by scardine on 10/14/19, 7:00 PM with 101 comments
by ksec on 10/14/19, 7:35 PM
I was very late to the whole StackOverflow Saga, and didn't spend much time reading through all of its causes and comments at the time it happen.
And when I did, the thing that struck me most and has been in many other places including HN ( Sometimes ) is the use of English presumes others are Americans, especially in technology sector. This completely ignores people all over the world using English to communicates. And this is not about cultures or values, but what is a pronoun? How do we use the correct "pronoun", how do we tell which one to use. I suspect many native English user will have cognitive load and may decide it is not worth the hassle and walk away.
What about those that uses English as 2nd or even 3rd language.
I remember a story my British Colleague once told me, our German Colleague is so good with his English, so precise that sometimes it is borderline rude if you didn't know he was German. i.e The tone is wrong, but Germany tends to be very explicit about things in their culture, not the same could be said about the Brits.
It is important to understand the meaning, and messages that is trying to come across behind its written or verbal form, and often not literally what it meant.
If we have to nitpick every single word, phase or grammatical mistake as well as whatever political issues it is with the usage of the word, we will very quickly end up with people not communicating to you ( or in this case Stack overflow ) in the fear of constantly being bashed and disrupted.
by RankingMember on 10/14/19, 7:17 PM
I find myself starting to subconsciously just use "you" or "them" and avoid any specific gendering altogether- in this day and age it just seems the least tiring route to go.
by tharne on 10/14/19, 7:21 PM
by Excel_Wizard on 10/14/19, 8:09 PM
I feel like the idea of choosing your own pronoun is fine and happy within an insular LGBTQ+ forum or venue. When it tries to take over the language everyone else uses, it's gonna do more harm than good. People that push it just seem to be selfish to me.
by frittig on 10/15/19, 1:47 PM
This may be easier to understand by using a comparison. When I talk about the Muslim prophet I say Muhammad. However, many Muslims would say Muhammad pbuh (peace be upon him). This isn't that problematic, but let's say they the term was Muhammad ttp (the true prophet). Now I as a non Muslim believer would never use ttp because that would be insulting for whoever I believe in. If SE required that whenever I mention Muhammad that I append ttp, I would refuse as it would be extremely offensive to me.
Similarly by referring to a person with XX chromosomes as she, is offensive to people who believe that genders cannot change. A reasonable compromise would be to let whoever is righting chose what they want, or even allow gender neutral pronouns. But what SE chose to do was to say that people who believe that XY is a guy are wrong and deserve no respect for their beliefs.
by hackerbabz on 10/14/19, 7:18 PM
I write a question referring only to myself “How do I...” Or I write an answer with “you”, or I reference another poster by name.
I don’t quite understand why the admins thought this was a good use of energy, but I am also all for inclusivity. If I find the need for a pronoun, I will use “they” and not be bothered by it.
by hirundo on 10/14/19, 11:19 PM
Yes, if those are stated by the individual."
Therefore if someone says their pronouns are all Apache Attack Helicopter (and someone will), and you are aware of it, you are obligated to say things like "I think Apache Attack Helicopter made a good point". If I'm familiar with it, yet choose to say "I think they made a good point", I would have violated the code of conduct.
That leads me to assume that I am unwelcome on this site and to look down the FAQ for the answer to the question, how do I delete my account?
P.S. It's not in this FAQ, but https://stackoverflow.com/help/deleting-account.
by folkhack on 10/14/19, 7:28 PM
I mean - it's a clear-enough defined problem to solve with software and I've found that if you mess up a gender pronoun on accident people sometimes get deeply offended. I've gone 100% to the "they/them/you/their user name/etc." route because I just don't want to step on toes.
I miss the days when everyone was just a silly textual username that didn't have a gender, age, religion, race, etc. I've gone years communicating with people without actually knowing their gender.
by amanzi on 10/14/19, 11:25 PM
by dvfjsdhgfv on 10/15/19, 5:28 AM
> Is using someone's personal pronoun really "showing respect" if you get banned otherwise?
by tzs on 10/15/19, 12:56 AM
My proposal would be:
1. "he" becomes gender neutral, and always refers to the first person in the sentence.
2. "she" becomes gender neutral, and always refers to the second person in the sentence. You can think if it as standing for "second he".
3. "tehe" is a gender neutral pronoun that always refers to the third person in the sentence. Think of it is standing for "tertiary he".
4. "quhe", "pehe", "hehe" are the 4th, 5th, and 6th persons ("quad he", "penta he" and "hex he"). If your sentence has more than six persons, rewrite the damn thing.
For example, in the sentence "Alice, Bob, and Carol took his car, she drove, and tehe paid for the gas", they took Alice's car, Bob drove, and Carol paid for the gas.
If they took Bob's car, Carol drove, and Alice paid, that would be "Alice, Bob, and Carol took her car, tehe drove, and he paid for the gas".
by gwbas1c on 10/14/19, 7:34 PM
by Kye on 10/14/19, 10:40 PM
Even most of the people screaming bloody murder in here say they're okay with they/them. I'm not sure who SE consulted on Q9, but xey are not representative of any neopronoun user I've met. They recognize it's a lot of extra mental load beyond the much more common they/they/their and make a small accommodation for people who struggle with it.
I don't see any other issues on a skim, but that seems to be what's setting people off anyway so maybe that is it.
by luord on 10/15/19, 3:14 PM
Regardless, this policy means that I'll be contributing even less frequently than I already do and, if/when that happens, I'll just keep using the second person.
If I somehow slip, use the third person and someone ends up saying anything about "misgendering", I'll just delete the answer/comment and spend my time better doing something else.
by automathematics on 10/14/19, 8:02 PM
If you're getting angry that you (might) upset someone else you need to take a hard look in the mirror. Not only because you're immediately acting like their feelings don't matter because you didn't MEAN to offend them. But also, why don't you have a hobby? If you do, apologize to the person you upset and move on and reclaim that time to do something productive.
by kelnos on 10/14/19, 7:40 PM
Essentially it boils down to: if you know someone's preferred pronouns, use them. If not, use gender-neutral pronouns. They even specifically point out that there's no requirement to actively seek out someone's pronouns if you don't know; just use something gender-neutral and move on.
I do see some issues, like: what if someone makes up a pronoun in bad faith, with the intention to troll people? There's some discussion around that in the comments, but the current policy seems to be "go along with it, but raise the issue with mods and they'll look into it", which is... not really a satisfying answer at all? And what if someone puts down a pronoun in good faith that you're simply unfamiliar with? Is it really reasonable to expect that answering a SE question will sometimes require googling someone's stated pronoun, followed by a value judgment to guess if they're trolling or not?
I come to SE (well, mostly SO) for answers to technical questions. For the vast majority of them, gender has nothing to do with the question or answer. Someone in the comments links to a question where someone put their pronoun preference at the bottom of their question, followed by an edit war removing and re-adding it[0], plus there's a meta discussion of the question[1]. Pronoun discussion in a technical question that doesn't even have to do with people is just noise, plain and simple. But it seems the consensus among community managers is edging toward leaving the pronoun notification in there, even though their FAQ explicitly states that the right place for a pronoun preference is in the About Me section of the user profile. This is getting to be a bit much.
[0] https://stackoverflow.com/posts/58336846/revisions
[1] https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/390301/would-a-note...
by gwbas1c on 10/14/19, 7:29 PM
Sometimes I wonder if we should all adopt thick accents so we can just use 'e (instead of he or she); hm (instead of her or him); and ha (instead of his or hers).
(Please laugh)
by progfix on 10/14/19, 7:41 PM
by atonse on 10/14/19, 7:29 PM
The odd thing here is that in most cases, rules regarding speech revolve around what _not_ to say. (cursing, hate speech, attacks, etc).
But in this case, these kinds of things feel like they belong more as a list of good manners. But in this case, you aren't being told "this is what we feel are good manners", but you're forced to say certain things, but those rules can be all over the place (physically, on different pages, and complexity-wise). So now are people supposed to check each profile before responding? What's wrong with just saying s/he, or OP, or the various internet-isms? Do they cause so much harm? They are totally harmless and neutral, and not offensive. Or are they offensive now?
Again, it's one thing if it was a guideline (like when we talk about manners), but this seems like users are being forced to say certain words (compelled speech), knowing which words to say requires them to do additional research, and that research usually has nothing to do with the content of the actual post.
by ladysman217 on 10/14/19, 7:43 PM
by ykevinator on 10/14/19, 7:57 PM
by CM30 on 10/14/19, 7:12 PM
Hopefully they'll look at this, see the amount of dislikes it's getting and change course again/revert this mess to the way it was before.
by axaxs on 10/14/19, 8:50 PM
by fwip on 10/14/19, 7:15 PM