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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 pronoun

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 7y 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.
- mentat 7y ago
  It's about writing around pronouns, not using neutral or gendered either way. That was said to be unacceptable.
JumpCrisscross 7y 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.
- herostratus101 7y ago
  What's the point of noting that they have the right to do this? Was anyone arguing that SE violated the law? Their culture is stupid and alienating to many intelligent people.
  - geofft 7y ago
    Because the comment at the top of this thread uses the phrase "punish that assumed thought crime." It's just a disagreement of values. I'm not going to hire a Catholic to be a pastor at my Lutheran church, but that doesn't mean I think that Catholics are committing thoughtcrime. (Despite the historical fact that many Lutherans and many Catholics did go to war for disagreeing with each other thoughts.)
    - herostratus101 7y ago
      You really can't grasp the differences between a technology site that's used by practically every software developer and a church?
      - geofft 7y ago
        True, I've never heard of an official state established Q&A site. So there's even less danger of state suppression of rights in the case of the technology site.
        herostratus101 7y ago
        Unlike a church, most of the world's programmers have to use Stack Exchange in some capacity and abide by its policies. You're being obtuse.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
        geofft 7y ago
        Huh? Why? I mean, first, I'm surprised at the implicit claim that most of the world's programmers do use Stack Exchange and abide by its policies. I don't have a Stack Exchange account. I occasionally run across it in Google searches, but I don't have to abide by any policies to read a website. And my company (which is in a regulated industry and is IP-sensitive) prohibits us from posting detailed information about our work externally without review by the security team, so I assume most (I certainly don't assume all) of my coworkers don't post to Stack Exchange from work / about their work. I can't remember the last time I heard a coworker (here or at a previous employer) say "I asked StackOverflow and they said....". There are a lot of companies and non-company employers (governments...) which will be equally sensitive about posting code. Second, even if it were true that most of the world's programmers do use Stack Exchange, why do they have to? It's a company that's barely 10 years old. It's a site that's notorious for closing question as off topic. Surely there are other resources. Surely other sites could pop up. I specifically mentioned "established" churches because it is no such thing - it's popular because people want to use it, not because anyone is obligated to. If people want to use something else, or nothing at all, they can. If someone figures out how to disrupt Stack Exchange, nobody is stopping them. "Crime" is a term that applies to violations of rules set by the government, which you are obligated to follow - it does not apply to violations of rules set by private parties. Finally, the policies in question were applied in this instance to a moderator, not a user. I don't believe that most of the world's programmers have to be a moderator. (And, again, given that StackOverflow is notorious for editing questions to make them more generally useful even at the risk of making the question useless for the individual asker, I assume they would at most rephrase the question to be policy-compliant instead of banning the user.)
- kjaftaedi 7y ago
  Yes, it's a private organization acting within their "rights", but this private organization is heavily reliant on their community, which they are now alienating themselves from.. which is the topic of discussion. The moderator (whom you are ironically misgendering) was not attempting to burn political capital, and was never told they were doing anything against the rules by offering their opinion on a topic of discussion.
  - JumpCrisscross 7y ago
    > The moderator (whom you are ironically misgendering) was not attempting to burn political capital One, thank you for pointing out the midgendering. Flagged it in my original comment. They weren’t attempting to deploy political capital. But repeatedly flagging an issue for discussion is a political act. (This is, by the way, another cultural norm. The level of openness to challenging the organisation’s authority.) On content, I agree with the author. But I disagree with OP’s claim that there is a growing wing of our culture seeking to punish people for thoughtcrime. The analogy would be someone who brings up the office dress code at every meeting. Yes, it’s arbitrary. Yes, you’re just talking about the rule. And yes, at a certain point it will be perceived as a challenge. (Depending on the culture, one that is laughed off or responded to.)
    - MauranKilom 7y ago
      Where do you see an indication that the moderator in question brought up the issue constantly? By her own account, she got into a single major discussion and then let it go.
    - Chyzwar 7y ago
      It was on private moderator chat. Content of this conversation was not intended to be public. It was not Monica to bring this issue up to discussion but new PR people in SO working on new CoC. IMO there bigger problems in SO that should be addressed on instead of gender pronouns. I would question SO leadership ability to focus on the right things.
- denton-scratch 7y ago
  "It’s a private organisation. The person “let go” was a volunteer. It sucks, but both parties acted within their rights." This. Also, if you have a legal dispute with someone, hire a lawyer and STFU. Do not go ranting on HN - that really screws stuff up for whoever has to be your advocate.
- loeg 7y ago
  > Meh. It’s a private organisation. The person “let go” was a volunteer. It sucks, but both parties acted within their rights. The drama isn't that any party acted or is alleged to have acted illegally. Stack Overflow derives huge value from, in part, free moderation by volunteers; part of continuing to extract that free labor means maintaining positive relationships.
- smsm42 7y ago
  > The cost of vilifying norms we disagree with is a reduced cultural space private organisations can explore. In case you've been living under a rock, this has already happened. Organizations are routinely boycotted, denied business, harassed out of existence and deplatformed by providers for "exploring" cultural spaces and for allowing others to do that without enforcing certain cultural norms in aggressive enough manner. It's not something theoretical, it's what has already happened many times. People fired, sites shut down, services denied, etc. And yet, the occasion where you decide to raise your voice is when somebody complains about being excluded from the community for mere discussing the rules - and falsely accused in violating those rules with no evidence whatsoever? This is where you wake up and start protesting about narrowing the exploration of cultural space - when somebody who dares to question whether it should be narrowed as harshly as it is done is immediately fired and libelously accused? Somehow it sounds to me as if either you are not completely informed or your "let the thousands flowers bloom" sentiment is less than genuine and of more tactical nature.
- 9HZZRfNlpR 7y ago
  It is just American puritans again but from a different angle. Rest of the world is confusingly laughing over these issues.
greglindahl 7y ago
The policy is talking about situations where a person's preferred pronouns are known.
- munmaek 7y ago
  Even if someone's pronouns are known, what is the issue with using a gender neutral term? The ire with he/she is misgendering someone, so why is going with a neutral term for everyone a bad thing? I am not trying to be inflammatory, I am genuinely confused as to why this would upset anyone. I don't look up the pronouns of every single person I respond to on the internet.
  - JimboOmega 7y ago
    The issue is when you use pronouns for others, but you won't for one person, because they're transgender. You're really calling their otherness out, and it hurts. There are people in this world (ex: Ben Shapiro) who simply refuse to gender transgender people correctly on principle. If you are such a person, and your organization doesn't let you do that, and your solution is to use gender neutral pronouns for transgender people? Yup, that's very nearly as bad. This is very different than me referring to you or anyone else who I only know as a screen name as "they". That's normal because if you don't even know their pronouns, what else can you do? But if you are part of a team and you know how people identify, you don't really have an excuse.
    - munmaek 7y ago
      In meatspace this issue is quite different, and I have no issue with using what someone wants. What about using they for everyone, preferred pronouns or not? It seems more logical to not make distinctions at all, and just use one term, they, for everyone. In other languages one can simply omit the subject as well.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
    - 7y ago
JimboOmega 7y 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)
- munmaek 7y ago
  What if you use they for just about everyone? The other question I have is am I expected to look up every single person's preferred pronouns that I reply to? This situation doesn't make any sense at all to me personally.
  - JimboOmega 7y ago
    I feel like there's part of this story I'm not hearing because just using gender neutral language for everyone on its own shouldn't be offensive. Unless, as I said in my other reply, you're basically doing it to avoid having to gender someone correctly. I certainly wouldn't expect somebody to know what my pronouns are over the Internet. I try very hard to present in a way that is identified as female in real life, but the Internet? It's not like I try to write in a feminine way or anything, there's just no way you would know.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      The part of the story you're missing is the somewhat recent (arguably happening for many years, now) phenomenon where some people take an issue like this (correct use of pronouns, in this case), weaponize it, and use it to assault communities. If you find yourself in a situation like this, you cannot get away by being more neutral and more reasonable, because it's not a misunderstanding - it's an attack. The situation is very asymmetrical; a lot of people and organizations yield at the very first opportunity, and people thinking it was just a misunderstanding get thrown under a bus.
eej2ya1K 7y ago
The people you know are probably, you know, cool, sane and well-adjusted NB, trans or genderqueer people! Like the majority. This isn't about those, it's about a minority (of what's already a minority) of mentally ill people who are playing a dangerous game. They're winning some battles right now, but every win is taking them closer to... something really, really bad.
- dang 7y ago
  Please let's not cross into name-calling ("mentally ill"). Internet psychiatric diagnosis is a particularly bad sign in contentious threads. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - sincerely 7y ago
    People with gender dysphoria are by definition mentally ill...
    - dang 7y ago
      That sounds like a circular statement to me. But even if true, it's not ok to diagnose people on HN or to use diagnostic labels to juice up arguments. Note how the GP's substance doesn't change if you take out the label "mentally ill". It just gets less labelly.
    - stordoff 7y ago
      I don't believe that's what the post is saying though. It appears to be saying a minority of them are mentally ill.
    - mimi89999 7y ago
      Ad hominem arguments are always unacceptable. People with various mental illnesses (depression, autism, asperger, OCD, etc.) can still hold perfectly valid claims. The fact that somebody might see the world in a different way does not discredit them.
latk 7y 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 7y ago
I tend to avoid using gendered pronouns in professional settings because I want to keep sexual dynamics out of it.
Lazare 7y 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.
- jiofih 7y ago
  It’s the other way around, the policy was enforcing specific (preferred) pronouns. But they didn’t get to force her to do anything, she was fired before having a chance to violate it.
  - Lazare 7y ago
    There seems to be some debate about that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21175143 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21175143 > Monica was asked many times, by many other moderators, to please use "singular they" for people who she actively knew preferred that pronoun. To the extent that's true, then 1) the issue is about her refusal to use the singular they construction, and 2) the suggestion that this about her potential to violate a future change to the CoC is a red herring, because she was removed for actual violations of existing rules. Of course, I'm not sure how much I trust the leaks. Given how politicized the situation now is, any transcript now has to be viewed a bit sceptically. However, The Register talked with her, and their story (https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/01/stack_exchange_controversy/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/01/stack_exchange_cont...) quotes her as saying "I said I don't use singular they". From context it seems this is categorical; she won't use it ever, in any circumstances, including in cases where that is someone's preferred pronoun. That doesn't answer the timeline question, but it strongly suggests reports of her refusal to use singular they are correct. If she's just quietly avoided language she didn't like, I'm sure she'd have been fine, but when you make a big deal about how you're refusing to use a specific pronoun, even when asked, and even when using it is grammatically correct... ...yeah. Sorry, no sympathy for Monica there. I don't see how she really gave SO a lot of choice.
    - phyzome 7y ago
      SO had the choice to 1) not remove someone for a violation that hadn't actually happened, and 2) give her a warning rather than surprise her with a firing, and 3) follow their own procedures for removing a moderator. And many other choices besides. Heck, they could even have had a discussion with her.

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 7y 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.

mentat 7y ago
It's about writing around pronouns, not using neutral or gendered either way. That was said to be unacceptable.

JumpCrisscross 7y 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.

herostratus101 7y ago
What's the point of noting that they have the right to do this? Was anyone arguing that SE violated the law? Their culture is stupid and alienating to many intelligent people.
- geofft 7y ago
  Because the comment at the top of this thread uses the phrase "punish that assumed thought crime." It's just a disagreement of values. I'm not going to hire a Catholic to be a pastor at my Lutheran church, but that doesn't mean I think that Catholics are committing thoughtcrime. (Despite the historical fact that many Lutherans and many Catholics did go to war for disagreeing with each other thoughts.)
  - herostratus101 7y ago
    You really can't grasp the differences between a technology site that's used by practically every software developer and a church?
    - geofft 7y ago
      True, I've never heard of an official state established Q&A site. So there's even less danger of state suppression of rights in the case of the technology site.
      - herostratus101 7y ago
        Unlike a church, most of the world's programmers have to use Stack Exchange in some capacity and abide by its policies. You're being obtuse.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
        geofft 7y ago
        Huh? Why? I mean, first, I'm surprised at the implicit claim that most of the world's programmers do use Stack Exchange and abide by its policies. I don't have a Stack Exchange account. I occasionally run across it in Google searches, but I don't have to abide by any policies to read a website. And my company (which is in a regulated industry and is IP-sensitive) prohibits us from posting detailed information about our work externally without review by the security team, so I assume most (I certainly don't assume all) of my coworkers don't post to Stack Exchange from work / about their work. I can't remember the last time I heard a coworker (here or at a previous employer) say "I asked StackOverflow and they said....". There are a lot of companies and non-company employers (governments...) which will be equally sensitive about posting code. Second, even if it were true that most of the world's programmers do use Stack Exchange, why do they have to? It's a company that's barely 10 years old. It's a site that's notorious for closing question as off topic. Surely there are other resources. Surely other sites could pop up. I specifically mentioned "established" churches because it is no such thing - it's popular because people want to use it, not because anyone is obligated to. If people want to use something else, or nothing at all, they can. If someone figures out how to disrupt Stack Exchange, nobody is stopping them. "Crime" is a term that applies to violations of rules set by the government, which you are obligated to follow - it does not apply to violations of rules set by private parties. Finally, the policies in question were applied in this instance to a moderator, not a user. I don't believe that most of the world's programmers have to be a moderator. (And, again, given that StackOverflow is notorious for editing questions to make them more generally useful even at the risk of making the question useless for the individual asker, I assume they would at most rephrase the question to be policy-compliant instead of banning the user.)
kjaftaedi 7y ago
Yes, it's a private organization acting within their "rights", but this private organization is heavily reliant on their community, which they are now alienating themselves from.. which is the topic of discussion. The moderator (whom you are ironically misgendering) was not attempting to burn political capital, and was never told they were doing anything against the rules by offering their opinion on a topic of discussion.
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago
  > The moderator (whom you are ironically misgendering) was not attempting to burn political capital One, thank you for pointing out the midgendering. Flagged it in my original comment. They weren’t attempting to deploy political capital. But repeatedly flagging an issue for discussion is a political act. (This is, by the way, another cultural norm. The level of openness to challenging the organisation’s authority.) On content, I agree with the author. But I disagree with OP’s claim that there is a growing wing of our culture seeking to punish people for thoughtcrime. The analogy would be someone who brings up the office dress code at every meeting. Yes, it’s arbitrary. Yes, you’re just talking about the rule. And yes, at a certain point it will be perceived as a challenge. (Depending on the culture, one that is laughed off or responded to.)
  - MauranKilom 7y ago
    Where do you see an indication that the moderator in question brought up the issue constantly? By her own account, she got into a single major discussion and then let it go.
  - Chyzwar 7y ago
    It was on private moderator chat. Content of this conversation was not intended to be public. It was not Monica to bring this issue up to discussion but new PR people in SO working on new CoC. IMO there bigger problems in SO that should be addressed on instead of gender pronouns. I would question SO leadership ability to focus on the right things.
denton-scratch 7y ago
"It’s a private organisation. The person “let go” was a volunteer. It sucks, but both parties acted within their rights." This. Also, if you have a legal dispute with someone, hire a lawyer and STFU. Do not go ranting on HN - that really screws stuff up for whoever has to be your advocate.
loeg 7y ago
> Meh. It’s a private organisation. The person “let go” was a volunteer. It sucks, but both parties acted within their rights. The drama isn't that any party acted or is alleged to have acted illegally. Stack Overflow derives huge value from, in part, free moderation by volunteers; part of continuing to extract that free labor means maintaining positive relationships.
smsm42 7y ago
> The cost of vilifying norms we disagree with is a reduced cultural space private organisations can explore. In case you've been living under a rock, this has already happened. Organizations are routinely boycotted, denied business, harassed out of existence and deplatformed by providers for "exploring" cultural spaces and for allowing others to do that without enforcing certain cultural norms in aggressive enough manner. It's not something theoretical, it's what has already happened many times. People fired, sites shut down, services denied, etc. And yet, the occasion where you decide to raise your voice is when somebody complains about being excluded from the community for mere discussing the rules - and falsely accused in violating those rules with no evidence whatsoever? This is where you wake up and start protesting about narrowing the exploration of cultural space - when somebody who dares to question whether it should be narrowed as harshly as it is done is immediately fired and libelously accused? Somehow it sounds to me as if either you are not completely informed or your "let the thousands flowers bloom" sentiment is less than genuine and of more tactical nature.
9HZZRfNlpR 7y ago
It is just American puritans again but from a different angle. Rest of the world is confusingly laughing over these issues.

greglindahl 7y ago

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

munmaek 7y ago
Even if someone's pronouns are known, what is the issue with using a gender neutral term? The ire with he/she is misgendering someone, so why is going with a neutral term for everyone a bad thing? I am not trying to be inflammatory, I am genuinely confused as to why this would upset anyone. I don't look up the pronouns of every single person I respond to on the internet.
- JimboOmega 7y ago
  The issue is when you use pronouns for others, but you won't for one person, because they're transgender. You're really calling their otherness out, and it hurts. There are people in this world (ex: Ben Shapiro) who simply refuse to gender transgender people correctly on principle. If you are such a person, and your organization doesn't let you do that, and your solution is to use gender neutral pronouns for transgender people? Yup, that's very nearly as bad. This is very different than me referring to you or anyone else who I only know as a screen name as "they". That's normal because if you don't even know their pronouns, what else can you do? But if you are part of a team and you know how people identify, you don't really have an excuse.
  - munmaek 7y ago
    In meatspace this issue is quite different, and I have no issue with using what someone wants. What about using they for everyone, preferred pronouns or not? It seems more logical to not make distinctions at all, and just use one term, they, for everyone. In other languages one can simply omit the subject as well.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - 7y ago

JimboOmega 7y 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)

munmaek 7y ago
What if you use they for just about everyone? The other question I have is am I expected to look up every single person's preferred pronouns that I reply to? This situation doesn't make any sense at all to me personally.
- JimboOmega 7y ago
  I feel like there's part of this story I'm not hearing because just using gender neutral language for everyone on its own shouldn't be offensive. Unless, as I said in my other reply, you're basically doing it to avoid having to gender someone correctly. I certainly wouldn't expect somebody to know what my pronouns are over the Internet. I try very hard to present in a way that is identified as female in real life, but the Internet? It's not like I try to write in a feminine way or anything, there's just no way you would know.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    The part of the story you're missing is the somewhat recent (arguably happening for many years, now) phenomenon where some people take an issue like this (correct use of pronouns, in this case), weaponize it, and use it to assault communities. If you find yourself in a situation like this, you cannot get away by being more neutral and more reasonable, because it's not a misunderstanding - it's an attack. The situation is very asymmetrical; a lot of people and organizations yield at the very first opportunity, and people thinking it was just a misunderstanding get thrown under a bus.

eej2ya1K 7y ago

The people you know are probably, you know, cool, sane and well-adjusted NB, trans or genderqueer people! Like the majority. This isn't about those, it's about a minority (of what's already a minority) of mentally ill people who are playing a dangerous game. They're winning some battles right now, but every win is taking them closer to... something really, really bad.

dang 7y ago
Please let's not cross into name-calling ("mentally ill"). Internet psychiatric diagnosis is a particularly bad sign in contentious threads. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- sincerely 7y ago
  People with gender dysphoria are by definition mentally ill...
  - dang 7y ago
    That sounds like a circular statement to me. But even if true, it's not ok to diagnose people on HN or to use diagnostic labels to juice up arguments. Note how the GP's substance doesn't change if you take out the label "mentally ill". It just gets less labelly.
  - stordoff 7y ago
    I don't believe that's what the post is saying though. It appears to be saying a minority of them are mentally ill.
  - mimi89999 7y ago
    Ad hominem arguments are always unacceptable. People with various mental illnesses (depression, autism, asperger, OCD, etc.) can still hold perfectly valid claims. The fact that somebody might see the world in a different way does not discredit them.

latk 7y 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 7y ago

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

Lazare 7y 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.

jiofih 7y ago
It’s the other way around, the policy was enforcing specific (preferred) pronouns. But they didn’t get to force her to do anything, she was fired before having a chance to violate it.
- Lazare 7y ago
  There seems to be some debate about that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21175143 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21175143 > Monica was asked many times, by many other moderators, to please use "singular they" for people who she actively knew preferred that pronoun. To the extent that's true, then 1) the issue is about her refusal to use the singular they construction, and 2) the suggestion that this about her potential to violate a future change to the CoC is a red herring, because she was removed for actual violations of existing rules. Of course, I'm not sure how much I trust the leaks. Given how politicized the situation now is, any transcript now has to be viewed a bit sceptically. However, The Register talked with her, and their story (https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/01/stack_exchange_controversy/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/01/stack_exchange_cont...) quotes her as saying "I said I don't use singular they". From context it seems this is categorical; she won't use it ever, in any circumstances, including in cases where that is someone's preferred pronoun. That doesn't answer the timeline question, but it strongly suggests reports of her refusal to use singular they are correct. If she's just quietly avoided language she didn't like, I'm sure she'd have been fine, but when you make a big deal about how you're refusing to use a specific pronoun, even when asked, and even when using it is grammatically correct... ...yeah. Sorry, no sympathy for Monica there. I don't see how she really gave SO a lot of choice.
  - phyzome 7y ago
    SO had the choice to 1) not remove someone for a violation that hadn't actually happened, and 2) give her a warning rather than surprise her with a firing, and 3) follow their own procedures for removing a moderator. And many other choices besides. Heck, they could even have had a discussion with her.