Board Thread:Consensus Track/@comment-38502514-20190216075013/@comment-34115-20190218054955

They don't as in Gender: male. But when talking about Orochimaru, they use the pronouns he and him. Example from pg 72 in 4th Databook: "Orochimaru was doing cellular research on various clans. A portion of it was being preserved in his hideout."

Databook translations cannot be used as references for pronouns. Gendered language in Japanese is different than in English, many Japanese pronouns that are gendered-only in English are gender-neutral in Japanese. So regularly in translations gender neutral text gets substituted with gendered pronouns when translated to English. Which gender the pronouns should use are an assumption made by the translator, not a fact that can be cited.

The original Japanese text needs to be referenced to check for gendered language.