4 ms·

This comment made me laugh. There's a bunch of charitable explanations as to why it was written, most notably "honest mistake". But there's also very uncharita

This comment made me laugh. There's a bunch of charitable explanations as to why it was written, most notably "honest mistake". But there's also very uncharitable explanations! For instance, I'm sure I'm not the only one who's noticed that hard technical IT blogs written by women are disproportionally often written by women who were born men (disproportionally wrt the general population of transgender women). Just like the one starting this thread might have assumed that "it's deep tech, so it must be a guy", I can imagine that stevenh assumed that "it's deep tech, so she must be trans". This is beautifully similar to the sentiment of his comment in general, to not under any circumstance let anyone get away with getting gender stuff wrong. So it looks like even the people who have a strong opinion about being hard on each other about gender stuff, can do it wrong. Maybe the lesson is that we should be slightly less hard on each other about it? I propose we politely point out mistakes and assume the best intentions (even though of course sometimes that assumption will be wrong).

aspaceman 9y ago
> I propose we politely point out mistakes and assume the best intentions (even though of course sometimes that assumption will be wrong). It's possible to politely point out peoples' mistakes while giving them no room to purposely misgender, which is exactly what this thread does. Let's examine the course of this conversation: "He said..." "It's a she" (In my opinion a polite response. This is where any discussion should have ended.) "Why does that matter?" "You can't let people get away with misgendering a trans person" If you only respond to the final comment, then your point makes sense. But the the act of politely pointing out the mistake already happened - now we must justify why it matters.
- skrebbel 9y ago
  I only responded to the final comment. Sorry, I thought that was clear. I agree with you for the rest. I did think stevenh's comment had a needlessly militant vibe to it, which is what I responded to. The rest of the thread lacks that vibe, which is good.
  - aspaceman 9y ago
    Gotcha, no hard feelings.

aspaceman 9y ago

> I propose we politely point out mistakes and assume the best intentions (even though of course sometimes that assumption will be wrong). It's possible to politely point out peoples' mistakes while giving them no room to purposely misgender, which is exactly what this thread does. Let's examine the course of this conversation: "He said..." "It's a she" (In my opinion a polite response. This is where any discussion should have ended.) "Why does that matter?" "You can't let people get away with misgendering a trans person" If you only respond to the final comment, then your point makes sense. But the the act of politely pointing out the mistake already happened - now we must justify why it matters.

skrebbel 9y ago
I only responded to the final comment. Sorry, I thought that was clear. I agree with you for the rest. I did think stevenh's comment had a needlessly militant vibe to it, which is what I responded to. The rest of the thread lacks that vibe, which is good.
- aspaceman 9y ago
  Gotcha, no hard feelings.