Comment by MauranKilom | Hacker News Reader

Comment by MauranKilom | Hacker News Reader

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I'm under the impression that you misunderstand the CoC update procedure. It has not been updated. SE is hellbent on updating it in the future, and they explicitly stated that they are not willing to budge an inch on its gender-/pronoun-related contents. This is not accidental, there is not one single dissident behind it but the entire company.

It will be the duty of the moderators to enforce the new CoC. The discussion in question arose in a mod-only forum (and later on an email conversation) and concerned what behaviors these rules sanction or disallow. It should be self-evident that moderators need to ask these questions and clarify these things in order to enforce them, and that none of this discussion is in itself to cause public outrage (because the public was not to know of any of this in the first place).

Public outrage was _only_ sparked when Monica was unceremoniously fired without any explanation to her or the public. Predictably, the context being described by those privy to it has resulted in lots of pronoun- and gender-related discussions all over the place, but this is neither the primary problem for SE (significant parts of the moderation force leaving is, as well as this being the ~6th community PR nightmare in 1-2 years) nor was it in any way avoidable or unpredictable based on the plans of SE.

Why the hell are pronouns a centerpiece of a CoC?

Just be nice to people. For fuck's sake.

> Why the hell are pronouns a centerpiece of a CoC?

Because aggressive misgendering including by refusal to use the subject’s preferred pronouns is currently a significant form of harassment which is actively promoted by certain groups.

> Just be nice to people.

The fact that people aggressively refuse to do that is exactly what pronoun policies are responding to.

I'm gonna wade in hip-deep here and suggest that, given the size of the transgender community, the heat and hype of these issues are completely unwarranted.

No hate towards anyone and I'll call anyone whatever they want as far as pronouns.

But why is this a top-3 culture war issue? For a bunch of combatants who are overwhelmingly not trans and shouldn't really care?

We need to think of a way to rise above without throwing anyone under the bus. It'd be better for both the trans community and society at large.

Honestly it is very strange to me that this is being downvoted. The level of outrage that I see is not at all proportional to the number of people affected. This is a very strange phenomenon. I seriously feel that the most heated carriers of torches in this scenario are people who gravitate towards "power play" moments and have happily found a niche where they can be ruthless in their assault.

> The level of outrage that I see is not at all proportional to the number of people affected

If you insist on calling a transman “she” because of his genitals at birth, then (aside from how to affects me because I have trans people I care about, which is, to be sure, the more important impact on me), it also means when you call me “he” it only coincidentally aligns with my preference rather than respecting it. Just because I only can see your disrespect when it's directed at someone whose pronouns don't conform to your preference for them doesn't mean that it's only present there, just that it is masked by circumstance elsewhere.

> I seriously feel that the most heated carriers of torches in this scenario are people who gravitate towards "power play" moments and have happily found a niche where they can be ruthless in their assault.

And I seriously feel that the people with the most intense need to distract from the issue with speculation about why other people might express concern for the issue do so because they have a sode, can't defend it, and so choose instead to distract from opposition to it with irrelevancies.

distract? are you serious? yea this isn't distracting at all to 99.99% of people who can get along fine without worrying about pronoun rules.

thats exactly it. people who have no serious problems so they invent new ones and love to play the moral outrage game because they get power over others

you see so many people who do this then get eaten by the same group when they inevitably screw up some rule in the future

> But why is this a top-3 culture war issue?

It's not. Without suggesting these are the top 3, Abortion, gun control, and immigration are, just to pick 3 obvious ones, a far more central culture war issues than pronouns. (If you aggregated “LGBT rights” as a whole, you might get into the neighborhood of a top-3 issue.)

> For a bunch of combatants who are overwhelmingly not trans and shouldn't really care?

Unless, of course, you are a combatant on the other side, I can't imagine why you'd think that not-trans people shouldn't really care.

> We need to think of a way to rise above without throwing anyone under the bus.

How isn't having the decency to respect people's preferences in the pronouns you use to refer to them (and, though it's a separate but often concurrent issue, the gender you ascribe to them) exactly that?

Mmmm. Look at the size of this subthread. It's like catnip.

And I said I'll use whatever pronouns people want, already, in one of four short grafs. Yet it didn't stop you from wondering if I'm some 'stealth enemy'.

It's funny, these culture war issues.

In the case described, it doesn't seem to have involved any actual trans people either. It was all theoretical, talking about the CoC.

I suppose my talk of 'rise above' means waiting until someone is actually a jerk before correcting them. We don't need cultural uniformity, we just need people to be nice.

yea the problem is all the people getting involved and outraged about things that dont concern them. they even use war terms like "allies" to get that moral righteousness so they feel like theyre in the "fight"

Might I suggest that most people who insist on using pronouns derived from one's biological sex (rather than gender) are not attempting to engage in harassment, but are simply refusing to concede a currently unsettled political and societal question?

Whether one think it's valid or not, people are hurt and suffer from the actions you suggest. Even if no harm is intended, harm is actively being done. At the same time, there is a limit to the linguistic, religious and/or philosophical concessions that pronoun users can reasonably make. It appears to me that that there is not always a middle ground that satisfies both sides.

I (as someone who has no horse in this race) would suggest to put basic empathy and courtesy above "refusing to concede" on some more or less immaterial question, at least where there is no other reason not to. The ideological high horse isn't very high if one knowingly goes about hurting people to stay on it.

Empathy and courtesy have nothing to do with referring someone by generic pronouns. No one is being unempathetic by refusing to call "Joey", Joe, or not referring to Nat by their full name, Natalie. These are all personal issues that one must deal with on their own, either by disengaging from the situation or escalating however they desire and finding a resolution amongst themselves.

Pronouns are no different - if you want me to refer to you as her, and I don't, then you and I will have a problem, not you, me, the mods, my boss, the government, etc.

> The ideological high horse isn't very high if one knowingly goes about hurting people to stay on it.

I have heard this time and time again. If misgendering someone is hurting them in any way, I'm suspecting the solution is for that person to disengage from society, not for society to cater to that person's needs, because they will be misgendered day in and day out for the rest of their life. If someone believes they are being gangstalked, society doesn't modify itself to ensure no one within 500 meters of them has a predictable schedule.

> because they will be misgendered day in and day out for the rest of their life. If someone believes they are being gangstalked, society doesn't modify itself to ensure no one within 500 meters of them has a predictable schedule.

That's no good reason to go out of your way to misgender someone or pretend to stalk someone who has that phobia. Yes, there will be problems interacting with society overall, I have no good answer for that. But I do know that knowingly and actively hurting people "because society does it too" when you could trivially avoid it is reprehensible.

> But I do know that knowingly and actively hurting people "because society does it too" when you could trivially avoid it is reprehensible

My argument isn't "do it because society does it too", it's we already have systems in place to give people the therapeutic treatment they need to get past issues like this, which are issues, because it is unfeasible to expect society to shape itself around coddling that person's beliefs.

So let me get this straight:

- You meet Gabrielle, and call her Gabbi.

- She says "I don't like that nickname, could you use Bree?"

- You say, "No, I'm going to call you Gabbi, because you should not expect society to shape itself around coddling your beliefs, GABBI."

Honestly, you probably wouldn't do that, right? I mean, maybe you would, but it'd... kind of make you a jerk. It would be a stupid, stupid hill to die on.

So why is it different with pronouns?

> stupid hill to die on

Of late I've been saying not the mole hill I'd choose to die on. Also the question what's in it for me if I'm right? If the answer is 'nothing' we're done here.

> Honestly, you probably wouldn't do that, right?

No, and I never said I would, and that example does nothing for or against my argument. So making up a scenario, saying it'd make me <some negative term nobody wants to be associated with>, and asking me "If you wouldn't do X, why would you do Y?" does not sound like it will progress this discussion whatsoever

It won't progress this discussion because you avoided engaging with the question at the end. If I ask you to use a pronoun for me that in your judgement is "incorrect," why is your judgement more important than my request? If you say, "You asked for 'he,' but you look like a 'she' to me, so I'm going to use 'she,'" then why aren't you the one being the jerk just as much as the person who insists on calling someone the wrong name?

Pronouns are different from names because there is a very strong correlation between pronouns and certain physical aspects of people.[0] What is being asked of people in the gendering debate is to go against this correlation sometimes. Our minds are built on pattern matching and working with such correlations, so it really shouldn't be a surprise that asking people to go against it is going to tick some of them off: you're asking them to enter into a state of cognitive dissonance, which can be unpleasant.

Names, on the other hand, are really quite arbitrary and independent of physical attributes. So yes, there's an important difference.

[0] I believe these kinds of correlation are what people intuitively mean when they talk of biological gender and the like, which make most of the responses against this argument miss the point...

In civil society we forgo our intuitions all the time - our moral intuitions are frequently superseded by law, our intuitions about what atoms look like are superseded by a university Physics course, etc. - but your response I see repeatedly, you don't say we should give into intuition, you say that some people would be "ticked off" by being asked to do something against intuition.

Part of the movement to get people to use the correct pronouns to refer to someone is really just the movement against the epistemic authority of some forms of intuition.

As an aside, in Western society names are generally not independent of physical attributes, and most names are gendered as well. I know very few people with unisex names.

This shouldn't be downvoted; it's a very good point addressing a basic problem with the "call 'em as I see 'em" side of the argument.

"What is being asked of people in the gendering debate is to go against this correlation sometimes."

Yes. Exactly. That's what's being asked of them. To follow someone's request out of courtesy. Again: why is this difficult?

In your quote, you conveniently left out the part about cognitive dissonance. That's what answers your question. It's possible that you personally don't feel this cognitive dissonance, or that you feel it but it simply doesn't bother you. People's subjective experiences can be quite diverse, though, and you need to accept that.

Let me put it another way. Person X asks person Y to take person Z's feelings into account. Sounds reasonable, right? But what if, in doing so, person X doesn't take person Y's feelings into account?

I'd say that'd make person X a hypocrite. There are different goods that need to be weighed against each other here, and person X pretends that this isn't the case.

This is what's happening here. Z = (some) transgender people, Y = (some of) the people expressing concern about pronoun enforcement, X = people taking your current position in this discussion.

In the weighing of different goods against each other, you can reasonably come to the conclusion that person Y should just suck it up because person Z's feelings are simply more important in this case. That's fine, stuff like that happens all the time in society, though you'd be wise to use more reconciliatory language when talking to an actual person Y.

You need to be honest about what you're doing. What isn't fine is to essentially "erase" Y's feelings by pretending that you aren't overriding them for Z's benefit. Because that is what you're doing. (Or maybe you aren't even aware of person Y's feelings. I'm not sure what to consider worse...)

(And yes, the hypocrisy is genuinely what I find most grating about the position you're taking here: the position is often taken by people who claim to champion diversity, inclusiveness, and the equal validity of people's subjective experiences -- but then turn around and selectively decide to not take into account others' subjective experiences when they happen to be inconvenient, and in doing so essentially exclude those others.)

The choice here is:

(1) Bob suffers cognitive dissonance when he calls Angela, a transgender woman, "she".

(2) Angela, who has suffered the cognitive dissonance of gender dysphoria for years, has that revisited on her by Bob's insistence on calling her "he".

So, yeah. I'm privileging Angela over Bob here, because it is his mild discomfort versus her lived-in experience.

Bluntly, nobody has been driven into lifelong therapy and suicidal depression by having to refer to someone by a different set of pronouns. If you want to insist I'm a jerk for denying that these two experiences of "cognitive dissonance" are equivalent, you know, so be it.

I neither wrote nor meant that those two experiences are equivalent. I specifically wrote that one can reasonably draw a conclusion like yours. What I did write is that both experiences are real -- and you denied even that in your earlier comments!

I'd also point out that your example is rather uncharitable. I personally do think Alice is quite justified in asking Bob not to use "he" as a pronoun, but I also think it's acceptable for Bob to prefer using a gender-neutral pronoun such as singular "they". If that had been the example (which it might well have been, especially given the context of this thread overall), your point would be quite a bit weaker, and you ought to feel quite a bit less righteous indignation. After all, if somebody has a problem because of non-neutral pronouns, it'd be rather reasonable to expect them to accept it when people contribute to reducing their use overall -- especially when that also helps to reduce the discomfort of those other people.

Anyway, thank you for acknowledging that other people's feelings exist. Maybe next time you can even use that reconciliatory language I've mentioned.

you realize nobody really has a problem with that right?

this isnt a case about a specific person wanting a different pronoun. its about changing ALL language in the site to be gender neutral. that part is dumb. we dont need to worry about using she and he to talk about alice and bob because "they might be trans"

first, yes you can call her whatever you want. its called freedom.

second, yea pronouns are different. they are actual nouns in the language used to describe people by what they are. theyre exactly the opposite of names which are completely random things you can claim

third, you know most people use pronouns that match a name and looks? so if you change gender and change your name then people are probably gonna be using the right pronoun anyway

> it is unfeasible to expect society to shape itself around coddling that person's beliefs

What indication do you have that a majority of the "society" in question (Stack Overflow) has a problem with addressing people in the manner they prefer?

In other words, have you considered the possibility that you are the one with an opinion or belief that runs contrary to what this "society" expects of its members?

If so, are you expecting to be coddled?

Judging from the overwhelming negative response to what SO did, I'm confident that I am not the one with the controversial beliefs.

You're seeing what you want to see. The controversy has little to do with that. How SO treated the moderator and handled the issue publicly is what's raising flags.

You know, it's possible to support the pronoun policy while still being against how the moderator was treated.

It seems to be an opportunistic vocal minority that is trying to make this political.

It is already political. I raised this point to another user - changing policies is political. If by, political you mean dealing with government policy, not sure what that has to do with this discussion.

the fact that 99.999% of people throughout history have gotten along just fine without worrying about different pronouns that dont match their gender

> No one is being unempathetic by refusing to call "Joey", Joe, or not referring to Nat by their full name, Natalie.

I thought not calling people nicknames they dislike had something to do with courtesy and empathy. (I'll also note that you picked very mild nicknames for your example)

> if you want me to refer to you as her, and I don't, then you and I will have a problem, not you, me, the mods, my boss, the government, etc.

Insisting on some level of courtesy is the moderators and the bosses job. As is enforcement if insistence isn't enough. What that level is, and what's appropriate enforcement, that's the tricky part.

I personally concur with the strategy of empathy and courtesy, but others won't, and I don't think that's anywhere close to a good reason to kick them out of civil discussion.

But I simply don't buy the "hurt and suffering" argument. Just because someone has a different opinion and expresses it doesn't mean the hearer is hurt and suffering to any degree that has a snowball's chance in hell of overwhelming the right to have and express a different opinion. The right to express opinions is WAY MORE IMPORTANT than the supposed right to not temporarily feel bad.

Not to use this as an argument but as something to think about: Picture that second paragraph of yours in the context of racism instead of gender. It's not the same thing, but it leaves me unconvinced in the same ways.

No, no it isn’t. In a private forum, you lose your rights as soon as you walk in the door. The host makes the rules, not you. You stay at their pleasure.

Also, I find it odd to describe lack of empathy and courtesy as “civil discussion.” If anything, it is the opposite of civility.

>I personally concur with the strategy of empathy and courtesy, but others won't, and I don't think that's anywhere close to a good reason to kick them out of civil discussion.

The very definition of "civil" is "courteous and polite" (Oxford).

>The right to express opinions is WAY MORE IMPORTANT than the supposed right to not temporarily feel bad

For better or worse, there is no such thing as a "right to express opinions" on a privately owned internet site.

Ah, yes, the fabled "biological pronoun".

Pronouns are not biological constructs. They don't have chromosomes, genitals, or secondary sex characteristics. They are, by definition, tied to gender.

How would life work if pronouns were determined biologically? For example, how would you figure out what pronouns to use to describe me, if we met in person?

You'd have to ask me to drop trou immediately after we met, which would generally be considered socially unacceptable, or at least a bit forward. But if I did it anyway, how would you know my genitalia hadn't been surgically altered? You could try to cross-reference my secondary sex characteristics, but even those could have been modified hormonally. Really, you'd have to ask for a DNA sample to determine which chromosomes I have, and even that might turn out not to align with the sex I was assigned at birth, much less the one I present today. And what pronouns do you choose if it turns out I have a combination other than XX or XY? It all seems like a lot of trouble and expense for pronouns anyway.

What I'm getting at is that people who make that sort of argument aren't actually saying, "the pronouns I'm using for you are based on your biology". That's just disingenuous, or at the very least shows that they haven't given it any actual thought. What they're really saying is, "the pronouns I'm using for you are what I think you look like, even if it's the opposite of what you tell me you are". I don't see how there's a well-intentioned way to interpret that.

It's so much safer (and easier!) just to take people at their word when they tell you their pronouns, just as you would when they tell you their name.

> That's just disingenuous, or at the very least shows that they haven't given it any actual thought.

Or maybe they are thoughtful, caring people that are generally kind but have a different take than you do.

At any rate, your arguments in this thread do not settle the question, even if they were irrefutable. Point being, you just replied to "the issue isn't settled" with an impromptu attempt to finally settle things.

It would be easiest to call anyone who looks like a woman (or has put effort into trying to look like a woman) a woman, anyone who looks like a man (or has put effort into trying to look like a man) a man, and avoid using any pronouns at all if you're not sure. I'm convinced this is what most people naturally do anyway.

millions of years of evolution that lets us instantly identify a man or woman by sight and other senses

do you think trans people want to be passable because its just fun to do? why else would they care about passing?

Understood. But for simplicity and consistency maybe we should just use first names. No he or she, etc. Just use the first name. Wouldn't that do it?

It seems that was the issue. The moderator in question, as best as I've been able to ascertain, decided to avoid gendered pronouns entirely and in doing so violated the rules.

So someone got sacked for using a person's name instead of a pronoun?

No, it's far away from being that simple, and probably too complicated to summarize in a single sentence. For starters, the discussion was about a future CoC change and its theoretical enforcement. The actual allegation is repeated violation of the current CoC, but no warning regarding that was ever handed out. Nobody (not even the mod in question) has been told the exact violation, despite repeated queries.

You don’t need a reason to kick someone out of your house.

Absolutely, but then everyone can leave and call you a jerk for doing it. Actions have consequences and taking them unilaterally in a community might not go how you want it to.

I have a feeling, based on prior experience, that that is unlikely to be the consequence here.

What is 'aggressive' misgendering and aggressive refusal ?

Person 1: “He did a great job on the presentation...”

Person 2: “Thanks, that means a lot. Also, I actually prefer ’she’, but you can also use ‘they‘ if that makes you more comfortable.”

Person 1: “But you are clearly a man.”

Person 2: “...”

Person 1: “Like I was saying, he did a great job on that presentation. I want the rest of you guys to follow his lead.”

nope expecting the world to cater to your pronouns is harassment of the 99.99% of people who dont need or want to deal with it. i cant think of a more privileged complaint.

if you want to make extreme choices then youre gonna have to accept that its not going to be as comfortable. nobody owes you anything

A big part of a CoC is making sure everyone is on the same page about what being nice to people is, and presumably "don't willingly misgender people" may be part of that.

Because life isn't that simple. To one group "misgendering" people is harassment and therefore not nice. To another group being forced to speak as if someone is a gender you do not believe them to be is patronizing and not nice. No one is intentionally being unkind, other than the people who like to wade into the culture war

life has been pretty simple for centuries. this is a manufactured problem. seriously because if youre trans and change your name then people just go with your new pronoun automatically anyway. you literally have to go out of your way to be difficult with this and thats why people have problem accepting it

Trans individuals and other marginalized people often spend a lot of time online as a kind of safe haven from difficult personal circumstances.

People online can be horrible asshats to a degree they wouldn't dare be in person.

These two facts tend to collide and go bad places.

(This comment is only describing the problem space, not taking sides in an argument.)

As other comments here already described, the gender of the person writing questions or answers on SO shouldn't matter at all. If you really want to avoid all issues with this, just randomize usernames for every topic and mandate gender neutral language. There is no need to use gendered pronouns in the Q/A format.

Indeed most writing which demands clarity and precision (legal documents, regulations, military reports, etc.) intentionally avoid ALL pronouns.

In a military report, the enemy isn’t ever referred to as “they” because that pronoun could also be understood to refer to another friendly unit or allied government force depending on ambiguous word order or mistranslation. Instead a term like OPFOR or similar is used consistently instead of a pronoun.

This is what sites like SE should use as a standard: precise and pronoun-free language for both questions and answers.

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