An Update to Our Community and an Apology • Hacker News Board

Re: An Update to Our Community and an Apology

#291

Post by DanBC » Sun, Oct 06, 2019, 5:12 AM UTC

baggy_trough wrote: post #273

humanrebar wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...if someone has an onerous or complicated preferred pronoun, that person is rude and can't expect others to comply or remember. To the extent that there is any controversy here, it's in this guideline. I'd just soften 'rude' to unreasonable. 1. I have not seen any code of conduct make room for this scenario. It's taken as a given that pronoun preferences are reasonable. 2. Some people think singular 'they' and 't…

You cannot compel people to talk in a certain way. To do so is totalitarian and evil.

> You cannot compel people to talk in a certain way. To do so is totalitarian and evil.

I don't understand this argument in the context of an employer / employee relationship. Employers tell employees how to respond to clients all the time.

Re: An Update to Our Community and an Apology

#292

Post by adrianN » Sun, Oct 06, 2019, 5:14 AM UTC

DoreenMichele wrote: post #220

yourbandsucks wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why the hell are pronouns a centerpiece of a CoC? Just be nice to people. For fuck's sake.

Trans individuals and other marginalized people often spend a lot of time online as a kind of safe haven from difficult personal circumstances. People online can be horrible asshats to a degree they wouldn't dare be in person. These two facts tend to collide and go bad places. (This comment is only describing the problem space, not taking sides in an argument.)

As other comments here already described, the gender of the person writing questions or answers on SO shouldn't matter at all. If you really want to avoid all issues with this, just randomize usernames for every topic and mandate gender neutral language. There is no need to use gendered pronouns in the Q/A format.

Re: An Update to Our Community and an Apology

#293

Post by chipotle_coyote » Sun, Oct 06, 2019, 5:16 AM UTC

michannne wrote: post #244

MauranKilom wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because they will be misgendered day in and day out for the rest of their life. If someone believes they are being gangstalked, society doesn't modify itself to ensure no one within 500 meters of them has a predictable schedule. That's no good reason to go out of your way to misgender someone or pretend to stalk someone who has that phobia. Yes, there will be problems interacting with society overall, I have no goo…

> But I do know that knowingly and actively hurting people "because society does it too" when you could trivially avoid it is reprehensible My argument isn't "do it because society does it too", it's we already have systems in place to give people the therapeutic treatment they need to get past issues like this, which are issues, because it is unfeasible to expect society to shape itself around coddling that person's…

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 on.

So why is it different with pronouns?

Re: An Update to Our Community and an Apology

#294

Post by DanBC » Sun, Oct 06, 2019, 5:17 AM UTC

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…

> People are really really afraid to talk about this particular topic

I don't understand how you can say that when we have this huge HN thread (and it's interesting to see who is being downvoted here) and the huge SE threads spread out across the sites.

Re: An Update to Our Community and an Apology

#295

Post by shard972 » Sun, Oct 06, 2019, 5:18 AM UTC

MauranKilom wrote: post #242

tmp20191006cars wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally concur with the strategy of empathy and courtesy, but others won't, and I don't think that's anywhere close to a good reason to kick them out of civil discussion. But I simply don't buy the "hurt and suffering" argument. Just because someone has a different opinion and expresses it doesn't mean the hearer is hurt and suffering to any degree that has a snowball's chance in hell of overwhelming the right t…

Not to use this as an argument but as something to think about: Picture that second paragraph of yours in the context of racism instead of gender. It's not the same thing, but it leaves me unconvinced in the same ways.

being racist is a first amendment right

Re: An Update to Our Community and an Apology

#296

Post by shard972 » Sun, Oct 06, 2019, 5:19 AM UTC

brankoB wrote: post #258

groby_b wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a top-3 culture war issue because it gives a perfect wedge. Gay marriage is lost as that issue, that was the next one theofascists latched on. (It's the same reason state legislatures are so very much concerned with gendered bathrooms these days) It is deliberately stoked time and again because it specifically fires up a large conservative base, and is life-threatening to a small group. As a bonus point for t…

Are you seriously equating misgendering someone with killing them?

Yes

Re: An Update to Our Community and an Apology

#297

Post by seventhtiger » Sun, Oct 06, 2019, 5:27 AM UTC

nabdab wrote: post #20

When did the US start weaponizing pronouns? From a European standpoint this all seems extreme to the point of absurdity.

They argue about it as a fundamental right (to respect on one side and free speech on the other) and it's just a quirk of English. What to do if the entire language is gendered?

Re: An Update to Our Community and an Apology

#298

Post by derefr » Sun, Oct 06, 2019, 5:30 AM UTC

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…

Pronouns are political insofar as even having grammatical gender in the English language is a continuous political decision made by a linguistic enclave; and interpreting said grammatical gender as having something to do with gender-identity is another political decision by that linguistic enclave. (Think: adding keywords to a programming language as a political decision.)

Other languages—and even other linguistic enclaves of English-speakers or English-creole speakers—don’t have this problem; either for lack of grammatical gender, or for lack of an association between grammatical gender and gender identity.

Re: An Update to Our Community and an Apology

#299

Post by wincy » Sun, Oct 06, 2019, 5:33 AM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #143

goatinaboat wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is true but SE gained a critical mass of answers by encouraging one set of behaviours through its points and badges system, then pulled a bait-and-switch and told those subject matter experts that they were no longer welcome. Wrong demographic, see. SE is dying. The quality of the questions is falling because being welcoming to new users is deemed more important now than the newcomers absorbing the culture. Ques…

How does one get to the Q&A on GitHub? When I Google a question, an SE link is still the most common thing I'll get (especially for error codes).

For a particular framework or package that’s hosted on Github, questions are often answered in the Issues page.

Re: An Update to Our Community and an Apology

#300

Post by derefr » Sun, Oct 06, 2019, 5:36 AM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #284

automatoney wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never thought about how changing social norms affect people on the spectrum, but it definitely seems like it would be a lot harder to get pronouns right. In my experience with trans friends, pronoun misuse would just come with a gentle reminder, and if you want, mentioning you have trouble with social norms should give you more leeway. In many left-leaning circles awareness of gender, disability and other things…

> changing social norms affect people on the spectrum, Gender fluidity is much more common among autistic people, so most autistic people handle it just fine. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26753812

Sensory processing disorders are common among people on the spectrum; but they do not tend to handle one-another’s (often opposed) disorders well at all, e.g. people who feel a need to stim, vs. people with misophonia who hate the sound people make when clapping their hands against themselves or constantly grunting. Explained more here: https://autofspoons.com/2017/12/02/competing-access-needs/