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Comment by tmp20191006cars | Hacker News Reader

tmp20191006cars

I've never seen a code of conduct that makes calling someone by the wrong first name a bannable offense. So why is it so with pronouns? IMHO it's because this issue is politically unsettled -- it is not universally resolved across society. A fair percentage of people do not accept the concept of transgenderism, and instead see a transgender woman as a mentally ill man (and vice versa).

While this issue is politically unsettled, it cannot be correct to enforce one side's view by banning people on the other side of the argument if they don't tacitly concede the argument via enforced pronoun usage.

[Personally I hold no strong opinions about transgenderism, I just hate to see society splitting apart.]

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> A fair percentage of people do not accept the concept of transgenderism, and instead see a transgender woman as a mentally ill man

A not trivial amount of the objection is because of the singular 'they' and 'their'. I'll cop to being confused by sentences leveraging those formations. One can appeal to etymology, but even knowing the etymology didn't prevent my confusion.

"Be kind" is a good rule. And now there are also practical concerns to be sensitive to.

Point being, it's more complicated than accepting new gender models. And whatever peaceful solution is possible, I don't see any that don't involve decades of patience as folks get comfortable with new grammatical constructs: gender agnostic singular pronouns other than 'it', sentences containing 'their' not implying plurality, or something along those lines.

Keep in mind that the U.S. still uses imperial measurements.

Do any of your friends use they/them pronouns? Most people get used to them with a tiny bit of practice. I've seen Italian, Mandarin, Spanish and Hindi native speakers use them fluently.

"Why are half the rations gone!?" - Inigo

"They said they were hungry." - Vezzini

Ambiguity: Is one person eating too much or did many people get impatient (maybe fine depending)?

It's not just a matter of becoming accustomed. It's definitely more ambiguous.

The only way to clear that pickle up is to get used to clarifying questions as appropriate. Or maybe a "they all" will emerge parallel to "you all", but that sort of thing takes time.

My point is that people asking for singular pronouns should prepare to be patient since, at best, these things take time.

I understand what you're saying but it's seriously not a huge problem — usually there's context to figure out what a sentence means.

What if an author or speaker feels that context is lacking and is not comfortable with the ambiguity? The answers to that question do not sound all that understanding or conciliatory in my experience, especially not as phrased in a code of conduct.

It sounds pedantic, but SE sites are especially attractive to folks who close helpful questions for pedantic reasons.

I just want people to chill out and exhibit a bit of grace instead of bringing up codes of conduct and unhelpful lectures about manners.

Truth and falsehood and opinion are all points on the same spectrum. Typically, facts and falsehoods are mutually agreed upon by both sides, and opinion is what falls in between as cannot-yet-be-determined stuff. But we live in a world where opinion has exceeded its bounds and encompassed fact. Evolution and climate change are still hotly contested. And it is the same with transgenderism: both sides hold different "factual" views (from their own standpoint) that make their broader worldviews paradoxical and irreconcilable, just as if 2 + 2 were 5.

This is not a both sides issue. The medical fields moved to complete affirmation of trans identities a while ago because the scientific evidence for trans affirmation is overwhelming -- literally everything from mental health outcomes to surgery regret rates indicates that.

The other side is both bigoted and factually wrong.

This is exactly my point. The other side looks at you and says you're wrong with equal conviction and their own bevy of justifications. Since you and the other side can't mutually agree on some set of axioms of worldview, both sides' "facts" just become opinions.

Yes, and at that point the only way out is to:

1. keep the door open for anyone who wishes to change their mind

2. wrest power from everyone else -- workplace by workplace, jurisdiction by jurisdiction, culture by culture.

The pro-trans side is true, and sometimes truth has to go to war to win.

The presence of two opposed positions does not imply that they're both equally plausible.

For example: one group believes in evolution, another believes God created the Earth out of nothing 6000 years ago. Without a time machine, neither one can categorically prove exactly what happened. But one side has mountains of evidence, and the other has dogma and ideology.

There's a lot we don't understand yet about how being trans works, just as there's plenty of gaps in the fossil record that we haven't been able to fill yet. But if you ignore all the evidence we do have in favor of cherry-picking only the isolated studies that might support your position, you're no better than the people who think that the scarcity of transitional fossils refutes evolution.

This is because the sex reseachers with a different view were forced out of their jobs by intense activism.

They were forced out because they put hetero/cisnormative society's interests over their patients'. Their main goal always was to fit their patients into society rather than advocate for society to accept greater gender diversity.

One hopes that eventually it will be like mistakenly calling someone left-handed, with the reality of the situation so obvious there'd never be a need to get angry about it or create rules about it.

It is completely appropriate to enforce a trans-affirming policy. A view that considers a group of people -- other people that participate on the site -- mentally ill, has no place in workplaces, large-scale online forums and polite society in general.

I'm not among this group we speak of, but I will never accept that view of them. They are not malicious, they are just different, and we should be tolerant of them even if they are not tolerant of transgenders.... in the same way that we are tolerant of Islam even though Islam is not tolerant of women's rights.

I consider them (Christians) to be mentally ill what with all that christian god stuff they preach. Do you therefore think I also have no place in "workplaces, large-scale online forums and polite society in general" because I consider this "group of people -- other people that participate on the site -- mentally ill"?

I think this way leads to a Oberton window that only narrows, like a boa constrictor. I prefer broader thinking and more tolerance for a wider set of views.

The goal should be to shift the overton window towards greater justice, not simply broaden it.

Yes, a view that all Christians are mentally ill has no place in workplaces either. This does not mean that you cannot privately hold such views, but that you should not act in the workplace in ways that show you hold those views (so you should not misgender a trans person, for example).

My mother is in her 70s. She won't willingly knowingly recognize a trans person to be of the "gender" they claim, because she honestly believes deep in her mind that doing so is a sin against God and man, and she would be forfeiting her place in heaven. She wouldn't hurt a fly but she's between a rock and a hard place. The only emotion she ever expresses is guilt. I think she is delusional (mentally ill) and I blame religion. If some website decided to kick her off because of a silly pronoun, even though she was behaving entirely sincerely, because IMHO they are intolerant of her viewpoint (and she is not an isolated case), then I would be inclined to leave said website as well.

I will not reply to anymore of your comments as you have expressed your view that I shouldn't be allowed to, and I don't want to offend you any further.

Your premise is wrong. A pronoun is not "silly" to a trans person! If your mother was misgendering a dog that would be one thing, but it's a person we're taking about here. A human being. Your mother does not simply get to hurt other people's feelings because of her religion.

It is still inappropriate to call all Christians mentally ill. I know plenty of Christians who have no trouble treating trans people with all the respect they deserve.

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