Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

An Update to Our Community and an Apology

meta.stackexchange.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 424 posts

Re: An Update to Our Community and an Apology

#331

Post by goatinaboat »

forgotmypwd123 wrote: post #30

>Last week we made an important decision for our community. We removed a moderator for repeatedly violating our existing Code of Conduct and being unwilling to accept our CM’s repeated requests to change their behavior. Hang on a sec... >their behaviour. Wasn't monica fired for suggesting she used gender neutral pronouns generally? Because they said she should use the preferred gender specific pronoun when known? And…

we made an important decision for our community

It’s interesting that “we”, “our” and “community” in that quote all don’t mean what they seem. “We” are the farmers and “community” are the sheep, is what she means.

Re: An Update to Our Community and an Apology

#332

Post by solinent »

reccanti wrote: post #209

Some of the responses to this article showcase opinions that I see a lot on Hacker News and which make it really hard to be on this site as a trans person sometimes. There’s a lot of attention being paid to the people who resigned, or whose moderator status was revoked—and how accommodating they may or may not have been—but it seems like very little of them are focusing on the people who this preferred pronoun policy…

If non-binary people want a world which exclusively genders them (exclusive of man/woman) they have to pick their own word and stick to it. Adopting an existing gender-neutral pronoun doesn't work for anybody since they might mean cis-gendered people.

So I find it difficult referring to a non-binary person in singular or in particular. I usually just say "non-binary" or trans when it's important, typically only using their name, or not mentioning them at all for fear of misgendering them.

Re: An Update to Our Community and an Apology

#333

Post by switch007 »

henrikschroder wrote: post #249
asdjlkadsjklads wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes i consider myself lucky that i don't know anyone seeking special pronouns - because i imagine i would repeatedly use what i visually see, not what they request. These days i seek to find a gender neutral word i can get into the habit of using (it, or they, or something similar) , for fear of mis-nouning someone. Though, i also have the fear that if i use something neutral, when someone requested a specific…

Think of special pronouns as names. All the etiquette we have surrounding names apply equally to pronouns. It's not expected to remember someone's name if you've only met them briefly, but the more you've interacted with the person, the more embarrassing not remembering their name becomes. Mis-naming someone intentionally, repeatedly, is rude and quickly moves into harassment territory. But the flipside is also true,…

> And, finally the flipside, if someone has an onerous or complicated preferred pronoun, that person is rude and can't expect others to comply or remember.

But the person with the onerous/complicated pronoun gets to define how onerous or complicated it is, right?

However I don't imagine many people with non-standard pronouns think they're onerous nor complicated. Seems like you're setting up a straw...thing.

Re: An Update to Our Community and an Apology

#334

Post by dragonwriter »

yourbandsucks wrote: post #186
dragonwriter wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why the hell are pronouns a centerpiece of a CoC? Because aggressive misgendering including by refusal to use the subject’s preferred pronouns is currently a significant form of harassment which is actively promoted by certain groups. > Just be nice to people. The fact that people aggressively refuse to do that is exactly what pronoun policies are responding to.

I'm gonna wade in hip-deep here and suggest that, given the size of the transgender community, the heat and hype of these issues are completely unwarranted. No hate towards anyone and I'll call anyone whatever they want as far as pronouns. But why is this a top-3 culture war issue? For a bunch of combatants who are overwhelmingly not trans and shouldn't really care? We need to think of a way to rise above without thr…

> But why is this a top-3 culture war issue?

It's not. Without suggesting these are the top 3, Abortion, gun control, and immigration are, just to pick 3 obvious ones, a far more central culture war issues than pronouns. (If you aggregated “LGBT rights” as a whole, you might get into the neighborhood of a top-3 issue.)

> For a bunch of combatants who are overwhelmingly not trans and shouldn't really care?

Unless, of course, you are a combatant on the other side, I can't imagine why you'd think that not-trans people shouldn't really care.

> We need to think of a way to rise above without throwing anyone under the bus.

How isn't having the decency to respect people's preferences in the pronouns you use to refer to them (and, though it's a separate but often concurrent issue, the gender you ascribe to them) exactly that?

Re: An Update to Our Community and an Apology

#335

Post by dragonwriter »

flippinburgers wrote: post #192
yourbandsucks wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm gonna wade in hip-deep here and suggest that, given the size of the transgender community, the heat and hype of these issues are completely unwarranted. No hate towards anyone and I'll call anyone whatever they want as far as pronouns. But why is this a top-3 culture war issue? For a bunch of combatants who are overwhelmingly not trans and shouldn't really care? We need to think of a way to rise above without thr…

Honestly it is very strange to me that this is being downvoted. The level of outrage that I see is not at all proportional to the number of people affected. This is a very strange phenomenon. I seriously feel that the most heated carriers of torches in this scenario are people who gravitate towards "power play" moments and have happily found a niche where they can be ruthless in their assault.

> The level of outrage that I see is not at all proportional to the number of people affected

If you insist on calling a transman “she” because of his genitals at birth, then (aside from how to affects me because I have trans people I care about, which is, to be sure, the more important impact on me), it also means when you call me “he” it only coincidentally aligns with my preference rather than respecting it. Just because I only can see your disrespect when it's directed at someone whose pronouns don't conform to your preference for them doesn't mean that it's only present there, just that it is masked by circumstance elsewhere.

> I seriously feel that the most heated carriers of torches in this scenario are people who gravitate towards "power play" moments and have happily found a niche where they can be ruthless in their assault.

And I seriously feel that the people with the most intense need to distract from the issue with speculation about why other people might express concern for the issue do so because they have a sode, can't defend it, and so choose instead to distract from opposition to it with irrelevancies.

Re: An Update to Our Community and an Apology

#336

Post by mantap »

dehrmann wrote: post #178
djsumdog wrote: post #16

-542 before it was locked. That's incredible. People are really really afraid to talk about this particular topic (which they don't mention in the statement), because this type of call-out to be banned happens a lot. The book "The Coddling of the American Mind" is an amazing book that documents how this is happening in academia, and it's happening on the software world too. Most people in our industry, in the US, EU…

> the majority of people just want to live and be kind to each other Once you realize that people's politics reflect their values and the problems they see in their world (and which side they've bought into), it becomes a lot harder to stigmatize the other side...or even take a side.

Conversely when both left and right are pushed towards extremes (compare this story to Trump), it becomes hard not to stigmatise both.

Re: An Update to Our Community and an Apology

#337

Post by claudiawerner »

atq2119 wrote: post #322
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So let me get this straight: - You meet Gabrielle, and call her Gabbi. - She says "I don't like that nickname, could you use Bree?" - You say, "No, I'm going to call you Gabbi, because you should not expect society to shape itself around coddling your beliefs, GABBI." Honestly, you probably wouldn't do that, right? I mean, maybe you would, but it'd... kind of make you a jerk. It would be a stupid, stupid hill to die…

Pronouns are different from names because there is a very strong correlation between pronouns and certain physical aspects of people.[0] What is being asked of people in the gendering debate is to go against this correlation sometimes. Our minds are built on pattern matching and working with such correlations, so it really shouldn't be a surprise that asking people to go against it is going to tick some of them off:…

In civil society we forgo our intuitions all the time - our moral intuitions are frequently superseded by law, our intuitions about what atoms look like are superseded by a university Physics course, etc. - but your response I see repeatedly, you don't say we should give into intuition, you say that some people would be "ticked off" by being asked to do something against intuition.

Part of the movement to get people to use the correct pronouns to refer to someone is really just the movement against the epistemic authority of some forms of intuition.

As an aside, in Western society names are generally not independent of physical attributes, and most names are gendered as well. I know very few people with unisex names.

Re: An Update to Our Community and an Apology

#338

Post by Flow »

lesstenseflow wrote: post #255

Reading some of Monica’s commentary on this, it pains me to conclude that she doesn’t know just how bad the situation is. She appears to have approached the issue in question respectfully and highlighted her concerns diplomatically, and she believes there must be a “big misunderstanding” because of the extreme response with which she was met. Surely all parties are interested in reaching an outcome everyone can live…

I just deleted mine. Then I discovered on that delete page that you have to separately delete the accounts you might have on other exchanges. This is bad UX.

I searched the net for a bit and it seems the way to do it is via:

- https://stackoverflow.com/contact

- Select Other in the drop-down list,

- Then you enter a message that you want them to do delete your accounts for you.

Re: An Update to Our Community and an Apology

#339

Post by 5555624 »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #202
djsumdog wrote: post #16

-542 before it was locked. That's incredible. People are really really afraid to talk about this particular topic (which they don't mention in the statement), because this type of call-out to be banned happens a lot. The book "The Coddling of the American Mind" is an amazing book that documents how this is happening in academia, and it's happening on the software world too. Most people in our industry, in the US, EU…

Three other takeaways from Coddling: 1) Context and intent matter 2) It's better not to assume the worst (of the other person's intent) 3) Just because something is uncomfortable or offensive does not categorically make it painful. -- For those who can't be bothered with the whole book the authors did an article for The Atlantic that was so well received they did the book.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-cod...

Re: An Update to Our Community and an Apology

#340

Post by MauranKilom »

P_I_Staker wrote: post #156
fencepost wrote: post #128

This really seems like a "respect mah authoritah!" situation followed by "oh crap it's blowing up, apply more power! This will not be re-litigated." Looking from the outside as someone who's mostly ignored SE for the last few years, this feels to me like something personal combined with making an opportunity. I can't help but feel that the current "Director of Community" at the core of this will be moving to a differ…

This is what really irritates me about moderating in general. The whole thing is an exercise in power tripping. Considering whether a decision was misguided is forbidden. You must always be dictator. Mistakes are never made.

There is plenty of questioning moderator decisions on the stackoverflow meta, in civil ways where both sides can explain their actions and perspectives. Mistakes are sometimes made and subsequently corrected given the background and opportunity to recognize them.
Post reply on HN