5 ms·

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?

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
phyzome 7y ago
I'm pretty sure cellio specifically said that they were fine with using pronouns when specified.
- reanimus 7y ago
  Really? The post here seemed to indicate otherwise: > I said I avoid singular they for that reason, 95% of the time you can write around the problem, and (on SE) I'm offended when someone edits my posts badly to solve a gender-neutrality problem. (Editing well is fine, which usually means pluralizing or using a name or something like that instead of either generic "he" or singular "they".) Some people said not using preferred pronouns invalidates the person; I said for me it's not about the person at all but the quality of my own writing (an important part of my identity). and later: > 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, but this question calls for adding a positive requirement to use specific language and we shouldn't do that. I talked about writing in a gender-neutral way, that we rarely even need third-person-singular pronouns in our discussions, and not using a pronoun at all isn't misgendering. This, to me, sounds like "I refuse to use the pronouns you ask me to use for you and will instead rewrite whenever possible to not use pronouns for you".
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - simo7 7y ago
    Pronouns are meant to be a finite set, contrary to names which are an infinite (or unlimited) set. That way you can group many multiple names under few pronouns. If you want to allow an infinite set of pronouns you might just as well remove pronouns altogether as they would stop serving the purpose they are meant to serve.
  - fencepost 7y ago
    Where are pronouns specified? How much digging are volunteer mods required to do under penalty of censure? Will all Stack Exchange sites add a "pronouns" field to user profiles that can be displayed along with user IDs? Are mods going to be required to go look at each user account's free-form description each time to check for pronoun information and possible changes (there have been references to 'gender-fluid' which makes me think the pronoun may change frequently)? Will there be history tracking so when a mod says 'she' and gets called on it by a 'he' it can be shown that the expressed preference has changed since a response was written? You couldn't do a better job of building a system of unavoidable traps if you were actively trying to sabotage the system. By the time this is all done every.single.moderator will be guaranteed to have violated the CoC at least once and can be censured or fired for it on a whim.
    - morelisp 7y ago
      > Will all Stack Exchange sites add a "pronouns" field to user profiles that can be displayed along with user IDs? You ask this rhetorically and like it's some big challenge, but it's genuinely a good idea and straightforward to implement for any community site.
      - michannne 7y ago
        The answer to the questions asked on StackExchange have nothing to do with the gender of the asker, they are intended for anyone who has the same question.
        morelisp 7y ago
        Meanwhile, for those of us not ascended to a Platonic space but are still in the real world, Stack Exchange remains people talking to each other.
        michannne 7y ago
        From your derogatory reply, I can expect that the new policy on SO is to not lock duplicate questions, then, seeing as how it's a forum for conversation, instead of a Q&A platform.
  - morelisp 7y ago
    Yes, lost among the many people rushing to comment here is context about a real dynamic that exists in some faux-inclusive, usually queer or queer-adjacent but not trans-friendly, spaces. People will advocate for singular they, solely so they do not have to use "he" or "she" for trans people, playing a shell game to misgender people while claiming not to. It's fine to use singular "they" to refer to anyone. It's fine to write avoiding pronouns. But if you only use singular they when referring to (even specific) trans people, or only avoid pronouns when referring to (even specific) non-binary people, that's just being coy about your transphobia. Whether that's what happened here, I suspect we will never know unless all relevant logs leak - neither side has much to gain from in going into subtleties like this.
    - DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
      Your comment makes some strong, derogatory assumptions about some persons' motives. Why is that?
      - morelisp 7y ago
        Whose? (If anything I suspect I'm giving someone at SO too much credit for understanding this dynamic - 99 times out of 100 this shit is just the boring office politics it looks like.)
  - maxlybbert 7y ago
    I’m sure the fundamental issue is that one person wrote the code of conduct, and another is enforcing their interpretation of it. If the code of conduct says “you must use a person’s preferred pronouns,” I would not expect to mean that I have to use pronouns at all. But if I do use pronouns, I will use that person’s chosen pronoun. I can’t speak for anybody else, but if I write that my real first name is “Max,” and I prefer “he,” I wouldn’t consider it a firing offense if somebody were to say “Max’s post” or “Max’s answer,” or “the advice Max wrote is ridiculously bad,” even if they could have written “his post,” “his answer,” or “the advice he wrote is ridiculously bad.” The claim (at least as I understand it) is that somebody able to fire employees believes that a rule along the lines of “you must use users’ preferred pronouns” creates some kind of obligation to use pronouns.
  - phyzome 7y ago
    Ah, I had misread. I don't agree with your conclusions, however. Based on reading her last couple posts, it sounds like she doesn't like using singular they in generic settings. (No evidence either way on people who use a personal singular-they pronoun, but given that she was trying to defend against anti-trans and anti-NB bigotry, that seems unlikely?) I don't think she's anti-trans at all, and just wants to avoid unnecessary use of pronouns in generic writing.
freehunter 7y 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.
- reanimus 7y ago
  This is unrelated to what I'm talking about lol
- comex 7y ago
  This post is about a case where someone was avoiding singular they, in favor of changing the wording to avoid pronouns altogether.
- simonblack 7y ago
  English already has a non-specific pronoun that's been around for hundreds of years. It has come from the French, so it's been around at least since the Norman Invasion of 1066. So roughly 1050 years. One can use it at any time.
  - LordDragonfang 7y ago
    At least in modern English, "one" is specifically an indefinite pronoun, and is therefore inappropriate for use when referring to a specific individual. And before anyone claims otherwise, "they" was still in use as a definite, gender-neutral pronoun long before its NB usage began to become mainstream.
    - esyir 7y ago
      "They" might be a definite pronoun, but it is almost exclusively used as a plural. It's also a pretty bad drop in replacement; "They is currently running" sounds weird as all hell for instance. That there has been an explicit and forced attempt to shift it towards that doesn't make it sound any better. Furthermore, "He" has been used as a generic pronoun long predating the singular they. While it comes with some ambiguity as well, it flows a lot better and does not screw around with singular/plural ambiguity.
Wowfunhappy 7y ago
What is the alternative on a Q&A site that explicitly restricts tangential conversation?
michannne 7y 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.
- dgabriel 7y ago
  What? You can't say "call me they/them," rather you can only say "don't call me him/her/or any other pronoun besides they"? That's very silly. Clarification of rules, even to the point where they may seem redundant, is completely fine and often important. This is such a weird hill for them to die on.
  - michannne 7y ago
    The new rule is not a clarification of the existing rule. If you'd not like me to call you "OP", that's fine, I can refer to you by your username or they or I can refer only to "the post", and if you prefer a pronoun, Cellio states she will use that pronoun. The issue is that the new rule states you must use a certain term whichever the user specifies.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
trentnix 7y ago
You know what else is a dick move? - punishing people for wrongthink.
- fzeroracer 7y ago
  Let's use a hypothetical here. Let's say you're on a team with someone named Mike. Mike has a team member that keeps referring to him as 'Mikey'. Mike doesn't like this, because he feels it's demeaning and rude. He insists on being called Mike, but his teammate refuses. If his manager gets involved and tells said team member to cut it out, is that punishing someone for wrongthink? Do you think it's acceptable to repeatedly call someone a name that they don't like?
  - crististm 7y ago
    Are you talking about name-calling? Cause people already know what to do about it. Is "Mikey" pejorative?
  - iMerNibor 7y ago
    There's a huge difference between calling someone you know and have interacted with for a significant amount of time or a random internet stranger the wrong thing though (not to mention the overhead of looking up & remembering the pronoun vs just writing around it for technical/factual answers)
    - fzeroracer 7y ago
      Except that's not the scenario in question. The person I was responding to (and in turn, the OP) was about someone explicitly not calling you by what you request even after you ask them to please to so. In my scenario, it doesn't change much if Mike is a new employee at said company. The coworker still calls him Mikey even after the employee's requests to stop, which would be considered rude by a lot of people.
  - anang 7y ago
    There is a distinct difference between asking to be called something, and asking to not be called something. I don’t think anyone is arguing that it’s right or correct to continue using a pronoun or name that someone has specifically objected to.
unreal37 7y 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 7y 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.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

phyzome 7y ago

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

reanimus 7y ago
Really? The post here seemed to indicate otherwise: > I said I avoid singular they for that reason, 95% of the time you can write around the problem, and (on SE) I'm offended when someone edits my posts badly to solve a gender-neutrality problem. (Editing well is fine, which usually means pluralizing or using a name or something like that instead of either generic "he" or singular "they".) Some people said not using preferred pronouns invalidates the person; I said for me it's not about the person at all but the quality of my own writing (an important part of my identity). and later: > 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, but this question calls for adding a positive requirement to use specific language and we shouldn't do that. I talked about writing in a gender-neutral way, that we rarely even need third-person-singular pronouns in our discussions, and not using a pronoun at all isn't misgendering. This, to me, sounds like "I refuse to use the pronouns you ask me to use for you and will instead rewrite whenever possible to not use pronouns for you".
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- simo7 7y ago
  Pronouns are meant to be a finite set, contrary to names which are an infinite (or unlimited) set. That way you can group many multiple names under few pronouns. If you want to allow an infinite set of pronouns you might just as well remove pronouns altogether as they would stop serving the purpose they are meant to serve.
- fencepost 7y ago
  Where are pronouns specified? How much digging are volunteer mods required to do under penalty of censure? Will all Stack Exchange sites add a "pronouns" field to user profiles that can be displayed along with user IDs? Are mods going to be required to go look at each user account's free-form description each time to check for pronoun information and possible changes (there have been references to 'gender-fluid' which makes me think the pronoun may change frequently)? Will there be history tracking so when a mod says 'she' and gets called on it by a 'he' it can be shown that the expressed preference has changed since a response was written? You couldn't do a better job of building a system of unavoidable traps if you were actively trying to sabotage the system. By the time this is all done every.single.moderator will be guaranteed to have violated the CoC at least once and can be censured or fired for it on a whim.
  - morelisp 7y ago
    > Will all Stack Exchange sites add a "pronouns" field to user profiles that can be displayed along with user IDs? You ask this rhetorically and like it's some big challenge, but it's genuinely a good idea and straightforward to implement for any community site.
    - michannne 7y ago
      The answer to the questions asked on StackExchange have nothing to do with the gender of the asker, they are intended for anyone who has the same question.
      - morelisp 7y ago
        Meanwhile, for those of us not ascended to a Platonic space but are still in the real world, Stack Exchange remains people talking to each other.
        michannne 7y ago
        From your derogatory reply, I can expect that the new policy on SO is to not lock duplicate questions, then, seeing as how it's a forum for conversation, instead of a Q&A platform.
- morelisp 7y ago
  Yes, lost among the many people rushing to comment here is context about a real dynamic that exists in some faux-inclusive, usually queer or queer-adjacent but not trans-friendly, spaces. People will advocate for singular they, solely so they do not have to use "he" or "she" for trans people, playing a shell game to misgender people while claiming not to. It's fine to use singular "they" to refer to anyone. It's fine to write avoiding pronouns. But if you only use singular they when referring to (even specific) trans people, or only avoid pronouns when referring to (even specific) non-binary people, that's just being coy about your transphobia. Whether that's what happened here, I suspect we will never know unless all relevant logs leak - neither side has much to gain from in going into subtleties like this.
  - DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
    Your comment makes some strong, derogatory assumptions about some persons' motives. Why is that?
    - morelisp 7y ago
      Whose? (If anything I suspect I'm giving someone at SO too much credit for understanding this dynamic - 99 times out of 100 this shit is just the boring office politics it looks like.)
- maxlybbert 7y ago
  I’m sure the fundamental issue is that one person wrote the code of conduct, and another is enforcing their interpretation of it. If the code of conduct says “you must use a person’s preferred pronouns,” I would not expect to mean that I have to use pronouns at all. But if I do use pronouns, I will use that person’s chosen pronoun. I can’t speak for anybody else, but if I write that my real first name is “Max,” and I prefer “he,” I wouldn’t consider it a firing offense if somebody were to say “Max’s post” or “Max’s answer,” or “the advice Max wrote is ridiculously bad,” even if they could have written “his post,” “his answer,” or “the advice he wrote is ridiculously bad.” The claim (at least as I understand it) is that somebody able to fire employees believes that a rule along the lines of “you must use users’ preferred pronouns” creates some kind of obligation to use pronouns.
- phyzome 7y ago
  Ah, I had misread. I don't agree with your conclusions, however. Based on reading her last couple posts, it sounds like she doesn't like using singular they in generic settings. (No evidence either way on people who use a personal singular-they pronoun, but given that she was trying to defend against anti-trans and anti-NB bigotry, that seems unlikely?) I don't think she's anti-trans at all, and just wants to avoid unnecessary use of pronouns in generic writing.

freehunter 7y 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.

reanimus 7y ago
This is unrelated to what I'm talking about lol
comex 7y ago
This post is about a case where someone was avoiding singular they, in favor of changing the wording to avoid pronouns altogether.
simonblack 7y ago
English already has a non-specific pronoun that's been around for hundreds of years. It has come from the French, so it's been around at least since the Norman Invasion of 1066. So roughly 1050 years. One can use it at any time.
- LordDragonfang 7y ago
  At least in modern English, "one" is specifically an indefinite pronoun, and is therefore inappropriate for use when referring to a specific individual. And before anyone claims otherwise, "they" was still in use as a definite, gender-neutral pronoun long before its NB usage began to become mainstream.
  - esyir 7y ago
    "They" might be a definite pronoun, but it is almost exclusively used as a plural. It's also a pretty bad drop in replacement; "They is currently running" sounds weird as all hell for instance. That there has been an explicit and forced attempt to shift it towards that doesn't make it sound any better. Furthermore, "He" has been used as a generic pronoun long predating the singular they. While it comes with some ambiguity as well, it flows a lot better and does not screw around with singular/plural ambiguity.

Wowfunhappy 7y ago

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

michannne 7y 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.

dgabriel 7y ago
What? You can't say "call me they/them," rather you can only say "don't call me him/her/or any other pronoun besides they"? That's very silly. Clarification of rules, even to the point where they may seem redundant, is completely fine and often important. This is such a weird hill for them to die on.
- michannne 7y ago
  The new rule is not a clarification of the existing rule. If you'd not like me to call you "OP", that's fine, I can refer to you by your username or they or I can refer only to "the post", and if you prefer a pronoun, Cellio states she will use that pronoun. The issue is that the new rule states you must use a certain term whichever the user specifies.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

trentnix 7y ago

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

fzeroracer 7y ago
Let's use a hypothetical here. Let's say you're on a team with someone named Mike. Mike has a team member that keeps referring to him as 'Mikey'. Mike doesn't like this, because he feels it's demeaning and rude. He insists on being called Mike, but his teammate refuses. If his manager gets involved and tells said team member to cut it out, is that punishing someone for wrongthink? Do you think it's acceptable to repeatedly call someone a name that they don't like?
- crististm 7y ago
  Are you talking about name-calling? Cause people already know what to do about it. Is "Mikey" pejorative?
- iMerNibor 7y ago
  There's a huge difference between calling someone you know and have interacted with for a significant amount of time or a random internet stranger the wrong thing though (not to mention the overhead of looking up & remembering the pronoun vs just writing around it for technical/factual answers)
  - fzeroracer 7y ago
    Except that's not the scenario in question. The person I was responding to (and in turn, the OP) was about someone explicitly not calling you by what you request even after you ask them to please to so. In my scenario, it doesn't change much if Mike is a new employee at said company. The coworker still calls him Mikey even after the employee's requests to stop, which would be considered rude by a lot of people.
- anang 7y ago
  There is a distinct difference between asking to be called something, and asking to not be called something. I don’t think anyone is arguing that it’s right or correct to continue using a pronoun or name that someone has specifically objected to.

unreal37 7y 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 7y 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.