Stack Overflow Inc. Fiasco: Timeline

https://cellio.dreamwidth.org/2019/10/05/stack-overflow-fiasco-timeline.html

by SnarkAsh • 7 years ago

516 461 7 years ago

cellio.dreamwidth.org

blondin• 7 years ago

tangent but, omg livejournal is back?!

phyzome4• 7 years ago

Sort of, yeah. Dreamwidth is a fork of the codebase and has some of the original developers. Technically, Livejournal is still around too, but a lot of people migrated when LJ was bought by a Russian company and later when the servers moved to Russia as well. LJ is a total ghost town now.

m-p-3• 7 years ago

What a mess of a slippery slope..

throws_gender2• 7 years ago

This was touched on briefly in the article, but maybe someone else here can shed some light on this here.

Is it not super confusing for gender neutral to use the 'they' pronoun? It's already in use in the English language. Every time I've heard people try to use it in conversation it's sounded like an Abbott and Costello routine.

reanimus3• 7 years ago

It's been around for ages as a gender neutral pronoun: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002748.h...

Symbiote• 7 years ago

(Native English speaker)

I find it pretty easy to use "they" when the gender is unknown, which fits a lot of writing online.

I find it much, much more difficult to remember to call my friend's partner, who looks in every way to me very feminine, and has an unambiguously feminine name, "they" rather than "she".

edflsafoiewq• 7 years ago

With an indefinite referent though (from you link: "a man", "a person", "every one"). Not with reference to specific definite person. "Jack got their jacket" does not usually parse as Jack getting his own jacket.

sawaruna• 7 years ago

What's the confusing part? It's often used in both plural and singular, for the latter mainly when you don't know the identity of the person. Not totally confusing to use it for an identity you do know IMO.

ergocoder8• 7 years ago

As a non-native english speaker, using singular "they" is confusing. It may even negatively impact some people.

I've seen a recommendation that we should use "on another hand" instead of "on the other hand". Because, you know, we should avoid seeing things as black and white. I agree. Things often have more than 2 sides.

My English teacher said "on another hand" wasn't acceptable. You might be deducted point in a situation like TOEFL exam.

Another example is "I ain't" in some other dialects. We don't want to discriminate against certain groups. But, at the same time, it's wrong to use those phrases :S

Using a singular "they" is on a different level of being problematic. You don't wanna look illiterate in a situation like TOEFL exam and some other official situation. On another hand, you don't want to be publicly shamed and ganged up for misgendering others.

lorenzhs2• 7 years ago

You already use "you" as both singular and plural. Historically, "you" used to be the plural form of "ye". Grammatically, singular "you" works just the same as singular "they", so it's not confusing at all (I'm also a non-native speaker). See https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/you#Usage_notes

The references to "on another hand" I've found have been mostly historical (e.g., a Senate speech from 1830) and/or discussions whether it is correct. I can't find anyone advocating its use.

Freak_NL3• 7 years ago

My English teacher said "on another hand" wasn't acceptable. You might be deducted point in a situation like TOEFL exam.

That is likely because 'on the other hand' is what is known as an idiom; a fixed saying. Even if some people are advocating for change of certain idioms, as a (second language) student of a language you are ill-advised to take the liberty of promoting such a novel phrasing, because people may find it hard to tell if you are making a mistake (and that they should adjust their language to your perceived level) or are in fact advocating a different way of saying things.

When taking an exam you are of course expected to use only language that is currently seen as obviously correct, because the examiner cannot tell the difference either.

"on another hand"

This seems silly. You use on the other hand to contrast two viewpoints. There are other idioms for enumerating more than two.

teddyh2• 7 years ago

I've seen a recommendation that we should use "on another hand" instead of "on the other hand".

http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/O/on-the-gripping-hand....

sampo• 7 years ago

As a non-native english speaker, using singular "they" is confusing.

I am non-native as well, but my native language doesn't have gendered pronouns. To me, using singular "they" is actually easier as it is closer to how I speak and think in my native language. The normal English (as well as most other Indo-European languages) way of using she or he, always meant I have to stop a bit to think, to add this extra bit of information I wouldn't have to if I were speaking in my native language.

Let's imagine a language that doesn't have a word for red, but has "wine" for darker shades of red and "rose" for brighter shades of red. You just can't talk about "red" in general, you always have to specify if you're meaning the darker or the brighter kind. That's a bit how I feel always needing to specify she or he.

sitharus• 7 years ago

They avoidance of ‘they’ as a singular personal pronoun is a recent occurrence, historically it has been used frequently when gender is unknown or unclear. The Oxford English Dictionary did some research on the history last year https://public.oed.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-singular-they...

The only recent change is people expressing a desire to use they/them as their own forms of address, but this isn’t an invalid use.

goto11• 7 years ago

"They" have been used like that for ages. It is certainly less clunky than writing "he or she" in cases where you are not referring to any particular person.

83457• 7 years ago

The problem is there is no alternative in English other than "it" which is pejorative.

freehunter3• 7 years ago

No more confusing that any other words that have two meanings. When you hammer a nail, you certainly don't want to hit your fingers. But if you miss the nail with the hammer, you might hit your nail, which would be painful. And you have to be really careful asking someone if they want a date. If you mean the fruit of a palm tree but they think you want to start a romantic relationship, things might get tricky.

And certainly less confusing than words that are spelled the same but have wildly different meanings depending on pronunciation (read, past tense meaning to have finished reading a section of text, or read, future/present tense meaning has not finished reading a section of text).

throws_gender2• 7 years ago

I guess it's better if I give a concrete example of a conversation I recently observed.

Bob is gender neutral. Uses the 'they' pronoun. In a conversation with people, instead of saying "Bob helped me out with this problem", someone says "They helped me out with this problem", referring to Bob, and no one, including Bob, has any idea who they are referring to.

cryptozeus3• 7 years ago

Yes it is , it so is.

cdirkx• 7 years ago

I have never used in conversation, but sometimes use it in writing. My native language has a gender neutral pronoun, so it did not take too much getting used to in English. You say the double usage of 'they' might be confusing, but in pratice believe it has been around for long enough on the internet that I have a high enough confidence that most readers will understand it's use or at least not be too distracted by it.

solidsnack90002• 7 years ago

It is a long accepted usage, with regards to abstract persons, like "one".

wolco2• 7 years ago

Isn't a mod a volunteer position? Why waste years working for free without any control?

julienreszka• 7 years ago

Reputation. Power hunger. Ego trip. Many possibilities.

erikpukinskis• 7 years ago

Building wealth is not everyone’s primary goal.

philwelch• 7 years ago

True. Wealth, at the scales most of us are familiar with, gives you autonomy over your own life. The motivations described here have more to do with the desire to exercise power over others.

randrews• 7 years ago

Precisely so you can enforce your views about wrongthink.

greggman2• 7 years ago

do volunteers for not-tech things have control?

I don't feel like I'm working for free when I contribute to stack overflow. I feel like some company is running a mostly free site (until recently just job ads you can turn off).

I volunteer to help others. I assume most others do the same. It just feels good in the same way I'm assuming other volunteer activities feel good. Of course not everything feels good but over all when I've managed to answer someone's question it feels like the same feeling I get helping someone on a non-tech way.

wolco2• 7 years ago

I understand the helping feeling.

Stack overflow just hired a ceo to extract as much value as possible. They should pay you or reward you for years of service. You've saved them personally over 250k if you have been doing this for 5 years or more.

Volunteering so a for profit company feels helpful but who are you helping? If no one volunteered then someone paid would perform the same tasks...

Permit• 7 years ago

Same reason many people contribute to open source projects for free, often without any control (ie. they can be removed from a project for similar violations as the one linked here).

michannne7• 7 years ago

Power is what it usually boils down to - power to control what may or may not viewed, power to revoke privileges, power to ban, it's very tempting, look no further than Twitch mods of large streamers.

goostavos• 7 years ago

"require use of preferred pronouns and avoiding them is forbidden"

This line of thinking is so bizarre to me, but seems to be increasingly common (or at least loud enough in the right places to be noticed). There is a segment of the population that seems intent on being able assign and punish that assumed thought crime.

Now your lack of a specific behavior is suspect!

reanimus3• 7 years ago

I think it's just rude behavior, honestly. If I ask you to call me something and you go out of your way not to do that, how is that not a dick move?

phyzome4• 7 years ago

I'm pretty sure cellio specifically said that they were fine with using pronouns when specified.

freehunter3• 7 years ago

It's not a dick move because the singular "they" covers every conceivable pronoun that could ever possibly exist. Saying "they" is not the same as calling a man "she" or calling a woman "he" or any combination of genders and pronouns. The singular "they" is as accurate for one gender as it is for any other possible genders and covers all of them exactly the same.

That's the entire reason neutral words like "they" exist, to cover every possible case to avoid mis-gendering. If we decide that the singular "they" is inappropriate, we might as well do away with pronouns altogether and refer to people by name every time we mention someone.

Wowfunhappy6• 7 years ago

What is the alternative on a Q&A site that explicitly restricts tangential conversation?

michannne7• 7 years ago

I answered saying that we already have a negative commandment, don't call people what they don't want to be called (like wrong pronouns), which is proper

Straight from the article. You can tell people not to call you something, Cellio will not call you that thing. However, they will not go out of their way to call you what you want to be called, it's their choice in what they call you, as well as how they respond to names you don't like.

trentnix• 7 years ago

You know what else is a dick move? - punishing people for wrongthink.

unreal372• 7 years ago

Edited to say...

I think we (as humans on this planet) need to be respectful of each other. Not go out of our way to hurt each other.

But "being respectful" needs to have a standard, society-wide definition. We cannot allow individuals to set their own standard of what they demand in order to feel respected, because then people can invent unreasonable demands on others and then claim to be harmed when that fails to happen.

For instance, I can go around demanding people call me "your lordship". No, my name is not Scott. My name is not unreal37. I am not he/she/they. Call me "your lordship" or I will consider that an insult.

Individuals cannot define the rules like this. We need a standard of what is considered respectful behavior and it applies to everyone.

loco5niner• 7 years ago

If you ask me to do something that I am not comfortable with or goes against my values, I will not do that thing.

Nothing wrong with that.

phyzome4• 7 years ago

It's also super weird because everyone I know who is NB, trans, or genderqueer is fine with singular they and absolutely supports its use when someone's pronouns are unspecified.

detaro• 7 years ago

This appears to have been more specifically about using neutral forms (EDIT: specifically avoiding any pronouns at all), if someone's preference otherwise is known.

JumpCrisscross3• 7 years ago

It's also super weird

It’s a private organisation. The person “let go” was a volunteer. It sucks, but both parties acted within their rights, legally and I’d argue morally.

Lots of places have weird norms—dress codes, for instance. This group has a different view of pronouns. They want to enforce that as a cultural value. Apparently, their leadership either agrees or doesn’t find the topic worth burning political capital over. The author did find it worth burning political capital over, which caused him [EDIT: oops, them] to be ejected.

The cost of vilifying norms we disagree with is a reduced cultural space private organisations can explore. That loss of dynamism may reduce the frequency of seemingly-silly subcultures, but it also hits our broader culture’s flexibility.

greglindahl2• 7 years ago

The policy is talking about situations where a person's preferred pronouns are known.

JimboOmega4• 7 years ago

But this is in a case where the pronouns are (presumably?) known. If you were obviously doing it with regards to one person, it could be very offensive. That is, if you insist on referring to a transgender person as "they", when you know their pronouns but refer to cis-gender people using gendered pronouns.... then you're just refusing to gender a trans person correctly as opposed to trying to take pronouns out of your language.

We did just have the whole contrapoints fiasco regarding pronouns, which shows that... the community is not dealing with some of these things very well at all. (FWIW, I'm a transgender woman and I totally agree with the concept she was expressing)

latk2• 7 years ago

Singular they is great when pronouns are unspecified, and also makes for a great specific pronoun :)

But the issue at hand is precisely that Monica doesn't want to use singular they, even when someone has specified that pronoun – not out of bigotry, but because it supposedly makes for ambiguous, inelegant writing. Instead she prefers alternative constructions. I think this standpoint is more stupid than actually harmful; Stack Exchange of course disagrees.

Gibbon1• 7 years ago

I tend to avoid using gendered pronouns in professional settings because I want to keep sexual dynamics out of it.

Lazare3• 7 years ago

If I'm reading these leaks correctly, the core issue is that Monica was not okay with singular they. The issue isn't that SO was forcing her not to use it, it's that they were forcing her to use it, and she was refusing.

Barrin922• 7 years ago

Now your lack of a specific behavior is suspect!

this has been established practise since the dawn of time, to the point where some languages have honorifics built into their grammar. Communities have guidelines and addressing someone with their preferred pronoun seems as simple to me as addressing someone with their proper name and title.

If someone is not up to the task to treat others with at least a modicum of respect they probably shouldn't moderate communities.

luckylion5• 7 years ago

Avoiding pronouns appears to be an offense in that new CoC though. If I was to refer to your comment saying "As Barrin92 wrote", I'd be close to a ban if you've stated your preferred pronouns in your profile, as those are to be used.

humanrebar7• 7 years ago

...addressing someone with their proper name and title.

Except titles were banned by the U.S. Constitution. I'm not sure why Your Honor and Dr. stuck around, probably because of the immediacy of the need to oblige onesself to them. But it's important to remember that the Dr. honorific is cultural and unenforced. And the Your Honor is only enforced in court.

If someone wants to call the President "Donny", there are no legal repercussions. Not that Donny T will be a grown-up about it necessarily.

austincheney2• 7 years ago

This may seem shocking but it is absolutely not any form of attack: One person's identity crisis is very likely not another person's problem. Trying to force that problem where it is not well understood causes confusion and miscommunication issues, especially for people who not using the current language as a comfortable native language. Furthermore, a difference of opinion is not a form of attack. People forcing the narrative that any difference of opinion must be some form of attack are perhaps a source of the problem.

When these sorts of issues come up in an online community I do myself the service of abandoning the community before watching things get out of hand.

d_e_solomon• 7 years ago

I don't think it's particularly difficult to refer to a person how they want to be referred to. Enforcing that as a standard isn't thought crime and the amount of hand wringing over this supposed 'thought crime' is gross.

I call Robert, Robert - and not Bob, Bobby, or Teddy. Because Robert goes by Robert. Similar to pronouns. Not difficult at all.

_qwfv• 7 years ago

Not only is it not difficult to use someone's correct name and pronouns, frankly it's just basic politeness to call people what they want to be called.

teddyh2• 7 years ago

Note: “Teddy” is usually short for “Theodore”, not “Robert”.

smsm423• 7 years ago

I have a somewhat unusual name for Anglosphere. Some people have trouble pronouncing it. When that happens, I don't attack them in a fit of rage, I either correct them or most frequently just ignore it. Sometimes - e.g. Starbucks and so on - I use English version of the name that I never use otherwise but that sounds close enough so I know they are calling me. I don't try to organize boycott of Starbucks and demand the state to make a law that under penalty of firing on the spot they have to pronounce my name absolutely correctly and with the right accent. I don't demand from people who don't know me to instantly know my name and never be confused about how to pronounce it - in fact, some of my friends sometimes mispronounce it and I don't have trouble with it because I know their language background makes it harder for them to express the right combination of sounds that the correct pronunciation in my native language requires. I don't demand venues to make rules that require everybody to learn my name and how to pronounce it and fire anybody who speaks around it because they can't remember it or have hard time to pronounce it. I know none of it is meant as an insult to me and none of people who have hard time properly pronouncing my name do it because they hate me and my whole ethnic background.

djaque3• 7 years ago

This is a straw man.

There is a segment of the population that seems intent on being able assign and punish that assumed thought crime.

Nobody really believes this outside of trolls and maybe a tiny fraction of people that only exist on the internet.

There are real people out there that are uncomfortable with their biological gender and I can promise you that none of them are asking to be called "xe/xey/xem" or whatever people want to beleive now.

I don't think refering to trans people by the gender they want or by "they" is too much to ask.

SnarkAsh• 7 years ago

I agree that it's a tiny minority view, but it's not a straw man when that tiny minority are making the decisions at Stack Overflow.

djaque3• 7 years ago

Although, I should mention that the way SE is handling this is still very strange.

unreal372• 7 years ago

The Stack Exchange rule forbids calling them "they" and requires calling them the pronoun they wish to be called.

The original post is saying "I refer to people as they" and SE is saying that's a violation of the code of conduct.

So what do you think of that?

shrimp_emoji2• 7 years ago

I agree.

Recently, though, a trans acquaintance told me that some trans people do find gender-neutral pronouns like "they" to trigger dysphoria. I said I don't understand how that's possible (not that I understand dysphoria to begin with). They said they don't get it either. Have we then found the line separating the realms of cultural accommodation and psychiatric help, and is that minority of trans people across it?

If not, the pronoun floodgates are loose!

https://uwm.edu/lgbtrc/support/gender-pronouns/

How will civilization endure? After us, the deluge. We shall not last, the die is cast. YwY

iagovar3• 7 years ago

So why is this situation even happening? Can you explain it?

aldoushuxley001• 7 years ago

I don't think refering to trans people by the gender they want or by "they" is too much to ask.

It's not, but it shouldn't be a punishable offense either.

eecc• 7 years ago

I don't think refering to trans people by the gender they want or by "they" is too much to ask.

"They" apparently is wrong. You see, it depends. That's the issue.

caconym_9• 7 years ago

The behavior of the far-left identity politics crowd has crossed over into outright bullying. I say this as someone who self-identifies fairly left and extremely liberal.

Their central rhetorical tool is extremely effective: if you are not a member of a marginalized identity group (this category itself being fluid), you do not have a right to question anything they say (according to them). This works on thoughtful people who want to do the right thing, because such people tend to take the general concept of social justice very seriously (as they should, it's important).

We need to collectively realize how toxic these people are, and start pushing back.

celdon252• 7 years ago

If you are part of the identity group, and if you question what they say, they'll call you a traitor. It's thinly veiled fascism to say the least.

kristopolous5• 7 years ago

That's liberal politics, not left. There's a real, meaningful difference. Liberating identities is a form of liberalism.

There's some dogpiling effect where all these terms which deviate from a current conservative are used interchangeably.

Leftists and liberals really don't like each other and when the liberal parties need to choose between supporting their conservative opponents or a leftist challenger, they almost without exception, join the conservatives to block out the leftists from power.

Many liberals see the left as a far bigger threat than most forms of conservatism and to confuse the these groups is part of the reason people don't think these groups have a coherent vision, because they actually don't like each other and aren't the same.

rtpg• 7 years ago

The "actual thing" w/r/t pronouns in particular is that people should respect someone else's identity.

Deadnaming someone is basically bullying. There's no principled to intentionally do it, and it's almost always done as a power play more than anything. Respecting someone's choice of identity is just baseline "respect for others". It would be like insisting to use someone's old married name after a divorce (or even just refusing to use someone's name after they get it changed, for whatever reason!)

I'm a bit agnostic about stuff like "forbidding non-pronoun usage" (how is that intent even seen?) and fights are getting virulent. But I think it's hard to see the principled argument against asking people to respect someone's choice of pronouns or name.

einpoklum7• 7 years ago

"identity politics" has very little to do with the left. It's a social diversion tactic from actual left-wing struggles, that is employed by pro-Capitalist political parties (with the US Democratic Party being a prominent example).

nazgulnarsil• 7 years ago

Everything that is not forbidden is mandatory.

yashap• 7 years ago

IMO internet communities make this worse - it’s a lot easier to be a bully online than in person. Also, internet communities are so large that the chance of running into a bully is much higher.

I have plenty of LGBT friends and family, and none of them get too caught up in language. I’d assume this is the norm? Nobody wants to be disrespected - if someone clearly identifies as a man, then referring to them as “she” (especially if done in a spiteful manner/tone) is disrespectful. Using gender neutral pronouns, or avoiding pronouns altogether ... I don’t think many would consider that an issue? Especially online, gender is normally not known at all, and that’s fine. Calling someone a bigot because they avoid using gendered pronouns seems like bullying to me.

Communities should stand up to bullies, not cave in to them, especially internet communities where bullying is so easy and common. This is true whether the bullies are extreme left, extreme right, or just assholes. I consider myself fairly left of centre, but siding with someone just because they’re on your end of the political spectrum is wrong. People can share some beliefs with you but still behave as bullies, and if they do it’s important to stand up to them.

From what I’ve read of this Stack Exchange mess, it seems like the people who won were the bullies, and that’s unfortunate.

WhiteOwlLion• 7 years ago

Those that forcibly suppress of opposing thought on pronouns share characteristics that define fascism.

stackptr• 7 years ago

One line of thinking around requiring usage of preferred pronouns is that normalizing the act of giving/asking for pronouns allows for more inclusive spaces. For instance, if someone is transitioning between genders it might not be obvious what their gender identity is, and assuming their gender identity can lead to further dysphoria. At the same time, if you are someone who sees that the only people who get asked for their pronouns are people who do not obviously exist at either of edge of the gender spectrum, then the act of being asked for pronouns is tantamount to someone admitting their own confusion of your identity. This issue can be resolved for all parties and gender identities when asking/giving pronoun preference is the norm. For people with more straightforwardly normative gender identities, offering preferred pronouns is an act of solidarity with people who might not have the privilege of their gender identity being so obvious.

nullc4• 7 years ago

Doesn't that approach have the downside risk strongly elevating gender to be essential to activities where it really has no business?

I have no idea what your gender is and I don't think our interaction would be improved by forcing you-- by either rule or convention-- to specify something. Doing so would unnecessarily prime my sterotypes and perhaps leave you and/or me worrying that my response was unduly biased by the knoweldge. An effective requirement-to-specify implicitly makes a strong assumption that your gender can be described categorically rather than as, say, the fractal attractor of a complex collection of partial differential equations. :)

For a long time online I've tended to fill out apparently pointless gender fields with a "none of your business". I'm happy to support people identifying in whatever way they find most enabling, but at the same time it feels like a step back to elevate gender as important in contexts where it isn't after working so long to push towards a more gender blind world.

wozer• 7 years ago

Not directly related, but I'm a bit afraid that as someone who is not a native speaker of English, it becomes more and more difficult not to inadvertantly cause a shit storm on American websites. People seem to become incredibly sensitive to "correct speech".

johnchristopher• 7 years ago

I recently got caught off-guard on HN. Until a few months I didn't really get that 'they' could be used to refer to a company and I believe it led to some quiproquo in a conversation. One HN commentator went into my post history and hinted I was lying about it.

shrugged

Fellshard6• 7 years ago

This history-trolling is a nasty element in this new landscape. I've noticed the more zealous members of this policing regime creating automated tools for each forum that will scan through post history and divine - for example - occurrences of the n--- word, listing how many times they've said it, and whether they've tried to cover their tracks since the last search.

https://www.reddit.com/user/nwordcountbot

audessuscest• 7 years ago

It's not just more difficult, it also feels weird (to not say more). In France, they want to change how to write things so you write the masculine and feminine version of each word at the same time, and even though it looks like the most stupid thing in the world, a lot of people working at university or some politician do it.

Progress they say....

jraph2• 7 years ago

they want to change how to write things

Who? Far from everybody.

looks like the most stupid thing in the world

At the very least…

Progress they say....

Almost nobody is for progress for the sake of progress. Rejecting a solution that tries to address a (arguably) less-than-ideal status quo as stupid is not very helpful. We could argue that the status quo is stupid too anyway. Don't you see that the solution you find stupid (which you can, of course) is an attempt to address something some people see as a problem?

At least, enlighten us with reasons why you find it stupid, it's easy to find interesting things to say on this matter.

tootie2• 7 years ago

Ha, so true. I know a lot of people (particularly East Asians) who struggle with basic English gender pronouns. I used to have a Chinese co-worker who just always got them backwards and when she said "him or his" I always assumed she was talking about a woman and vice-versa.

alkonaut5• 7 years ago

I think there is plenty of leeway and acceptance for honest mistakes here. I don't think many people are easily offended by mistakes.

kamaal• 7 years ago

A few months back I took the IELTS(International english language testing system) exam. There was nothing in the entire syllabus, or sample tests I took, or the exam I appeared in, about all this. In fact I did a fair bit of practice on listening, reading, writing and speaking tests. Worked my way through some 7 - 8 workbooks. Had a good score in the exam too.

This entire thing is so confusing to a point it almost requires a fair degree of exposure to politics, sub culture and social narrative cutting across various issues just to be able to ask some one to serve them a cup of tea.

I'm surprised a language proficiency testing system, with may be tens of thousands of people taking the exam, with books, and training material designed with may be a century worth of experience from English speaking cultures across the world doesn't have anything on this. Or doesn't train us on this. There is no right way, grammatical or cultural accepted across the English speaking world to get this right.

It so confusing. At this point in time its like I have to run a rule engine inside my brain just be be able to say 'Hi $title, $name, Did $pronoun take the book from my desk'

Try filling in $title and $pronoun and see how it goes, especially when $name has a gender attached to it over entire known human history.

anoncareer0212• 7 years ago

I'm mildly embarrassed to have written off critiques of the Great Awokening via CoCs a few years ago – after a few more years dealing with adult life, it's pretty clear that two constants are A) people, universally, can be in a dark cloud where unrelated actions by unrelated people are a personal attack on their existence B) authority _hates_ dealing with issues, especially the more distant they are from you in the hierarchy, and will always choose the option that keeps the largest crowd aware of the situation the quietest.

paul7986• 7 years ago

Give it 20 to 30 years and he or she won't be used anymore. It will become an HR issue.

Things change.

noonespecial• 7 years ago

I think the opposite. Instead of polite consideration for others, we filled the airspace with dictatorial edicts and draconian overreactions. The backlash will be such that any hint of it in the future will be vigorously put down. A shame all the way around.

shados• 7 years ago

Getting downvoted, but there is something worth discussing here.

Originally you had sex === gender. Pronouns being words to address them and describe them per their sex/gender.

Then there was a split between sex and gender, and a push for pronouns to describe gender rather than sex. A bit confusing when the person in question just transitioned or does not "pass" (for lack of better terminology), but all around pretty simple. While there's been trans and non-binary folks forever, it's still a recent thing in term of large scale awareness.

Then things moved forward with genders being much more complex with a ton of variations, but we still only have a few pronouns, so it no longer quite works. So things moved from pronouns matching genders to "preferred pronouns" Logical for non-binary where things aren't as simple as men/women (and thus he/she doesn't map cleanly 1:1), but it gets really confusing with things like people who identify as one of the binary genders but wants to be addressed by the opposite pronoun (eg: a woman requesting to be addressed as a he, but still identifies as a woman).

At that point keeping this straight in one's head gets seriously confusing and complicated, and has a lot of parallels with Asian languages that have deep complex hierarchies of ways to address based on status. Obviously it's possible since those other cultures can do it (albeit in a different context), but foreigners have a pretty hard time with it (you need to learn LOT about the language and the people to do it correctly).

So realistically, especially while we're transitioning to this new world, it's a heck of a lot easier to stick to gender neutral. Personally, I'm old and have a lot of decades behind me of habits that need changing to make people happy. If I'm in a group and it's not completely obvious what to use (or I don't know folks personally), I'll just stick to gender neutral everything until I catch on or get corrected. Never offended anyone (or at least no one told me so) that way, and it makes things a lot simpler.

I mean, I can't remember people's first name until I hear it quite a few times, and its (generally) a fair bit simpler, assuming western names since thats where I'm from. Fortunately people generally don't take it too badly if I ask them to remind me a few times or I get it wrong a bunch, but first names aren't as emotionally loaded.

bbanyc• 7 years ago

You say that like it's a bad thing. Getting rid of gendered language would eliminate so many misunderstandings and bigotries (both accidental and intentional) that it seems like the obvious choice, especially when you consider that future generations will be raised with it sounding natural.

But I don't think it's going to happen.

echelon• 7 years ago

Getting rid of gendered language would eliminate so many misunderstandings and bigotries

That's only one of so many dimensions. Take it a step further and get rid of all racial and ethnic language.

And ageist language. And ableist.

Socio-economic, religious, political.

Anything that separates us.

anm89• 7 years ago

I don't think anybody is in the wrong here. These types of forums are communal in nature, they are the sum of the people who use them. There is really no right or wrong here, if a thing bothers enough people within a community for them to speak up then rule changes should be made if that is the consensus based o. The power structure. If those rule changes push community members away then that is a natural consequence.

But all of the above is why I feel that it is unwise to engage with these types of communities or at least that you need to be very selective when you do. It's either a dictatorship or mob rule and if you buy into these communities as part of your identity with out being sure your values are aligned with it's, you're bound to end up frustrated.

mlthoughts20182• 7 years ago

This is a side question, but in regards to the actual gendered pronoun discussion that seems to be at the center of the policy debate, what even is the specific set of criteria being used?

It seems like someone is lobbying that moderators must refer to others with pronouns that the other person chooses. Doesn’t this obviously have unsolvable problems, in principle?

- most of the time, responses on a Stack Overflow site are content-specific (“clinical”) and should not necessarily make reference to another human at all (and probably should make efforts to avoid such references as often as possible, for writing clarity).

- when referencing another comment or answer or something, dry scientific writing that does so without attributable language attaching it to a person would be less controversial, more clear, and less likely to bring subjective opinions into a matter of reference.

- you could always make all references revert to a chosen username and restructure language to have no concept of gender, which for clinical writing is a huge positive aspect, and is in no way connected to the preferences of those being referred to (by matter of it being clinical, not by any matter of status of gender identity)

- even if you assume you did need to refer by pronoun, how could Person A know what pronoun Person B wishes to be referred by, unless explicitly stated somewhere?

- how could you prove negative intent when choosing not to use certain pronouns, as opposed to a mistake, or pronoun identity that was not publicly known, etc.?

I’m just curious how such a thing could ever conceivably be part of a policy that restricts or controls clinical writing style in the moderation of a forum. Regardless of all the moderator drama, it just appears to me like a type of policy that functionally cannot exist, regardless of whether a corporate entity declares it a policy or not.

Pfhreak10• 7 years ago

- how could you prove negative intent when choosing not to use certain pronouns, as opposed to a mistake, or pronoun identity that was not publicly known, etc.?

Same way you prove someone is posting maliciously in any other context -- you make a judgement call based on history? If it looks like an honest mistake and they say, "Whoops, my bad!", then it's no big deal?

- even if you assume you did need to refer by pronoun, how could Person A know what pronoun Person B wishes to be referred by, unless explicitly stated somewhere?

People who care about having the correct pronoun used will either gently correct you or have their pronouns in their profiles.

mlthoughts20182• 7 years ago

“Same way you prove someone is posting maliciously in any other context -- you make a judgement call based on history?“

Since when is that the evidenciary standard for making a decision like this? At the very least that certainly doesn’t seem in line with Stack Overflow’s policy (which favors assuming positive intent and working to rectify before punishment), so seems implausible in that specific case. More generally, “make a judgment call based on history” sounds like a recipe for huge abuses of power and double standards in applying the policy. Instead you need clear guidelines on exactly what it means (which seems near impossible in this case.)

“People who care about having the correct pronoun used will either gently correct you or have their pronouns in their profiles.”

There are a lot of problems with this. For one, it assumes you can identify “people who care” and removes the possibility of people who might care but don’t speak up for any variety of reasons.

More importantly though, without a clear policy on the first part, then writing something which presents any way in which someone can “gently correct you” may already be a violation of the code of conduct, or could selectively be treated as such, with no hard guidelines by which someone could defend themselves as having made an honest mistake.

Going further, a lot of the discussion in the SO meta posts seemed to be around the idea that pursuing a gender-neutral writing style that structures language so as to not need any type of pronoun reference was itself a form of misgendering or disrespect. It’s not fully clear, but there’s significant reason to think the people lobbying for the SO policy were trying to say that you both have to write using pronouns and also have to know and use the correct pronouns, and that any other type of behavior would potentially be considered a violation.

MauranKilom7• 7 years ago

or have their pronouns in their profiles.

So it would be everyone's obligation to check everyone's profile before interacting with them in any way - even if it only makes a difference in 1%-3% of the cases? That's just plain unrealistic if you ask me.

michannne7• 7 years ago

An employee with a "director" title posted and pinned a message saying the company is changing the CoC to require use of preferred pronouns and avoiding them is forbidden. I asked questions, most importantly: would it now be a violation of this new policy to write in the gender-neutral way that I already use? And how are you judging "avoiding", which requires knowledge of intent? Other people had questions and issues too. One moderator pointed out a problem with something I was proposing to do and I agreed after it was explained and said I wouldn't do that. The employee did not stay to field questions, but came back a couple hours later to tell me "we've been as clear as we can and your values are out of alignment".

In what world is this type of action supposed to be praised?

Pfhreak10• 7 years ago

Which action? The directors or the moderators?

eej2ya1K2• 7 years ago

This is what happens when corporate codes meet kindergarten mindsets. The longer this continues, the worse the blowback is going to get - I'm just happy to be far enough away to not have to care (protip: get the fuck out of the anglosphere as soon as possible)

michannne7• 7 years ago

get the fuck out of the anglosphere as soon as possible

Can you expand on this?

munmaek7• 7 years ago

Contextual languages like Korean and Japanese omit pronouns/the subject entirely, unless it's ambiguous. It's common to use their name instead of "you", etc. It's not like English where the subject cannot be omitted.

iagovar3• 7 years ago

Yeah this seems an issue in the anglosphere, but similar issues are arising in Spanish though. There's also push to change the language in weird ways from the left, although it's true that is not as widespread.

eej2ya1K2• 7 years ago

Oh yeah, there are attempts all over the world, but for some reason it seems to "stick" better in the anglosphere.

Also, while this is all coming from the left, it's not really coming from the "mainstream left" - it's coming from a fringe of troublemakers. The mainstream left, respectful as they believe themselves to be of the "other", are just letting it happen. And they're going to continue to let it happen for a while longer, until... well, I don't want to speculate too much on what happens when the house of cards falls down, but I doubt it's going to be pretty.

(I used to be a "leftist" myself, but now consider myself apolitical. I moved out of my home country and can no longer vote, but to be honest, I don't miss it at all)

millwork2• 7 years ago

The really interesting thing about all this CoC nonsense is how it's making strange bedfellows between some on the right and the left who have a keen interest in civil liberties. I'm a lifelong social democrat and have a lot of issues with barely-regulated free markets, but holy hell am I ever sick and tired of this identity-politics BS. I just want poor people to have free healthcare and educational opportunities, man. I didn't sign up for this personal-pronoun-crusade crap.

If I ever start a project where I need to implement some kind of CoC, I'm going to base it on the friggin' Discordian Five Commandments and call it a day.

maximente• 7 years ago

what's your take on latinx or latin@?

djsumdog4• 7 years ago

I have friends in Germany who are seeing the same trends in academia there.

conradfr6• 7 years ago

You'll be disappointed if you join the frenchosphere as the new pronouns are basically crazy and unlearnable.

jumpingmice4• 7 years ago

I've seen first-hand people whining online that someone used the initialism "LGBT" which apparently can be considered exclusionary by some people. It seems that "LGBTQIAGNC" exists and may be more expansive, however I can't rule out the existence of some person who objects to even this.

scoot• 7 years ago

How about "[A-Z]" ?

swasheck• 7 years ago

won’t someone think of the lower cases?

jumpingmice4• 7 years ago

The problem is the people who object to LGBT would see a wildcard expression in the same way that "black lives matter" folks see "all lives matter": as an attempt by an oppressive majority to erase their minority identity. For me the problem is how these things come up in a professional context. The culture of "bring your whole self to work" seems good at first reading but what it really means is bringing a lot of irrelevant things to work, none of which are contributing to the well-being of the workplace. I don't want anyone on my team to feel excluded at work but I also don't want anyone on my team to feel like that one non-binary activist from the adjacent team is going to report them to HR because they overheard them saying "LGBT" and "LGBT" is exclusionary to nonbinary people. That stuff belongs at the cafe or library or the debate salon, not in the workplace.

xkcd-sucks• 7 years ago

Maybe it's more concise to specify who doesn't matter

djaque3• 7 years ago

Exactly, and you only saw it online. This type of "alphabet soup" people doesn't really exist outside of the twitter rage machine.

I volunteer for a large organization promoting gay rights and have never seen people complain about this type of petty issue.

ben_jones• 7 years ago

The tone of the answer was pretty combative and people downvoted for that reason (as noted in comments). OP interpreted downvotes as transphobia. There was another answer that said something like "cultural awareness / different cultures, as part of D&I" that was presented positively and got a lot of support. (I know gender != culture; I'm pointing out that another D&I answer, presented constructively, was well-received.)

Seems like an age old tale of management assessing a situations potential liability as high, and promptly responding with a zero tolerance policy and throwing someone under the bus to protect themselves.

gcb0• 7 years ago

Is this the new hollywood black list/red scare?

Tech behemoths, full of privileged people on top, use the false pretense of respecting pronouns or other minority demands, to actually oust people that care about such issues in the first place?

Marazan4• 7 years ago

This person seems to think using 'they' as a singular is somehow wrong in English.

That's not correct. It's been used since the 1500s and it was only when the wave of idiot Victoria grammar prescriptivists started throwing weight around that there was any dispute at all.

shrimp_emoji2• 7 years ago

And, if you're coming from a Romance language, it feels natural to use "plural" pronouns (like "they") for singular subjects because that's the formal way to address people in those languages (when you're being more respectful). It seems like such an efficient solution. (Ironic, too, that it comes from languages where inanimate objects have genders!)

vsl2• 7 years ago

I’m a native speaker of one such language, where plural is the respectful form (though lately cultural Americanization imports singular/familiar tone into even business contexts). It has gendered plural pronouns and no natural way to be gender-less except “it”.

Freak_NL3• 7 years ago

I really like how simple it is in English to use the singular pronoun they when the gender of the person you are referring to is not known. I find that it reads a lot better than the compound he/she.

I wish we had something similar in Dutch that didn't sound like a kludge. If we do, I haven't found it yet.

Interestingly, in Japanese it's rather easy to refer to people in a gender-neutral way if you know either the profession or the name of that person; the honorific suffixes for names (e.g., さん or 様) where we would use Mr/Mrs/Ms don't differentiate by gender in Japanese and professions are often gender-neutral in name.

It gets trickier if you don't have that information, because you tend to need he or she (彼 and 彼女 respectively) or one of the very common age bracket and gender specific classifiers like (you who could be someone's) sister (お姉さん) for any adult woman under the age of 35 (or older if you want to flirt a bit). Of course there is always the generic that person (あの方 or あの人).

Luckily, Japanese allows you to complete leave out the subject of a sentence and still make sense if the context makes it clear, so there is that.

michannne7• 7 years ago

Formal Japanese takes a lot to get into coming from English, but the benefit is that in informal conversation you can reliquish the honorifics to some extent.

The con is that there is not that much informal conversation going on especially in regards to work, so polite form grammar should be the default way to speak. On the other hand, polite form still allows you to drop gender specific words, and another note is the way Japanese conversations are formulated, gender is almost never a pre-stated thing, it's usually inferred based on who you're speaking about or who you're talking to.

Strom• 7 years ago

It's even easier in a language like Estonian where there's no grammatical gender or gender pronouns at all. Everything is neutral/universal.

Example: He wanted her number -> Ta tahtis ta numbrit.

If for some reason you want to give info about the gender you can use words like girl/woman/lady/grandma instead of the pronoun.

amenod• 7 years ago

Interesting, I didn't know this - thank you! Here is a brief history if anyone else is interested [0].

[0] https://public.oed.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-singular-they...

tootie2• 7 years ago

Honestly sounds like the mods were just ginning up for a fight. They would rather force people into compliance with difficult rules while the writer of this piece was looking to reduce conflict. It's not exclusive to LGBTQ+ and is a pretty common theme in any subculture. Some people just live to enforce rules and any chance to create new and obscure rules is like catnip to them.

If I can rope this back into something more relatable to the HN crowds, this is like the agile gurus who present an inviolable 87-step process to achieve agility while completely ignoring the actual goals of the process.

Pfhreak10• 7 years ago

They would rather force people into compliance with difficult rules

Which rules, exactly, would you say are difficult?

MauranKilom7• 7 years ago

For the record, on stackexchange, "mod" refers to a volunteer (elected by the community) and "CM" or "Community Manager" to someone employed and paid by SE. I believe you meant "CM" instead of "mod" in your first sentence.

humanrebar7• 7 years ago

The problem is that it's popularly a plural pronoun now, despite any finer points of etymology. Especially going back that far, all sorts of words have had meanings drift. Shakespeare and the King James Bible need footnotes to be intelligible.

jimsug3• 7 years ago

Well, that's not entirely true either.

The driver's coming at 5pm and they're always on time, so we'll need to be ready for them.

Seems pretty unambiguously alright to use it in the singular there, unless there's more than one driver

akvadrako2• 7 years ago

According to most style guides as of 5 years ago, it's only proper English when the gender of the person is unknown, though even that isn't universal - he/she is often preferred.

Marazan4• 7 years ago

Style guides aren't how a language is actually used. It's just some people's opinions.

I bet the style guide you are consulting says some nonsense distinction between less and fewer.

smudgymcscmudge5• 7 years ago

That may have been fine in 1500, but in modern, American english the phrase “they is” just makes you sound like an idiot.

Marazan4• 7 years ago

So would saying "you is".

You are an idiot. They are an idiot

Thou is an idiot if you want to be 'correct'.

conradfr6• 7 years ago

I'm appalled that moderators edit posts over pronouns. And not sure why the gender or sexual orientation of people matters on a site where you can basically be anonymous. I guess because I only read Stack Overflow questions from Google searches there's a whole dimension of Stack Exchange that eludes me.

On Twitter I know not to engage with people that specify their pronouns on their bio, it's just a waste of time even for trolling. I guess it's something that I can extend to SE and elsewhere.

And to be clear I've no problem with trans people and calling them what they want, but sometimes it's just difficult to remind it all (and confusing over different languages).

About CoCs: who would have thought? Well ...

martin_a2• 7 years ago

And to be clear I've no problem with trans people and calling them what they want, but sometimes it's just difficult to remind it all (and confusing over different languages).

But wouldn't you have to look in every profile on SE before posting an answer or comment to make sure you're up to date about the pronoun that person wants to have used? At least that's what I understood is how it's supposed to be.

Fellshard6• 7 years ago

And you can be found retroactively in violation. Time is an element that is continually rebuffed in consideration of these things.

conradfr6• 7 years ago

It was poorly written on my part, I mostly meant trans people I would meet in real life and choosing between he or she.

I guess I'm strongly against discrimination but basically don't care about the rest, especially when it's about pseudonyms on the internet where nobody cares about your gender.

Maybe because I'm from the "there are no girls on the internet" meme times.

ph33t• 7 years ago

In short ... too many people take themselves too seriously. too many people reading the intent to malign from internet postings made by people intending to help.

ng122• 7 years ago

I don't understand why this has become such a common theme in the tech world. A small clique of non-binary/LGBTQ+ people who wield undue amounts of soft power and use that soft power to fight pseudo-political internet battles. I've yet to experience this with any other subculture I'm involved in.

harryf• 7 years ago

There was a TL discussion about gender-neutral pronouns and then "preferred pronouns".

Reading the post right here at the beginning I'm like "Oh here we go..."

And reading the rest went just as predictably as I expected. A tiny minority wielding their power. Sane people attempting to stay sane and reasonable, but failing. A terrified company acting in panic.

Future alien archeologists will wonder "So they were facing imminent extinction, how did they respond to this threat?" ... "Well they seemed to spend a lot of time arguing over what they should call each other"

PS: before anyone likes to shame me, I _might_ actually be a woman...

oefrha• 7 years ago

A few years ago when I was a member of a relatively high profile open source project, I myself was once (informally) accused of non-inclusive behavior towards a trans person. It was a very confusing experience because I didn’t even know that person’s gender up until that point, much less whether they were trans or not; I only found out after the accusation. Nor did I ever care about their gender before or after the incident — the only thing I gave a damn about was the code they produced. Turns out my complaint against a poorly thought-out feature of theirs (which was greenlighted by the project lead, landed despite much opposition, and subsequently caused quite severe breakage) was distorted as an attack against their gender.

That experience and experience from other clashes against the broader CoC-wielding crowd, either firsthand or secondhand, tells me that people who are determined to inject identity politics into software are either (a) honestly over-sensitive, can’t imagine other people not giving a shit; or (b) using CoC as a convenient tool to end technical debates (when they’re out of arguments or don’t want to argue further) with folks who prefer a more blunt communication style.

IanSanders• 7 years ago

Turns out my complaint against a poorly thought-out feature of theirs (which was greenlighted by the project lead, landed despite much opposition, and subsequently caused quite severe breakage) was distorted as an attack against their gender.

You can subvert any community/organisation/process this way. Social "grenade" in a sense. Scary.

einpoklum7• 7 years ago

The SE Inc. authoritarian moves are not, AFAICT, by non-binary/LGBTQ+ people but virtue-signaler staff/management who feel that behaving like the Spanish Inquisition will get them some sort of morality or PR points.

nabdab2• 7 years ago

An LGBTQ+ individual resigned over the fact that people where discussing the coc change. That’s not virtue-signaling staff, that’s someone throwing a hissy-fit that they can’t get things their way by with no questions asked.

tgsovlerkhgsel• 7 years ago

A small clique of non-binary/LGBTQ+ people who wield undue amounts of soft power

It's often not members of these groups, but "allies" acting "on their behalf" (and likely hurting the cause because the extremist and witch-hunting behavior gets associated with these groups).

knowledge-clay4• 7 years ago

I don't find it to be unreasonable. If a trans person clearly states that her pronouns are "she/her" and you twist your sentences around to avoid using pronouns at all, that could certainly give the impression that you don't recognize her identity as valid. I am not saying OP did this or did this intentionally but it's not an unreasonable policy. It sounds to me (without being intimately familiar with the situation) that OP has esoteric stylistic preferences that are not transphobic but happen to be consistent with the language that transphobic people will use.

Pronoun use is pretty straightforward. If someone says their pronouns, you use their pronouns to refer to them, just like you would anyone else. It may feel a little disorienting if you don't talk to many trans people and, for example, they use singular "they" or have a pronoun that seems different than the one that you would naturally assign to them based on their appearance, but it's not difficult and you can get used to it pretty quickly.

The reason that people are so sensitive and strict about this is because the stakes for trans people are very high -- some people don't believe trans people exist, should exist, or should have the same rights as cis people. Refusing to use the right pronouns reveals either a benign misunderstanding about trans people or a willful hostility towards their existence. The latter is extremely common and can be both hurtful and often scary, as trans people, especially trans people of color, are often subject to violence because of their identities.

pfortuny2• 7 years ago

And... how is it that you know when someone is twisting his or her sentences?

knowledge-clay4• 7 years ago

I don't know the situation at hand well enough to say whether the policy was fairly enforced, but the policy itself is not unreasonable.

If, for example, someone had the same stylistic practices as the OP and also wrote hateful things about trans people on Twitter, it may be more likely. Or if they use a certain style when referring to cis people but use a different one when referring to people with they/them pronouns or trans people.

geofft5• 7 years ago

Something like "Jenner said that Jenner's children all have a good relationship with Jenner and that Jenner values Jenner's time with Jenner's children."

(To be clear, I made this sentence up just now, I'm not quoting anyone, but this is presumably the sort of thing that would motivate a policy against not just misgendering but also deliberately avoiding the use of pronouns. If you use this construction, and then use "he" to refer to, say, Daley Thompson, you're sort of calling attention to your refusal to use a pronoun. My reading of the article is this sort of thing is not the moderator in question's intention, though.)

alkonaut5• 7 years ago

At StackExchange this is unlikely and difficult. But in an everyday scenario this is quite possible: you call the girls in the class "she", the guys in the class "he", and the boy who used to be a girl and wants to be called "he" these days, you call "they/them". Using a neutral in that scenario could be wrong.

uryga• 7 years ago

check out the wiki article about DJ Sprinkles:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terre_Thaemlitz

it's written without using pronouns in accordance with the artist's wishes afaik. it's pretty easy to notice the places where you'd normally put a pronoun

ng122• 7 years ago

that OP has esoteric stylistic preferences that are not transphobic but happen to be consistent with the language that transphobic people will use.

Is there a term for this? May I suggest "wrongthink by associaton"?

Furthermore I suspect this is less about he/him vs she/hers but some of the more esoteric pronoun preferences.

knowledge-clay4• 7 years ago

Singular they/them is not esoteric -- it is recognized by most major style guides, including the New York Times, the Associated Press, the Chicago Manual of Style, among others.

Freak_NL3• 7 years ago

Furthermore I suspect this is less about he/him vs she/hers but some of the more esoteric pronoun preferences.

Is that the case here? I would think it is a bit too avantgardist to expect people to contort their sentences to include singular pronouns beyond he/she/they at this point. I get the impression that those esoteric made-up pronouns tend to be mostly used for straw-men arguments.

recycler022• 7 years ago

"wrongthink by association"

I think this is a fairly descriptive term. This happened fairly recently for me in another context. After I saw Star Wars Episode VIII, I let it be known that I thought it was a bad movie. In this cultural moment, some folks will take that innocent opinion from a lifelong Star Wars fan as a signifier of my stance in favor of every controversial thing that a terrible person who also disliked the movie said. It feels like everything is taken as a dog whistle.

strken• 7 years ago

The stakes being so high justifies good decision making, not instant compliance.

When you're arguing with those who are actively hostile towards your beliefs, you're usually only able to convince the undecided middle, who watch your argument and take sides without contributing. I don't think firing a moderator who was to all appearances LGBT-friendly and causing this level of drama has been a net reputation gain for either Stack Exchange or trans people.

mwyah• 7 years ago

I don't find it to be unreasonable. If a trans person clearly states that her pronouns are "she/her" and you twist your sentences around to avoid using pronouns at all, that could certainly give the impression that you don't recognize her identity as valid.

...and why should I? Why is this a given? Reminds me of when Andy Bernard goes to therapy and when he comes back he asks people to call him Drew.

knowledge-clay4• 7 years ago

Because trans people exist, and this isn't really up for debate, it's accepted by all mainstream medical and psychological associations and is demonstrated in practice by the lived experiences of millions of trans people.

djsumdog4• 7 years ago

This is a topic no one can talk about today. Previous discussions on this on HN quickly dropped off the page.

I've always found the concept of preferred gender pronouns to be problematic from a pure technical perspective. But I was so afraid of the stigma I haven't really written about it. Recent events made me finally publish this last night:

https://battlepenguin.com/philosophy/perspective/preferred-g...

The summary: pronouns reduce cognitive load, because you can refer to someone by a broad category. With custom pronouns, you now create a way to offend someone in the base language.

drdaeman3• 7 years ago

Moreover, those personal pronouns are untranslatable. If someone’s wants to be referred as “xir” in English and use of “they” is considered offensive, there is no “politically correct” way to refer to such person in at least some non-English languages unless xir defines the pronouns for other languages too.

rasengan0• 7 years ago

Makes total sense https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/xir

Traster• 7 years ago

I'm sorry I don't understand this argument. Let's say we're talking about something on a website, I say I want to be referred to by the pronoun "xir". "No,because I can't translate that into Swahili" seems like an odd response to me. It seems irrelevant to an average conversation I'm going to have. And even if you are planning to translate the conversation into another language you could just.... ask what would be reasonable in the other language?

dwaltrip3• 7 years ago

Have you ever met a single person who requested anything other than "he", "she", or "they"?

Those aren't "custom pronouns". Are you pushing back against a real phenomena?

Pfhreak10• 7 years ago

Once or twice. But everyone I've met who prefers Xe/Xir/Xirs will often append that with, "Or she/he/they. Fuck it, they're all wrong, use whatever makes you happy."

loeg3• 7 years ago

Yes, there are real people asking for use of novel pronouns like "xe," "sir," "hir," etc, etc, etc.

drdaeman3• 7 years ago

I've seen a few and that wasn't even online but in a meatspace, at a software conference. A few persons had bagdes with pronouns other than "he/she/they". Suppose that was a request of sorts. Although I haven't really talked to... err... such people ("them"? "xzem?" "xirzey'm?" what I'm supposed to use for "xe" and "ze" as a generalized group?), only saw that *ey (okay, does it work?) exist, so can't really tell more.

oh_sigh• 7 years ago

They is pretty novel. Yes, singular they has existed for a long time, but when was the first time anyone ever demanded that their only pronoun be "they"? I suspect only within the past 10 years or so.

odkamkfn• 7 years ago

I haven't even met anyone requesting "he", "she" or "they" in real life. And if I do, I'll probably just disengage and walk away.

dang• 7 years ago

Previous discussions on this on HN quickly dropped off the page.

Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21153224 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21167710.

vagab0nd• 7 years ago

https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/08/stick-figure-guide.html

cryptozeus3• 7 years ago

Exactly

“3) Use “they” “them” and “their” as gender-neutral pronouns. Almost a good plan, but it doesn’t work. Too often I’ll be talking about two WBW characters, and when I say “they,” readers can’t tell if I’m referring to the one I was just talking about or to both of them.”

jraph2• 7 years ago

Do you have a hard time to understand from the context whether "you" is plural or singular? It seems like it is the same problem but nobody is out there arguing that we should find a way to disambiguate this.

sawmurai• 7 years ago

And that’s why I am not twitter anymore ^^ just one giant minefield

marcinzm• 7 years ago

The employee did not stay to field questions, but came back a couple hours later to tell me "we've been as clear as we can and your values are out of alignment".

The core issue as I see it isn't CoC or gender pronouns. Stack Overflow is punishing people if their perceived internal views (ie: "values") are not the same as a set of unwritten allowed views. So basically thought crime mixed with McCarthyism. Except without any specific clarify on what the allowed thoughts are.

pfortuny2• 7 years ago

OUT OF ALIGNMENT.

Unbelievable.

OUT OF ALIGNMENT.

like Geometric values or what?

harryh4• 7 years ago

StackOverflow is a community and communities are sustained by shared values. It makes perfect sense to oust leaders from a community who are out of alignment with the values the community wants to support.

LargeWu• 7 years ago

I think the problem here is that those values are not in fact being defined by the community, in toto. They are being defined by a very vocal and relatively small subgroup. Furthermore, the author doesn't even seem to be opposed to those values, just highly ambivalent about them.

blub4• 7 years ago

StackOverflow used to be a community of people wanting to share technical knowledge.

Now I don't know what the F it is, but "pronouns" is about as far from technical knowledge you can get...

MauranKilom7• 7 years ago

That's straight up unenforceable though. And I doubt you would be left with much of a community if you kicked out everyone that isn't at least as hard-line on the issue as the described policy and its interpretation.

luckylion5• 7 years ago

The community has been very vocal on this issue - they stand with the fired moderator. If what you said was true, the CEO of the company would get ousted, because clearly his values are not aligned with the values of the community.

scarejunba3• 7 years ago

No, that part makes sense. Strong value alignment is something you want as an org.

rjf722• 7 years ago

It seems all sites that rely on free labor for moderation end up with similar sorts of problems. Moderation is time consuming, tedious, and thankless work when done well. Who wants to spend hours doing this each day without any financial incentive? You end up getting folks attracted to having some degree of power over people, or ability to enforce or espouse their own views/values/ideologies, and so on. But all of these motivations are completely antithetical to what the position 'ought' be about - which is essentially a digital janitor.

Pay moderators and the problem goes away since you now attract a pretty normal pool of people whose motivations might be earning a buck, or career advancement. I think we can see that clearly enough here where it's self evident that the moderators are paid. The problem of course is imagine a larger site wants 100 moderators. OK, you can get 100 people who are going to do a mixed job at best, but for free. Or you can pay $3,000,000 a year for the same team. Most companies? Easy decision. That's a $3 million executive bonus right there!

MauranKilom7• 7 years ago

I see no reason to believe that the involved mods are power-hungry. You generally need to have invested tons of tedious unpaid volunteer work (raising flags, reviewing questions/answers etc.) to become elected in the first place, and the subsequent duties are more of that nature.

I mean, there surely is some merit to your thesis, but I have no idea how you think this is relevant to the situation in question. The people gravely mishandling things are exactly the paid employees, not the volunteer moderators.

rjf722• 7 years ago

You have to try to see things from their perspective. Any option they could choose is going to be bad, so they're incentivized to choose what they perceive to be the least negative one. Sexual/gender groups tend to be hyper active on social media and organization - they are also extremely vigilant in trying to socially damage any perceived enemies. Had Stack Exchange chosen to not act they would likely be facing an angry mob of people who are hyper active on social media hounding them about not being inclusive, engaging in [--]phobia, bigotry, etc.

They probably simply felt that firing one moderator was easier than dealing with what was likely to become a deluge of public relations damage if they did nothing. Depending upon the laws in New York, there would even be the potential of them facing discrimination or other lawsuits. Regardless of the merit of the claims, it would be enough to severely hurt the company. For instance see Ellen Pao vs Kleiner Perkins. Even though she decisively lost every single claim, their company's name and image was dragged through the mud for months in many major media outlets that draw tech oriented readership. And that's a company that doesn't, in the same way, rely on general populace brand value.

The solution, like many things, is to never put yourself in this position to begin with. And that starts with paying for your labor.

As for the mod selection process itself, it's the same thing everywhere. In general moderators are hired from the community. The problem is the people you don't want to be mods are the ones that'd be most interested in such a position, whereas the people you do want are generally not going to be willing to do it without compensation. There are some exceptions of course, but I think it's becoming increasingly clear that they are indeed the exception.

cryptozeus3• 7 years ago

Disagreement between mod and policy makers is hardly a stack Overflow fiasco.

luckylion5• 7 years ago

What would you call ~15% of the moderators quitting, the community largely unified and heavily confronting the company?

scarejunba3• 7 years ago

A storm in a teacup. It's the usual internal politics in these communities. Because the stakes are so low, people's reactions are more violent.

terfwars• 7 years ago

I am left leaning and have actively supported the LGBT community, campaigned for marriage equality and helped raise someone who is LGBT and who suffered from brutal bullying in school.

I have moved away from actively supporting the LGBT community but I still support my friends and family. I did this because the toxicity and witch hunting has gotten out of hand. We all used to fight the good fight. But the community has transitioned into a culture that is creating an increasing number of rules and tribes in order to differentiate themselves from the rest of society and in order to 'trap' outsiders into making a faux pas and then elevate themselves by pointing out the mistake. My sense is that this is a vocal minority in the LGBT community, but also highly influential, and that influence comes through fear of being called out.

If you'd like to see examples of some of the toxicity inside the LGBT community itself, just do a search on TERF (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist) on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/search/?q=TERF

The LGBT community is managing to alienate those who used to vocally support them. I think all of us hoped that we would some day be one people. Instead there is a persecution underway of anyone who is not LGBT - and merely pointing this out will see me accused of engaging in hate speech.

As a side note: The comment thread here is a bloodbath, in case you hadn't noticed. Massive swings up upvoted and downvoted posts. The LGBT community will no doubt explain this away as haters and extremists who waded in and downvoted anything supportive. In fact many of us are supporters of human equality. We just don't support persecution, witch hunts and people who need to bring others down to elevate themselves.

michannne7• 7 years ago

The thing with HN and other forums which utilize an upvote/downvote feature, is that it will always devolve into using downvote as a way to disagree with a post, or to discourage certain opinions, then coming up with justification for the downvote only after being called out on it.

I've accepted this inevitability, but that doesn't mean my opinion on issues will change, the best you can do is to ignore your karma when it comes to controversial topics or don't bother posting on them at all.

dmix2• 7 years ago

One of the many reasons I'd never work at a big company.

I just want to build software. I don't go to work to talk politics or have to keep track of every person's political radicalism for fear of being fired.

I'd also prefer not to add even more social anxiety because I don't keep up with the latest stuff on Twitter.

slig• 7 years ago

Working from home used to make me feel anxious about being lonely and the lack of networking. Now I know I made the right decision and plan to stick to it as long as possible.

dmix2• 7 years ago

Coworking spaces help solve this. At least 2-3 times a week. Or find other remote devs to work with at a space.

Nothing beats being around other smart and motivated people sometimes.

jerriep• 7 years ago

Yeah, I share your feelings on this and this is one of the reasons I work alone for clients of my choosing

pkaye• 7 years ago

People are worried about pronouns meanwhile the supreme court is revisiting the LGBTQ workplace protections laws... https://www.vox.com/2019/10/2/20883827/supreme-court-lgbtq-d...

throwaway8291• 7 years ago

Language is a sensible thing, and draws all kinds of demarcations. A single word can shift the perception of a person. A circle might identify an outlier by just a slip of tongue.

If you are from another socioeconomic stratum (or somewhere else in the capital quadrant), you might never learn a certain language, that provides a common ground. There are unspeakable things, I can think of, that I would never ever bring up in a conversation with a random person.

These exclusions and inclusion have already been there, it seems like some fights are more naked now, uncovered, harsh and sometimes meaningless to someone not involved.

I was a top SO contributor and very much enjoyed the site - and still enjoy finding answers. I fear, I will be policed at some point for something - but maybe not, because I am usually agreeable - but who knows: only time will tell.

Edit: I am usually not that impartial, but there is a discourse (where this particular thread might belong to), where I am not able to take sides - because my gut feeling says: you cannot shift the responsibility you have, when you interact with another person, to some abstract law, entity, or something else - it has to be you, to show respect and to allow for a common room for everyone - which does not mean, that the room is just there of one.

Wowfunhappy6• 7 years ago

Edit: Never mind

andreareina• 7 years ago

Why shouldn't it apply? The participants of the chat are entitled to their privacy. If there were some harm to the public at large I'd recognize that as being an extenuating circumstance but in this case even the party claiming to be wronged sees the issue of privacy as taking precedence[1].

[1] https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/334248/an-update-to...

laurex• 7 years ago

At the risk of making mistakes here, where I've come to personally, in a journey to understand myself, is that the idea of gender seems artificial in general, for the most part. I've been in a relationship with someone who felt strongly about being identified "correctly" when they had transitioned, and also with people who absolutely assume they'll be identified "correctly," when they had never particularly explored an alternative to how they were designated at birth. For me, I'm not upset when gender pronouns are applied to me, but I'd prefer to not be identified this way, even though I often feel since identification with the cultural experience of being identified as gendered.

I've had some frustration that "they" has become the "neutral" pronoun, when earlier I felt more personally identified with pronouns that still disambiguated plural and singular more clearly, but a friend pointed out that if referring to an unidentified singular person, "they" is perfectly grammatical (i.e. "did someone deliver the mail?" "Yes, they did."). I am concerned that so much of the focus is placed on the problem of the word, without acknowledging the more fundamental question of willingness to consider if gendered pronouns are necessary.

What seems problematic for me is trying to strike a balance between personal identity and "correct" speech. Most of the time, "making sure" that a gender is assigned in speech doesn't feel relevant to actually understanding general meaning. I appreciate language that better avoids pronouns rather than uses them as a means to add clarity. It feels to me that is possible to respect gender identity without requiring language to be gendered in a general way. At the same time, I've myself tried to take gender out of my speech and I fall constantly.

Fundamentally, it feels like a cultural moment where it feels like we're focusing on very black and white ideas and feeling that others are "not listening," or on the other hand, "forcing me to do something I feel uncomfortable about and lying in wait for me to make a mistake." When there's a possiblity for openness, there's also the possibility of vulnerability, whereas in a cultural context, it seems like we're moving towards walls and fortification, which makes me pretty sad and concerned that there's not space for nuance.

scarejunba3• 7 years ago

What happens to a sentence like " Elle est intelligente". Do the conjugations change to be neuter?

sword_smith• 7 years ago

Seeing that the instigator's post is the most downvoted I have ever come across on Stack Exchange, I thought of the saying "the Revolution devours its children".

wendyshu2• 7 years ago

Stack Overflow hired a highly political, sanctimonious Community Manager and this is the result.

E.g. he suggested users who didn't like the rules require therapy https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/389935/why-was-the-... http://archive.li/UGUNK

zschuessler• 7 years ago

Both links 404 for me. Did they take down the link?

djsumdog4• 7 years ago

Yep. Archive.is has a version:

http://archive.is/UGUNK

cpitman• 7 years ago

The thread was deleted, viewing it requires getting access to moderator tools by getting 10,000 reputation.

wwarner• 7 years ago

This is a case in which a Code of Conduct actually creates confusion instead of dispelling it. The more I think about it the sadder it is. It's tragic when there should be a rule but when you reach for it you find instead there is an empty space surrounded by razor wire where a rule should be.

einpoklum7• 7 years ago

The SO Code of Conduct was - I believe - not intended to create nor dispel confusion. It was created to legitimize/bless authoritarian site management/moderation practices with no due process. Before that code, there was a general "be nice" principle, and informal customs regarding what happens when you don't act nice. After the code, it became the accepted, hallowed norm that you can be kicked off or otherwise harshly penalzied on almost a whim, no input from by your peers, no public record of what had happened, no opportunity to argue in your defense etc.

throwaway8451• 7 years ago

Might be a bit meta but could it be that there's a pretty widespread attitude of 'wanting to be offended' and black and white 'with me or against me' thinking in America (sorry if over-generalizing here), judging from what I get to see on Twitter?

How's a society supposed to work like this? Could it be that assuming good faith more often might be a starting point for a solution to a lot of problems, this one included?

Aperocky2• 7 years ago

You find a common enemy to hate in unison, for example China. And then you remind other black and white groups that hay we have greater things to hate.

nojvek• 7 years ago

Come on. We’re all children of the Earth. Half of the shit we consume is made in China. Let’s not spread xenophobia about an entire nation that makes 30% of the world’s population

busterarm• 7 years ago

SO seemed all crazypants to me years ago when all of the moderators started zealously closing down topics as off-topic or duplicate that the moderator had clearly misunderstood.

That desire to maintain some precious perfect garden of facts drove me to leave and never look back. Glad I did.

hendersoon• 7 years ago

The argument came down to "call people what they want to be called" vs. "don't call people what they don't want to be called". The banned moderator preferred the latter. Either seems perfectly fine to me but I don't belong to any of the impacted minorities myself.

Firing someone, even from a volunteer position, over that specific argument seems like a severe overreaction. Assuming we got the whole story, of course.

Internet drama. Tempest in a teapot.

miopa4• 7 years ago

This is getting quite ridiculous.

I don't want to know your gender. I don't care. It's your thing. It's non of my business, and it makes no difference to me whatsoever.

If I do want to know your gender, then things between us are starting to become intimate.

To sum things up: I would say it's rude if someone shares his gender identity with me without being asked. On the same level as if someone shares his/her dick size without being asked.

spectramax2• 7 years ago

I agree, "They" is perfect. If you're offended then so be it. I don't really care if you're a man, woman, transgender, gay, lesbian, whatever.

We are in a society that demands special treatment and we've become so afraid of offending people.

To the offended - Don't be, assume the best of everyone and things will be fine. The problem starts when people are offended and they require special treatment. Malice, racism, segregation and other forms of abuse is not part of this clause. Those are universally inexcusable.

mintplant• 7 years ago

You, and most of the commenters in this thread, seem to have somehow missed that the author specifically objects to using the singular "they". Perhaps people are skipping to the comments and/or jumping to stock reactions to the topic of gendered pronouns instead of reading and responding to the content of the linked post. Otherwise, I've no idea why so much debate is ragimg around, for example, "custom pronouns" (ze/xir/etc), when the original author doesn't mention them at all.

saagarjha4• 7 years ago

Would you be offended if someone shared their name without being asked? The issue here is that names and pronouns come up in ordinary conversation quite frequently.

miopa4• 7 years ago

I don't get offended when someone is rude, it just makes that person an asshole in my mind.

But of-course I don't think sharing the name is rude, it's a basic personal reference. It would be rude if it's followed by "I'm straight" or "I'm a woman". As for pronouns, in most languages, you can know the [grammatically] correct gender automatically from the name. And if you don't, most grammars have middle or neutral gender, so that can be used. The issue here is that we shouldn't bother other people with our gender identity.

rmc• 7 years ago

But to address you, to talk to and about you, I need to know your name. And often, your pronouns.

miopa4• 7 years ago

We managed since usenet times to quite successfully communicate with knowing only the handles of the other persons involved in the discussion.

Simulacra• 7 years ago

Shouldn't the point be to reduce conflict and increase communication? I don't see that here...

burneraccount126• 7 years ago

60 million starving children in Africa. Something like 25,000 people die every year to war. The US president, leader of the free world, is facing possible impeachment.

And what are we worried about? Pronoun use and codes of conduct on software Q&A websites.

Give. Me. A. Break.

Almost 2,000 words on it, no less. Talk about 15 minutes of my life I'll never have back.

I'm trying to think if there's something dumber to argue about than this, but right now I can't.

Not sure how the world will continue to spin on its axis what with the bloodbath of moderators on StackExchange but somehow the universe will find a way to carry on.

thereare5lights5• 7 years ago

This line of argument is specious. There are always bigger problems. That doesn't mean that smaller issues don't matter.

burneraccount126• 7 years ago

Oh really? So if you had an open chest wound you'd say, "Worrying about bleeding to death is specious. There are always mortal wounds to worry about. That doesn't mean I can't worry about what color my fingernails are"?

saagarjha4• 7 years ago

These issues aren’t mutually exclusive, and it’s not “dumb” to argue about something that affects the the software engineering community personally and that we can have a meaningful impact on.

burneraccount126• 7 years ago

If you want to have a meaningful impact, go volunteer at a soup kitchen. No, seriously. Spend a day at a homeless shelter. Help with the disabled.

Arguing about pronouns is, in fact, dumb and no, it does not affect the software engineering community "personally."

dmitrybrant• 7 years ago

This is actually extremely poignant, because it's a neat encapsulation of the entire political climate in the US. While the far left are busy arguing and cannibalizing themselves over pronouns, the Republicans are busy getting elected.

Imagine if these people spent a tenth of that energy on striving towards positions of actual political power. But no, they must really want four more years of Trump -- why else would they spend an iota of energy on this nonsense?

blub4• 7 years ago

This is not only happening in the US, but also Western Europe.

Left-leaning social and political elites have jumped the political correctness shark so hard that they're not being taken seriously by a significant amount of the population which feel patronized and lied to and turn to voting anyone that will at least validate their concerns.

gdy• 7 years ago

"Talk about 15 minutes of my life I'll never have back."

And yet you had decided to waste more precious minutes to write that comment.

0x262d• 7 years ago

these comments are a cesspool

RobertRoberts• 7 years ago

Compelled speech should be illegal.

What if my preferred pronoun is "lordmasterofall"? Can I call on the full force of the law to demand its use?

Wowfunhappy6• 7 years ago

I was ready to be on Monica's side until I found and read the leaked Teacher's Lounge transcript. I'm now significantly more conflicted.

In the chat, Monica was asked many times, by many other moderators, to please use "singular they" for people who she actively knew preferred that pronoun. Monica flat out refused, saying it was confusing and grammatically incorrect. She said she'd be happy to use literally any other word, including "new" pronouns like "Xe". She also suggested that she could avoid using pronouns altogether, either just for people who preferred singular they, or universally for everyone. (Other moderators said this last option likely would have been fine had Monica not made known her reason for doing so.)

Now, on a purely personal level, I also find singular they to be super confusing in conversation, at least when the subject is unambiguous. But the extent to which Monica refused to budge, even after being told that she was making colleagues uncomfortable, struck me as behavior that would need to be disciplined in any formal workplace.

blub4• 7 years ago

There's no formal workplace where anyone would be disciplined because they don't want to use "they".

This is simply not a concern in the real world, it's another storm in the internet outrage tea cup.

Wowfunhappy6• 7 years ago

Well, speaking personally, if I acted the way she did at my workplace, I expect I'd get a talking to.

einpoklum7• 7 years ago

Plus - Monica doesn't even f'ing _work_ for them! She's a volunteer moderator, through elections. Well, she had been anyway.

danpalmer2• 7 years ago

But the extent to which Monica refused to budge, even after being told that she was making colleagues uncomfortable, struck me as behavior that would need to be disciplined in any formal workplace.

Whether you agree or disagree with the author's position, whether you agree or disagree with the Stack Exchange policies, a reasonable person acting in good faith would change their behaviour when told they are making others feel uncomfortable (unless perhaps they thought the change would make others more uncomfortable which doesn't appear to be the case here). This is pretty much the definition of good faith.

blub4• 7 years ago

"a reasonable person acting in good faith would change their behaviour when told they are making others feel uncomfortable"

Yes, in yesterday's world this would be sensible. Nowadays being uncomfortable is being weaponized to bully others into submission and this should be fought against.

Being uncomfortable is part of the human existence and anyone should be able to feel uncomfortable and continue to function and continue to work with whoever is making them uncomfortable, unless that person is being downright offensive. Using "they" doesn't qualify, it's not even playing this game.

Wowfunhappy6• 7 years ago

I agree with you insofar as, this isn't about the policy itself so much as Monica's reaction to being told she was making others uncomfortable.

However, I truly do believe from reading the chat that Monica had no ill intentions. She has strong feelings about the english language, and takes pride in upholding her own personal standards of quality in her writing.

Furthermore, the entire conversation was overly heated. And much of the blame that can be placed on StackExchange—they dropped an ambiguous announcement into the chat without any context, and left everyone to discuss and interpret it amongst themselves instead of staying to answer questions.

caconym_9• 7 years ago

Other moderators said this last option likely would have been fine had Monica not made known her reason for doing so.

That reason being that it's "confusing and grammatically incorrect"? What does that have to do with the distinction between "people who preferred singular they" and "everyone"?

even after being told that she was making colleagues uncomfortable

Where is the evidence that she was legitimately making colleagues "uncomfortable"?

If I claim to be "uncomfortable" at work because my colleagues do X or don't do Y in their interactions with me, should that be taken at face value? Is my claim enough to have them removed if they don't correct their "problematic" behavior?

narrator3• 7 years ago

I'd like to learn how to force cultural change on people who don't want it and don't care about it. It's just a really cool society hacking technique.

So how does a bill become a law with regards to this pronoun stuff? Who were the people who initiated this policy? What motivated them to do it? Who influenced them? Who influenced them? Who funded the whole movement?

4chan has been doing research into this by doing enough trolling that they got the ok hand sign classified as a hate symbol. It seems, based on following the timeline on that phenomenon that a lot of what is considered forbidden in our culture is generated by certain 3 and 4 letter non-profits who feed that information to Google, Facebook, and others. That's just the negative part of it all though: how behavior becomes forbidden.

I want to know how behavior, like the pronoun stuff, becomes prescribed. I want to use that machinery to get society to do strange stuff as civilization level performance art.

TeMPOraL12• 7 years ago

If you ever discover the technique, please also make the civilization finally do something about climate change and getting us gently off the exponent in our economies. Sincerely, a time traveller from the 2080s.

narrator3• 7 years ago

Climate change has been screamed at you from every single information stream in your entire universe. To act like you're the smart one who has to deliver this to the people is the height of grandiosity.

What I am asking here is how do we regain control of The Spectacle of Guy Debord for our own performance art projects that originate nowhere except our very own minds.

rdiddly• 7 years ago

If referring to someone by the correct pronoun is respectful, referring to them by their name is even more respectful in my book. Or avoid talking about them in the third person where possible and only talk to them, for example. These are among the ways of "writing around" the pronoun, and they're both more respectful than using the pronoun. I suspect they're more constructive and efficient in other ways too, but would have to pay attention to see whether that's true. Anyway, if English is like code, all the pronoun solutions are currently hacks, so I'm all in favor of refactoring to avoid them.

abhorrence• 7 years ago

I think what you’re saying is true in the case where you apply it consistently to all people you talk about. When someone knows many people’s preference of pronouns but singles one out with “they”, name or avoidance of pronoun, that’s where the disrespect starts creeping back in.

einpoklum7• 7 years ago

This storm is really _not_ about gender pronouns, nor about the use of singular "they", nor about inclusivity.

It is all about how StackExchange Inc. is managing the StackExchange network; and the liberties it allows itself vis-a-vis individual moderators and the community at large.

The fiasco is that the answers to these two questions are really bad.

Lazare3• 7 years ago

Stack Overflow has handled the communication and PR side of this about as badly as a company can, and I started - and still want to be - on the side of the moderators.

However, as near as I can tell from piecing together the different leaks, it turns out a core issue was that Monica Cellio refused to use the singular "they" construction, including when she knew that was someone's preferred pronoun.

In my view she is 1) objectively grammatically wrong and 2) just being needlessly rude. And ultimately, I can't bring myself to support this position at all. If you lost your moderator role because of a refusal to use a widely used and accepted English construction, even though you knew this refusal would hurt people, then uh, I hope you're happy with your life choices, but I have no sympathy for you.

nullc4• 7 years ago

When you say 'refused to use' it sounds like you're saying Monica insisted on the wrong pronoun. But my understanding is that the argument was around drafting to simply avoid the use of pronouns entirely.

I've never previously seen it described as rude to write text that simply didn't use pronouns, in and of itself.

reilly3000• 7 years ago

I know this isn't what is at issue here, but I can't help but feel it's connected:

Gendered language runs deep, especially in languages like Spanish. Essentially anything ending in 'a' is considered feminine, and anything ending in 'o' is considered masculine. How could one hope to bring equality or neutrality to such language? It almost seems like a new language altogether would be easier than fighting to modify thousand-year histories and trillions of written words.

I'm all for healthy dialog that leads to ending oppressive norms, building compassion and inclusion. This situation feels like its own form of oppression, and as such ought to be questioned, if not resisted.

I honestly think everybody at the table here is trying to do the right thing as they see it, yet almost everyone is going to walk away hurt; there are no winners.

XPKBandMaidCzun• 7 years ago

I have a WIP theory about this type of person on social media.

This isn't about validation or inclusion, if it was, it'd have been over years ago. We're deep in malingering territory now.

1. Creating a divisive persona / Integration

Their bio may mention their membership in an off topic, but sensitive, divisive and prickly issue. The goal is to draw attention to the sensitive issue in the next phases.

They join the group, sometimes not even in the actual working parts of it, but after party social/meta scenes.

2. Exposure and Hijacking

They will tend to put themselves into conversation, conferences, etc. in preparation and in compulsion recreate the issue. The goal is to shift people focused diligently to shift their attention to being a caregiver not for their project or teammates, but to them.

3. Special VIP treatment

Then they get a big smirk when people when management get tongue tied trying to navigate it gracefully. We've seen many surprising public concessions to these types, sometimes based off very flimsy reasons. Which tends to really annoy people who just want to work.

Passerbys also unwittingly aid their endeavors, mistakenly believing they're helping someone disenfranchised and in need.

4. Consolidating (destruction)

When they get the thumbs up on being VIP, they can now consolidate their gains and show what the world is like when only their feelings are cared for.

Cancel culture, trying to ruin people's careers, get them banned, getting in fights with their bosses and chain of command etc. This way they can solidify their need for special treatment.

It's a continual loop of positive reinforcement for them. Since people in power and passerby always cave to them, unwittingly creating more division in an already annoyed community.

5. Preservation / Preemption

To draw the sting of critics, they beat them to the punch by calling them entitled and privileged. Further accuse critics can't grasp and judge their unique plight and never can. Demonstrating evidence of hypocrisy simply validates their presupposition they're underdogs being hounded. So they can repeat and get more concessions and attention.

Other facets: My original theory is it was validation based. It maybe play a role, it's a multi-faceted thing, such as feeling ashamed of their activity some how and want to "come out" in public. But if it was just that, wouldn't they get it off their chest and just over it?

hirundo• 7 years ago

It's hard to know what people want to be called, but there's a technical fix for that: add keywords to comments, etc., so that Stack Overflow can know it for you. E.g.

"%pronoun% was a legend in %possessive-pronoun%'s own mind."

Just another markup feature. Let people enter their pronouns in their profiles, and simply substitute them as needed. This at least relieves the burden of knowing the intimate preferences of strangers. Use something neutral, like xe, and xer, for the default, and let users choose their own defaults.

But if this is about something other than sparing people's feelings then this wouldn't help.

johnday• 7 years ago

One immediate problem that springs to mind would be for the "they" pronoun which conjugates differently.

recycler022• 7 years ago

I've been watching Ken Burns' "The Civil War". There was a bit that got me thinking about something which I've had trouble fully defining.

In one of the episodes, a historian talks about the simplicity of the values of the soldiers in that war. He marvels at how they were willing to march a mile and a half across an open field against a fortified enemy position. Think of the Union soldiers at Fredericksburg or the Confederate soldiers under Hood at Franklin. The historian also talks about how, were he in that situation, he feels like his response might have been "Sir, I don't believe that's a good idea sir" but how they bore it year after year and slaughter after slaughter.

Someone misgendering another person is a cruelty, just like any bully teasing a vulnerable person. There have always been cruel people though.

Juxtaposing that example of historical resilience against the increasingly baroque etiquette we require to insulate ourselves from experiencing garden variety cruelty, there's an incongruency that bothers me. Why could they bear that but we cannot bear this?

King-Aaron• 7 years ago

Personally, I go to stack overflow to find out about problems with my code, not about what set of genitals a person has.

Waterluvian• 7 years ago

I identify as a gender akin to a math wizard. The correct pronoun is a newly discovered prime number, unique each time. You know my preferred pronoun so please don't use "they."

Now this seems absurd but dare you call me out on it and tell me I'm not actually who I am? Are we all entitled to commanding everyone's use of the language by constructing and dictating pronoun usage?

I've had an easy time with gender issues in my life because I'm pretty carefree and accommodating. But I'm trying to understand where it goes from here.

I don't see how we can go past he/she/they because it opens the floodgates to an infinite number of more pronouns, does it not? How does any group get to decide which new pronouns have enough subscribers to be added to the official list?

It feels like in a gender fluid model, pronouns just don't work. "He" and "she" are legacy and "they" is the catch all. So I kind of get this idea of just not using them anymore. But does that feel manifestly absurd to anyone else?

This is also why I enjoy the internet so much. Gender doesn't matter and I have mastered picturing everyone as a cat on a keyboard.

nabdab2• 7 years ago

There is an awefull lot of gender neutral references in the CTO’s apology, even though it obviously knows that the fired moderators preferred pronouns are the female gendered ones. Someone should edit to remove all the gender neutral references to make a point how silly such a policy is.

Stack Overflow Inc. Fiasco: Timeline

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