Richard Stallman Has Announced the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines | Hacker News Reader

Richard Stallman Has Announced the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

gnu.org

114 pointscrunchiebones193 comments

There was a bunch of discussion already in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18274663.

<pre> Rather than trying to have the last word, look for the times when there is no need to reply, perhaps because you already made the relevant point clear enough. If you know something about the game of Go, this analogy might clarify that: when the opponent's move is not strong enough to require a direct response, it is advantageous to give it none and instead move elsewhere. </pre>

I had to deal with someone who thought that having the last word is "a thing". So, he will never give up on any discussion without adding a last reply. It is hard to deal with such people.

On the game of go, can someone illustrate how it is advantageous to not have the last word?

Also, I am not sure if this example will convince a last-word-wrong-doer, they are in for an emotional satisfaction, not a rational one.

I'm a beginner at Go but I think it is fascinating and full of real-life lessons like this.

In general, strong play has a lot of forcing moves that demand responses. Being obsessed with having the last word is akin to allowing the other player to dictate when and where you will play, which is a substantial advantage for the other player. Go is won by area, not capture, so often a weak-looking sketch of territory is more effective than a lot of direct squabbling over little stones.

It's also easy to overplay. Being greedy is a good way to lose everything in Go. So a good game can have the flavor of a negotiation. There are even a lot of standard trades that aim for equality between the players.

> So, he will never give up on any discussion without adding a last reply. It is hard to deal with such people.

If having the last word matters to them and not you, then let them have it and don’t worry yourself.

Indeed, I also know someone like this and he's pretty much universally regarded as a self-important loudmouth and an idiot.

Sometimes it is better to remain silent and thought a fool, and all that jazz.

In the game of go, if your opponent plays a weak attack move that you can ignore, you basically have won a turn (by playing elsewhere). If he tries to invade your territory and doesn't realize that he cannot create a living group inside it, it's just like he gave you a prisoner.

The Go board can be thought of as having nine regions, if you imagine breaking it into squares of the same size, like a tic tac toe board. Later in the game you may have developed such a strong position in the "northwest" region of the board that when your opponent places a stone there, it isn't important for you to respond immediately in that region - it'd take many turns for your opponent to have a chance of being a real threat in that area. So, you play elsewhere on the board.

building on that, remember that your time is a finite resource

Offtopic but it struck me as strange that the author would choose to use Go for this example instead of chess, which would be much more familiar to people. Almost like a subtle form of intellectual "flexing".

In Go, there's a lot of common terminology reflecting the concept of "evaluate your own move independently of your opponent's move", from direct terms like "tenuki" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenuki) to strategic koans like "play away from thickness[strength]" (https://senseis.xmp.net/?PlayAwayFromThickness). I think this type of thinking is something that all journeyman-level Go players learn in order to progress, more so than in Chess.

The allegory doesn't work for Chess since you almost always need to meet advances with responses. Go is different and more strategic in that respect, because you don't need to win every skirmish.

That is also true for chess.

Go is far more complex than Chess, and also far more familiar to people raised in the Asiatic regions. Might be either a cultural thing or simply the fact that Go is only similar to Chess in terms of it being a strategy game, but not similar in difficulty or style of play.

I had to deal with someone who thought that having the last word is "a thing". So, he will never give up on any discussion without adding a last reply. It is hard to deal with such people.

Just reply with

That's nicely balanced and well thought through in my opinion.

I'm particularly impressed by the second last para talking about the Gnu organisation's only two political positions or points, and says: "We don't require you as a contributor to agree with these two points, but you do need to accept that our decisions will be based on them."

I agree it is making their stance clear on their policies and standing ground on what they believe in.

One of the first effects of this is another attempt to remove RMS's pet favourite abortion joke from the glibc docs: https://lwn.net/Articles/753646/ -> https://sourceware.org/ml/libc-alpha/2018-10/msg00399.html

Will RMS comply with his own "guidelines"?

Apparently not: https://sourceware.org/ml/libc-alpha/2018-10/msg00467.html

> More precisely, the guidelines are about how we communicate in our discussions, not what ideas we communicate (as long as they are pertinent to the topic of the list and support the goal of the project).

> These guidelines as such do not apply to manuals. Kindness as a general principle surely does apply to manuals, but precisely how remains to be decided.

> I just installed a statement in the GNU maintainer guide saying that humor is welcome _in general_ -- that we reject the idea of "professionalism" which calls for deleting humor because it is humor.

> That doesn't decide the question of the abort(3) joke. There are issues to decide before that.

I wish rms had the humility to accept that his joke is not funny and is making more people unhappy than it's making people laugh.

Proposed Federal censorship régulations may prohibit us from giving you information about the possibility of calling this function. We would be required to say that this is not an acceptable way of terminating a program.

I don't get the joke; I think I'm missing some context since I'm not from the US. Can you explain it?

If you read the thread you could see how everyone agreed that the guidelines didn't apply to docs.

The highest discriminatory factor I see in the tech community is the English language. You either have to invest a lot of energy to master it or you are left with local niche communities.

Of course that is difficult to tackle, but it can serve as a benchmark. You can offer a french speaker to be addressed with the wrong pronoun in french or the correct one in English. How would the majority decide?

It might be the first time in the history of Human Civilization that we have the opportunity to standardize the communication pipeline on a global scale. English is not perfect, but it's the standard we have. It's like coding conventions, the exact choice doesn't really matter, consistency is the important trait.

I wish we could forget about where the language is coming from and focus on where we are going. Do we want a future where everyone can understand each other? I do. I don't want some great ideas to be hidden for centuries because their author happened to speak a language no one bothered translating from.

Let's standardize on English, teach it everywhere to every child, call it a solved problem and move on.

(disclaimer: I am a French native speaker living in France).

The role of English (and linguistic imperialism) is overlooked not just in the tech world, but more or less everywhere (academia, job market, etc).

It's another stratification fault line. Much more research would be needed to understand the impact of it.

Learning a language is super expensive; but the people involved mostly don't see the cost of doing it (because sometimes it's a pleasure, but it's a pleasure that not everybody can afford).

Language barriers can be exclusionary, but they're not discriminatory.

Anglophone project owners don't not work with non-English speakers because they hate other languages, they just can't understand them. Nobody's at fault for this.

I don't disagree that a language barrier exists and that it is exclusionary to non-English speaking/reading people. However, what do you propose as a solution?

This seems like a fairly incremental tweak to normal professional protocols; I think it's one of the better guidelines I've seen.

I still disagree with framing this as "kindness" though, simply because courtesy is a habit you practice for those times when you're not feeling kind. On good days, I may litter my speech with "thank yous" and such that might be unnecessary given my demeanor, but on bad days it pays off as the behavior is automatic.

Much of the document is about deescalation which really is an art if you've ever tried to break up a fight. That they bring up the Go analogy is good, because if you're working on project you're not just responding to respond, but because you're trying to represent your interests; lobbying in a word.

The article as a whole is well-worded, and surprisingly neutral given what's been going on in the community lately, that's why it boggles mind why you'd write something like "This discouragement particularly affects members of disprivileged demographics (...)". All this is going to do is upset people.

The best way to avoid conflict and encourage diversity is to force everyone to voluntarily think alike.

Odd, but correct. It's a heterological issue, where maximal (not total) diversity is achieved by getting everyone to agree on the value of respecting each other's choices as long as no harm is done.

For an example in the political realm, see Popper's Paradox of Tolerance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance, aka, why we shouldn't tolerate neo-nazis, white supremacists, etc.

>The best way to avoid conflict and encourage diversity is to force everyone to voluntarily think alike.

I have no idea if this was a joke, given you used the words "force" and "voluntarily" in the same sentence, as well as "diversity" and "think alike". In the event that you are serious, I completely disagree. Or rather, if by "best" you mean "ideal", I agree. If you mean "best" as in "most likely to succeed", the method rarely works.

Some of a comment I wrote a week ago applies:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18249218

Specifically:

>BTW, lest I be misunderstood, neither I nor the books are saying there isn't anything like an obligation, and that you should not have shoulds. Of course everyone will have them. The key is to realize that your set of shoulds will be incompatible with others. You could have a long, multi-day conversation with the other to align your sets, but if you just change the style (and tone) of the conversation, you won't need to.

You really don't need people to think alike to avoid conflict and encourage diversity.

I know this has been litigated into the ground by now, but I'm just struck by the pettiness in GNU continuing to insist that:

> There are various ways to express gender neutrality in third-person singular pronouns in English; you do not have to use “they.”

This feels like a vanishingly small hill to die on, given the ideals that are at stake in the GNU project. It certainly feels very out-of-place on a high-level code of conduct such as this one.

EDIT: to clarify, I'm referring specifically to the insistence that "they" is an invalid singular pronoun. I'm being maximally charitable when I say that I'm not sure why RMS's personal views on what constitute "correct" pronouns merits mention on an organization's code of conduct.

Stallman's still upset that people use singular "they". It's bad grammar, or something. https://stallman.org/articles/genderless-pronouns.html

I go by "they" on a day-to-day basis and generally I don't have any issues with it; it's fairly obvious when someone's referring to me singularly, and people will sometimes use my name a little more often if it's ambiguous.

It's not a big deal except when people elect to make it a big deal; I've had Stallman's blogpost thrown at me on IRC a few times by people who also like dying on the vanishingly small hill that is "People who don't identify with any gender in particular shouldn't be able to use the existing non-gendered pronoun because it's BAD GRAMMAR and that INFRINGES ON MY RIGHTS or some shit"

Tom Scott put it well in an older video of his; "Some people are "They", get over it!"

The other day I was walking across the quad with my linguistics professor, and we encountered a group of people savagely beating a prescriptivist in broad daylight.

"Oh, my goodness!" I exclaimed, "We have to help!!!"

My professor paused to look at the scene for a moment, then said, "Nah, six should be enough."

I think we agree, and I've edited my comment to clarify. My usual reaction when people refuse to use pronouns such as "they" is that they (hah) don't want to acknowledge gender identities outside of the male/female binary.

But even a maximally charitable reading of this note - which assumes that Stallman genuinely cares deeply about both gender identity and proper classical grammar, and ignores the long historical use of "they" as a singular pronoun - still doesn't pass the smell test for me. A code of conduct is supposed to articulate your organization's higher ideals and how they are put into practice. A link to your personal blog post about how you think modern language is wrong just has no place here.

> My usual reaction when people refuse to use pronouns such as "they" is that they (hah) don't want to acknowledge gender identities outside of the male/female binary.

This is probably different. I for one don't think there are enough non-binaries out there to warrant a generalised pronoun, let alone its generalised used. I believe even most trans people identify as either "he" or "she".

On the other hand, I like to maintain uncertainty whenever someone's gender is either unknown or undisclosed. When talking about a hypothetical individual for instance, being able to refer to them neutrally is convenient. On the other hand, I hate to use "they" whenever there might be a number ambiguity. In those cases, I'll use "he" or "she", or find another phrasing.

Finally, gender-full pronouns are pretty good at disambiguating roles without having to repeat people's names all the time. Crypto examples with Alice and Bob for instance benefit from saying "he" and "she", so the audience (or student) readily understand whether we are talking about the initiator or the recipient.

I don't think we have a good idea of how many nonbinsry people there are. The number of people who openly identify as nonbinary seems to be increasing as awareness and acceptance spread. Those are nowhere near universal.

Referring to Alice and Bob with gendered pronouns is fine becauae we know their genders. Also, the same logic suggests it's convenient for any third party to be nonbinary.

Here's my guess: non binary are less than 1%. Probably less than 0.2%.

We still exist, yo.

Of course you do. I just don't think there is enough of you to warrant a special gender pronoun.

Yet. Who knows how things will be next century.

> is that they (hah) don't want to acknowledge gender identities outside of the male/female binary.

I refuse to use singular 'they' for the same reason I don't name variables 'if' or 'printf'.

If a set of people want another personal pronoun then invent one. Don't overload an existing word.

He / she / ke. There you go.

I'm entirely sympathetic with his preference for precision when at all possible. One of my great pet peeves in modern usage of language is the lack of precision of usage, which I think leads to a lack of precision of thought and communications that creates bad feeling and wastes time unnecessarily. When people are lazy about using words correctly they can also become more generic over time in general, which in turn robs other people of the ability to get their thoughts across as well down the road.

However while I think his examples of where "they" can lead to ambiguity are fair, his argument that "we have a clean, clear and natural solution" is not supported by his own examples. Take the first one for they:

>"When my child was removed and placed with Dad, they internalized it and took it like they did something wrong."

Let's try his "natural" answer:

>"When my child was removed and placed with Dad, person internalized it and took it like pers did something wrong."

What. That's awful. Certainly no better then "ze internalized it" or any other entirely made up word. "Per" and "pers" and "perse" are not "equivalent and interchangeable" with person in normal English at all, and in fact "per" is already in usage as a preposition. He does this whole setup but then his solution falls hilariously flat, and in fact illustrates precisely why people use "they".

If people just want to bite the bullet and try to push a universal gender neutral singular pronoun like "ze" or "zhe" or whatever for English I don't have any problem with that. I think it also might be practical to achieve, it's just "the singular of they" so plural doesn't change and nobody ever needs to think about it again. It has the advantage of laziness, everyone can just start using it everywhere and never have to think about it again. I don't think it can really be pretended that anything existing can just slot in there though, certainly not what RMS came up with.

> I think it also might be practical to achieve, it's just "the singular of they" so plural doesn't change and nobody ever needs to think about it again. It has the advantage of laziness, everyone can just start using it everywhere and never have to think about it again.

It's already been achieved, and is totally ignored by activist types - "they" has been singular for "they" for hundreds of years.

>I'm entirely sympathetic with his preference for precision when at all possible. One of my great pet peeves in modern usage of language is the lack of precision of usage, which I think leads to a lack of precision of thought and communications that creates bad feeling and wastes time unnecessarily.

I have this same feeling but I also recognize you can be as pedantic as we want to be, or you can be happy and get along with normal humans.

Belief that (extreme) precision of thought and communication has been achieved is probably more harmful than words having slippery definitions.

> One of my great pet peeves in modern usage of language is the lack of precision of usage

What makes you think this is a modern thing?

Everything bad is modern. Things used to be so much better back in the before times.

Make English Great Again</s>

The great thing about language is that you can choose the level of precision you want to use.

Gender and Numerus (Singular Plural) ia usually not the kind of precision valuable in my opinion so I am fine with singular they.

Also, as a non-native speaker I don't get how people get outraged about singular they but not singular you. For credibility stallman should start using they.

The disingenuous thing about the anti-third-person-singular-they is that it's been used like that constantly for years, and (other than a few grammar nazis) no one really cared until people wanted to use it for non-binary genders.

There's no need to be so dismissive of Stallman's point of view. He has a great example in your link where using they is ambiguous.

Saying it's not a big deal unless people make it a big deal is not useful. Many people say the same about assuming gender. Language and the way we express ourselves matter and affect the way we think.

As many equivalently ambiguous examples could be formed with he or she, particularly when there are more than one person of the same gender.

There is ambiguity in all natural language and we work around it quite effectively with either assumed knowledge or phrasing which removes the ambiguity (while often adding other ambiguities which aren't plausible so ignored).

Stallman says himself that he can understand his examples, and a couple aren't even ambiguous. He's adding in hypothetical other people to make them ambiguous.

Stallman has highlighted a problem with English and happened to use singular they as an example. He hasn't highlighted a problem with singular they.

The weird thing is that we seem to do just fine with singular you, so it's not obvious - at least, not to me - why singular they would be such a problem.

I don't think the examples are that great as Stallman's suggested replacement doesn't make much sense in them either.

The usage of "you" is very ambiguous. The usage of "cold", or "warm", or "right" or "north" is very much as ambiguous as can be.

Ambiguity –or specificity– has nothing to do with why we talk the way we do. Sometimes, ambiguity is the whole point of a sentence.

>> Every language has grammar rules. They are in the minds of speakers of the language — including, for English, me. The fact that they weren't decided by an official edict doesn't mean these rules are a trivial matter; demanding people change their grammar rules is an affront.

It's an interesting observation. Speakers of a language often (always?) have a strong feeling of what is right and wrong in the language, and this feeling is not usually formally justified. People just know how to speak right- and hearing an incorrect expression feels jarring.

Stallman has touched on something deep here, and although his insistence to pick at it is probably part and parcel of his personality, it is not an unreasonable insistence. Unusual use of pronouns is likely to make many people feel uncomfortable.

This has been explored in linguistics. People do have an innate sense of grammar. However, language use changes over time, of course, and it's absurd to try to prevent that. Here's a good example -- as you said above, "People just know how to speak right." Of course, many English teachers would love to tell you that you're supposed to say "speak correctly" -- but why? It's a widely understood use of the word "right" and most people wouldn't think anything of it. Having standards about written language are necessary and helpful, but arbitrarily dictating the use of words based on their history is not necessary or helpful.

>> However, language use changes over time, of course, and it's absurd to try to prevent that.

I agree, totally. Different people have a different sense of what is right and wrong to say. I'm guessing that is how languages change over time.

But the fact remains that there are things that are very likely to be nearly universally received as wrong. For example, if I say "My mother will eats here tonight" - most people will wonder why I don't say "eat", etc.

Equally, hearing or reading someone use a pronoun like "ey" or "zie" that are not part of what the majority of English speakers will recognise as English is likely to raise an objection from many. I assume listeners or readers who have only a fleeting familiarity with non-binary people, though this may be a bit unrealistic, given the internet etc.

Looks like RMS wrote an essay on this. https://stallman.org/articles/genderless-pronouns.html

'They/them' has been used as a singular for many centuries. It's the least-worst option in English to express third person singular. It sounds strange when someone uses it to refer to a specific person, because we are used to gendered pronouns in that context. However, it's used ubiquitously to refer to nonspecific individuals.

'they' as a singular isn't my favorite thing in the world, but it doesn't matter much to me, and it clearly matters much, much more to some others. So, I think it's best to just use what pronouns folks prefer (within reason anyway).

It may have been used here and there for centuries, but the massive inflationary use came in the last 5 years.

I'm not a native speaker, so I can't comment how the construct sounds to natives. To me, it sounds wrong, so I'd avoid communicating with people who demand this form of speech.

Why is it so upsetting to you that you would go so far as to avoid people that use 'they?'

People using a particular phrasing in their own speech is not upsetting. People demanding I phrase my speech a particular way is upsetting - it suggests they're trying to control how I think.

I'm pretty sure this (as well as most of the other replies) is a total misunderstanding of what vmaier said. They avoid communicating with people who demand that they use "they". They don't care about other people who use "they".

To play devil's advocate why is it so upsetting that people don't want to use they?

(seriously just playing devil's advocate here)

It's not a big deal until somebody makes a big deal about it, on either side of the issue. What we have is one group making a HUGE deal about pronouns, and another equally making a HUGE deal about not using pronouns. At the same time each side is saying each other is horrible.

It's not a big deal until you make a big deal about it...

When has gender not been a big deal in human society?

We are not talking about gender. We are talking about pronouns.

We're specifically talking about English third-person singular pronouns. Why do you think that is?

A word...

Because they're typically militant social justice types. Not everyone wants to interact with people under that kind of microscope, it's tiring and life is short.

I live in the Bay Area and there are quite a few trans people in my social circles. You know how much stress it is being under that kind of microscope? Literally none whatsoever. That's because - contrary to what you hear in alt-right media - rational adults aren't looking to leap on every single misstatement. Sometimes I say "he" or "she" instead of "they", and no one bats an eye. It's understood that I'm trying to do right by the people around me, but also that it's not something most people are used to and mistakes happen.

In my experience, this "microscope" simply doesn't exist. Turns out it's pretty easy to be nice to people, and when you're acting in good faith, those same people are nice to you in return. Wild, huh?

That's great, I'm happy for you. I have not said that any particular group are all social justice types, I'm well aware that many people in all kinds of communities are perfectly rational human beings and interact in a perfectly rational way.

Claiming that the social justice warrior enclaves don't exist, however, ignores fact.

Again, I live and work in the Bay Area. I run errands in Berkeley. I have friends who live in communes. And in all my stomping about, I've never encountered these hordes of people waiting to pounce on my straight white male mistakes. Again, people can tell when you intend to be nice to them and tend to react accordingly.

Yes, there are individual people who get hyper-offended when you say something wrong. I've been chastised for not admitting that vaccines are a big government conspiracy. I've even been in arguments with social injustice warriors who were pissed off about being asked to use the singular pronoun "they". There are all types in the world.

By trying to impose such restriction on the use of 'they' as a singular (what about 'you' short for "you all" as plural?), you are creating conflict of your own rather than letting life go on.

Those who see the world in terms of good and evil tend to do more evil themselves. Take care that your perception of militancy does not similarly take over your own effect on the world.

Peace.

I don't impose anything on anyone. I don't restrict what anyone says. I don't really care all that much what other people want to say or do within at least some degree of reasonableness.

I simply choose not to put myself in a position where I must interact with those who want to tell me how I must use a language that predates their existence by thousands of years.

What currently living language is spoken in a way that would be intelligble to speakers of the language with the same name "thousands of years" ago.

Modern English didn't even come about till the 14th century

This is the weirdest grandstand ever. Why not take the opportunity to better learn the language instead of avoiding it?

I'm not a native speaker of French, but what I know makes various French Creole languages sound wrong. I wouldn't think to avoid speaking to someone who spoke a French Creole because I might feel like they're not talking grammatically correct French.

The construct has been used incorrectly for many years, to the point that most people hear it and don't shudder over it anymore even though it's incorrect.

As a non-native speaker, you learned it correctly and thus it sounds wrong once you've actually paid attention to it and studied it. Many native speakers never really study grammar and don't understand it -- I'm no exception, I took a course years ago but can't quote grammar rules and go almost exclusively on how things sound to my native ear. It makes it interesting at times when my non-native spouse asks me "why do you say it that way" and I have to research the rule so I can explain it properly or fix my incorrect impressions.

> The construct has been used incorrectly for many years, to the point that most people hear it and don't shudder over it anymore even though it's incorrect.

You're contradicting yourself. If most people don't shudder over it, and people understand what is being communicated when it is used, then it is correct. Any opinion stating that it is incorrect would have to rely on authoritative sources, which do not exist in the English language.

It's not. This nonsense is used to derail/bikeshed all sorts of communication.'

I've found that using "they" in the singular is ambiguous and confusing to non-native speakers especially, and I interact with many people in that category. Using "person" in more formal, and words like "folks" in more informal settings is more understandable.

As many people are pointing out, they has been used as an alternative singular pronoun for a very long time. For those who think that these things are unacceptable, one only has to look at other Indo-european languages.

German has sie, which means 'they' (in addition to 'she'). However, they also have Sie which means formal 'you'. This is the same mechanism at work, albeit formalized and thus further along the path to acceptance.

French has a more recent example. The pronoun on means 'one', in the third person singular, gender-neutral sense. In recent history, it has been transformed to take on the sense of 'we'. The motivation, as with many things French, is to shorten words and to make things less formal. The on conjugation of verbs is more brief than the nous (we) equivalent.

These languages have re-purposed pronouns in a natural way, and have accepted it--even formalized it in grammar books. English needs to do the same.

English needs to do the same.

Why? Because less than half a percent of the population would prefer it? I don’t think so. That part of the population should be respected and referred to as they prefer, but I’m not interested in them dictating how the other 99.96% of the population refers to itself.

Who said anything about eliminating gendered pronouns?

Who said anything about eliminating gendered pronouns?

Is that a trick question?... because I didn’t mention that. So I guess the answer is, you, just now for reasons I’m not totally clear on.

Is there really a strong amount of outrage about which gender neutral pronoun was used? As the use of a gender neutral pronoun seems like the important bit.

Yes. Especially in academia, where it's often a bullshit power-play in a really bizarre bureaucracy, that wastes alot of time.

I know someone who was dragged into some HR process because she did not sufficiently respect the wishes of a subordinate who did not self-identify as a human being, identified as a "non-binary organism" instead, and selected "it" as the only acceptable pronoun. Fortunately, the process got bogged down for a couple of years between the various unions, human rights committees and administrative processes and the complaint went away when the individual moved on.

That sounds similar to some of the gender politicking that someone pointed out in Mastodon.[1][2] I'm still not sure at this point if some of those don't just represent some next level trolling.

1: https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/pull/7391

2: https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/pull/7391#issuecomment...

There was even a situation a little before this year's WorldCon [the annual globe-trotting science fiction convention] that presented via Twitter; it was resolved "to satisfaction" and the offended person still attended but yes -- there can be, and has been, outrage.

If it's petty, then by definition it's petty for either direction to fight about it. You can't dismiss something as unimportant then try to start an argument about it.

If it's really petty, it doesn't matter so stop talking about it. If it's not petty then OK, it's reasonable for him to spend the time to have an opinion, so go argue against that.

They started the argument by putting it in their guidelines. It's not necessarily petty to point out that someone else is being petty, especially if the petty behavior can cause harm.

But it's just very disingenuous, take the politics out of it.

He includes a statement that he prefers chicken soup, which people have very strong views about. You write a comment saying "it's very petty to write about chicken soup we should have higher values than this and not get sidetracked into arguments on nonsense". But where do you post the comment? On a public forum which you're inciting to have that argument.

It's not honest. If you don't like chicken soup and you think that's important, then have the guts to say that. It's actually the oldest meaning of trolling - starting a big fight whilst pretending not to.

It's just a footnote. I don't think that GNU are making a big deal about it.

In fact, the wording of the Code of Conduct actually contradicts RMS's linked article in the footnote. The article specifically states that RMS won't use certain forms even if the he's asked to by the recipient.

>I'm being maximally charitable when I say that I'm not sure why RMS's personal views on what constitute "correct" pronouns merits mention on an organization's code of conduct.

To provide an example of a what an alternative third-party gender neutral option is. Even with this example, you assumed he meant "they don't want to acknowledge gender identities outside of the male/female binary."

His blog post is more about his personal preference and reasons for them, not about what is "correct."

I’ve never understood why people get so upset at using the word “they” or “them”. We already use gender neutral pronouns in the plural or possessive cases (we, their, etc) all the time. Switching over to gender neutral for all cases seems harmless to me.

Personally I switched over years ago after a faux pas too many. Getting embarrassed sucks, and using gender neutral in most or all cases saves me mental cycles anyways.

At least we have gender neutral pronouns in the English language. Some languages like Portuguese will default to a male pronoun when in the plural possessive even if their is women in the group. And if there are 9 women and 1 man in a group, the plural possessive is still masculine.

What do people sensitive to these pronouns do if their own language will make a distinction?

As a native Portuguese speaker, I just replace the pronoun with, say, "the group" or some more specific description.

We have an advantage here, because you can translate "belongs to" as just "é do/a", so you can write "it belongs to the group" as "é do grupo".

Thanks. I’m still learning, but I think I would use your style like this: instead of o carro é do eles. I could use o carro é do grupo. Please correct me.

That's right! Though in the first, it would be "de eles" rather than "do eles", as "do" is a contraction of "de o", and one wouldn't say "de o eles".

To add further confusion: "de eles" is usually contracted to "deles", but only if "eles" is not a subject in the statement :)

Ouch. That’s hard.

Long term, the language will change, as languages tend to do. Short term? Probably a lot of cultural conflict.

Lots of people tend to hate the usage of they; he's basically setting an area of compromise for the people who put forth the argument that they isn't proper grammar. (You wouldn't think this would be an issue, but free software nerds manage to outdo themselves.)

I have no issues at all with creating gender neutral pronouns... most often, including gender information adds nothing to the value of what’s being conveyed.

I am annoyed at losing “they” as a plural though, because number often does add useful information. I’d much rather we invented a new pronoun.

That shop has sailed though, so I try not to worry about it anymore.

I don't feel like we are losing "they" as a plural. We're just learning how to use it in more singular contexts than we used it before. Many new pronouns have been invented and some folks use them, but none of them really catch on. "They" has the advantage of being universally recognized in a lot of contexts already, plus, it's what people who's identities for themselves prefer, which is in my opinion the most important aspect. I think 99/100 times, the use of the "they" pronoun can be understood in context once one is familiar with its use. I think we just need to accept this as part of language and accept it's here.

To be clear, I do accept it - the common decency of referring to people the way they would like to be referred to is much more important than a minor linguistic inconvenience to me. I'd just have preferred one of those others had caught on.

What it comes down to, as with all things like this, is control; we'll acknowledge you non-binary folks, but we'll choose the language we use to describe you. letting them pic their own preferred pronoun is too uncomfortable, it means really giving them a seat at the table.

everything else is just rationalization.

Neat how that last line dismisses any further discussion. Its not trolling when trying to shut down discussion; is there another term for such activity?

I meant that deferring to "it's bad grammar" or "we have other words to choose for them" is a rationalization. The real answer is, "we don't want to fully acknowledge their humanity, so we'll retain grip over this one tiny meaningless thing, to remind them that we're in charge".

Saying it's grammar and you can't use bad grammar is a rationalization -- grammar's also an entirely invented thing and it changes over time and if it changes now because we're all getting on board with NB folks existing, then that's just one of a million grammar changes in the 2010s.

Saying we have other words and they should be happy we're using other words is just a rationalization -- it's their call to make and we can either let them own that or we can keep insisting NB folks don't get that self-determination.

"Neat," right???

You may want to add an addendum to your original comment; until I read this I misinterpreted it as actually arguing for not recognizing their humanity, and I'd imagine you're getting downvoted for the same reason.

Its all about trying to get everybody to do what is PC (sorry I don't know any other word). And blaming them when they resist organizing their own mind and behavior around somebody else's issues.

Blaming folks for not falling in line with a very tiny point is unreasonable. Arguing around it with moralizing and appeals to guilt is manipulative.

That a neat summary in my opinion.

"Let people choose their own words to describe themselves."

How is that PC? How is that not common courtesy??

It's special treatment rather than common courtesy. I don't get to choose the pronouns that other people refer to me by, and neither does anyone else I know. I would only be offended by someone misgendering me if it were clearly meant as an insult.

If someone sincerely believes that people cannot choose their own gender, then it's not very clear to me that misgendering a trans person is disrespectful, rather than an honest indication of differing views on a single social issue.

> I don't get to choose the pronouns that other people refer to me by, and neither does anyone else I know.

Why not? People do similar things all the time.

If I introduced my friend Richard to you and he said "Please, call me Rich", would you say "Sorry buddy, no can do; Richard is your name, and that's what I have to call you"?

Why are pronouns so special compared to names?

I didn't choose my own name or nickname either, but I take your point that some people do.

I guess I would say that pronouns are primarily syntactic constructs while proper nouns are not.

When I was younger, I had fairly long hair. I've always been kind of a scrawny person with a fairly neutral face, so if you didn't look closely it was pretty easy to mistake me for a girl.

If somebody mistook me for a girl and referred to me as "she" or "her", I would correct them. Are you saying that I didn't have the right to do that, because a pronoun is a syntactic construct?

No I'm not saying that, not sure why you made that leap.

Well, you said that people don't get to choose the pronouns that other people refer to them by, and the reason that people can do this with names but not pronouns is because pronouns are a syntactic construct.

Thus, when people misgendered me as a child because they mistook me for a girl, it seems to follow that you're asserting that I shouldn't have corrected them because a pronoun is a syntactic construct and I don't get to choose what pronoun they use to refer to me by, regardless of how I personally identify. I can correct them if they mispronounce my name, but not if they mistake me for a girl.

If that's not what you're saying, then I guess I don't understand your position.

I was just spitballing, I'm not committing to any hard and fast rule here. Someone referred to you with the wrong gender because they mistook you for a girl, and probably appreciated the correction.

This is way different than the transgender case in that no deep-seated & conflicting beliefs came into play. Language is deep-seated, syntax more than names. Beliefs about gender are also obviously deep-seated.

I would say that I'm undecided on transgender issues, so mostly my position is that you shouldn't assume that skepticism is equivalent to bigotry.

> This is way different than the transgender case in that no deep-seated & conflicting beliefs came into play.

What deep-seated and conflicting beliefs come into play here? This doesn't need to be about transgender issues, that's just where it comes up a lot (for obvious reasons).

If I get to say that I want people to use masculine pronouns and correct people when they refer to me as "her" or "she", that seems reasonable to me. And it sounds like it seems reasonable to you too.

That seems like a solid case for saying "people should get to choose their pronouns". I choose masculine ones. Somebody else might make a different choice, but it doesn't become "special treatment" just because they're making a different choice.

Transgender or not, the pertinent issue is not whether people have a right to choose their pronouns (they don't), but what gender the speaker believes the referent to be.

If you're using third person pronouns, you're generally not speaking to the person in question anyway.

So if somebody _mistakes_ me for a girl, I can correct them, but if they deliberately decide to refer to me as "she", I have to accept it?

I really don't think my opinion is so complicated. Your reaction should depend a great deal on whether they were being straightforward (doubtful in your case) or malicious. In neither case will you get very far by trying to control their speech or acting indignant about it, but that doesn't mean the only alternative is accepting it.

Wait, have I mischaracterized your argument in any way? Because I'm honestly not trying to do that, I'm just trying to follow your position to its logical conclusion.

If somebody says about me, "She's been really busy this week" and I overhear them and say "Excuse me, I prefer masculine pronouns", somebody following your line of argument can respond by saying "Sorry, but a pronoun is a syntactic construction, you don't have the right to choose which one refers to you."

What about that doesn't follow from your position here?

I don't think you've mischaracterized me, but you've given undue attention to statements that I consider tangental and would be okay with discarding. Let me restate my position, which I think I can do more clearly now:

1. The general rule that English speakers use to choose a gendered pronoun depends on what the speaker believes a person's gender is, not what the referent prefers or believes. You don't get to choose their words for them.

2. You should clearly be offended if someone uses the opposite gender that they believe you to be. (If someone thinks you're male but refers to you as female).

3. It's not at all clear whether or not you should be offended when someone uses the opposite gender that you believe yourself to be, even if they know what you prefer. (If you believe you're male, but they believe you're female). The fact that I'm neutral or uncertain in this case might be why you couldn't pin down my argument.

So if I say that I'm a man and somebody doesn't believe me, what can I do? Wouldn't it be easier to say "An individual is the ultimate authority on what pronouns are correct, and their word should be taken over that of everybody else because everybody else might be mistaken"?

Specifically, you've stated that people _don't have the right_ to choose their pronouns, and that's where you lose me. What does it mean to "choose" a pronoun, and what harm does allowing people to confidently assert "This is how I am properly referred to, all other ways are incorrect"?

This just happens to be where pronouns clash with free speech, which I consider a sacred value.

You don't get to choose the words that other people speak. It's invasive and destructive to a person's integrity, and potentially dangerous to do even with good intentions.

You're totally free to refer to other people however you want; no one's debating that. But everyone else has the same right to free speech, and many people will use it to call out the act of ignoring someone's preferred pronouns. It's a two-way street.

Free speech aside, I'm confused as to why you're pushing back so hard on this. You've used "they" as a singular third-person gender-neutral pronoun multiple times in ancestor posts ("Someone referred to you with the wrong gender because they mistook you for a girl") so clearly this isn't a principle in which you're particularly invested.

Well the principle isn't to avoid singular they at all costs. Although there are contexts that call for a gendered pronoun and where it's difficult to interpret they in the singular ("Alice isn't here, they are over there").

Part of my problem with the way I've seen people get corrected "with free speech" is that there seems to be no tolerance for making mistakes, and no time allowed for people to think. You're assumed to be a bigot if you're not already 100% on board the PC train. It seems quite unreasonable given that most peoples' experiences with transfolk can be measured in seconds.

As somebody who has misgendered people on accident and been accidentally misgendered, I've never seen anything other than gentle, polite correction when it occurs.

When it occurs more than once, it starts to move from the realm of "accident" to "deliberate", and I can easily imagine that in such a scenario, the corrections would become less gentle and less polite. That doesn't strike me as unreasonable, nor does it strike me as a free speech issue.

But notably, you're giving rather more power to free speech than is usually ascribed, which I find interesting. You're asserting that your right to free speech trumps my right to self-definition; if you want to call me a woman, you have that right under free speech, and if I want to correct you by explaining that actually, I'm a cisgender male, I can't do that because you have the right to free speech.

This seems patently ridiculous to me, and hopefully it does to you too. I don't see a way to reconcile your desire for free speech with my desire for bodily autonomy and self-definition. Can you clarify how allowing other people to choose the proper referential terms for me doesn't erase my ability to define who I am?

Why exactly can't you explain that you're male? Why would you be defined by other people? I don't see how these points follow from mine in the slightest. And how did bodily autonomy enter into the conversation?

EDIT: At least one of my comments about this was regarding strategy rather than rights. Think about the scenarios like this: If someone misgenders you as a mistake, then a polite correction is appropriate. But if they do it as an insult, than a correction is probably not the best response.

If they do it because they don't even believe you're the gender that you claim to be, then a correction is a terrible tool for changing their mind. Both sides will only dig their heels in and come away feeling hostility for each other.

> Why exactly can't you explain that you're male?

What would an explanation provide that saying "I prefer masculine pronouns" doesn't?

> If they do it because they don't even believe you're the gender that you claim to be, then a correction is a terrible tool for changing their mind. Both sides will only dig their heels in and come away feeling hostility for each other.

I agree with you! That's why I think the social standard should be "Everybody chooses their own pronouns", because then there's no external interpretation needed and it doesn't matter whether or not somebody believes something, the only key thing is whatever the stated preference is.

Expecting people to say things they don't believe strikes me as a bad idea.

Why am I not the ultimate authority on what pronoun best refers to me? Why do I need to try and _convince_ somebody that no, despite whatever you might think, the appropriate pronoun is "he"?

Imagine a dialogue where Marcus introduces his colleague Sam to somebody.

Marcus says, "This is Sam, he's a real hard worker." Sam says, "Excuse me, I'm a woman and prefer female pronouns". Marcus says, "Uh, yeah right. I don't believe you."

Who's the unreasonable party, here? Is it Sam, who's stated their identity and preference? Or is it Marcus, who feels like Sam needs to do something to convince him of her femininity? Why is Marcus's belief about Sam's identity the record as opposed to the statement from the primary source?

You've said that your issue here is that people get corrected in impolite ways, but if people just _believed everybody when somebody stated a pronoun preference_, that problem would go away.

> Who's the unreasonable party, here?

I don't know; that has to be negotiated through dialogue.

This problem can't be limited only to pronouns, unless you're okay with people saying things like "she's a man". Otherwise you're expecting people to falsify their opinions.

EDIT: It may be that trans individuals will simply always encounter friction on this issue, since transgenderism presents such big challenges to entrenched ideas on both sides of the political spectrum. (If it's not obvious where the friction is on the left, consider that the legitimacy of transgenderism depends on gender having a biological basis. If gender is socially constructed then conservatives have a straightforward case against transgenderism, along the same lines as "just choose not to be gay.")

>falsify their opinions

How am I making them falsify their opinions? My identity is not an opinion-based phenomena; you can refer to me by female pronouns and be incorrect, or you can refer to me by male pronouns and be correct. Your opinion on whether or not I'm male or female seems entirely beside the point.

> How am I making them falsify their opinions?

If I believe you're female, but call you male because that's what you prefer, in what way is that not speaking contrary to my beliefs (i.e. lying)?

Why do you believe I'm female, when I've explicitly told you that I'm not?

And again, why does your opinion have anything to do with my gender? You can call me a female, and you'd be incorrect; whether or not you think I'm a woman has nothing to do with whether or not it's correct to refer to me as such.

To be clear, if I met a transgender person I wouldn't know what to make of their gender. So if they told me which pronouns to use I would just use them. (Well, provided they weren't made up words...)

But what if someone strongly believes that biological sex and gender are inseparable? I suspect that the majority of the planet believes there is only male and female, and that it's fixed at birth. That doesn't seem so hateful to me.

The whole point of this is that you (or codes of conduct, or communication guidelines) cannot both insist on accepting other peoples' pronouns and also claim not to discriminate on the basis of personal beliefs. You have to choose one or the other, and I think it's more reasonable to choose the latter in most cases.

But here's the thing. I am not transgender, and if somebody misgendered me, it would both offensive and wrong. Somebody can believe that I'm a woman with their whole heart and being, but that doesn't make it so; my identity isn't defined by their belief or their opinion. There _have_ been people who honestly, truly, legitimately believed I was a woman, and yet I wasn't.

It seems only intuitive that if I get to define my own gender identity, as I have and as the world lets me, then everybody else should get that same privilege. And yes, I would say that denying that privilege from some people while granting it to others is inherently hateful.

You can swing your fist all you like, but you can't punch me in the face and claim that I'm infringing on your right to swing freely. You can have all the personal beliefs you like, but as soon as you start imposing them on somebody else's identity, they're not personal beliefs anymore and you don't get to enforce them on other people. When you misgender somebody else, you're imposing your own personal beliefs on them, and that's wrong.

Correct me if I'm mischaracterizing you, but it seems like our deepest disagreement comes down to this:

You think of misgendering as someone imposing a false identity on you. This is an injustice because you have a right to determine your own identity.

I view the expectation to utter words I think are false to be the real imposition. I don't think people have total freedom to define themselves however they wish because they are constrained by the necessity to negotiate it with other people. I didn't choose my own gender identity and neither is anyone else entitled to.

I don't think these positions can be reconciled, but I would point out a disadvantage to your approach is that it leaves no possibility to foster peace between people who believe differently. Because if they don't accept your identity they should be written off as hateful.

EDIT: s/understanding/peace/

Well, one position is concerned with truth (e.g. "I'm a man") and one position is concerned with belief (e.g. "I believe you're a woman").

Being more concerned with what you believe about people over facts about them seems pretty selfish, but at this point if I haven't convinced you that perhaps people are a better judge of their identities than random strangers, I don't think I'm going to, and I agree that our positions are irreconcilable.

I'd point out, however, that your position doesn't really leave possibility to foster understanding between people who believe differently either; if I say I'm a man and somebody disagrees, they're ignoring the most primary of primary sources. That's not the position of somebody who's open to compromise; that's the position of somebody who's already made their decision and refuses to consider any other factor.

"organizing their own mind and behavior around somebody else's issues." Its very personal.

Compound this with, the words seem silly and contrived. How about you address me as "Mr. Oingy Boingy" from now on. To get a flavor of the emotional content of language. Just as an example; choose your own.

Let me be more helpful and less obtuse. Language is an emotional issue, so yes folks become pedantic and argumentative. That route (arguing) is unlikely to get a favorable response.

What will work then? Empathizing, suggesting ways to help folks who are sensitive and understand their point of view. Things like that.

I understand the frustration that comes with failure to convince, particularly when its a point that seem obvious and simple. I apologize for vectoring off with unhelpful comments about trolling. I'll try to understand the issue better in future.

See? That was easy and didn't cost me anything. I'll take my own advice more in future.

Looks like its you claiming that hill from where I am standing. This is about the most uncontriversial position ever. Stallman literally just published his pronoun post on his personal site stallman.org. He seems to have left his personal views out, as I see no mention of his pet version of a genderless pronoun construct.

I personally find it polite to call people what they wish, given it does not unreasonably burden my natural expression. No contradiction here with compelled speech or free speech, which are hills I am quite literally willing to die on.

This seems along those lines, allowing further investment by those interested in less common pronouns to express themselves, while not burdening those who are not, while respecting everyone by setting clear expectations for conduct.

Can you expand on your objection? Perhaps I missed nuance...

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