On the way to being the most downvoted post ever on StackOverflow:Meta
meta.stackexchange.com[Off Topic]
I was very late to the whole StackOverflow Saga, and didn't spend much time reading through all of its causes and comments at the time it happen.
And when I did, the thing that struck me most and has been in many other places including HN ( Sometimes ) is the use of English presumes others are Americans, especially in technology sector. This completely ignores people all over the world using English to communicates. And this is not about cultures or values, but what is a pronoun? How do we use the correct "pronoun", how do we tell which one to use. I suspect many native English user will have cognitive load and may decide it is not worth the hassle and walk away.
What about those that uses English as 2nd or even 3rd language.
I remember a story my British Colleague once told me, our German Colleague is so good with his English, so precise that sometimes it is borderline rude if you didn't know he was German. i.e The tone is wrong, but Germany tends to be very explicit about things in their culture, not the same could be said about the Brits.
It is important to understand the meaning, and messages that is trying to come across behind its written or verbal form, and often not literally what it meant.
If we have to nitpick every single word, phase or grammatical mistake as well as whatever political issues it is with the usage of the word, we will very quickly end up with people not communicating to you ( or in this case Stack overflow ) in the fear of constantly being bashed and disrupted.
> And when I did, the thing that struck me most and has been in many other places including HN ( Sometimes ) is the use of English presumes others are Americans
This is a huge problem, the assumption that everyone should be forced to share Americas liberal political views. Software is global and much of the globe is still struggling with concepts like equal rights for women and not criminalizing homosexuality. Now all of a sudden people in those countries are being penalized for having perfectly normal attitudes for someone from their culture.
"Inclusivity" is alienating most of the world and destroying diversity for the few people in the world privileged enough to argue about pronouns.
I didn't assume, but I can tell right away when someone has English as a second language like you do.
I pick up grammatical oddities as I read, and if I had to guess i'd say your first language is of Asian origin, possibly Filipino.
Of course that doesn't mean you aren't American, but I assume you are not vs are in this kind of situation.
It probably depends on how "American" the forum for discussion is vs global, I see HN more American then say, Reddit.
>I pick up grammatical oddities as I read
Mind sharing? So I can improve on it, it is funny as this is not the first time someone said I am Filipino, which I am not XD.
I don't think your post is off-topic at all.
We have very few signals in this medium that can tell us if someone is acting in bad faith, or just simply made a mistake. The scary thing about this code of conduct change is that it's mandating required behavior, which is a little unusual: most items in a code of conduct remind people of things they should not do, but speak in general only about behaviors that promote inclusiveness. This new bit is very specific, and lays out rules for how to use language. English itself is not a particularly consistent language even within English-majority countries like the US or UK; differences are huge between countries, especially when English isn't the primary language, due both to cultural convention and personal skill with the language.
I do think we should refer to people using their preferred pronouns when known. But we need to make allowances for mistakes; sadly I expect that the norm will be an assumption of bad faith when simple mistakes are likely to be the most common case.
I think the blowback is really just about cognitive load. There's only so much you can expend on social mores before the actual subject you're discussing gets eclipsed. Everyone deserves equal respect, but I understand that when I'm not in the majority in a situation that my perspectives/language may be alien to some of those in the majority- I don't hold it against them unless there is explicit hostility.
I find myself starting to subconsciously just use "you" or "them" and avoid any specific gendering altogether- in this day and age it just seems the least tiring route to go.
Absolutely "They". They they they they they. English already has a perfectly good gender-neutral pronoun. I explicitly list my pronouns as "He/his or they/their" because I think the neopronouns are ultimately a way to gatekeep inclusivity, which is ironic.
> I explicitly list my pronouns as "He/his or they/their" […]
This reminds me of an interview I had with a recruiter from Slack HQ.
The first question the interviewer asked was which pronoun should I be called?
The question threw me off for a moment but after reflecting about it for a while I thought it was a good strategy to make themselves look inclusive. If you are in California and want to work at Slack, know that at least their interviewers will respect whatever pronoun you want to be called.
This is what confuses me the most: the pronouns usually listed by people who insist on listing them are third person pronouns. How do you use a third person pronoun when talking to somebody to reference the very same person? Or are "he/him/his" etc actually second person pronouns? I.e. if somebody listed pronouns as "they/them/their" should I say "Hi, how are they doing? Can I offer them something to drink?". I hope this is not the case and these are really third person pronouns but then I fail to see how you can use them when addressing that person in a one-on-one interview (since it's "the interviewer" it was a one-on-one, right?).
PS. In Russian there are two second person pronouns and sometimes people will ask if it's appropriate to use a less-formal singular "you" instead of default plural "you" but this makes no sense in English. There is just one second person pronoun.
It makes no sense to me either. When you reply to a person, you never use a pronoun apart from 'you' when you refer to them.
It might make some sense in a multi-party discussion, I think. E.g. "When Soandso implied X he or she made a mistake by assuming Y". In an interview though? Unless it's from the Silence of the Lambs, I don't see where third person pronouns could ever happen.
Singular they always gets me confused about how many people we're talking about. As a non-native speaker, I wouldn't call this solution perfectly good.
On the other hand, I think it's an advantage that plurality is ambiguous. You can always make the plurality certain with additional words and when it is necessarily, and e.g. "you" is already a pronoun that has ambiguous plurality.
I assume that your native tongue is one where pronouns necessarily indicate plurality, and also that your English education almost always uses they to indicate the plural. But there are languages that have independent subject pronouns that do not mark for plurality; they indicate plurality when necessary with other words.
That doesn't fix everything.
My kid's best friend is now a they. After knowing a 'her' for three years, it's been hard to switch. I have a hard enough time some days stringing the right adjectives into sentences without also worrying about pronouns too. It's easier for me to do when typing, but I can't speak for everyone.
Since their first name is a single syllable, I've found myself avoiding pronouns entirely when talking about them. Because accidentally saying 'she' more than once in a while causes stress for everyone. It's a big deal, their father is not okay with this, and we are frequently the safest house for this group of kids to hang out at.
Our kid has always gone by a nickname. When she got older she decided she wanted a change. I was the first one in the house to use her new first name reliably. I'm not sure why I'm the one having trouble with pronouns.
You mean that you say "do they want some chocolate" when directly asking that single person if that single person wants chocolate?
I thought that "they" is too ne used instead of he or she (3rd person) - which I find useful to avoud he/she or (s)he
EDIT: I had an epiphany under the shower, sorry I misunderstood you and you probably meant that you now have to say "ask your friend Jane if they want chocolate"
A friend of mine transitioned. Using the new name came fairly quickly. Adapting all of my own history with this friend to bubble up a new pronoun reliably is still a work in progress.
What will happen with grammatically gendered languages, like Spanish?
Then you need to go look up how it's handled in Spanish.
BTW, English is gendered, just not as much as Spanish, French, and Italian are.
What are you talking about? English is verifiably not as gendered as Spanish, at the very least.
All nouns in Spanish require a gender article (el/la or los/las). In English, you do not have to figure out whether "día" should be prefixed with el or la -- and in the case of "día" despite it ending in "a" which usually implies feminine and la, it's actually masculine and is properly "el día."
That doesn't even bring into it examples like ellos/ellas ("they" or "them" in English) referring to a male group or a female group where the standard rule is to use ellos if referring to an unknown group or even a group of 100 women and one man, the only application of ellas should be when you can verify every single member of the group is female.
Look more closely at Latin gendering rules, not romance language gendering rules. In Latin, gender comes from the suffix.
It's typically carried over in suffixes from Latin: Words ending in "a" are feminine, words ending in "um" are masculine.
Or, look through common English names and see how often they follow Latin gender suffixes. Adam / Ada is an example. ("Am" is a male suffix.)
I recall responding to the statement "English is just as gendered as...", but clearly that's not what you wrote. That's my fault.
nit: the suffix -um in latin typically indicates a neuter grammatical gender. -us is usually masculine, and only in its accusative form it becomes -um. there are exceptions though, e.g. feminine 'manus' (hand). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_declension
They hamfist in their solution of using "x". eg. latina/latino -> latinx.
How does that work in the language itself? In English people say "latin-ecks". In Spanish do people say "latin-equis"?
It doesn’t. It’s a written-only solution. If you listen to a speech from someone who uses the latinx you will notice they don’t even try to speak it, and they just go with the “latino and latina”.
I not only sympathize, but completely agree with that point of view. However, the idea that the hate-driven portion of the blowback might be so small as to be negligible seems unrealistic to me, almost regardless of the forum.
That's the most reasonable explanation. Some of the reactions here are beyond absurd and make no sense except if they feel overwhelmed. I can at least empathize with that. Too much too fast can be hard to deal with.
Sometimes I forget I've spent a lot of time in a LGBTQ+-heavy community where this sort of basic respect for self-identity has been the norm for years. I think a lot of folks screaming bloody murder today will accept it once they acclimate and realize the requests were nothing extraordinary.
People who are used to he and she based on appearance and they when you don't know may need some time. They'll get there.
What's particularly obnoxious about this type of political thought is the idea that "If you don't support forced or compelled speech in favor of X then you must be against X". The problems with this type of thinking are too obvious to list off.
After visiting a friend of mine who was attending UC Berkeley in the 90s, I made the comment that "if you don't have an open mind, then get the fuck out of here." This current movement feels very much like an extension of what I felt there.
It's really strange to me that a trans (or whatever) person would be offended at being called a standard pronoun. Seems like an easy mistake to make.
I feel like the idea of choosing your own pronoun is fine and happy within an insular LGBTQ+ forum or venue. When it tries to take over the language everyone else uses, it's gonna do more harm than good. People that push it just seem to be selfish to me.
Some people do deliberately (misgender) to antagonize a person. Particularly people who feel their culture is being redefined without them.
By the way, EVERY trans person I know has been EXCEEDINGLY kind and understanding when I've made a mistake with their gender. Now, if I don't know it already, I ask what they prefer to be called the same way I would ask how to properly pronounce someone's name. "Pardon me, what are your pronouns?"
If they've stated what their pronouns are then use them with the same respect you would muster to call someone by their proper name and pronunciation and spelling. The value here is no different, just more broadly applied then you're perhaps used to.
If you deliberately misgender someone (show me a nerd hasn't had this or some similar slur used against them) then you're just a jerk and should be reprimanded.
As an aside, to all the people complaining about non-English speakers doing enough work already participating in our idiom: 1) proper use of pronouns is essential to speaking English with or without neopronouns. 2) Many languages and cultures require VERY refined and strict understanding of a persons A) Age, B) Marital status, C) Gender and especially D) Social status before even beginning to address them.
> Some people do deliberately (misgender) to antagonize a person.
There's a difference between childish behavior in real life, versus an internet forum where someone's name and profile picture don't really say much.
If their preferred pronoun is non-gendered, how can using singular "they" misgender them?
One issue that a lot of trans supporters don't realize is that similarly to how trans people could be offended when they are referred to by a gender not of their choice, so to could some speakers be offended if they are forced to refer to a person as a gender not of their (the speaker) choice.
This may be easier to understand by using a comparison. When I talk about the Muslim prophet I say Muhammad. However, many Muslims would say Muhammad pbuh (peace be upon him). This isn't that problematic, but let's say they the term was Muhammad ttp (the true prophet). Now I as a non Muslim believer would never use ttp because that would be insulting for whoever I believe in. If SE required that whenever I mention Muhammad that I append ttp, I would refuse as it would be extremely offensive to me.
Similarly by referring to a person with XX chromosomes as she, is offensive to people who believe that genders cannot change. A reasonable compromise would be to let whoever is righting chose what they want, or even allow gender neutral pronouns. But what SE chose to do was to say that people who believe that XY is a guy are wrong and deserve no respect for their beliefs.
> Similarly by referring to a person with XX chromosomes as she
It is worth pointing out that there are non-transgender XX males [1]. They are very rare, but it can happen. If the part of the Y chromosome which contains the SRY (testis-determining factor) gene is translocated to the X chromosome, an individual can be an infertile XX male. I don't think anyone would try to argue that such a person is not actually male (assuming they in fact identify as such), in spite of their XX chromosomes, since their external appearance from birth can be completely male. (XX male individuals vary: some appear anatomically completely male, albeit sterile; others show incomplete masculinisation.)
Biological sex cannot be reduced to chromosomes, although chromosomes can be used as a rule of thumb valid 99.99% of the time. In fact, I don't think there is any one single factor to which biological sex can be reduced; both maleness and femaleness are composites of collections of traits which usually occur together, but none of those traits is absolutely necessary to being of that biological sex. People who talk about biological sex as if it was completely determined by chromosomes are ignorant of the whole story.
I don’t know if I’ve ever written a single pronoun on stack overflow.
I write a question referring only to myself “How do I...” Or I write an answer with “you”, or I reference another poster by name.
I don’t quite understand why the admins thought this was a good use of energy, but I am also all for inclusivity. If I find the need for a pronoun, I will use “they” and not be bothered by it.
> If I find the need for a pronoun, I will use “they” and not be bothered by it.
That will possibly get you a warning and, if you keep doing it, a ban. If you're using any pronouns and the person has written their preferred pronouns on their profile, you must use those.
I believe that the whole issue is virtue signalling. It has none to very little actual practical value but is highly contentious (especially with draconian punishments for minor infractions), it's great as a signal and useless as a policy.
It absolutely says the opposite of that.
> Q15: Is it expected that people go to "About me" to check whether someone has pronouns there when interacting in Q&A?
No. That would be good practice, but it is not required.
Oh, thanks for pointing that out. I had read the whole shebang yesterday and that Q&A has been added since then. Before the CoC was made public, the (unofficially) communicated approach was that checking the profile was to be mandatory.
"Q9: Do I have to use pronouns I’m unfamiliar or uncomfortable with (e.g., neopronouns like xe, zir, ne... )?
Yes, if those are stated by the individual."
Therefore if someone says their pronouns are all Apache Attack Helicopter (and someone will), and you are aware of it, you are obligated to say things like "I think Apache Attack Helicopter made a good point". If I'm familiar with it, yet choose to say "I think they made a good point", I would have violated the code of conduct.
That leads me to assume that I am unwelcome on this site and to look down the FAQ for the answer to the question, how do I delete my account?
P.S. It's not in this FAQ, but https://stackoverflow.com/help/deleting-account.
>> "Therefore if someone says their pronouns are all Apache Attack Helicopter (and someone will), and you are aware of it, you are obligated to say things like "I think Apache Attack Helicopter made a good point". If I'm familiar with it, yet choose to say "I think they made a good point", I would have violated the code of conduct."
This would be obvious trolling. No one sincerely identifies as an Apache Attack Helicopter. No one doing this is making a worthwhile contribution, so there would be nothing worth engaging with. Report and move on.
Here’s a better example that’s not as obvious: if I am not aware that ze was an accepted pronoun and someone told me to use it, how do I know its real and not them jokingly using “the” with a French accent? Should I report it as someone fooling around?
Is the post otherwise good? If so, Google/quack/whatever for ze pronoun and see what comes up. Search engines are better at surfacing explanations for them these days.
In practice, you won't encounter them often, and it should be obvious if they're a troll. Those should be reported and otherwise ignored. You can worry yourself sick with these hypotheticals. You are more dynamic than you give yourself credit for.
Fun fact: googling "apache attack helicopter pronoun" turns up a few things, and it may not be immediately obvious to all good-faith searchers that it's bogus.
https://www.google.com/search?q=apache+attack+helicopter+pro...
>If so, Google/quack/whatever for ze pronoun and see what comes up.
No, I don't think I will waste my time Googling every little thing to avoid manufactured outrage.
Do you typically refuse to learn new things because some people who know those things are toxic assholes? I never would have learned anything about computers, writing, or music with a policy like that.
You do you. I'll be over here learning new ways to expand on the human experience.
It's not about refusing to learn new things. You're missing the point. It's about having to think about (and having to apologize for it if you don't think about) something that's completely irrelevant to the conversation.
Others have rightly pointed out that there are some StackExchange networks where your pronoun matters. And I'm sure in those, it's worth putting in the effort. But for StackOverflow, MathOverflow, Electronics, these things are absolutely, positively irrelevant to the subject. It neither adds nor takes away a sense of inclusivity because _it's not relevant_. It's a neutral thing.
Honestly, if I didn't read Hacker News and get exposed to this stuff I'd assume someone asking to be called "xe" was obvious trolling. I mean, who spends time inventing a non-existent gender with a word that is equally non-existent and then flames everyone for not using it? That sort of thing is classic trolling behaviour.
I've met lots of people who use these pronouns and I've never seen one go on the attack because someone got it wrong unless said person was an asshole. You should eject xem from your life. That kind of behavior is toxic and contrary to helping people learn.
This is clearly something very culturally local. I've never met anyone who uses such pronouns. I'm not even sure I've ever met a transgender person at all. If I did they didn't mention it and it wasn't noticeable.
If it's that much of a concern just put a validation filter on the comment submission box that has you "gender neutralize" your submission/answers if they find "he/her" type language in there.
I mean - it's a clear-enough defined problem to solve with software and I've found that if you mess up a gender pronoun on accident people sometimes get deeply offended. I've gone 100% to the "they/them/you/their user name/etc." route because I just don't want to step on toes.
I miss the days when everyone was just a silly textual username that didn't have a gender, age, religion, race, etc. I've gone years communicating with people without actually knowing their gender.
For what it's worth, I've only ever encountered people getting "deeply offended" over intentional misrepresentation of gender. I hear far more people complaining about people being upset about being misgendered than people actually upset about being misgendered. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, I'm just saying that in my experience the counter-"outrage culture" in many cases blows things way more out of proportion than the "outrage culture" they rail against.
The introduction of this policy rather contradicts your claim.
In what way? I think it only supports my claims. How much visible outrage was there from people being misgendered? Yet there is a thread full of people complaining about having to adjust their language. It seems to me there is way more people upset about changing language than were upset about being misgendered. Unless there is some meta thread you can point me to which is full of people complaining about being misgendered?
The visible outrage is not from people "complaining about people being upset about being misgendered", it is from people complaining about an actual policy change introducing compelled speech. If people complaining about being misgendered is as rare as you suggest then why does stack exchange feel the need to push through such a controversial policy change?
The policy is about recommending polite speech in a public forum where rules to this effect have been enforced for a long time. And it's articulating what that means to people who don't understand what pronouns are for.
That some people may use a pronoun other than the one on their birth certificate is the way things are going in the modern world, so polite use of the language must take this into consideration.
I have living aunts and uncles and grandparents who still think it's okay to refer to dark skinned persons, and with all politeness, as "Negro." I take it on to school them and, yes, compel them to use polite and accepted speech.
By the way, there is no society or culture without compelled and enforced norms, which by the way are what's under debate underneath all this.
> The policy is about recommending polite speech
The policy is not about "recommending" anything, it's about "requiring". That's the essence of most of the negative reaction. There are plenty of things that I will usually be happy to do voluntarily but will strongly oppose being required to do.
Anecdotal, but I have definitely seen people be hurt when it's not intentional... and honestly, I feel for them.
I can't truly relate but I can be empathetic. Folks bug me sometimes when they assume in conversation that I'm close to my family (because most people are). In reality I come from an abusive family and tend to not want to talk/think about them.
I understand that it's a completely different thing, but I'm using it to illustrate that _all_ of us should be good to each other, and realize that sometimes we can hurt someone's feelings without a single bit of intention to do so!
Right but intention is everything.
There's a difference between someone who knows you don't have a good relationship with your family and then really just being in-your-face about it (that's intentionally making you feel bad about your family), vs someone who doesn't know.
Yes you feel bad in both cases, but you probably feel much worse when it's an intentional thing.
> Yes you feel bad in both cases, but you probably feel much worse when it's an intentional thing.
Of course. I don't want to make people feel bad regardless of intention so my personal SOP is to try not to hurt people in regards to gendered language by keeping it as neutral as possible, and that's pretty easy when it's typed out IMO.
I think the first 8 points are all totally acceptable and makes sense. But it goes downhill from there... I'm totally not comfortable calling someone by a strange-looking "neopronoun" that I'm unfamiliar with - I would rather avoid interacting with them than use those words.
This comment made me think:
> Is using someone's personal pronoun really "showing respect" if you get banned otherwise?
I could get behind a real fix to English pronouns that takes gender completely out of it and fixes the problem of ambiguity when you have more than one pronoun in a sentence.
My proposal would be:
1. "he" becomes gender neutral, and always refers to the first person in the sentence.
2. "she" becomes gender neutral, and always refers to the second person in the sentence. You can think if it as standing for "second he".
3. "tehe" is a gender neutral pronoun that always refers to the third person in the sentence. Think of it is standing for "tertiary he".
4. "quhe", "pehe", "hehe" are the 4th, 5th, and 6th persons ("quad he", "penta he" and "hex he"). If your sentence has more than six persons, rewrite the damn thing.
For example, in the sentence "Alice, Bob, and Carol took his car, she drove, and tehe paid for the gas", they took Alice's car, Bob drove, and Carol paid for the gas.
If they took Bob's car, Carol drove, and Alice paid, that would be "Alice, Bob, and Carol took her car, tehe drove, and he paid for the gas".
that's actually really interesting, I never thought of that. do you know if any languages have something like that?
I wonder how a non-native English speaker would handle this, especially if they came from a country that is still hostile to LGBTQ issues?
This one has me torn. Neopronouns are hard. I spend a lot of time in and around communities where these are used, and people who use them tend to be accepting of people using they/them. It's a compromise for the reality that most people aren't going to remember something they rarely use even if they want to. I rarely see people who use these pronouns, so I forget usage between encounters.
Even most of the people screaming bloody murder in here say they're okay with they/them. I'm not sure who SE consulted on Q9, but xey are not representative of any neopronoun user I've met. They recognize it's a lot of extra mental load beyond the much more common they/they/their and make a small accommodation for people who struggle with it.
I don't see any other issues on a skim, but that seems to be what's setting people off anyway so maybe that is it.
I've been answering questions in Stack Overflow for over two years and I don't remember referring to anyone by anything other than the second person; I never saw SO as a platform that lended itself to talk about anyone in the third person.
Regardless, this policy means that I'll be contributing even less frequently than I already do and, if/when that happens, I'll just keep using the second person.
If I somehow slip, use the third person and someone ends up saying anything about "misgendering", I'll just delete the answer/comment and spend my time better doing something else.
Just try and recognize you're not the only person on the internet. Do right by them, and if you fuck up, apologize and move on.
If you're getting angry that you (might) upset someone else you need to take a hard look in the mirror. Not only because you're immediately acting like their feelings don't matter because you didn't MEAN to offend them. But also, why don't you have a hobby? If you do, apologize to the person you upset and move on and reclaim that time to do something productive.
I get that there is a much larger context to this (moderator losing her moderating bits over this issue, many other moderators stepping down in protest) that's almost certainly inflaming the discussion and driving a lot of the downvotes, but overall I don't really see much that's objectionable about this.
Essentially it boils down to: if you know someone's preferred pronouns, use them. If not, use gender-neutral pronouns. They even specifically point out that there's no requirement to actively seek out someone's pronouns if you don't know; just use something gender-neutral and move on.
I do see some issues, like: what if someone makes up a pronoun in bad faith, with the intention to troll people? There's some discussion around that in the comments, but the current policy seems to be "go along with it, but raise the issue with mods and they'll look into it", which is... not really a satisfying answer at all? And what if someone puts down a pronoun in good faith that you're simply unfamiliar with? Is it really reasonable to expect that answering a SE question will sometimes require googling someone's stated pronoun, followed by a value judgment to guess if they're trolling or not?
I come to SE (well, mostly SO) for answers to technical questions. For the vast majority of them, gender has nothing to do with the question or answer. Someone in the comments links to a question where someone put their pronoun preference at the bottom of their question, followed by an edit war removing and re-adding it[0], plus there's a meta discussion of the question[1]. Pronoun discussion in a technical question that doesn't even have to do with people is just noise, plain and simple. But it seems the consensus among community managers is edging toward leaving the pronoun notification in there, even though their FAQ explicitly states that the right place for a pronoun preference is in the About Me section of the user profile. This is getting to be a bit much.
[0] https://stackoverflow.com/posts/58336846/revisions
[1] https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/390301/would-a-note...
(Joke)
Sometimes I wonder if we should all adopt thick accents so we can just use 'e (instead of he or she); hm (instead of her or him); and ha (instead of his or hers).
(Please laugh)
I use whatever pronoun I see fit and if I offend someone by using the wrong pronoun I will apology to that person and move on.
"I'll wave my fists wherever I see fit and if I end up hurting someone by punching them I'll apologise to that person and move on."
Maybe stop waving your fists about?
As a marginalized person who has both been physically assaulted for my identity as well as been subjected to hate & discrimination, let me be clear that equivocation between words and violence is not helpful.
I didn't mean for it to sound like an equivocation, and reading it back I see how it could be seen that way. I should have worded it better.
What I'm trying to say is that we should all be aware that our actions occur in a context, and thinking about the possible implications of those actions is a good thing. This is true whether that action is a physical action, or speech, or even inaction etc. The attitude of the OP appeared to be more "I am free to do x and I'm not going to give any thought to what the possible consequences might be before I do x", which isn't particularly fun for everyone else.
"Whatever I see fit" typically is a declaration of defiance and rejection, rather than a simple "I'll try my best". If that characterization is accurate, it implies that your theoretical apology would be insincere. If so, why offer it?
With "I see fit" I meant to use one that I assume is correct in the spirit of "I'll try my best".
English is my second language and I should have worded my comment differently.
Obligatory need to say: I strongly believe in a live-and-let-live idea so yes, everyone should be treated fairly and with decency. Everyone.
The odd thing here is that in most cases, rules regarding speech revolve around what _not_ to say. (cursing, hate speech, attacks, etc).
But in this case, these kinds of things feel like they belong more as a list of good manners. But in this case, you aren't being told "this is what we feel are good manners", but you're forced to say certain things, but those rules can be all over the place (physically, on different pages, and complexity-wise). So now are people supposed to check each profile before responding? What's wrong with just saying s/he, or OP, or the various internet-isms? Do they cause so much harm? They are totally harmless and neutral, and not offensive. Or are they offensive now?
Again, it's one thing if it was a guideline (like when we talk about manners), but this seems like users are being forced to say certain words (compelled speech), knowing which words to say requires them to do additional research, and that research usually has nothing to do with the content of the actual post.
> So now are people supposed to check each profile before responding?
That question is specifically asked—and answered—in the linked article; the answer is no.
ming the discussion and driving a lot of the downvotes, but overall I don't really see much that's objectionable about this. Essentially it boils down to: if you know someone's preferred pronouns, use them. If not, use gender-neutral pronouns. They even specifically point out that there's no requirement to actively seek
Nothing better to do
This story cannot die fast enough. The simplest solution is to pay moderators.
Now it seems StackOverflow knows how YouTube feels whenever they post a YouTube Rewind video. That one got absolutely downvoted to all hell, and for similar reasons to this post.
Hopefully they'll look at this, see the amount of dislikes it's getting and change course again/revert this mess to the way it was before.
Wrongthink
This "mess" is an attempt to encourage/enforce basic decency in their community. Why do you think they should "change course"?
It’s like making it illegal to not greet your neighbor each morning. The underlying premise is to make things nicer, but it’s also just stupid. A good rule would be “try to be considerate of pronoun preferences”.
The wants of the LGBTQA community are, in the eyes of the majority, probably not this. I like to be polite and respectful. I’ll be honest though, I would guess that less than 0.1% of the English speaking population identifies as “Xir” and that a non trivial portion of those that do are comfortable with the understanding that random strangers are more comfortable using gender neutral language. I would further posit that the portion of those that are not ok with people having points of view favoring even gender neutral language and instead demand the usage of the term Xir have adopted it as a counter cultural stance to combat heteronormativity- which honestly is fine, but it’s also a move made knowingly to make some people uncomfortable which by any metric must be ruder than someone who is just trying to avoid controversy at all by using gender neutral pronouns to begin with. I’m a left leaning adult, and I think it’s pretty bullshit. Especially on the Internet where women have been assumed to be men by default for decades.
If I misgender someone, and they ask me to use any specific pronoun in the future, I probably will. If the responder instead gets angry and implies that I am rude because I made a common assumption, and instead asserts that I’m going to tell them to buzz off.
Rudeness is clearly a subjective concept based around intent. And it’s frankly a waste of people’s time.
Imagine if every post had pronouns at the end, and if every man then demanded a correction for a use of they instead of “he”. That would be a waste of time and disrespectful to the ability of everyone else to be an adult.
Are you suggesting that basic decency wasn't a thing on SO/SE before? I can count the number of rude interactions I've witnessed on two hands, and all of them were either people being angry about their shitty questions being flagged or fundamental disagreements over how software development should be done.
This wasn't a significant problem for the community as a whole. Certainly, any individual might be hurt when it happens, but let's keep some perspective. I've also not heard anything about mods not being able to deal with instances when it happened. There were people trying to be within an inch of the rules (on other issues, I've never seen gender being an issue at all), and they were all easily dealt with because SO never claimed to apply any rules by the letter only.
Granted, I'm speaking for the technical sites, law.se or pets.se may be terrible places, but I doubt it. Where did you witness that lack of basic decency?
"Decency" is not a universal thing, so it's not acceptable to enforce your ways of being decent onto everyone else.
Because using good causes for justifying bad actions is bad.
I don't care how downvoted I get, I'll never call someone a made up pronoun. There is no word as xir as xe or latinx and i'm not participating in what I'd consider alarming participation of a mental illness. If you want me to call you he, or she, or as pointed just they, I don't think that's asking much. And I'll probably make a mistake, just mention it and move on. But the second you force this crap onto me, I'm out, which I'm sure pleases both sides.
>mental illness
Do you actually believe this, or are you using it as an insult?
>I don't care how downvoted I get
This hurts your comment so badly, especially as a leading statement.
>Do you actually believe this, or are you using it as an insult?
I believe this, and mean it more as a matter of fact in a literal sense, and not as an insult.
>This hurts your comment so badly, especially as a leading statement.
To each their own. I know my audience. I lean conservative on a heavily west coast populated forum. I'm usually pretty easy going, but did draw a line in the sand on this. If every SE community trends this way, I'll pursue other interests.
Wow, what a trainwreck in the comments. It's a shame that this is what happens whenever you remind developers to use common decency.
The majority of comments have no qualms with respecting one's mode of self-identification, but rather, with the method by which S.E. has chosen to approach it.
In other words, the commenters have an issue with the poor execution of a noble idea.
Genuinely, what's the poor execution? They seem to have basically codified "use someone's stated pronouns" with an awareness of the common ways people try to get around it.
It seems like anyone who respects how other people identify will have hard time running up against this policy.
The policy assumes that everyone will act in good faith, or will be explicit about acting in bad faith. That's a terrible assumption.
For example: if I put an unfamiliar pronoun in my profile, and someone sees it, are they obligated to refer to me that way? What if I'm just trolling? Should people be required to google my preferred pronoun and then make a value judgment on whether I'm acting in good or bad faith?
If they err on the side of assuming good faith, and I'm really just trolling, then we get an answer for all to see that includes someone falling for a troll, which reduces the value of that answer. It also normalizes trollish behavior, which is bad.
If they believe I'm acting in bad faith, and they're wrong, they could get banned from the site, which is an overreaction to what I'd expect will be a common, innocent mistake.
And that's just one example; there are plenty more in the comments.
I would hope a mod on SO/SE is better at detecting trolling than the average /r/TumblrInAction poster. People who do this are very obvious if you're not already poised to go off on a rage at the people they're pretending to be. Unchecked confirmation bias is a critical vulnerability.
> It seems like anyone who respects how other people identify will have hard time running up against this policy.
Because the policy isn't about respecting gender identity; it's about having a political battle where there are no winners.
Must be nice to assume everyone is a native English speaker. Do you not believe foreign language speakers have equal rights to transpeople?
Almost as bad as the reaction when China "reminded" the NBA to respect China's views on Hong Kong.