@Kilisi it's not 1994 any more.. the whole "it's just the internet" as if it has no ramifications once you sign off is no longer true (if it ever really was) stuff said/written on the internet can have very real ramifications on people's lives, reputations and careers
@motosubatsu so best they keep their drama off it?
all this gender stuff is just dramatising... what realistically isn't very dramatic, it's just the internet, if I'm not prepared to take a bashing because I'm a straight male, then I shouldn't make a big deal about being a straight male
in fact I'm all sorts of strange, I'm a straight male, married and faithful, living with and looking after my own kids
No one's really bashing you for being male. That's not how things are. It's just a matter of giving people respect in how they see themselves. Like I said in the Meta comments a while ago, in a world of 0s and 1s, being a NULL shouldn't break the system. You just need to respect and deal with those NULLs when you come across them. In the vast majority of your time here, you don't need to do anything different to how you've posted in the past.
Simply speaking, if someone requests that you address them in terms that aren't "he/she", then just respect that and call them what they want to be called. Or walk away from the question/post. That's all this is. The only dramatisation here is people not getting this and creating drama for the sake of drama.
It's dramatic because of the wider situation. There's been a lot of words and arguments surrounding what's at heart a small amendment to the CoC. People are feeling dictated to, and they're feeling marginalised because they feel as though a minority group is claiming control.
When all they're doing is asking for a little respect in response to them taking a huge leap in confidence in declaring their gender identity. It might not seem important to many people, but to them it's important. Just as important as a woman not being called a man, or a man being called a woman.
It's also getting complex because people call names such "identity" "gender", "freedom", "respect" etc. that everybody have different views of, and expect to be universal. So the conflicting societal views are clashing
CoC changes touch that, what are our expectation about society
When in the actuality, people have pointed out less than 1% of comment contain content susceptible to be impacted
end of the day, it's just internet, and it's my internet, I pay for this connection, unlikely to pay to have a persistent unpleasant experience in my spare time.... unsure why others are ok with that
@Kilisi I think part of this might be generational, but its still unclear to me. Until this mess I had no issue switching off "real life" versus "virtual life". What I have witnessed in this event is that "virtual life" reached out and grabbed some people I don't want to see hurt.
@Snow except that's not what happened. They announced a policy that seemed to go beyond "don't call people what they don't want to be called" (which we all agree with) to "you must take positive action to inject people's pronouns into discourse". They also initially said that you could not disengage. I specifically asked if the gender-neutral writing that I already do was ok; SE wouldn't answer that and then fired me.
Now the CoC allows both gender-neutral language and disengaging from unpleasant conversations, but the FAQ undermines it and my continued status as "fired and maligned by corporate represenatives" calls their intentions into question.
So, SE set a shitstorm in motion, and in the process harmed lots of people, including the queer people they were supposed to be supporting. It's disgusting.
@MonicaCellio I think what Snow was specifically talking about the current iteration of the policy. As you note, the history and background of the wording and specifics has been complicated and is, in fact, still evolving (see the updated FAQ being promised as you note).
But yeah I think one thing that almost everyone can agree on is that SE made a huge mistake when they tied the drama surrounding you being fired to the new policy. It set everyone up for failure.
@MonicaCellio I read this as "don't overtly use grammar as a way of avoiding using someone's declared pronoun". I don't recall seeing a wording where declared pronouns were forced in all circumstances. I admit, however, that there are litterally weeks of TL transcript on this subject.
@Snow it was a little unclear, which is why I asked for clarification. Some other mods (you know the ones) insisted that it would not be ok. Others agreed that it was unclear. Sara never answered. This was all on Sep 18. The TL transcript is impossible to stay on top of, and I imagine it's been even worse the last few weeks.
@Rubiksmoose oh, ok. @Snow, if you were talking about the final form, I'm sorry for misunderstanding you.
SE has made a royal mess of this, intertwining many threads. It's hard to track.
But fundamentally, I don't think the current mess is about people wanting to misgender people (trans or otherwise). Nobody ever suggested that that was ok. The issues arose in implementation, SE's poor communication, SE's capricious actions and doubling down on mistakes, and a lot of unclarity and contradictions in what they did finally publish. Sigh.
From the drafts that I saw, the language was referring to the use of pronouns where you'd normally use one (and in many conversations, you don't use pronouns at all). The keystone is not overtly avoiding them as doing this implies that you're (the writer, not you) don't wish to acknowledge their gender identity.
@Snow I assume that by the time it made it into the draft that mods were able to comment on, that was the case. I was gone by then, so I can only comment on what was originally shared with us.
@Snow ah, so "finalizing it this week" (approximately what David said) was optimistic. Well, I look forward to seeing it.
@MonicaCellio It pays to be very clear here: some people definitely want to be able to misgender people. I'm sure you've been around enough recently to see the disgusting comments/answers (and from what you've said messages being sent directly to you). And that definitely is causing some fraction of the mess.
@Rubiksmoose oh yeah, the trolling now, I agree. I meant that in the discussions I was part of, nobody thought using wrong pronouns was ever ok. The issue was how far we had to go to inject pronouns where they otherwise wouldn't belong.
So I think people are crossing wires. I think and everyone can correct me if I'm wrong, Monica is more complaining about the way she perceived the policy when she was kicked out. A lot of us are responding it seems with the current iteration.
@Rubiksmoose This is correct, I feel. And Monica's reinstatement rests on the acceptance of the current meaning and intent, not a previous unratified one. I beleive. No moderators have an inside track on Monica's personal reinstatement path.
@MisterPositive everyone who is angry is throwing the spears. "Spear catcher", is just an old turn of a phrase that means that the job is metaphorically as desirable as trying to catch spears that are being thrown. Or, to put it simply, you get to deal with all the anger out there while SE proper doesn't have to take the heat
@Snow Which would be fine, except "walking away" or "disengaging" is explicitly called out in the FAQ as not-allowed.
And even then I might not worry too much about how it's going to be enforced and adjudicated, if it weren't for what happened and is still happening to @MonicaCellio.
@RichardU The updated policy was created to fill a specific, perceived issue in enforcement of Be Nice. Just because one group is getting attention now doesn't mean that any other group is being ignored. And there's no guarantee that each marginalised group would benefit from the same solution as this.
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@RichardU In short, that shouldn't be happening and I know any mod would take action against it if notified. And if they don't, a CM will.
@Snow "Explicitly avoiding using someone’s pronouns because you are uncomfortable is a way of refusing to recognize their identity and is a violation of the Code of Conduct."
@Kaz That's not the same as walking away, that's referring to avoiding pronouns . From the actual CoC: "Avoid sarcasm and be careful with jokes — tone is hard to decipher online. Prefer gender-neutral language when uncertain. If a situation makes it hard to be friendly, stop participating and move on. "
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There's nothing at all stopping anyone from pressing Alt-L and walking away from any conversation at any point.
@RichardU The poor treatment of autistic people doesn't call for the continued poor treatment of trans people. It calls for a defense of autistic people as well.
Telling people "I'm not going to call you that" is avoiding using someone pronoun. Using repeated use of someone's screen name where you'd normally use "he/she" for someone else is avoiding using a pronoun. It's that avoidance that's against the CoC.
@Snow Except (and admittedly I wasn't there and even the people who were seem to have different interpretations of what happened), that seemed to be the thrust of @MonicaCellio's questions and look what happened there.
@Snow I don't particularly trust whatever they say now. Until they back it up with some kind of actual action, my baseline assumption is that they're saying what they think they need to say to mitigate this disaster, while their underlying interpretations and motivations remain entirely unchanged.
@AGirlHasNoName I'm happy somebody can say, what I was trying to in a much better way :)
@Kaz From what I've seen personally from the interaction I've had with company employees, it seems SE genuinely cares for trans/NB people and is actively trying with earnest good-intentions to do best by them. It's clear they've made missteps but I really think they are committed to finding the best solution here.
@RichardU That is your call, you have the choice, but if you purposefully call someone she when they prefer he your violating the CoC and are not being a nice person. Just follow what I outlined above and forget about it.
@RichardU Again, that is your call. You account deletion is scheduled, so it will happen eventually, unless you cancel it. I cannot speed it up.
@RichardU If you want to discuss further, I am here for a few more hours, then I am off on vacation and unplugged for a week or so.
@MonicaCellio I'm trying to get this clarified in the newer, fresher CoC FAQ : If someone uses a nonstandard pronoun, do I have to work that into posts in cases where I wouldn't normally use "he" or "she" or can I write normally and only use nonstandard pronouns only in places where I'd normally use "he" or "she"?
If I just want to write about kashrut or documenting an API or binary-star systems, I shouldn't need to use gender.
@Snow yes, we agree. The folks in charge at SE seem conflicted. I hope they clarify, since the CoC says one thing and their FAQ says another (though I know they're going to edit the latter).
Exactly. It's natural usage. And most of the time we don't use gender pronouns in posts. It's only rarely that we do because we normally write for the wider group of OP/answers/commenters in a question or chatroom setting.
@MonicaCellio I wrote something the other day with "they" as a pronoun and when I edited it to be a proper noun, thought of you (because it was unclear in that context what I was referring to with "they")
I write around that kind of ambiguity. "They" is number-ambiguous and sometimes that really, really affects comprehension. Fortunately, there are many other ways to communicate the same content, and I naturally reach for them.
Needing a singular pronoun on SE is rare. Needing a singular pronoun that is neither "you" nor "I" is even more rare.
Especially if you don't use chat much, which I don't (in part because it's not very visually accessible).
Enderland's face is especially easy to see. Even I can recognize that one at 16x16px or whatever the chat icons are. Snow, on the other hand, is "red smudge to the right of something blue or gray". :-)
@MonicaCellio I'm signing off for the weekend. Just wanted to wish you a good weekend. The newer FAQ has more sense to the content, and more natural, relatable wording.
It's far too late. But at least it will be better.
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