This is all fun and games until a “politically neutral” decision is made by a programming language foundation to refer to all trans people using they/them. How would that make you feel?
r/programminglanguages has the right idea: put a pride flag in the logo and a lot of these problems just sort themselves out.
the flag logo has proven surprisingly effective at weeding out bigots. Not just in this thread or the previous one, but also in the moderator mail: we've had at least several instances of mouth breathers writing rants along the lines of "How dare you use colors in your logo!" (that's a very nice "translation" of what's actually written in those cases). Similarly, several comments in this thread have been removed and their authors banned, due to comments that boil down to "I'm not a bigot, I just hate LGBTQ+ people". This will not change, based on the simple premise that such people aren't worth having around in any community, and these people don't contribute anything of value anyway.
And it does work out well, the discussions stay on topic, LGBTQ issues aren't really a community topic despite the flag. Here's how that works out in practice, from today:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammingLanguages/comments/1onr6...
Someone says "he", they're corrected with "she", and that's the end of it. In more toxic communities where people are encouraged to use whatever pronouns they want, that simple interaction because a whole thing, where eventually one person calls the other delusional, the other calls them a bigot, and then no one is talking about programming languages. It's an eternal struggle, and for many people who build and maintain programming languages, they prefer to kick out the bigot rather than be called delusional, so everyone can get back to talking about programming languages. Still, there are plenty of online spaces, especially language spaces, where LGBTQ people are made to feel excluded. People upset with the flag or pronouns can join one of those communities, and everyone is happy.
(If anyone is wondering what kind of comments, they're usually veiled or not so veiled threats along the lines of this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45727677. If the mere presence of the flag keeps people like this out, that's fine by me.)
> Someone says "he", they're corrected with "she", and that's the end of it.
This is a good example of conversational flow in an environment where people are not reprimanded for referring to others with pronouns that accord to the speaker's personal worldview. One person says "he", another person says "she", and everyone tolerates this difference of expression whether they agree with it or not.
Essentially it's the most politically neutral stance on pronouns, as implemented in an everyday conversation.
I've laid out a neutral response. Of course I have my personal beliefs, as one does, but I speak here without pretense. Believe what you will.
(for the record I do realize the phrase 'politically neutral' is vague and unclear, and often used as a conservative dogwhistle, which is why I generally avoid it)
An example of the sort of Code of Conduct I personally feel is the most inclusive and 'politically neutral' in a non-scare-quotes-dogwhistle way is the Hacker News guidelines[0]. I think the moderation in general here does a good job of promoting open discussion across people from a wide variety of backgrounds.