9 ms·

Why the hell are pronouns a centerpiece of a CoC? Just be nice to people. For fuck's sake.

dragonwriter 7y ago
> Why the hell are pronouns a centerpiece of a CoC? Because aggressive misgendering including by refusal to use the subject’s preferred pronouns is currently a significant form of harassment which is actively promoted by certain groups. > Just be nice to people. The fact that people aggressively refuse to do that is exactly what pronoun policies are responding to.
- yourbandsucks 7y ago
  I'm gonna wade in hip-deep here and suggest that, given the size of the transgender community, the heat and hype of these issues are completely unwarranted. No hate towards anyone and I'll call anyone whatever they want as far as pronouns. But why is this a top-3 culture war issue? For a bunch of combatants who are overwhelmingly not trans and shouldn't really care? We need to think of a way to rise above without throwing anyone under the bus. It'd be better for both the trans community and society at large.
  - flippinburgers 7y ago
    Honestly it is very strange to me that this is being downvoted. The level of outrage that I see is not at all proportional to the number of people affected. This is a very strange phenomenon. I seriously feel that the most heated carriers of torches in this scenario are people who gravitate towards "power play" moments and have happily found a niche where they can be ruthless in their assault.
    - dragonwriter 7y ago
      > The level of outrage that I see is not at all proportional to the number of people affected If you insist on calling a transman “she” because of his genitals at birth, then (aside from how to affects me because I have trans people I care about, which is, to be sure, the more important impact on me), it also means when you call me “he” it only coincidentally aligns with my preference rather than respecting it. Just because I only can see your disrespect when it's directed at someone whose pronouns don't conform to your preference for them doesn't mean that it's only present there, just that it is masked by circumstance elsewhere. > I seriously feel that the most heated carriers of torches in this scenario are people who gravitate towards "power play" moments and have happily found a niche where they can be ruthless in their assault. And I seriously feel that the people with the most intense need to distract from the issue with speculation about why other people might express concern for the issue do so because they have a sode, can't defend it, and so choose instead to distract from opposition to it with irrelevancies.
      - anon12345690 7y ago
        distract? are you serious? yea this isn't distracting at all to 99.99% of people who can get along fine without worrying about pronoun rules.
    - anon12345690 7y ago
      thats exactly it. people who have no serious problems so they invent new ones and love to play the moral outrage game because they get power over others you see so many people who do this then get eaten by the same group when they inevitably screw up some rule in the future
  - groby_b 7y ago
    This is a top-3 culture war issue because it gives a perfect wedge. Gay marriage is lost as that issue, that was the next one theofascists latched on. (It's the same reason state legislatures are so very much concerned with gendered bathrooms these days) It is deliberately stoked time and again because it specifically fires up a large conservative base, and is life-threatening to a small group. As a bonus point for the wedge issue status, the vast majority in the middle doesn't understand how difficult and dangerous it is to be misgendered as a transgender person, and so it's easy to paint the LGBT community as "rabid" for defending people's right to not be misgendered. And that's why we're here. One large group deliberately fanning hate flames, and one small group desperately trying to not get killed even more often.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - brankoB 7y ago
      Are you seriously equating misgendering someone with killing them?
      - shard972 7y ago
        Yes
      - mthoms 7y ago
        The poster was likely referring to the astronomical rates of suicide among trans people. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/09/14/more-than-half-of-transgender-male-adolescents-attempt-suicide-study-says/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/09/1... Obviously, misgendering someone is not likely to be the thing that triggers such an act. But it is part of a pattern of bullying and general disregard that transgendered people face every single day.
        7y ago
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > But why is this a top-3 culture war issue? It's not. Without suggesting these are the top 3, Abortion, gun control, and immigration are, just to pick 3 obvious ones, a far more central culture war issues than pronouns. (If you aggregated “LGBT rights” as a whole, you might get into the neighborhood of a top-3 issue.) > For a bunch of combatants who are overwhelmingly not trans and shouldn't really care? Unless, of course, you are a combatant on the other side, I can't imagine why you'd think that not-trans people shouldn't really care. > We need to think of a way to rise above without throwing anyone under the bus. How isn't having the decency to respect people's preferences in the pronouns you use to refer to them (and, though it's a separate but often concurrent issue, the gender you ascribe to them) exactly that?
    - yourbandsucks 7y ago
      Mmmm. Look at the size of this subthread. It's like catnip. And I said I'll use whatever pronouns people want, already, in one of four short grafs. Yet it didn't stop you from wondering if I'm some 'stealth enemy'. It's funny, these culture war issues. In the case described, it doesn't seem to have involved any actual trans people either. It was all theoretical, talking about the CoC. I suppose my talk of 'rise above' means waiting until someone is actually a jerk before correcting them. We don't need cultural uniformity, we just need people to be nice.
      - anon12345690 7y ago
        yea the problem is all the people getting involved and outraged about things that dont concern them. they even use war terms like "allies" to get that moral righteousness so they feel like theyre in the "fight"
- tmp20191006cars 7y ago
  Might I suggest that most people who insist on using pronouns derived from one's biological sex (rather than gender) are not attempting to engage in harassment, but are simply refusing to concede a currently unsettled political and societal question?
  - MauranKilom 7y ago
    Whether one think it's valid or not, people are hurt and suffer from the actions you suggest. Even if no harm is intended, harm is actively being done. At the same time, there is a limit to the linguistic, religious and/or philosophical concessions that pronoun users can reasonably make. It appears to me that that there is not always a middle ground that satisfies both sides. I (as someone who has no horse in this race) would suggest to put basic empathy and courtesy above "refusing to concede" on some more or less immaterial question, at least where there is no other reason not to. The ideological high horse isn't very high if one knowingly goes about hurting people to stay on it.
    - michannne 7y ago
      Empathy and courtesy have nothing to do with referring someone by generic pronouns. No one is being unempathetic by refusing to call "Joey", Joe, or not referring to Nat by their full name, Natalie. These are all personal issues that one must deal with on their own, either by disengaging from the situation or escalating however they desire and finding a resolution amongst themselves. Pronouns are no different - if you want me to refer to you as her, and I don't, then you and I will have a problem, not you, me, the mods, my boss, the government, etc. > The ideological high horse isn't very high if one knowingly goes about hurting people to stay on it. I have heard this time and time again. If misgendering someone is hurting them in any way, I'm suspecting the solution is for that person to disengage from society, not for society to cater to that person's needs, because they will be misgendered day in and day out for the rest of their life. If someone believes they are being gangstalked, society doesn't modify itself to ensure no one within 500 meters of them has a predictable schedule.
      - 7y ago
- chiefalchemist 7y ago
  Understood. But for simplicity and consistency maybe we should just use first names. No he or she, etc. Just use the first name. Wouldn't that do it?
  - Causality1 7y ago
    It seems that was the issue. The moderator in question, as best as I've been able to ascertain, decided to avoid gendered pronouns entirely and in doing so violated the rules.
    - chiefalchemist 7y ago
      So someone got sacked for using a person's name instead of a pronoun?
      - MauranKilom 7y ago
        No, it's far away from being that simple, and probably too complicated to summarize in a single sentence. For starters, the discussion was about a future CoC change and its theoretical enforcement. The actual allegation is repeated violation of the current CoC, but no warning regarding that was ever handed out. Nobody (not even the mod in question) has been told the exact violation, despite repeated queries.
        otterley 7y ago
        You don’t need a reason to kick someone out of your house.
        wincy 7y ago
        Absolutely, but then everyone can leave and call you a jerk for doing it. Actions have consequences and taking them unilaterally in a community might not go how you want it to.
        7y ago
- JungleGymSam 7y ago
  Ridiculous. It's this bizarre viewpoint that's destroying our society. SJWs will never be satisfied because destruction is what they want.
- BurningCycles 7y ago
  What is 'aggressive' misgendering and aggressive refusal ?
  - soganess 7y ago
    Person 1: “He did a great job on the presentation...” Person 2: “Thanks, that means a lot. Also, I actually prefer ’she’, but you can also use ‘they‘ if that makes you more comfortable.” Person 1: “But you are clearly a man.” Person 2: “...” Person 1: “Like I was saying, he did a great job on that presentation. I want the rest of you guys to follow his lead.”
- anon12345690 7y ago
  nope expecting the world to cater to your pronouns is harassment of the 99.99% of people who dont need or want to deal with it. i cant think of a more privileged complaint. if you want to make extreme choices then youre gonna have to accept that its not going to be as comfortable. nobody owes you anything
AgentME 7y ago
A big part of a CoC is making sure everyone is on the same page about what being nice to people is, and presumably "don't willingly misgender people" may be part of that.
AlexB138 7y ago
Because life isn't that simple. To one group "misgendering" people is harassment and therefore not nice. To another group being forced to speak as if someone is a gender you do not believe them to be is patronizing and not nice. No one is intentionally being unkind, other than the people who like to wade into the culture war
- anon12345690 7y ago
  life has been pretty simple for centuries. this is a manufactured problem. seriously because if youre trans and change your name then people just go with your new pronoun automatically anyway. you literally have to go out of your way to be difficult with this and thats why people have problem accepting it
DoreenMichele 7y ago
Trans individuals and other marginalized people often spend a lot of time online as a kind of safe haven from difficult personal circumstances. People online can be horrible asshats to a degree they wouldn't dare be in person. These two facts tend to collide and go bad places. (This comment is only describing the problem space, not taking sides in an argument.)
- adrianN 7y ago
  As other comments here already described, the gender of the person writing questions or answers on SO shouldn't matter at all. If you really want to avoid all issues with this, just randomize usernames for every topic and mandate gender neutral language. There is no need to use gendered pronouns in the Q/A format.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - tatersolid 7y ago
    Indeed most writing which demands clarity and precision (legal documents, regulations, military reports, etc.) intentionally avoid ALL pronouns. In a military report, the enemy isn’t ever referred to as “they” because that pronoun could also be understood to refer to another friendly unit or allied government force depending on ambiguous word order or mistranslation. Instead a term like OPFOR or similar is used consistently instead of a pronoun. This is what sites like SE should use as a standard: precise and pronoun-free language for both questions and answers.

> Why the hell are pronouns a centerpiece of a CoC? Because aggressive misgendering including by refusal to use the subject’s preferred pronouns is currently a significant form of harassment which is actively promoted by certain groups. > Just be nice to people. The fact that people aggressively refuse to do that is exactly what pronoun policies are responding to.

yourbandsucks 7y ago
I'm gonna wade in hip-deep here and suggest that, given the size of the transgender community, the heat and hype of these issues are completely unwarranted. No hate towards anyone and I'll call anyone whatever they want as far as pronouns. But why is this a top-3 culture war issue? For a bunch of combatants who are overwhelmingly not trans and shouldn't really care? We need to think of a way to rise above without throwing anyone under the bus. It'd be better for both the trans community and society at large.
- flippinburgers 7y ago
  Honestly it is very strange to me that this is being downvoted. The level of outrage that I see is not at all proportional to the number of people affected. This is a very strange phenomenon. I seriously feel that the most heated carriers of torches in this scenario are people who gravitate towards "power play" moments and have happily found a niche where they can be ruthless in their assault.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > The level of outrage that I see is not at all proportional to the number of people affected If you insist on calling a transman “she” because of his genitals at birth, then (aside from how to affects me because I have trans people I care about, which is, to be sure, the more important impact on me), it also means when you call me “he” it only coincidentally aligns with my preference rather than respecting it. Just because I only can see your disrespect when it's directed at someone whose pronouns don't conform to your preference for them doesn't mean that it's only present there, just that it is masked by circumstance elsewhere. > I seriously feel that the most heated carriers of torches in this scenario are people who gravitate towards "power play" moments and have happily found a niche where they can be ruthless in their assault. And I seriously feel that the people with the most intense need to distract from the issue with speculation about why other people might express concern for the issue do so because they have a sode, can't defend it, and so choose instead to distract from opposition to it with irrelevancies.
    - anon12345690 7y ago
      distract? are you serious? yea this isn't distracting at all to 99.99% of people who can get along fine without worrying about pronoun rules.
  - anon12345690 7y ago
    thats exactly it. people who have no serious problems so they invent new ones and love to play the moral outrage game because they get power over others you see so many people who do this then get eaten by the same group when they inevitably screw up some rule in the future
- groby_b 7y ago
  This is a top-3 culture war issue because it gives a perfect wedge. Gay marriage is lost as that issue, that was the next one theofascists latched on. (It's the same reason state legislatures are so very much concerned with gendered bathrooms these days) It is deliberately stoked time and again because it specifically fires up a large conservative base, and is life-threatening to a small group. As a bonus point for the wedge issue status, the vast majority in the middle doesn't understand how difficult and dangerous it is to be misgendered as a transgender person, and so it's easy to paint the LGBT community as "rabid" for defending people's right to not be misgendered. And that's why we're here. One large group deliberately fanning hate flames, and one small group desperately trying to not get killed even more often.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - brankoB 7y ago
    Are you seriously equating misgendering someone with killing them?
    - shard972 7y ago
      Yes
    - mthoms 7y ago
      The poster was likely referring to the astronomical rates of suicide among trans people. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/09/14/more-than-half-of-transgender-male-adolescents-attempt-suicide-study-says/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/09/1... Obviously, misgendering someone is not likely to be the thing that triggers such an act. But it is part of a pattern of bullying and general disregard that transgendered people face every single day.
      - 7y ago
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > But why is this a top-3 culture war issue? It's not. Without suggesting these are the top 3, Abortion, gun control, and immigration are, just to pick 3 obvious ones, a far more central culture war issues than pronouns. (If you aggregated “LGBT rights” as a whole, you might get into the neighborhood of a top-3 issue.) > For a bunch of combatants who are overwhelmingly not trans and shouldn't really care? Unless, of course, you are a combatant on the other side, I can't imagine why you'd think that not-trans people shouldn't really care. > We need to think of a way to rise above without throwing anyone under the bus. How isn't having the decency to respect people's preferences in the pronouns you use to refer to them (and, though it's a separate but often concurrent issue, the gender you ascribe to them) exactly that?
  - yourbandsucks 7y ago
    Mmmm. Look at the size of this subthread. It's like catnip. And I said I'll use whatever pronouns people want, already, in one of four short grafs. Yet it didn't stop you from wondering if I'm some 'stealth enemy'. It's funny, these culture war issues. In the case described, it doesn't seem to have involved any actual trans people either. It was all theoretical, talking about the CoC. I suppose my talk of 'rise above' means waiting until someone is actually a jerk before correcting them. We don't need cultural uniformity, we just need people to be nice.
    - anon12345690 7y ago
      yea the problem is all the people getting involved and outraged about things that dont concern them. they even use war terms like "allies" to get that moral righteousness so they feel like theyre in the "fight"
tmp20191006cars 7y ago
Might I suggest that most people who insist on using pronouns derived from one's biological sex (rather than gender) are not attempting to engage in harassment, but are simply refusing to concede a currently unsettled political and societal question?
- MauranKilom 7y ago
  Whether one think it's valid or not, people are hurt and suffer from the actions you suggest. Even if no harm is intended, harm is actively being done. At the same time, there is a limit to the linguistic, religious and/or philosophical concessions that pronoun users can reasonably make. It appears to me that that there is not always a middle ground that satisfies both sides. I (as someone who has no horse in this race) would suggest to put basic empathy and courtesy above "refusing to concede" on some more or less immaterial question, at least where there is no other reason not to. The ideological high horse isn't very high if one knowingly goes about hurting people to stay on it.
  - michannne 7y ago
    Empathy and courtesy have nothing to do with referring someone by generic pronouns. No one is being unempathetic by refusing to call "Joey", Joe, or not referring to Nat by their full name, Natalie. These are all personal issues that one must deal with on their own, either by disengaging from the situation or escalating however they desire and finding a resolution amongst themselves. Pronouns are no different - if you want me to refer to you as her, and I don't, then you and I will have a problem, not you, me, the mods, my boss, the government, etc. > The ideological high horse isn't very high if one knowingly goes about hurting people to stay on it. I have heard this time and time again. If misgendering someone is hurting them in any way, I'm suspecting the solution is for that person to disengage from society, not for society to cater to that person's needs, because they will be misgendered day in and day out for the rest of their life. If someone believes they are being gangstalked, society doesn't modify itself to ensure no one within 500 meters of them has a predictable schedule.
    - 7y ago
chiefalchemist 7y ago
Understood. But for simplicity and consistency maybe we should just use first names. No he or she, etc. Just use the first name. Wouldn't that do it?
- Causality1 7y ago
  It seems that was the issue. The moderator in question, as best as I've been able to ascertain, decided to avoid gendered pronouns entirely and in doing so violated the rules.
  - chiefalchemist 7y ago
    So someone got sacked for using a person's name instead of a pronoun?
    - MauranKilom 7y ago
      No, it's far away from being that simple, and probably too complicated to summarize in a single sentence. For starters, the discussion was about a future CoC change and its theoretical enforcement. The actual allegation is repeated violation of the current CoC, but no warning regarding that was ever handed out. Nobody (not even the mod in question) has been told the exact violation, despite repeated queries.
      - otterley 7y ago
        You don’t need a reason to kick someone out of your house.
        wincy 7y ago
        Absolutely, but then everyone can leave and call you a jerk for doing it. Actions have consequences and taking them unilaterally in a community might not go how you want it to.
        7y ago
JungleGymSam 7y ago
Ridiculous. It's this bizarre viewpoint that's destroying our society. SJWs will never be satisfied because destruction is what they want.
BurningCycles 7y ago
What is 'aggressive' misgendering and aggressive refusal ?
- soganess 7y ago
  Person 1: “He did a great job on the presentation...” Person 2: “Thanks, that means a lot. Also, I actually prefer ’she’, but you can also use ‘they‘ if that makes you more comfortable.” Person 1: “But you are clearly a man.” Person 2: “...” Person 1: “Like I was saying, he did a great job on that presentation. I want the rest of you guys to follow his lead.”
anon12345690 7y ago
nope expecting the world to cater to your pronouns is harassment of the 99.99% of people who dont need or want to deal with it. i cant think of a more privileged complaint. if you want to make extreme choices then youre gonna have to accept that its not going to be as comfortable. nobody owes you anything

AgentME 7y ago

A big part of a CoC is making sure everyone is on the same page about what being nice to people is, and presumably "don't willingly misgender people" may be part of that.

AlexB138 7y ago

Because life isn't that simple. To one group "misgendering" people is harassment and therefore not nice. To another group being forced to speak as if someone is a gender you do not believe them to be is patronizing and not nice. No one is intentionally being unkind, other than the people who like to wade into the culture war

anon12345690 7y ago
life has been pretty simple for centuries. this is a manufactured problem. seriously because if youre trans and change your name then people just go with your new pronoun automatically anyway. you literally have to go out of your way to be difficult with this and thats why people have problem accepting it

DoreenMichele 7y ago

Trans individuals and other marginalized people often spend a lot of time online as a kind of safe haven from difficult personal circumstances. People online can be horrible asshats to a degree they wouldn't dare be in person. These two facts tend to collide and go bad places. (This comment is only describing the problem space, not taking sides in an argument.)

adrianN 7y ago
As other comments here already described, the gender of the person writing questions or answers on SO shouldn't matter at all. If you really want to avoid all issues with this, just randomize usernames for every topic and mandate gender neutral language. There is no need to use gendered pronouns in the Q/A format.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- tatersolid 7y ago
  Indeed most writing which demands clarity and precision (legal documents, regulations, military reports, etc.) intentionally avoid ALL pronouns. In a military report, the enemy isn’t ever referred to as “they” because that pronoun could also be understood to refer to another friendly unit or allied government force depending on ambiguous word order or mistranslation. Instead a term like OPFOR or similar is used consistently instead of a pronoun. This is what sites like SE should use as a standard: precise and pronoun-free language for both questions and answers.