StackExchange offers 'possible reinstatement' to moderator removed over pronouns
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And all the while there's still genuine real and unambiguous harm and violence being committed against the community that this is supposed to be about.
Something, something choose your battles...
I am non-binary and use they/them pronouns, and while I'm not bothered when people avoid my pronouns e.g. by using my name instead, it's another thing entirely to assert that someone who doesn't consider non-binary identity valid "believes in helping the LGBTQ+ community but differed in how to do so."
Simply avoiding being rude (by deliberately using the wrong pronouns) is the baseline for respect, literally the least you can do. To "help" implies to support--if you support our community please use our correct pronouns and correct other cis people who misgender trans folks in your presence, don't merely humor us.
Monica has a purely grammatical objection to the use of singular they. I believe that objection to be unjustified (for etymology pedantry reasons), but it's not born out of malice or the rejection of people's identities. I don't agree with Monica on this point, but she has never used her position as a moderator to hurt people in this way. She wouldn't be the sort of person to use neopronouns if she were inclined to do this.
And, to my knowledge, she has never knowingly used the wrong pronouns for a user of the site, which is more than can be said for most people.
Please don't selectively apply standards. You should be equally outraged at the other >30% of the population who fail this test – if you're not, stop slandering Monica.
But the thrust of my post is that it's wrong to describe her as someone who is helping the LGBTQ+ community, just in a different way, and I stand by that. She said in her statement that she "write[s] in a gender-neutral way specifically to avoid gender landmines".
I'm sure this is a relatable sentiment to cisgender people who's main engagement with the trans community is anxiety about making mistakes. But this can't be compared to the marginalization trans people face. One way that non-binary people are denied space in our culture is by being erased. It's not a high crime to go out of your way to avoid our pronouns like this, but by doing so Monica is someone who is doing the bare minimum of avoiding offense--she is not helping or supporting non-binary people or fostering their inclusion.
Despite the implication of your reply I am actually not outraged that she could continue to be a Stack Exchange moderator, that seems fine. But I am intransigently against the vision of LGBTQ+ allyship laid out in the GGP, where being a supporting helper just means not being hostile.
Trans people are fighting for our lives in society right now, it would really help if people could find it in themselves to pick the right side, use our pronouns in public, and build the cultural space for us to exist in normalcy, instead of only think about this issue when twitter "activists" have "gone too far" by criticizing someone they like.
How about if I don't accept your packaging of related issues. Are you insisting that I'm therefore not allowed to pick the side of transgender people?
From a purely strategic level - how best to achieve the worthy aim of improving the lot of transgender people - this strikes me as a mistake. I think the outcome will be worse than a more tolerant approach to forming an alliance.
(How ironic that I ended up using the word "tolerance" in trying to explain that... )
These modern ideas are far from confirmed scientific fact. Yes, there some sort of a spectrum, but just as the entire concept of "gender" is a social construct, the real argument is over the definition of the construct, and one could argue that truly "non-binary" or transgender individuals form a tiny cluster of outliers near the plane separating conventional male and female grouping. If that is the case, I personally find it offensive to afford such a tiny minority such a disproportionate amount of power by allowing it to shape thought through language policing.
The idea of intersectionality is mathematically equivalent to reducing an extremely high dimensional space, that of human physiology and behavior, to a simplified subset with fuzzy clusters separated by an arbitrary number of hyperplanes (gay, black, trans, etc). The particular modern formulation is one of an infinite number of possibilities, and it isn't fair to pick a handful of tiny minority clusters from this particular basis by those with vested interests, claim that those in particular are oppressed, and then afford them what are actually special priveledges under the guise of equality. Particularly when this mindset bleeds into politics and industry, it just comes off as a blatant powergrab for people who have defined their own social construct in a manner that benefits themselves.
This is why identity politics drives populations apart. The space of human nature is sufficiently high dimensional that it is impossible to divide it into priveledged clusters without picking what amount to arbitrary favorites.
Where does it say this?
On S.O? That's hard to believe. People come to S.O to have their coding questions answered, and in my experience, their identity plays no part in exchanges on the site.
A person is normal, but people are horrible. There's a reason SO felt the need to amend their Code of Conduct, and it wasn't just to score “wokeness points”.
I think these fights harm the cause in the broadest sense and act as recruiting tools for those opposed to the goals of inclusiveness.
I'm all for LGBTQ+ rights and I get that in the real world this sometimes means being uncompromising. Fighting for equality is complex.
Here's what went down.
The mod made statements that vaguely pattern match as onerous hair splitting in order to undermine LGBTQ+ rights. They did this in a private setting and there was absolutely no history that would imply they were trying to push an ulterior motive.
The SO representative identifies strongly as a defender of LGBTQ+ rights and viewed this as "definitely this person doesn't think LGPTQ+ people should have rights" and de-modded them.
SO made the initial choice to circle the wagons and back up one of their own and then got stuck hard on that path for months even when it became clear they'd made a mistake. It's a problem with management and it's not going to be solved without changes in management. A sorry would have sufficed if it had come many months ago. The SO rep just needed to admit to being human and making a bad call.
(P.S. this whole row was over the style in which I've written this post, the new code of conduct would have me use gender specific pronouns if the preferred pronouns of the subjects are known and using a genderless style of writing would be against it)
Fighting for anything is complex. If it wasn't complex it wouldn't take a fight.
But people get blinded by their righteousness and fight in ways that waste time at best, can make people disengage or set their goals back at worst. If anyone thinks they're fighting the good fight, they owe it to their cause to understand their actions.
I often find myself getting ignored or on the wrong side of an accusation for thinking about the "ends vs means" of goals I agree with. I'm running low on patience for getting asked to diminish or overlook hamfisted actions after the fact because the motivation was proper.
IIRC it wasn't even that, Monica was wondering whether it would still be okay to continue writing in a style that would avoid using pronouns altogether.
For example, my previous sentence.
According to the MSE FAQ, SO doesn’t care if you get it wrong as long as you’re willing to change the pronouns moving forward to reflect the correct ones. SO also prefers gender neutral writing (not using pronouns or using singular they) if you don’t know the correct pronouns for someone.
They don’t even require using pronouns at all unless avoiding it is really obvious (userx wrote in userx’s question that userx failed to find a solution - obvious example is obvious but I think it makes the point) but telling someone you refuse to use their pronouns is considered rude and moderators are expected to be willing to use correct pronouns.
In most cases, avoiding pronouns in day-to-day interactions is not noticeable. It’s more obvious when you interact with them (or talk about them) regularly.
No one is expecting anyone to memorize hundreds of pronouns for people you only talk to once.
The actual point is, there's no such thing as a "right to be addressed by one's preferred pronoun". Attempts to introduce such a purported "right" can easily pattern match to many other sorts of compelled speech, which in a genuinely liberal, rights-focused and non-oppressive political culture are generally rejected altogether - for very good reasons dating back to many centuries ago, that have zilch to do with the (very real and concrete, unfortunately) plight of a number of sexual and gender minorities.
Basically, this whole "you must use my preferred pronouns, or else" thing is a huge distraction that does nothing to make LGBTQetc. folks better off.
Why not worry about real injustices? You have no right to be free from being offended or having your feelings hurt, but you should be able to get a job, get married, get medical treatment, etc.
Of course you're free to call someone at work a jerk. Your boss is also free to fire you. Freedom of speech is a concept that applies to our government, not private entities. That said, we can still discuss whether or not specific limitatations on speech by private entities are a good or bad thing. In this case, I believe it's a bad thing to codify.
Rules which apply to harassment, which almost every forum has in place, still apply. The question is how far do we go? Are we really going to force people to use gender neutral ponouns at all times as a matter of course in order to protect some small portion of an estimated 0.6% of the population's feelings?
Repeated and intentional misgendering is similar to racial or ethnic slurs, which also don't belong in professional settings and will ideally also get you fired.
Personally I think the Catholic Church is a great force of evil, but I keep those opinions to myself at work out of respect for my Catholic coworkers. You are free to believe whatever you want about how nonbinary people are just seeking attention or whatever, but you shouldn't misgender people at work.
Who's forcing folks to use gender neutral pronouns "at all times"? You only have to use them for people who have requested it.
The 0.6% number is commonly quoted but is very dubious, since it doesn't account for people who may not be out due to social stigmatization. The real number of people who would be happier with a non-cis identity is probably much higher, somewhere around 5-10% by my estimate.
An excerpt from Monica's side of things:
>Under some pressure I said I don't use singular they or words like chairwoman but solve the problem other ways (with examples)." She said the moderator linked to her question and called her a bigot.
From what I have been able to gather, it would have been very difficult to comply with the proposed CoC without literally asking someone what their ponouns are or risk a villation. Whether or not the latter would have been actually enforced I can't say, but it all sounds rather half baked and would have led to a very vague definition of how one person is allowed to address another.
I also don't agree at all with the set of new nonsense pronouns like ze and xi. It's not useful as a language construct and I'm not ready to hand over the linquistic reins to a tiny minority.
>The real number of people who would be happier with a non-cis identity is probably much higher, somewhere around 5-10% by my estimate.
I can see why you doubt the 0.6% number (many people won't admit it), and that's fair, but your number sounds completely fictional. 10%?! C'mon. That requires some backing up.
I know a lot of nonbinary people — many use neopronouns but they are all reasonable people. I don't know anyone who wouldn't also be ok with they/them.
https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/press/in-the-news/27-...
GNC is not the same as trans, but the high numbers do suggest a much greater number of people are happier outside strict gender roles. It wouldn't be too much of an extension to say that this may apply to the pronouns they are happiest with as well.
I also think we get worked up about things that live on the edges. Extreme viewpoints either way which are battled out on the internet, but don't represent the opinions of most people.
The new pronouns though... I don't know, that may take me a while.
Agree.
> real and unambiguous ... violence
Disagree. I'm sure your intentions are good but this is concept creep, pure and simple.
- Full timeline from Monica Cellio herself: https://cellio.dreamwidth.org/2019/10/05/stack-overflow-fias...
- Her account: https://judaism.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5193/stack-...
- Discussion on HN back then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21153224
Resistance to this kind of minor injustice does help. It spreads fastest when the vast center is intimidated into silence.
Not surprising in the least. I think the ship has sailed on this case.
(Though the offer is probably as a token of good will and "no hard feelings")
What is supposed to make this interesting, the three links to actual sources of information, or the comments by Slashdot users?
The first revision of the CoC may not be utterly reprehensible, but once its power is established, minority activists who would like to force their views on others will just suggest “updates” to the CoC.
And suddenly there you are with entire SE being toxic drivel, because nobody dared to say “no” to a vocal minority.
I wonder who will be next.
Today, using "he/she" is considered transphobic, as in this SE case, since it assumes the subject is binary. So the present recommendation is to use "they".
Is this an accurate representation of the current state of affairs?
What's the proper pronoun to use today, if you don't know the actual gender of the subject, for example because you talk about a hypothetical situation?
Aren't people who identify as other pronouns (xe, zer, ve, aer...) upset by the use of "they"? Is "they" truly generic and can be used in all situations?
For many centuries singular ‘they’ had been used when gender is uncertain or unknown. In the last hundred years or so some (primarily American) language teachers decided that singular ‘they’ was wrong and adopted ‘he/she’.
See https://public.oed.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-singular-they... for a history.
I think that’s the case here. They are upset because they would like to be called by the specific pronoun they pick. Using ”they” erases their identity and contributes to discrimination.
Now in hypothetical situation I don’t see how “they“ could be problematic.
I have seen authors default to “she” but mostly in positive and neutral contexts. Then to “he“ for negative contexts. What I mean is if the hypothetical context is a about an astronaut flying to Mars it might be a “she” but if it is a criminal robbing a bank it would be a “he”.
"They" has gotten an additional meaning, it's one of the picked pronouns alongside xe/etc, which is why some people consider using it to still be using the wrong pronoun.
Though in that case, if it used carelessly in a negative context, it might not have a good outcome and someone might still be offended.
No it doesn’t. That’s just silly.
What it does is refuse to call them in a way which deviates from the standard norm and which they are in no way entitled to make demands about.
I don’t mind trans-people, but I don’t like anyone policing how I speak.
Addressing them how you address everyone else does in no way violate their rights.
I find myself rejecting the whole notion of preferred pronouns as a grammatical error.
Pronouns are generalist grammatical objects, and you can’t claim one by yourself, and thus make the object into being a individual object.
Also the arguments made here resonate with me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21901346
I’m all against discrimination, but there is no “right” to be called by your preferred pronoun.