Note that a 6⁄2 split (as in this post) would happen fairly frequently when tossing coins (~20% of the time, unless I miss my guess). Since alicey found that jarring, I expect that purposeful alternation would be a better strategy.
Maybe make 4 ♂ symbols and 4 ♀ symbols (if you know there will be 8 cases together) and shuffle them? Oh, I guess even in that case someone would complain if one set of symbols happened to get predominantly at the top of the article, and other set at the bottom of the article...
So probably it is best to alter them like this: ABABABAB… or maybe like this: ABBAABBA… with a coin flip deciding who is A and who is B.
More jarring than that is if one set of gender pronouns gets used predominantly in negative examples, and the other set gets used predominantly in positive examples.
I try to deliberately switch based on context. If I wrote an example of someone being wrong and then someone being right. I will stick with the same gender for both cases, and then switch to the other gender when I move to the next example of someone being wrong, right, or indifferent.
Occasionally, something will be so inherently gendered that I cannot use the non-default gender and feel reasonable doing it. In these cases, I actually don’t think I should. (Triggers: sexual violence. I was recently writing about violence, including rape, and I don’t think I could reasonable alternate pronouns for referring to the rapist because, while not all perpetrators are male, they are so overwhelmingly male that it would be unreasonable to use “she” in isolation. I mixed “he” with an occasional “he or she” for the extremely negative examples in those few paragraphs.)
Note that a 6⁄2 split (as in this post) would happen fairly frequently when tossing coins (~20% of the time, unless I miss my guess). Since alicey found that jarring, I expect that purposeful alternation would be a better strategy.
Maybe make 4 ♂ symbols and 4 ♀ symbols (if you know there will be 8 cases together) and shuffle them? Oh, I guess even in that case someone would complain if one set of symbols happened to get predominantly at the top of the article, and other set at the bottom of the article...
So probably it is best to alter them like this: ABABABAB… or maybe like this: ABBAABBA… with a coin flip deciding who is A and who is B.
You can also simply use standard names:
Alice, Bob, Carol, Dave, Erin, Frank...
More jarring than that is if one set of gender pronouns gets used predominantly in negative examples, and the other set gets used predominantly in positive examples.
I try to deliberately switch based on context. If I wrote an example of someone being wrong and then someone being right. I will stick with the same gender for both cases, and then switch to the other gender when I move to the next example of someone being wrong, right, or indifferent.
Occasionally, something will be so inherently gendered that I cannot use the non-default gender and feel reasonable doing it. In these cases, I actually don’t think I should. (Triggers: sexual violence. I was recently writing about violence, including rape, and I don’t think I could reasonable alternate pronouns for referring to the rapist because, while not all perpetrators are male, they are so overwhelmingly male that it would be unreasonable to use “she” in isolation. I mixed “he” with an occasional “he or she” for the extremely negative examples in those few paragraphs.)