Not a bar, but plays one on TV

Carcer

9:28 AM

my, hasn't the whole 2019 moderator resignation fiasco taken an interesting turn

Carcer

9:40 AM

so it's all about being told to positively respect people's gender identities and really not wanting to do that

handled really badly by management as is tradition

Derpy

10:52 AM

yesterday, by doppelgreener

Let's not have this conversation here too, please.

While I get your point, there are better places if you really want to discuss about that. There should be a link to a Discord room somewhere in The Meta Room

Carcer

11:21 AM

doppel also relented

V2Blast

11:37 AM

yes:

yesterday, by doppelgreener

Ok. If you feel strongly then you may discuss it, but please try to keep the discussion in here from getting incendiary, as normal.

GcL

4:33 PM

@Carcer That doesn't sound good. English really does need a better gender neutral pronoun aside from "they".

Carcer

@GcL it'd be convenient if it had one but I hardly think it's necessary

singular they is not ungrammatical and perfectly understandable from context most of the time

GcL

@Carcer Using "they" frequently gets confused with referring to a group in my experience. Takes some intentionally including context hints to get across that it's an individual being discussed.

@Carcer I've found that it's an extra cognitive burden to ensure those contextual clues are included.

Carcer

the variation on this is bizarre

I guess the most I can say is that such is not my experience

but regardless use or not of the neutral they isn't actually the issue as far as I can tell

GcL

The situations that come to mind immediately are the long email threads where there are groups and individuals. Also doesn't help I'm rarely around for the first dozen or so messages. So short communications with "they" referring to groups or individuals in different cases can be difficult to suss out sometimes.

@Carcer Yeah. Not that big of a deal. Would be more of a convenience to have a better singular gender neutral pronoun.

One of those things I hope the "kids these days" sort out, because the adults seem to be having a really hard time of it.

user15026

As someone who uses they/them for themself and others....It's not super difficult, people naturally do it fairly often, moreso than they often realize

GcL

4:44 PM

On the other hand, one of English's great strengths is the unabashed willingness to ~~steal~~ borrow words from other languages. Maybe one of those will catch on and be incorporated.

Carcer

@Ash agreed, the most annoying facet of that whole linguistic argument is grammarians crawling out of the woodwork to say that singular they is ungrammatical despite the fact most english speakers use it naturally often

GcL

@Ash Yeah. I'd just like a convenient term for singular neutral so I could immediately know if the remedy to a particularly long winded thread is a phone call to a person to help them out or a solution that has to work for an entire department.

@Carcer Seems like a losing argument.

Carcer

and yet it refuses to die

perhaps a bit hyperbolic to say that was the most annoying part of the whole situation actually, at least that bit is just grammatical pedantry

GcL

I wonder if there are historical examples of grammatical arguments that took a long time to die... maybe sort out a survival model for that kind of thing. " Prevalence of argument attenuates with time until it is extinct after 17 generations." I'd be entertained.

Xirema

5:37 PM

So I only found out about the big SE/Moderator controversy a few hours ago, still trying to figure out what actually happened. I find it really frustrating that a lot of the moderators who resigned keep using this really cagey language like "SE has made changes to the CoC, and these changes were not explained to us and I consider them unconscionable, hence my resignation", and it's like... What are those changes? Why are you so reluctant to spell them out?

It sounds like a moderator got fired for misgendering users, and a bunch of moderators resigned in solidarity with her, and then a few moderators resigned in protest of those moderators resigning. So if my read is incorrect, I apologize, but again: literally the first I'm hearing of the whole thing.

Xirema

5:59 PM

Mind, I've had.... "interesting" conversations with moderators from other stacks that's made me predisposed to distrust them, so seeing moderators leave because they can't handle basic respect towards people's pronouns makes me think A) Good riddance, and B) I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.

Especially since the phrase "They're forcing us to agree with their moral principles!" never seems like anything other than code for "I don't like that they're not letting me be X-phobic anymore!"

But again: someone please correct me if my assessment of the situation is mistaken, because trying to precisely determine what went down from the several dozen posts I examined was taxing.

user15026

@Carcer And it's not actually ungrammatical

user15026

@GcL I can see how that might help sometimes yes :)

Carcer

@Xirema as best as I can determine what's happened is this

SE staff told the mods they were going to change the CoC to mandate that you must use the appropriate pronouns for someone if you know them

Monica queried whether or not writing in such a way as to avoid using pronouns altogether was acceptable, which apparently she already did most of the time anyway

there's some discussion between mods about whether or not deliberately avoiding using someone's pronouns when you know them counts as misgendering

staff never clarify, monica persues query in emails and then gets fired

I'm assuming because refusing to use pronouns at all just so you can avoid calling someone something you don't want to call them is still pretty disrespectful when it's clear that's what is happening, and they overreacted to monica's dissent on that issue

the response has been varied yeah

some of it is definitely people who just don't want to have to respect other people's gender identity when it is in conflict with their personal beliefs, because they just about get by by avoiding explicitly misgendering anyone as it is

Xirema

6:17 PM

Alright. Some of that I got from her original post, but I've been avoiding relying on it too much because there were a few phrases that stuck out as red-flags to me, her describing the actions as responding to "thoughtcrime" in particular.

Carcer

that christianty.se mod's resignation was obviously about that

some of it is frustration about SE's typical bungled handling of the entire situation

oh yeah, reading between the lines even on Monica's post I get a vibe that goes "I don't want to have to call someone a woman if I don't think they're a woman, isn't it enough that I just don't call them a man?"

Xirema

@Carcer Yeah, that was the vibe I kept getting too. The big thing was the thing she did (which a lot of moderators did) where they kept talking in circles about "the policy change they won't explain to us" but never actually mention what that policy is or would be. Even Monika's post only explained the policy change as an added edit after other posts had already made it explicit.

Carcer

I don't think you should read too much into that specifically, I think that's just them being cagey about what they're even allowed to mention because it's internal teacher's lounge stuff that isn't officially announced

it definitely hasn't helped the clarity of the situation anyway

Xirema

@Carcer Maybe, but it's too familiar a style of language to me. Like a "I know if I just directly say what I'm thinking people will obviously disagree with me, but if I just very slowly edge towards my point in tiny gradual steps, it might get people on my side".

Carcer

now it's either extremely coincidental timing or the CoC change was prompted by Aza's quitting over transphobic atmosphere/culture within the SE moderation teams

Yeah, fair. It's all couched in reasonableness but fundamentally the problem is not wanting to have to refer to people correctly

of course SE have made it a PR disaster by horribly bungling the handling of the whole situation and generally appearing opaque and arbitrary

Xirema

6:27 PM

Actually, I think I have some of the facts of that case wrong.

I know he did something pretty ****ed up, but I don't actually remember what the details were, it was a few years ago.

Carcer

is this about Linus's sabbatical?

I'm not aware of anything specifically awful he did to specific people - his mistreatment was well-distributed amongst everyone he interacted with, because he's a very angry man and had no filter whatsoever

Xirema

@Carcer Yeah. I found an article, my summary was almost correct, but it wasn't a specific woman.

It was just general misbehavior. Still bad, but my summary wasn't accurate.

Either way, the Linux community updated their CoC in response, and a bunch of developers basically lost their minds about how needing to be pleasant and amicable would cause their work quality to deteriorate.

What I remember really clearly was the way they phrased their concerns, saying "we don't like these unnecessary changes" but never once actually addressing the changes themselves or offering itemized critiques of those changes.

Carcer

it was very unsurprising, yes

very hostile environment selecting for people with extremely thick skins who felt comfortable in that environment

Xirema

@Carcer Yup. Kind of a microcosm of the problems with the SO stack itself.

GcL

I can still just use "they" and not worry about it? or no?

Xirema

6:39 PM

@GcL If you don't know someone, and they haven't expressly told you how they prefer to identify, no one is going to be bothered by it.

Gender-Neutral as a default for "I don't know who this person is" is perfectly fine.

GcL

How about this. Is using "they" ever wrong?

Carcer

contextually, it could be

Xirema

But if someone says "I'm a woman; I use she/her pronouns", it's misgendering to call her 'they', and if you're making an effort to avoid using any pronouns at all, it gives off the impression you don't really believe in her identity, and are just performing a kind of plausible deniability.

GcL

@Xirema I don't use it as an "I don't know". I'll use that in written communication even when I do know. Especially if I don't want gender involved in any way with the topic at hand.

Xirema

@GcL Context is important.

If I'm describing the behavior of my friend to someone here at the stack, I might refer to her as 'they' or 'them' if I'm trying to avoid people making assumptions about her because of her gender.

GcL

6:43 PM

That's when it's okay? If so, what's an example of when "they" is not okay?

Carcer

though to be clear Monica was talking about phrasing in such a way as to avoid the use of third-person singulars altogether

Xirema

@GcL If someone directly tells you "I go by she/her", and in the same space where they told you this, you continue to use they/them, that can be misgendering.

GcL

@Carcer Seems like a safe plan to just use gender neutral all the time.

Carcer

@GcL when you are using "they" purely to avoid calling someone "he" or "she" after they have expressed what their correct pronouns are

GcL

That seems like you have to know the intent of the writer.

What if the writer is just uncomfortable with dealing with gender issue at all altogether.

Carcer

6:46 PM

@GcL that intent can be contextually obvious

Xirema

@GcL Well, I would say it's probably important to think about why they don't want to deal with those issues.

This isn't a all-or-nothing issue. There's a lot of context and nuance to it.

GcL

@Carcer I rarely find that to be the case unless someone has stated "I'm doing this because X" and even then, I might wonder.

@Xirema I find a lot of danger in the nuance of making assumptions about other's internal state or motivations.

Carcer

@GcL "can be" isn't "always is"

Xirema

@GcL Well, important to remember the difference between the Author and the author.

GcL

@Xirema Because it's politically charged? because they're afraid? because they're dealing with their own? because they have synethesia with those terms that they don't like? The reasons could be myriad.

@Xirema I don't think I follow. What is the difference between the Author and the author?

Carcer

6:48 PM

the thing is if you normally call people he or she, and you call me "he" and I correct you and say "I'm a she, actually", and then you start calling me "they", it seems pretty obvious that the reason you're doing that is because you don't want to call me "she".

GcL

@Carcer They might also be avoiding screwing it up again by defaulting to a safer term.

Xirema

@GcL But that's the thing though: it's not strictly a safer term. At least not in that context.

GcL

I don't know why people do what they do specifically unless they tell me.

@Xirema If there isn't a safe default, the language needs to incorporate one.

Carcer

I think it takes exactly as much effort to remember to call someone by the neutral pronoun as it does to remember to call someone by their actual pronoun

Xirema

@GcL Well, like I said: if you don't know someone, and they haven't expressly told you how they identify, "they" is perfectly fine.

Carcer

6:50 PM

either way you're having to mentally correct for whatever your brain's default categorisation of that person is

Xirema

It's only if you keep using it after they've told you that's not how they identify that it becomes misgendering.

Carcer

you're not any more or less likely to forget to use that pronoun and at any rate when you do make a mistake the appropriate response is to just apologise, self-correct and continue

GcL

@Xirema They're demanding to be excluded from gender neutral terms?

@Carcer You would probably be surprised about my capacity to forget anything about anyone.

Xirema

@GcL They're asking to be identified by what they claim they are. "Demanding" is an exaggeration of terms, I think.

GcL

@Xirema If you don't do it, asserting you're wrong seems pretty demanding to me.

Carcer

6:53 PM

@GcL if you always refer to everyone in a neutral way then I doubt anyone would actually have a problem with that, but the case where it is offensive is not that case

Xirema

I've never met anyone who specifically objects to being called "they/them" by someone who doesn't know them.

Carcer

it's the case where you obviously use the right pronouns for cisgendered people but only neutral pronouns for people you know to be transgender that is problematic

GcL

Even when someone you do know. Maybe they just don't like typing or saying "wym", and "they" is something both parties find palatable.

Xirema

@GcL If they've specifically told you that 'they' is fine, even if they normally go by 'he/him', then there's no problem.

GcL

@Carcer That's in the arena of being polite and still being a jerk.

@Xirema If someone tells you only "xyz" is acceptable. Is that a reasonable demand to make and expect?

Carcer

6:58 PM

@GcL now we're getting into more contentious terrain

GcL

@Carcer I have a few rarely used pronouns in my lexicon.

Xirema

@GcL This is where the nuance and context come into play. If someone tells me they wish to identify as an "attack helicopter", I don't stop and think "oh they've put time into this identity", I think "oh, they don't take transgender identity/gender pronouns seriously and are just making a dumb joke to upset me".

Carcer

@GcL I'm aware of a few myself although I don't know anyone who actively uses them

GcL

@Xirema Do you comply anyway?

Carcer

if someone did ask me to use xe/xir etc. I think I'd probably say that I'll make my best effort but I'm likely to default to they as natural language

GcL

7:02 PM

@Carcer That seems reasonable to me.

Xirema

But if someone reads through all visual cues that my lizard brain has taught me to read that they're a woman, but they tell me they're a man that uses 'he/him' pronouns, then I'll treat him like a man and use male pronouns when talking to or about him.

GcL

@Xirema Would you ask the person if they're making a joke or just trying to yank your chain?

Carcer

it seems like it would probably be very contextually obvious whether that was a joke or a serious request

gym time

GcL

ciao

Xirema

@GcL My general response is "if you're committed to identifying this way, I'm not going to challenge it". But that's the thing: if someone's serious about their identity, they're not going to talk about it in that kind of lexicon. Certainly not with literally referencing *the* meme about not taking gender identity seriously.

GcL

7:09 PM

Alternatively, they could be exploring your tolerance for not worrying about if people are serious or not and sticking to your guns.

Even if you're reasonably sure someone is joking, do you still do it.?

Xirema

And just so we're clear: nobody is demanding perfection. We're indoctrinated from birth with this false idea that there's only two genders and gender perfectly matches a person's physiology. Breaking out of that mindset requires tons of effort, and no one turns into an adult with the tools to break out of that mindset in no effort.

GcL

Some people do have that indoctrination from various sources.

Xirema

Even the best of people are going to mess it up sometimes. That's not something to be afraid of—despite the hullabaloo about "Cancel Culture", the people who get "Cancelled" rarely actually suffer any meaningful consequences other than being unable to use Twitter anymore—so as long as you're genuinely committed to admitting/apologizing when you make a mistake and try to do better, nobody is going to hound you for it.

GcL

Many questions come to mind and I don't have the time to investigate: What constitutes a meaningful consequence? Is being cancelled limited to a certain demographic or social class? Does it happen to people with less visibility on social media?

Xirema

1. Their long-term financial success being harmed
2. Not really, and I would actually argue cancelling can be a lot worse when it's applied to people who are in more vulnerable/minority demographics
3. Far, far less often

As far as I know though, the only person whose cancellation has actually had a demonstrable impact on their well-being is literal-neo-nazi Milo Yiannopolis, after he decided to take two of the worst socio-political stances imaginable and smash them together to form his brand.

vicky_molokh

7:50 PM

It has one, just like many other languages. Somehow we are just fine saying 'of course we love it, it is our child after all' and Russians are just fine with the phrase 'If any face [i.e. person] wants to obtain a permission, it may file the appropriate request', but English likes to pretend it doesn't already have a real singular neuter like many other languages have.

On a related rant, I really wish English stopped pretending that it lacks a real singular second-person; the kludging existence of y'all and all'y'all is testament that demand exists for it.

GcL

@vicky_molokh For second person plural, "yins" is my least favorite.

@vicky_molokh I'm not sure I'd be well received referring to individuals as "it". I expect I'd receive feedback similar to "people aren't its".

vicky_molokh

@GcL Trick question: what gender is the word 'person' or 'people' in English if not neuter?

GcL

@vicky_molokh That's neutral, but it's not a pronoun.

"Person has been sending us data..." doesn't work as well as "They have been sending us data..."

V2Blast

@Xirema "What are those changes? Why are you so reluctant to spell them out?" - a late response, but it's because conversations in TL are (supposed to be) private. Of course, not everyone has respected that.

@GcL Heh, I was just about to say "yinz" because it's the one I know of (though it's not really in my own vocabulary) from going to school in Pittsburgh for a time.

vicky_molokh

@GcL But grammatically (AFAIK!) English is a language which aligns them.

Like most European languages.

GcL

8:02 PM

@V2Blast That's where it's from. My Allegheny can't help themselves.

V2Blast

haha

GcL

@vicky_molokh Sure? Technically? I don't know, actually. I just don't think it would be well received to try to use "person" in place of "they" for the singular case.

Carcer

9:24 PM

@GcL I actually know someone who genuinely asked people to use "it" when referring to them for a while

they gave that up pretty quickly because it's hideously uncomfortable for people to use.

vicky_molokh

9:38 PM

@Carcer I use it a lot in /me posts because of / ever since of being called a giant spider for the first time (for my philosophical stance in a discussion on the topic of life, sapience, and children). I don't think it's very ethical to tell other people how to call me though.

Shalvenay

10:36 PM

@vicky_molokh "call me whatever you want, as long as its not late for dinner"? I can definitely see the virtue in that

Shalvenay

10:58 PM

I personally am not overly bothered by the recent attempts at additional pronouns -- they still sound a little odd to my ears, but I guess that's just me not hearing them growing up :p most of it is is because I spent a lot of time RPing in a setting that had to add a pronoun to common-tongue because one of the species in that setting reproduced solely by budding, basically

so they had neither sex nor gender to worry about, and thus had to make up their own pronoun from when they first encountered the common tongue

user15026

@vicky_molokh I look at pronouns like I do names, if someone constantly called me by the wrong name, I'd get mad.

user15026

To me, pronouns represent a permanent, not-up-for-discussion, important part of what makes me me

user15026

so I do get frustrated when people do not make any attempt whatsoever to respect that.

Transcript for

Not a bar, but plays one on TV