8 ms·

Official StackOverflow FAQ on Gender Pronouns and Code of Conduct Changes

54 points by nsoonhui 7y ago

xkapastel 7y ago
Sometimes I have a hard time believing that this gender stuff is really happening. That there are really people who want to divorce the words "man" and "woman" from a person's sex, and instead make them about personal identity. That they have enough political power to force changes like this with no discussion and no dissent allowed. It is not in any way bigoted or transphobic to believe that a person being a man or a woman, and therefore the pronouns used to refer to that person, are determined by that person's sex at birth. This was the accepted belief of the vast majority of the human race up until about 20 minutes ago, when it suddenly became a bannable offense. StackOverflow going all-in in support of social engineering on behalf of political activists is baffling to me. Where does this end? Is the goal really to force all of society to change to placate a small group of activists? A reasonable compromise would have just been to allow "they" to refer to someone in a neutral way, but I understand that this is actually not allowed if the person being referred to has stated they would like "he" or "she". This is what makes me think it's more about social engineering than actually protecting anyone from harm.
- ykevinator 7y ago
  The presumption of malicious intent is what's off putting. Plus its a fool's errand, you cannot retrain a few billion people by public shaming. I'm a liberal, and this is stupid.
  - ihatemondays 7y ago
    One of the central ideas that lead SE is "Assume good intent". There's no presumption of malicious intent.
    - rednixion 7y ago
      ... didn't they just fire someone like two weeks ago based on a presumption of malicious intent?
  - notadoc 7y ago
    > you cannot retrain a few billion people by public shaming There have been many cultural revolutions throughout history where a group tries to retrain millions through shaming, reeducation, force, policy, banning, censorship, etc.
- an_d_rew 7y ago
  > It is not in any way bigoted or transphobic to believe that a person being a man or a woman, and therefore the pronouns used to refer to that person, are determined by that person's sex at birth. Actually, yes it is (bigoted and transphobic). Consider making the same statement using the phrase “females are intellectually inferior to males” or “negroes are inferior to whites” to see the fallacy. And both of these (repugnant) beliefs were commonplace for much of history.
  - anoncareer0212 7y ago
    Can you clarify how "X are [optionally, Z] inferior to Y" is the same thing as saying "a person being a man or a woman, and therefore the pronouns used to refer to that person, are determined by that person's sex at birth."? I don't agree with OP, but am disturbed by your comment.
  - ljm 7y ago
    Saying “He’s got a penis, we’re going to have a boy!” when taking an ultrasound is in no way comparable to the examples of racism and chauvinism that you’ve described. The comparison here is utterly absurd. Why not throw something about Hitler in there too?
- lidHanteyk 7y ago
  But, at the same time, some 2% of people are neither male nor female, and our society ought to accommodate that. Not likely to happen while SO's moderators aren't even honestly engaging with the community, but instead rewriting their posts without comment: https://meta.stackexchange.com/posts/334979/revisions https://meta.stackexchange.com/posts/334979/revisions
  - ihatemondays 7y ago
    And according to the SO 2019 survey, "only" 91.7% of people on SO identify as male (do keep in mind that not everyone who identifies as male uses he/him too), yet most people default off to he/him when referring to others. This can alienate the 8.3%+, and is probably one of the reasons why that percentage is that low. This change isn't just about trans people, but about anyone who doesn't use he/him or isn't male.
    - mckirk 7y ago
      > This can alienate the 8.3%+, and is probably one of the reasons why that percentage is that low. That "probably" there isn't justified, in my opinion. As others in that FAQ thread have pointed out, StackOverflow isn't a place where a lot of third-person interaction is taking place, so I'd consider it a stretch to make that out as a reason that non-males are lacking there. Maybe it's just that women often have better things to do than to ask strangers for help on why their Haskell state monad is acting up.
      - ihatemondays 7y ago
        StackExchange is more than StackOverflow, and StackExchange is more than just the main site. Third party pronouns are widely used in meta and chat.
        NeedMoreTea 7y ago
        Meta and chat are the preserve of keen insiders. A new user will typically arrive at SE for asking or answering specific questions. Even most of the users with accounts rarely seem to go near meta and chat. When I was active on SE (I gave up logging in a few years ago), meta was the afterthought to bitch about some policy or detail and the annoying habits of questioners. The chat usually empty or quiet enough that even looking to see if it was active seemed mostly pointless. I'm sure it's grown since, but that's not really where new people are going.
- krapp 7y ago
  >It is not in any way bigoted or transphobic to believe that a person being a man or a woman, and therefore the pronouns used to refer to that person, are determined by that person's sex at birth. It is bigoted, because the implication behind this belief that all trans people are delusional, mentally ill or liars. Mind you, I agree that "they" is an acceptable pronoun unless it's being exclusively used to avoid the chosen pronouns of trans people (in other words, it's fine to me if applied neutrally) and I think SO is going overboard here, but your comment has a lot of anti-trans bigotry in it you may not recognize.
- belorn 7y ago
  I am not surprised. In the last few hundred years one of the more important social etiket was to use the correct title and social gesture. People could get lynched/beaten if incorrect behavior was given to an important enough person or group. Unproportional and often extrajudicial in their application of violence, but far from unprecedented. From a historical perspective all that has change is which group is important enough and what titles are deemed socially required.
- kupiakos 7y ago
  The claim that requiring pronouns be based on assigned sex not being transphobic is akin to claiming Prop 8 wasn't homophobic. Judging that a e.g. a trans man cannot possibly be a man and use he/him pronouns is transphobic by definition. It sucks because the day of a trans person can be ruined by someone being an asshole and then feeling justified that they weren't "because biology". Because the reality is, I'm trans and I don't feel safe participating on Hacker News anymore. If I try to ask someone to be respectful towards me, I know I'll be attacked because this is the top comment. And that sucks.
jonny383 7y ago
And this is the beginning of the end of SE. They should never have gotten anywhere near involved in such a controversial topic. Especially, given their site is _international_ and I'm assuming a huge amount of their customer base is coming from conserved, third-world countries, who are simply not ready to change to make a first-world minority feel better of factually correct wording. Save yourself the burden: $ echo "127.0.0.1 stackoverflow.com www.stackoverflow.com stackexchange.com www.stackexchange.com" >> /etc/hosts
- tsegratis 7y ago
  I found SO useful, but it is copy-left https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing So even GPL works need relicensing if they include anything from SO??
  - tsegratis 7y ago
    Ah, GPL is an exception; including something from SO makes your work: Either GPL, or one of two licenses they consider equivalent
- ihatemondays 7y ago
  So let them speak, not you. Most people I've seen that are complaining about this are from western countries.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- steff82x 7y ago
  Mhhh voglio capirci di piu
RenRav 7y ago
Unless they include the pronoun by their name... good luck. There could be a macro that expands into the pronoun or whoever you're responding to.
- benmmurphy 7y ago
  +1. This is actually a really good idea and solves the issue with people potentially abusing pronouns on their profile page in bad faith.
- kupiakos 7y ago
  I'd absolutely love a way to display pronouns next to a username when configured. It's not required to follow the rules though. It's actually pretty simple: use they/them unless you find out otherwise. You're not required to seek out someone's pronouns.
johannkokos 7y ago
Somehow I feel StackOverflow is preparing itself to be bought. Part of contract is for SO to deal with these hard problems before the it is made public.
duxup 7y ago
Moderating it and encouraging the community to run around policing each other seems like it is a bit too much. No matter how gently you moderate a person many take it harshly and I suspect the response will be to push back at the moderator, moderation, and ultimately the rule.... and it ends up being more counterproductive than anything else. Very very generally I would compare the response to say police detaining someone as far as a someone's response goes. It is hard to do so no matter how lightly it is presented and not get a strong response. Another issue is that moderators can't know if two people know the correct pronoun unless clearly stated in that conversation, so they are going to be guessing the vast majority of the time...
- ihatemondays 7y ago
  The FAQ clearly states that if you don't know then you're free to use they/them, and only are required to use their preferred pronouns if you're asked to do so by the person or if you very clearly knew before (say that you wrote 10 answers to someone over a week, if you defaulted back to they/them on each, then it could be seen as intentional).
  - duxup 7y ago
    I read that, i'm not entirely sure how that relates to my post.
chaorace 7y ago
It seems like the rule changes boil down to three points: * Use gender neutral pronouns in most prose * When directly addressing a user, use their pronouns, as configured on the user profile * Specifying your own identity is optional, intentionally ignoring the identity specified by others is not On the one hand, SE can be esoteric enough as it is, more rules will make for less ease of use. I absolutely think that there should be some level of natural resistance to all new (and existing) barriers to entry. On the other hand, this new rule isn't particularly difficult to understand (imo) and aligns fairly well with current best practices. I feel that it's particularly disingenuous to foist this issue as the straw that will break the camel's back, given how thoroughly declawed this rule is. Most infractions won't even constitute an official warning (though I am certain there are people who will test this rule to the limits, which will certainly be interesting to watch unfold).
blablabla123 7y ago
I really have problems following through this complex discussion. But if pronouns are such an issue, this proves that too many discussions on StackExchange are about people and not about technical issues. They should focus again on technical issues and also find ways to reward questions and answers about really specific issues. It could be observation bias but it seems that questions/answers on very generic topics get most upvotes, although these things can usually also be found on other websites easily and with more detail.
- wgjordan 7y ago
  > this proves that too many discussions on StackExchange are about people and not about technical issues ... They should focus again on technical issues StackExchange is a network of Q+A sites covering a diverse range of topics, many of which are non-technical by design. I think you might be confusing StackOverflow, the original and most popular technically-focused programming Q+A site, with the broader collection of Q+A sites this policy is addressing. Unless you're suggesting that all non-technical StackExchange sites should be shut down, which is a bit more drastic.
foolzcrow 7y ago
Communist reducation for the purpose of demoralizing a country ahead of invasion. Look it up. Same tactic 100%. Now you see why disarming Americans is so important to them.
effnorwood 7y ago
Oh my God. Fuck you. Your sites BLOCKED.
Demoneeri 7y ago
I agree with this. I use any pronouns or name someone wants to be called. I'm not a jerk. I don't understand the backlash, do you go around and call people other name that they want to be called because "you don't feel like it"?
- ihatemondays 7y ago
  I don't get the backlash either, I think it's a combination of genuine bigotry and the "nice" feeling of being on the side of everyone. In the end, it does feel weird to upvote a post that is at -700 or to speak positively when most people's reactions that you see are negative.
- jhanschoo 7y ago
  > Q9: Do I have to use pronouns I’m unfamiliar or uncomfortable with (e.g., neopronouns like xe, zir, ne... )? > Yes, if those are stated by the individual. As with some replies in the sourced thread, I take issue with this, because it gives a way for trolls to request to be referred to in a humiliating or offensive way, and to prove bad faith is a waste of limited resources. I say that it is a waste, because singular they/them is gaining currency, and has been used in many contexts as a gender-neutral third-person pronoun, and it is never interpreted as offensive or disrespectful afaict; at best somewhat awkward by some people in some contexts.
- mckirk 7y ago
  The problem isn't that people should be referred to in the way they want. The problem is trying to mandate it from above. Ideally, it would be perfectly "allowed" to insult someone by referring to them in a way they explicitly asked not to be referred to. And it would then also be perfectly allowed to call that person out for being a jerk. That's how a naturally formed community would handle such trolling -- but here, the idea is that the "right behaviour" has to be enforced by rules from above, and that's really not a good idea if you're dealing with anything other than a group of pre-schoolers.
  - ihatemondays 7y ago
    Relevant: https://xkcd.com/1357/ https://xkcd.com/1357/ You're still perfectly "allowed" to maliciously misgender people, it'll just get you warned or banned.
rossdavidh 7y ago
So, I wonder if the most likely result of this is that SO just becomes more of a "place I look stuff up", and less of a "place I post things"? Also, I wonder what happens the first time somebody says their preferred pronoun is "God", or something 127 characters long? or Little Bobby Tables? or...?
- ihatemondays 7y ago
  > Also, I wonder what happens the first time somebody says their preferred pronoun is "God", or something 127 characters long? or Little Bobby Tables? or...? As they said on the answers... bad faith actions like having a 127 character pronoun means that it must be reported: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/334900/official-faq-on-gender-pronouns-and-code-of-conduct-changes/334908#comment1098246_334908 https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/334900/official-faq...
  - ThrowawayR2 7y ago
    Seems logically contradictory to have an individual decide their identity but have an external body determine whether that's in bad faith or not.
    - krapp 7y ago
      It isn't. If one accepts the premise that gender is separate from biological sex, one accepts chosen gender-based pronouns as acceptable descriptors of a person's gender identity, but the premise of gender-based pronouns is that they describe gender. As the set of human genders is not infinite, the set of valid pronouns to describe human gender is also not infinite. "I identify as an attack helicopter" is obviously stated in bad faith, as "attack helecopter" is not a valid human gender. "God" or a base64 hash are also obviously not valid genders. The only people who would do so to begin with are trolls who want to mock trans identity.
      - jeromic 7y ago
        Though where is the line drawn about what is a valid gender/pronoun? For instance, are all the pronouns listed on https://askanonbinary.tumblr.com/pronouns https://askanonbinary.tumblr.com/pronouns acceptable or not?
halfarmbandit 7y ago
The people that don’t understand why this is awful concent to speech regulations. I can’t see how this differs from homophobia enforced by law. Both limit a person’s freedom. It is totally different to mispronounce and to make racist remarks. The former can be solved by asking the other person the latter won’t be solved because the other person is an asshole. One is a mishap directed towards a single person and the latter towards a group of people.
momo1987 7y ago
2019
19ylram49 7y ago
> Q9: Do I have to use pronouns I’m unfamiliar or uncomfortable with (e.g., neopronouns like xe, zir, ne... )? > > Yes, if those are stated by the individual. Yikes. I’m 100% in support of all gender identities, sexual orientations, races, etc., and I’ll fight for everyone’s rights and well-being, but this is insanity. It’s one thing restrict offensive language but it’s a whole different beast to mandate specific language. Nope. Nope. Nope. I’m not doing it. Sorry not sorry.
- cmrx64 7y ago
  Not doing what? Being 100% supportive as stated and addressing people respectfully? Seems strange to express displeasure with a corporate policy about a website by being disrespectful to unrelated individuals.
  - 19ylram49 7y ago
    > Seems strange to express displeasure with a corporate policy about a website by being disrespectful to unrelated individuals. What are you even going on about? Whom have I disrespected? Allow me to repeat myself: It’s one thing restrict offensive language but it’s a whole different beast to mandate specific language. If, e.g., you tell me to not refer to a certain group of folks using a particular racially offensive term, that’s fine and pretty reasonable, but if you tell me that I must refer to a certain group of folks using a term that you or they chose simply because you or they said so, as far as I’m concerned, we’re slowly walking ourselves into a dictatorship. For the first option, I can simply not do anything and avoid being a “bad” person, but for the second option, I’m implicitly a “bad” person if I don’t explicitly do as told (in this case, aka, ordered). There’s no way I could ever accept that. Nope. No way.
    - anp 7y ago
      How do you feel about using someone's name?
      - fstopmick 7y ago
generalpass 7y ago
If I were 15 nowadays, I'd be getting so many people banned, lol. I can't comprehend how SE can be so ignorant.
qbaqbaqba 7y ago
Are there any reasonable SO alternatives?
kangnkodos 7y ago
Can StackOverflow provide a technical solution? When I write my question, answer, or comment, allow me to add markup such as <pronoun @CaesarM />. And then StackOverflow will display the pronoun in the correct way. --- Or StackOverflow could take it one step farther. If I write a question, answer or comment with a pronoun, a dialog pops up asking me which username the pronoun refers to. The software does the rest.

54 points by nsoonhui 7y ago

Sometimes I have a hard time believing that this gender stuff is really happening. That there are really people who want to divorce the words "man" and "woman" from a person's sex, and instead make them about personal identity. That they have enough political power to force changes like this with no discussion and no dissent allowed. It is not in any way bigoted or transphobic to believe that a person being a man or a woman, and therefore the pronouns used to refer to that person, are determined by that person's sex at birth. This was the accepted belief of the vast majority of the human race up until about 20 minutes ago, when it suddenly became a bannable offense. StackOverflow going all-in in support of social engineering on behalf of political activists is baffling to me. Where does this end? Is the goal really to force all of society to change to placate a small group of activists? A reasonable compromise would have just been to allow "they" to refer to someone in a neutral way, but I understand that this is actually not allowed if the person being referred to has stated they would like "he" or "she". This is what makes me think it's more about social engineering than actually protecting anyone from harm.

ykevinator 7y ago
The presumption of malicious intent is what's off putting. Plus its a fool's errand, you cannot retrain a few billion people by public shaming. I'm a liberal, and this is stupid.
- ihatemondays 7y ago
  One of the central ideas that lead SE is "Assume good intent". There's no presumption of malicious intent.
  - rednixion 7y ago
    ... didn't they just fire someone like two weeks ago based on a presumption of malicious intent?
- notadoc 7y ago
  > you cannot retrain a few billion people by public shaming There have been many cultural revolutions throughout history where a group tries to retrain millions through shaming, reeducation, force, policy, banning, censorship, etc.
an_d_rew 7y ago
> It is not in any way bigoted or transphobic to believe that a person being a man or a woman, and therefore the pronouns used to refer to that person, are determined by that person's sex at birth. Actually, yes it is (bigoted and transphobic). Consider making the same statement using the phrase “females are intellectually inferior to males” or “negroes are inferior to whites” to see the fallacy. And both of these (repugnant) beliefs were commonplace for much of history.
- anoncareer0212 7y ago
  Can you clarify how "X are [optionally, Z] inferior to Y" is the same thing as saying "a person being a man or a woman, and therefore the pronouns used to refer to that person, are determined by that person's sex at birth."? I don't agree with OP, but am disturbed by your comment.
- ljm 7y ago
  Saying “He’s got a penis, we’re going to have a boy!” when taking an ultrasound is in no way comparable to the examples of racism and chauvinism that you’ve described. The comparison here is utterly absurd. Why not throw something about Hitler in there too?
lidHanteyk 7y ago
But, at the same time, some 2% of people are neither male nor female, and our society ought to accommodate that. Not likely to happen while SO's moderators aren't even honestly engaging with the community, but instead rewriting their posts without comment: https://meta.stackexchange.com/posts/334979/revisions https://meta.stackexchange.com/posts/334979/revisions
- ihatemondays 7y ago
  And according to the SO 2019 survey, "only" 91.7% of people on SO identify as male (do keep in mind that not everyone who identifies as male uses he/him too), yet most people default off to he/him when referring to others. This can alienate the 8.3%+, and is probably one of the reasons why that percentage is that low. This change isn't just about trans people, but about anyone who doesn't use he/him or isn't male.
  - mckirk 7y ago
    > This can alienate the 8.3%+, and is probably one of the reasons why that percentage is that low. That "probably" there isn't justified, in my opinion. As others in that FAQ thread have pointed out, StackOverflow isn't a place where a lot of third-person interaction is taking place, so I'd consider it a stretch to make that out as a reason that non-males are lacking there. Maybe it's just that women often have better things to do than to ask strangers for help on why their Haskell state monad is acting up.
    - ihatemondays 7y ago
      StackExchange is more than StackOverflow, and StackExchange is more than just the main site. Third party pronouns are widely used in meta and chat.
      - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
        Meta and chat are the preserve of keen insiders. A new user will typically arrive at SE for asking or answering specific questions. Even most of the users with accounts rarely seem to go near meta and chat. When I was active on SE (I gave up logging in a few years ago), meta was the afterthought to bitch about some policy or detail and the annoying habits of questioners. The chat usually empty or quiet enough that even looking to see if it was active seemed mostly pointless. I'm sure it's grown since, but that's not really where new people are going.
krapp 7y ago
>It is not in any way bigoted or transphobic to believe that a person being a man or a woman, and therefore the pronouns used to refer to that person, are determined by that person's sex at birth. It is bigoted, because the implication behind this belief that all trans people are delusional, mentally ill or liars. Mind you, I agree that "they" is an acceptable pronoun unless it's being exclusively used to avoid the chosen pronouns of trans people (in other words, it's fine to me if applied neutrally) and I think SO is going overboard here, but your comment has a lot of anti-trans bigotry in it you may not recognize.
belorn 7y ago
I am not surprised. In the last few hundred years one of the more important social etiket was to use the correct title and social gesture. People could get lynched/beaten if incorrect behavior was given to an important enough person or group. Unproportional and often extrajudicial in their application of violence, but far from unprecedented. From a historical perspective all that has change is which group is important enough and what titles are deemed socially required.
kupiakos 7y ago
The claim that requiring pronouns be based on assigned sex not being transphobic is akin to claiming Prop 8 wasn't homophobic. Judging that a e.g. a trans man cannot possibly be a man and use he/him pronouns is transphobic by definition. It sucks because the day of a trans person can be ruined by someone being an asshole and then feeling justified that they weren't "because biology". Because the reality is, I'm trans and I don't feel safe participating on Hacker News anymore. If I try to ask someone to be respectful towards me, I know I'll be attacked because this is the top comment. And that sucks.

jonny383 7y ago

And this is the beginning of the end of SE. They should never have gotten anywhere near involved in such a controversial topic. Especially, given their site is _international_ and I'm assuming a huge amount of their customer base is coming from conserved, third-world countries, who are simply not ready to change to make a first-world minority feel better of factually correct wording. Save yourself the burden: $ echo "127.0.0.1 stackoverflow.com www.stackoverflow.com stackexchange.com www.stackexchange.com" >> /etc/hosts

tsegratis 7y ago
I found SO useful, but it is copy-left https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing So even GPL works need relicensing if they include anything from SO??
- tsegratis 7y ago
  Ah, GPL is an exception; including something from SO makes your work: Either GPL, or one of two licenses they consider equivalent
ihatemondays 7y ago
So let them speak, not you. Most people I've seen that are complaining about this are from western countries.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
steff82x 7y ago
Mhhh voglio capirci di piu

RenRav 7y ago

Unless they include the pronoun by their name... good luck. There could be a macro that expands into the pronoun or whoever you're responding to.

benmmurphy 7y ago
+1. This is actually a really good idea and solves the issue with people potentially abusing pronouns on their profile page in bad faith.
kupiakos 7y ago
I'd absolutely love a way to display pronouns next to a username when configured. It's not required to follow the rules though. It's actually pretty simple: use they/them unless you find out otherwise. You're not required to seek out someone's pronouns.

johannkokos 7y ago

Somehow I feel StackOverflow is preparing itself to be bought. Part of contract is for SO to deal with these hard problems before the it is made public.

duxup 7y ago

Moderating it and encouraging the community to run around policing each other seems like it is a bit too much. No matter how gently you moderate a person many take it harshly and I suspect the response will be to push back at the moderator, moderation, and ultimately the rule.... and it ends up being more counterproductive than anything else. Very very generally I would compare the response to say police detaining someone as far as a someone's response goes. It is hard to do so no matter how lightly it is presented and not get a strong response. Another issue is that moderators can't know if two people know the correct pronoun unless clearly stated in that conversation, so they are going to be guessing the vast majority of the time...

ihatemondays 7y ago
The FAQ clearly states that if you don't know then you're free to use they/them, and only are required to use their preferred pronouns if you're asked to do so by the person or if you very clearly knew before (say that you wrote 10 answers to someone over a week, if you defaulted back to they/them on each, then it could be seen as intentional).
- duxup 7y ago
  I read that, i'm not entirely sure how that relates to my post.

chaorace 7y ago

It seems like the rule changes boil down to three points: * Use gender neutral pronouns in most prose * When directly addressing a user, use their pronouns, as configured on the user profile * Specifying your own identity is optional, intentionally ignoring the identity specified by others is not On the one hand, SE can be esoteric enough as it is, more rules will make for less ease of use. I absolutely think that there should be some level of natural resistance to all new (and existing) barriers to entry. On the other hand, this new rule isn't particularly difficult to understand (imo) and aligns fairly well with current best practices. I feel that it's particularly disingenuous to foist this issue as the straw that will break the camel's back, given how thoroughly declawed this rule is. Most infractions won't even constitute an official warning (though I am certain there are people who will test this rule to the limits, which will certainly be interesting to watch unfold).

blablabla123 7y ago

I really have problems following through this complex discussion. But if pronouns are such an issue, this proves that too many discussions on StackExchange are about people and not about technical issues. They should focus again on technical issues and also find ways to reward questions and answers about really specific issues. It could be observation bias but it seems that questions/answers on very generic topics get most upvotes, although these things can usually also be found on other websites easily and with more detail.

wgjordan 7y ago
> this proves that too many discussions on StackExchange are about people and not about technical issues ... They should focus again on technical issues StackExchange is a network of Q+A sites covering a diverse range of topics, many of which are non-technical by design. I think you might be confusing StackOverflow, the original and most popular technically-focused programming Q+A site, with the broader collection of Q+A sites this policy is addressing. Unless you're suggesting that all non-technical StackExchange sites should be shut down, which is a bit more drastic.

foolzcrow 7y ago

Communist reducation for the purpose of demoralizing a country ahead of invasion. Look it up. Same tactic 100%. Now you see why disarming Americans is so important to them.

effnorwood 7y ago

Oh my God. Fuck you. Your sites BLOCKED.

Demoneeri 7y ago

I agree with this. I use any pronouns or name someone wants to be called. I'm not a jerk. I don't understand the backlash, do you go around and call people other name that they want to be called because "you don't feel like it"?

ihatemondays 7y ago
I don't get the backlash either, I think it's a combination of genuine bigotry and the "nice" feeling of being on the side of everyone. In the end, it does feel weird to upvote a post that is at -700 or to speak positively when most people's reactions that you see are negative.
jhanschoo 7y ago
> Q9: Do I have to use pronouns I’m unfamiliar or uncomfortable with (e.g., neopronouns like xe, zir, ne... )? > Yes, if those are stated by the individual. As with some replies in the sourced thread, I take issue with this, because it gives a way for trolls to request to be referred to in a humiliating or offensive way, and to prove bad faith is a waste of limited resources. I say that it is a waste, because singular they/them is gaining currency, and has been used in many contexts as a gender-neutral third-person pronoun, and it is never interpreted as offensive or disrespectful afaict; at best somewhat awkward by some people in some contexts.
mckirk 7y ago
The problem isn't that people should be referred to in the way they want. The problem is trying to mandate it from above. Ideally, it would be perfectly "allowed" to insult someone by referring to them in a way they explicitly asked not to be referred to. And it would then also be perfectly allowed to call that person out for being a jerk. That's how a naturally formed community would handle such trolling -- but here, the idea is that the "right behaviour" has to be enforced by rules from above, and that's really not a good idea if you're dealing with anything other than a group of pre-schoolers.
- ihatemondays 7y ago
  Relevant: https://xkcd.com/1357/ https://xkcd.com/1357/ You're still perfectly "allowed" to maliciously misgender people, it'll just get you warned or banned.

rossdavidh 7y ago

So, I wonder if the most likely result of this is that SO just becomes more of a "place I look stuff up", and less of a "place I post things"? Also, I wonder what happens the first time somebody says their preferred pronoun is "God", or something 127 characters long? or Little Bobby Tables? or...?

ihatemondays 7y ago
> Also, I wonder what happens the first time somebody says their preferred pronoun is "God", or something 127 characters long? or Little Bobby Tables? or...? As they said on the answers... bad faith actions like having a 127 character pronoun means that it must be reported: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/334900/official-faq-on-gender-pronouns-and-code-of-conduct-changes/334908#comment1098246_334908 https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/334900/official-faq...
- ThrowawayR2 7y ago
  Seems logically contradictory to have an individual decide their identity but have an external body determine whether that's in bad faith or not.
  - krapp 7y ago
    It isn't. If one accepts the premise that gender is separate from biological sex, one accepts chosen gender-based pronouns as acceptable descriptors of a person's gender identity, but the premise of gender-based pronouns is that they describe gender. As the set of human genders is not infinite, the set of valid pronouns to describe human gender is also not infinite. "I identify as an attack helicopter" is obviously stated in bad faith, as "attack helecopter" is not a valid human gender. "God" or a base64 hash are also obviously not valid genders. The only people who would do so to begin with are trolls who want to mock trans identity.
    - jeromic 7y ago
      Though where is the line drawn about what is a valid gender/pronoun? For instance, are all the pronouns listed on https://askanonbinary.tumblr.com/pronouns https://askanonbinary.tumblr.com/pronouns acceptable or not?

halfarmbandit 7y ago

The people that don’t understand why this is awful concent to speech regulations. I can’t see how this differs from homophobia enforced by law. Both limit a person’s freedom. It is totally different to mispronounce and to make racist remarks. The former can be solved by asking the other person the latter won’t be solved because the other person is an asshole. One is a mishap directed towards a single person and the latter towards a group of people.

momo1987 7y ago

2019

19ylram49 7y ago

> Q9: Do I have to use pronouns I’m unfamiliar or uncomfortable with (e.g., neopronouns like xe, zir, ne... )? > > Yes, if those are stated by the individual. Yikes. I’m 100% in support of all gender identities, sexual orientations, races, etc., and I’ll fight for everyone’s rights and well-being, but this is insanity. It’s one thing restrict offensive language but it’s a whole different beast to mandate specific language. Nope. Nope. Nope. I’m not doing it. Sorry not sorry.

cmrx64 7y ago
Not doing what? Being 100% supportive as stated and addressing people respectfully? Seems strange to express displeasure with a corporate policy about a website by being disrespectful to unrelated individuals.
- 19ylram49 7y ago
  > Seems strange to express displeasure with a corporate policy about a website by being disrespectful to unrelated individuals. What are you even going on about? Whom have I disrespected? Allow me to repeat myself: It’s one thing restrict offensive language but it’s a whole different beast to mandate specific language. If, e.g., you tell me to not refer to a certain group of folks using a particular racially offensive term, that’s fine and pretty reasonable, but if you tell me that I must refer to a certain group of folks using a term that you or they chose simply because you or they said so, as far as I’m concerned, we’re slowly walking ourselves into a dictatorship. For the first option, I can simply not do anything and avoid being a “bad” person, but for the second option, I’m implicitly a “bad” person if I don’t explicitly do as told (in this case, aka, ordered). There’s no way I could ever accept that. Nope. No way.
  - anp 7y ago
    How do you feel about using someone's name?
    - fstopmick 7y ago

generalpass 7y ago

If I were 15 nowadays, I'd be getting so many people banned, lol. I can't comprehend how SE can be so ignorant.

qbaqbaqba 7y ago

Are there any reasonable SO alternatives?

kangnkodos 7y ago

Can StackOverflow provide a technical solution? When I write my question, answer, or comment, allow me to add markup such as <pronoun @CaesarM />. And then StackOverflow will display the pronoun in the correct way. --- Or StackOverflow could take it one step farther. If I write a question, answer or comment with a pronoun, a dialog pops up asking me which username the pronoun refers to. The software does the rest.