"...a TSA employee underwent screening at the beginning of their shift,"
Gah! The plural pronoun "their" describing a singular employee. Thank you, feminism, for corrupting the language for us. "The use he, him, his, etc. is nowadays considered sexist. Using them, they, or their is a way to avoid making an assumption of gender as there is no gender explicit in these pronouns."
If we want to avoid making assumptions about gender, maybe we need to switch to "xi" as in "at the beginning of xi shift."
/grammar rant. Returning you to you normal TSA and guns posting.
THank you for the PSA rant. I mean the TSA rant.
But why didn’t they just use “her” or “him” as was accurate. Why no mention of gender in this article? Does that mean it was a man and they want to avoid slandering men?
Why not just say “...at the beginning of its shift...”?
Oh wait, don’t return just yet. That one irks me too. The latest excuse [for using a plural] is that the language is deficient in providing an all-purpose possessive pronoun for just those occasions.
Maybe that’s because people are [supposed to be] either male or female? If something is an it, we use the word “its”.
The default masculine singular “his” is so offensive these days. It makes me appreciate him all the more. :)
Concur. The wording is straight out of Ayn Rand's "Anthem", where the individual had been expunged. "Our name is Equality 7-2521".