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Comment by dependenttypes | Hacker News Reader

> he outright fired a transgender woman from the FSF for reporting her transphobic coworker who kept harassing her

Would you mind providing a citation for this? I am legitimately curious, Leah for example retracted their comments on the issue.

> Not to mention his refusal to respect the pronouns of trans, queer, and nonbinary folks.

Please elaborate. This is the first time that I hear of such an accusation.

I don't see anything wrong there. What is wrong with believing that victimless crimes should be legal? Also, asking someone on a date is harassment now? What?

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As far as I know, Stallman respects "he", "she", and a genderless pronoun he made up. He refuses to respect singular "they".[1]

[1] https://stallman.org/articles/genderless-pronouns.html

> he made up

He says that he took it from "Marge Piercy's book Woman on the Edge of Time"

> He refuses to respect singular "they".

He says "As for \"they\", if you are plural by nature — for instance, if you are a colonial organism or a group mind, or if you wish to be known for having multiple personalities — I will use that plural pronoun to refer to you.", which seems fair to me.

He made up "perse".

Singular "they" is common English. Not respecting it seems unfair to me.

Unfair to whom? And why do you think that it is unfair? Is it just because it is popular?

It's not behavior that should be exhibited by a leader/evangelist for a cause.

I think that you posted this to the wrong post by mistake.

You're talking about the guy who, in the email thread that "ended" him, complained that he can't read a link because the site doesn't work with OSS technologies.

He's extreme in following his dogma. If he believes "they" is plural in nature, he will refuse to use that as a singular - and that is not because he disrespects you, but because he thinks "this is the right thing to do".

If you believe it's fair to have a particular personality that requires other persons to call you "they".... doesn't it follow that it's fair to have a particular personality that makes you feel very bad about "misusing English"? It's really two sides of the same coin, if you believe a person has the right to decide what pronouns he's comfortable being called, you must also believe a person has the right to decide how he uses a particular pronoun. The essential thing here is that RMS doesn't avoid "they" out of disrespect, but out of his own particular weirdness/ peculiarity... something that we should be able to respect.

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