On the character tokens cards, each character has a specified race, class and gender. As yet, it would appear that very few cards are affected by these traits. However, on reading certain cards more closely, they DO mention gender. For example,
Strength: "Discard this card and select a character. For the rest of the turn, add 3 to that character's checks that use HIS Strength die."
Ordinarily I wouldn't think this should mean that it must only be used on a character that is male, but there are other cards like
Speed: "Discard this card and select a character. For the rest of the turn, add 3 to that character's checks that use HER Dexterity die."
Now, I have always played these cards as though they are gender neutral, and I will continue to do so unless instructed otherwise, but it is (I think) worth mentioning that the wording could cause confusion the any of the more literal minded players out there. It might be good to have this uniformly dealt with, or to have the card reworded in future printings to avoid specific gender pronouns.
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Welcome to the brave new world of arbitrarily chosen general pronouns. It will be confusing for a while until everyone listens to me and completely abolishes sex differentiation in pronouns. Everyone can be "they"!
Until such a time, rest assured knowing you are playing correctly and if anyone else in your group tries to argue that cards are sex specific, you can be glad it only took a card game to help you find out they're a little weird.
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Some people think they can't use "they" as a singular 3rd-person pronoun, because some English teacher marked it as incorrect on an essay or assignment way back when. However, we've been using "they" as a singular 3rd-person pronoun for hundreds of years in spoken English. It is correct and less confusing than arbitrarily switching from "he" to "she." IMO.
Paizo's editorial staff seem to part of these "some people."
Some people think they can't use "they" as a singular 3rd-person pronoun, because some English teacher marked it as incorrect on an essay or assignment way back when. However, we've been using "they" as a singular 3rd-person pronoun for hundreds of years in spoken English. It is correct and less confusing than arbitrarily switching from "he" to "she." IMO.
Paizo's editorial staff seem to part of these "some people."
Paizo's house style is "sometimes male, sometimes female, never assumptive."
On a personal front, I'm a fan of the epicene "they," which appears in a lot of my games. But I'm also happy with Paizo's approach, because it's inclusive.
In the case of the two card above, the issue could have been cleared up by changing the gendered pronoun to "that character's" and change the preceding phrase slightly. I.e. it could have been
Strength: "Discard this card and select a character. For the rest of the turn, add 3 to checks that use that character's Strength die."
Etc. I understand the notion of wanting to be inclusive with pronouns, but I would think in general it is enough to simply not be exclusive with them.
Strength: "Discard this card and select a character. For the rest of the turn, add 3 to checks that use that character's Strength die."
Genius - and it's shorter than the original too. Sometimes people do tie themselves in knots trying to be PC ;)