Official StackOverflow FAQ on Gender Pronouns and Code of Conduct Changes
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meta.stackexchange.com
It is not in any way bigoted or transphobic to believe that a person being a man or a woman, and therefore the pronouns used to refer to that person, are determined by that person's sex at birth. This was the accepted belief of the vast majority of the human race up until about 20 minutes ago, when it suddenly became a bannable offense.
StackOverflow going all-in in support of social engineering on behalf of political activists is baffling to me. Where does this end? Is the goal really to force all of society to change to placate a small group of activists? A reasonable compromise would have just been to allow "they" to refer to someone in a neutral way, but I understand that this is actually not allowed if the person being referred to has stated they would like "he" or "she". This is what makes me think it's more about social engineering than actually protecting anyone from harm.
There have been many cultural revolutions throughout history where a group tries to retrain millions through shaming, reeducation, force, policy, banning, censorship, etc.
From a historical perspective all that has change is which group is important enough and what titles are deemed socially required.
Because the reality is, I'm trans and I don't feel safe participating on Hacker News anymore. If I try to ask someone to be respectful towards me, I know I'll be attacked because this is the top comment. And that sucks.
It is bigoted, because the implication behind this belief that all trans people are delusional, mentally ill or liars.
Mind you, I agree that "they" is an acceptable pronoun unless it's being exclusively used to avoid the chosen pronouns of trans people (in other words, it's fine to me if applied neutrally) and I think SO is going overboard here, but your comment has a lot of anti-trans bigotry in it you may not recognize.
Not likely to happen while SO's moderators aren't even honestly engaging with the community, but instead rewriting their posts without comment: https://meta.stackexchange.com/posts/334979/revisions
Citation?
LGBTQ population estimate (US) 4.5%:
https://news.gallup.com/poll/234863/estimate-lgbt-population...
Transgender population estimate (US) 1M/0.3%
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5227946/
From the above, "The available evidence suggests that the size of the gender-nonconforming or gender-variant population may be twice as large as our best estimate for the transgender population size."
That pushes the estimate to 0.6% of which non-binary or andogynous is a subset.
I'm not LGBTQ unfriendly at all so don't go there. I am, however, going to question stats that appear questionable, regardless of my personal beliefs.
So, it’s a touch more complicated than that.
This can alienate the 8.3%+, and is probably one of the reasons why that percentage is that low.
This change isn't just about trans people, but about anyone who doesn't use he/him or isn't male.
That "probably" there isn't justified, in my opinion. As others in that FAQ thread have pointed out, StackOverflow isn't a place where a lot of third-person interaction is taking place, so I'd consider it a stretch to make that out as a reason that non-males are lacking there.
Maybe it's just that women often have better things to do than to ask strangers for help on why their Haskell state monad is acting up.
A new user will typically arrive at SE for asking or answering specific questions. Even most of the users with accounts rarely seem to go near meta and chat.
When I was active on SE (I gave up logging in a few years ago), meta was the afterthought to bitch about some policy or detail and the annoying habits of questioners. The chat usually empty or quiet enough that even looking to see if it was active seemed mostly pointless. I'm sure it's grown since, but that's not really where new people are going.
People are making a huge deal out of nothing.
For 99% of questions and answers pronouns are irrelevant, and rarely ever seen.
No matter how gently you moderate a person many take it harshly and I suspect the response will be to push back at the moderator, moderation, and ultimately the rule.... and it ends up being more counterproductive than anything else.
Very very generally I would compare the response to say police detaining someone as far as a someone's response goes. It is hard to do so no matter how lightly it is presented and not get a strong response.
Another issue is that moderators can't know if two people know the correct pronoun unless clearly stated in that conversation, so they are going to be guessing the vast majority of the time...
* Use gender neutral pronouns in most prose
* When directly addressing a user, use their pronouns, as configured on the user profile
* Specifying your own identity is optional, intentionally ignoring the identity specified by others is not
On the one hand, SE can be esoteric enough as it is, more rules will make for less ease of use. I absolutely think that there should be some level of natural resistance to all new (and existing) barriers to entry.
On the other hand, this new rule isn't particularly difficult to understand (imo) and aligns fairly well with current best practices. I feel that it's particularly disingenuous to foist this issue as the straw that will break the camel's back, given how thoroughly declawed this rule is. Most infractions won't even constitute an official warning (though I am certain there are people who will test this rule to the limits, which will certainly be interesting to watch unfold).
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> Yes, if those are stated by the individual.
Yikes.
I’m 100% in support of all gender identities, sexual orientations, races, etc., and I’ll fight for everyone’s rights and well-being, but this is insanity.
It’s one thing restrict offensive language but it’s a whole different beast to mandate specific language.
Nope. Nope. Nope. I’m not doing it.
Sorry not sorry.
What are you even going on about? Whom have I disrespected?
Allow me to repeat myself: It’s one thing restrict offensive language but it’s a whole different beast to mandate specific language.
If, e.g., you tell me to not refer to a certain group of folks using a particular racially offensive term, that’s fine and pretty reasonable, but if you tell me that I must refer to a certain group of folks using a term that you or they chose simply because you or they said so, as far as I’m concerned, we’re slowly walking ourselves into a dictatorship. For the first option, I can simply not do anything and avoid being a “bad” person, but for the second option, I’m implicitly a “bad” person if I don’t explicitly do as told (in this case, aka, ordered).
There’s no way I could ever accept that. Nope. No way.
They should focus again on technical issues and also find ways to reward questions and answers about really specific issues. It could be observation bias but it seems that questions/answers on very generic topics get most upvotes, although these things can usually also be found on other websites easily and with more detail.
StackExchange is a network of Q+A sites covering a diverse range of topics, many of which are non-technical by design.
I think you might be confusing StackOverflow, the original and most popular technically-focused programming Q+A site, with the broader collection of Q+A sites this policy is addressing.
Unless you're suggesting that all non-technical StackExchange sites should be shut down, which is a bit more drastic.
I don't understand the backlash, do you go around and call people other name that they want to be called because "you don't feel like it"?
Ideally, it would be perfectly "allowed" to insult someone by referring to them in a way they explicitly asked not to be referred to. And it would then also be perfectly allowed to call that person out for being a jerk. That's how a naturally formed community would handle such trolling -- but here, the idea is that the "right behaviour" has to be enforced by rules from above, and that's really not a good idea if you're dealing with anything other than a group of pre-schoolers.
You're still perfectly "allowed" to maliciously misgender people, it'll just get you warned or banned.
1) The first amendment has been applied to companies which hold a position which similar to that of a town center. To be fair court decisions has gone both way, but the argument in favor is that when a company operate a space which is indistinguishable from a government operated space then it should be treated equally under the law.
2) When people in the US sue companies and talk about free speech or freedom of religion they usually don't win under the First Amendment ruling but rather under anti-discrimination laws. They will talk about freedom of speech to the media, but as a practical matter will raise anti-discrimination law in court as those have a much larger scope than the first amendment. In places anti-discrimination law can do more or less anything the first amendment do, except the first amendment restrict the government and anti-discrimination restrict companies.
3) In eu both freedom of speech and freedom of religion protects against governments, companies and people. Freedom of religion is particular broad and covers political and world views, and do not require any official religion or belief. EU law impacts many international companies. EU also has it own set of anti-discrimination and in 2000 added "any discrimination based on any ground such as sex, race, colour, ethnic or social origin, genetic features, language, religion or belief, political or any other opinion, membership of a national minority, property, birth, disability, age or sexual orientation shall be prohibited".
One of those three can likely be used when people bring up freedom of speech. Just because you think someone is an asshole for holding an opinion does not mean you can discriminate against the person saying it. The technicality of the first amendment is not a license for others to restrict speech.
> Yes, if those are stated by the individual.
As with some replies in the sourced thread, I take issue with this, because it gives a way for trolls to request to be referred to in a humiliating or offensive way, and to prove bad faith is a waste of limited resources.
I say that it is a waste, because singular they/them is gaining currency, and has been used in many contexts as a gender-neutral third-person pronoun, and it is never interpreted as offensive or disrespectful afaict; at best somewhat awkward by some people in some contexts.
There could be a macro that expands into the pronoun or whoever you're responding to.
Also, I wonder what happens the first time somebody says their preferred pronoun is "God", or something 127 characters long? or Little Bobby Tables? or...?
As they said on the answers... bad faith actions like having a 127 character pronoun means that it must be reported: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/334900/official-faq...
"I identify as an attack helicopter" is obviously stated in bad faith, as "attack helecopter" is not a valid human gender. "God" or a base64 hash are also obviously not valid genders. The only people who would do so to begin with are trolls who want to mock trans identity.
Personally, if I know someone is sincere and wants me to use such a pronoun, I probably would, even though I'd find it odd.
So let's draw the line here: at the very least if someone wants to be called "he" or "she" that should be respected regardless of their biological sex, and agree that it gets "complicated" from there.
[0]https://nonbinary.miraheze.org/wiki/Nounself_pronouns
[1]https://anagnori.tumblr.com/post/75752291700/a-non-binary-pe...
[2]https://www.reddit.com/r/asktransgender/comments/2oj7jt/thou...
Why is that assumed bad faith? What if someone has a legitimate 127 character pronoun and that is how they identify themselves? Are you not refusing their identity? Would it not be bigoted to not refer to them as their 127 character pronoun(s)?
Save yourself the burden: $ echo "127.0.0.1 stackoverflow.com www.stackoverflow.com stackexchange.com www.stackexchange.com" >> /etc/hosts
https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing
So even GPL works need relicensing if they include anything from SO??
Either GPL, or one of two licenses they consider equivalent
When I write my question, answer, or comment, allow me to add markup such as <pronoun @CaesarM />.
And then StackOverflow will display the pronoun in the correct way.
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Or StackOverflow could take it one step farther. If I write a question, answer or comment with a pronoun, a dialog pops up asking me which username the pronoun refers to. The software does the rest.
I can't comprehend how SE can be so ignorant.