A few hours ago this tweet surfaced on my feed:
Fuck. I felt terrible.
In the past year I’ve become increasingly aware of gender inequality and more empathetic of what many women have gone through, thanks to events like YC’s Female Founders (which is happening again this Saturday), stories shared by women, and private conversations with female friends of mine.
We made a big mistake. It may appear like a small typo, but the pronoun “his” subtly shouts disregard for women makers, particularly to those that have been mistreated because of their gender. Going forward we’ll be even more careful in how we communicate and hopefully this is a reminder to others of how important it is to be thoughtful and empathetic when crafting copy.
Again, I’m sorry. Thanks Allyson for bringing this to our attention and Ayrton for quickly fixing our flub:
EDIT: We updated the copy to be gender neutral, avoiding “his or her” as shown above.