@Fabby Oh so you are an "It" after all. I saw that movie... kinda scary clown right?

You know Nautilus is submarine from nove Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Now I'm loading it with ttlus (Twenty Thousand Loops Under Startup): askubuntu.com/questions/1180043/… hehe

@WinEunuuchs2Unix Upgoated.

@WinEunuuchs2Unix Is your answer still there?

Can this please be reopened? OP has clarified the OS is 19.04 and not 19.10.

quite long-lived spam

@DKBose Is it potentially answerable with the information that has been given so far?

@EliahKagan Deleted.

@EliahKagan As written, it seems to me that it could be closed as unclear or as a bug (which would be with the same close reason it's currently closed as), regardless of what Ubuntu release is being used.

@EliahKagan the poster is quite fond of Wayland!

@DKBose Shog9 deleted it after 4 downvotes. Perhaps they didn't like the fact I called these He/She/They/It pronouns being "trendy" and "politically correct":

@WinEunuuchs2Unix yes, there was an objection to the use of Orwellian as well :(

I think people call their computers "he" because their L1 is a gendered language

I routinely edit that type of thing

by a gendered language I mean one where every noun has a gender. For example, French, German, Spanish

This whole thing has me very confused. One of the earliest lessons I was taught (or learned) was to keep personal information of any kind off of the internet.

I also think it reflects sexism that ships, cars and airplanes have traditionally been called "she" while humans, regardless of their gender, have been referred to in general as "he". I mean the idea that male=subject female=object

According to the new CoC though, If I were to change the person's laptop from a he to a she or an it (gender neutral) then it would be a violation.

The person has stated wishes (perhaps english is second language though) that the laptop is a male.

The part I don't like about the CoC promoters is if you don't accept the fact one person's laptop is a he and another person's laptop is an it then the gender-thought-police might overreact and you are branded a bigot or hostile. The best course of action in this new age is to totally ignore all genders...

@Zanna I wouldn't call it "sexism" which I view as mean spirited. I would call it "traditionalism" which a person has been conditioned since birth. Look at the french language where every thing is prefaced with "le" or "la" one being male and the other being female. Tradition is embedded into the language and you not everyone who speaks french is being mean spirited.

You are correct though that females were at one point the property of males in Western Culture and still are in places like KSA.

Personally I always call an object an "it" never a "he" or "she".

@WinEunuuchs2Unix um, no, that would not be a violation

Where I live (Edmonton) five women started the movement of Universal Female Suffrage and won women the right to vote. So in our schools they teach such things.

@Zanna I should not have said "would be a violation" I should have said "could be a violation". If people have a new right to demand they are given a gender, they might also have a right to demand their property be given a gender.

I read a few weeks ago there are now 100 genders defined...

I read a few days ago primary schol girls in England (aged 4 to 11) are too embarrassed to use the gender-inclusive toilets at school because boys tease them.

@WinEunuuchs2Unix so, it was a good thing that the tradition of only allowing (white, property owning) men to vote was changed, no?

@Zanna It has helped reshaped our economy for sure; female assets and spending for example. Women can escape abusive relationships and more often than not they do.But you missed my point as it is not just "white males" in the past but "arab males" in the past and the PRESENT that own females. Rather than attacking white males today for actions of white males in the past, focus should be on MSB (crown prince) of KSA (saudi arabia) for males OWNING females TODAY.

And I watched a clip of a CNN Townhall that had a nine-year old kid who transitioned. The first half of The Second Coming came to mind.

Greta Thunberg: If you use that logic, I am also dumping a lot of trash in the ocean

She is becoming mainstream news lately...

Talking about climate change, people should agree to stop all non-discretionary events: Olympics, World Cups, Formula 1, 2, etc. Golf courses, racing courses and stadia should be converted to Miyawaki forests.

@DKBose Please add military to the list. I've mentally calculated their carbon foot print and it is HUGE.

But if you take it too far we'll be powering off all computers and carrying water and chopping wood all day long.

I mean, while I am in solidarity with the women and allies fighting for rights in Saudi Arabia, and if they ask for my help I'll try to give it to them, my focus should probably be on the things that could change for the better around me, not on some "worse" elsewhere

@WinEunuuchs2Unix Modern problems require modern solution.

Credits:View up and down votes, for everybody - Stack Apps

@Zanna Yes you need to pick your battles as the old adage says. Besides, the list of people who could change KSA you can probably count on one hand.

@Kulfy The stack exchange API is quite powerful with scripts like that. Thanks.

Coming back to the CoC, I wonder if it wouldn't be just as effective to deal with "offenders" on a case-by-case basis discreetly?

@DKBose It's complicated. We are talking about the gender of a screen name or avatar. In the real world the avatar's owner may want to be identified as male but in the artificial reality world of Stack Exchange they may want their male avatar identified as female. In the real world they may not be offended but in this artificial reality world they may feign indignation and dramatize / exaggerate so-called offenders as biggots or being hostile. I wouldn't want to moderate artificial reality.

@WinEunuuchs2Unix In that case, circling back, I'd say that avoiding mentioning one's gender is the safest route rather than figuring out how to control others. Even if the battle is won in SE, what about other environments.

For me Stack Exchange has always been right or wrong things to say to computers. Type "X" and "Y" appears as output. If you don't error message "Z" appears. Now they are evolving to legislate what to say to Avatars. To Avatar "X" you must always say "Y" unless avatar "X" wants you to say "Z". It's a complication I don't need in my computing life. I can't turn of Stack Exchange like I can turn off TV or change the channel if I don't like a show.

It's troubling that 73 mods have quit or gone on strike in Stack Exchange over artificial reality issues.

Agreed. I've tried hard to understand why your or my avatar, as you call it, has anything to do with seeking or giving support.

Certain information maybe shared with one's doctor, analyst, lawyer, etc but not elsewhere.

Well my screen name is obviously male. My avatar is planet earth so it is traditionally labeled "she" (mother earth) but in politically correct terms might be the gender "us". I'm not sure if "us" is one of the 100 new genders though.

Hey, last I heard Facebook listed less than 70.

@DKBose I committed Facebook suicide about 10 years ago so I don't know. It is the British Broadcasting Channel promoting the use of 100 genders: rt.com/op-ed/468726-genders-bbc-uk-school (I didn't read the article only the headline)

Well, things are fluid!

More like a hurricane of fluid

Please keep in mind the BBC is government owned and some content might be Orwellian state propaganda and not necessarily a reflection of the majority of Brits.

The BBC is not government owned

It is not a state company

Oh, I lost respect for the BBC years ago. They may not be owned by the the government but they're certainly no longer unbiased.

@DKBose to try to give you an idea what the intention is, as I see it, I'll share with you that I have been called "sir" on SE several times. I've also been referred to a few times as "he" when people are talking about me in comments, like "he edited the post".

Most people use pronouns at some point when talking about, for example, the OP of a question. In general I try to avoid doing so and if I need to I use "they" rather than assuming that someone is he or she. I know that it might be hurtful to do that because it feels a bit uncomfortable for me to be referred to as "he", but I'm only going on my own experience

So it's not about sharing your personal information, just about not being called something you are not

If you don't share that you aren't a "he", you'll get called "he"

@Zanna then the question arises as to what the intent was. Was someone trying to wind you up or just ignorant or inconsiderate? While going through the MSE posts, a female was "outed" as such by someone who remembered her posts from another SE site.

Or, if you have a name that is feminine in English, you'll get called "she", like Andrea Lazzarotto has complained of

@DKBose they just assumed I was a he because most SE users go by "he", they are dudes, isn't it. Not so many women here

They certainly intended no offence at all

Re. the need to use pronouns, it could happen in the comments between two or more commenters trying to help the OP. Again, is the intent malicious? I readily agree that the person involved wouldn't like being misgendered. But the CoC seems to come across quite harshly, IMO.

I'm cisgender, I never get misread as a man offline, so getting misgendered is not a big deal for me

But for some people it's more hurtful

As far as the word "dude" goes I hate when people call me that because I associate the word with drug users. So I guess we can all get offended by what people call us.

@DKBose no, I'm sure there's no malice intended by people getting someone's gender wrong in comments. Gender is not a salient topic on most SE sites, it's just not in people's minds. They're just making assumptions without thinking about it and that's not a big deal

@Zanna The "more hurtful" part is the issue. There's one school of thought about victimhood being parlayed for some advantage not by the victim but by others who want to control the victim. As in "I'm on your side", support me in my activities. The true friend of victims would try to get them out of that mindset rather than keep them in that victim status.

I didn't think it came off harshly, but I did upvote an answer to Glorfindel's question about why the announcement was poorly received, which suggested that the new CoC felt like it was assuming that people in general have ill intent. I've no idea how the whole thing should be handled, but perhaps people felt they were being accused in advance, provoking this horrible backlash

@DKBose I don't understand you

I think DK Bose is the theory of how homeless shelters profit off the homeless and advertise their plight but don't want the homeless to have homes because the shelters would be out of business?.

@Zanna, I've been following politics both here and in the US. IMO, keeping people thinking they're vulnerable is key to controlling them. Once they can stand on their own feet, they can think and act for themselves.

But, what does that have to with not misgendering people by using the right pronoun for them when you would normally use a pronoun for them?

@Zanna that's the crux of the SE CoC issue. IMO, people are being encouraged to proclaim their gender when it's quite unnecessary to the core function of SE (until recently) of asking for and providing technical support.

I don't think people are being encouraged to proclaim their gender

I added a pronoun note to my profile after being misgendered enough times that it stopped being funny

@Zanna but wasn't that before the whole multiple gender business came to the fore?

Again, gender has nothing to do with tech support, sure, but being assumed to be male when giving or seeking tech support is a thing

@DKBose sorry, again I didn't get you

In SE I view avatars as nouns and not pronouns. I would say most mods and users don't care about pronoun of avatar. What the avatar writes; how accurate, how interesting and how helpful are more important to most people I think. From what I can see the pronoun issue is just a mechanism to make 73 mods quit or go on strike without improving SE for most people. Of course a minority of political activists will be dancing with glee... but not me.

@Zanna changing the way people talk can come from within or be compelled. It's the latter that's the sticking point for many for a variety of reasons. The distinction between M/F genders is being blurred on the one hand (common toilets) and emphasized on the other by innumerable other genders (and gender fluidity). The whole people being assumed to be male is changing.

I've been pretty scrupulous in avoiding gender-specific pronouns, as far as I can recall. But keeping in mind the diversity of participants here, the m/f misgendering is bound to continue and, I would hope that people understand that and not draft draconian rules to "fix" the issue.

I wonder how this trend will effect religion? For example the Lord's prayer "Our father whom art in heaven" be legislated to "Our single parent who art in heaven"? In Canada for example they floated the idea of changing the national anthem lyrics "In all thy sons command" cnn.com/2018/02/01/americas/…

@DKBose they have said that making mistakes because you forgot, didn't know etc is not an issue. SE is moderated by humans who can tell whether someone is being a jerk or not, I think...

... but I do feel that they might better have approached it by trying to educate us in some way other than making a rule?

Many people seem to be confused

Having spent about 2 years intensively debating gender issues in feminism on Twitter, I made terrible errors talking to people outside that bubble about it

I assumed so much knowledge and awareness

And people were like whaaa?

Now we have this backlash and people using the unmarked masculine (calling everyone he because he is the proper pronoun for any human) in the comments, we have upvoted posts saying what amounts to "trans people are not real"

That doesn't fill me with confidence at all

Anyway, good night from here

@Zanna I'll read the CoC again tomorrow. But when I read it yesterday, I didn't have a good feeling. G'night from me as well.

It will be interesting to see if this ends up in Human Resources department in work places. For example when addressing a group of women employees will say "Are you girls going to ___?" and when addressing mixed gender group employees will say "Are you guys going to ___?". Can you see your HR passing a new rule where you have to always say "Are you people going to ___?" else face verbal warning, then written warnings and finally dismissal from work?

@WinEunuuchs2Unix you are making a good point there that change in culture doesn't come from rules and laws

At least, not directly or quickly. Sometimes they can be a good start

Like the Rooney Rule

@Zanna Which goes to show how new SE rules will not substantially change people here. It is only changing SE with 73 mods quitting or going on strike. On the surface the CoC seems to have back-fired.

Firing a couple of SE employees for mismanagement and hurting the corporation's image might be the best way out. I kind of agree with whomever said gender disputes should be dealt with on a case by case (individual by individual) basis instead of enshrined into 100-gender law which is hard to moderate.

For example allow Andrea to change his screen name to one that doesn't suggest he is a she is probably something within SE's power.

I just checked my own profile. SE hasn't created a field "Preferred Pronoun" yet. They can put their money where their mouth is and pay some programmers to do this. At even greater expense whenever pining someone or posting answer where SE now says "X is a new user please be kind" they can say "X prefers to be called a S/He/They". OTOH I do not wish to be called a pronoun so would need an opt out option on the proposed preferred pronoun field. sigh so complicated...