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

381–390 of 424 posts

Re: An Update to Our Community and an Apology

#381

Post by mywittyname »

otterley wrote: post #276
mywittyname wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with forcing compliance is some people are naturally going to want to resist the demand regardless of their personal opinions. I took a technical writing class in college where I attempted to use "they/their" as a gender neutral pronoun. This was not a political statement, I just felt it sounded more natural. The professor objected and gave me a disproportionately poor grade, insisting that I use either "…

What year was this? It sounds like English standards 10-20 years ago. Not sure whether this would recur today.

2011ish.

To my professor's credit, he was probably 70-80 years old at the time.

Re: An Update to Our Community and an Apology

#382

Post by flippinburgers »

groby_b wrote: post #358
mthoms wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The poster was likely referring to the astronomical rates of suicide among trans people. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/09/1... Obviously, misgendering someone is not likely to be the thing that triggers such an act. But it is part of a pattern of bullying and general disregard that transgendered people face every single day.

Well, that, and there's an orders-of-magnitude difference in homicides between trans and cis people. (And, of course, it's worst for young, black women). Being openly labelled as transgender significantly increases your risk of being assaulted. That's why misgendering is so insidious - it's stochastic terrorism. The person doing the misgendering can claim that they never meant any violence, but they're still increasi…

Is this a mathematical use of the word stochastic or a soft science use?

Re: An Update to Our Community and an Apology

#383

Post by flippinburgers »

Causality1 wrote: post #221
flippinburgers wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it she wanted to avoid using any specifically gendered pronoun and be general in her responses, but was told that she must use the preferred pronoun. Totally draconian if you ask me.

That's incredible if true. I've never cared about often being misgendered on the internet. I've also never cared what gender a stranger on the internet is. If I know their gender I might use it but I could also easily forget what they are or mix them up with someone else. Nor do I care if someone mistakes what country I'm from or what political party I vote for. These facts are immutable and no number of mistaken net…

What is even more interesting is that this happened because of a CoC that is not even yet in place.

Re: An Update to Our Community and an Apology

#384

Post by dagw »

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…

we should have clear, rational and reasonable debate

I'm starting to wonder if part of the problem is the way debating is taught in school. Certainly when I was in school debate was taught essentially as a sport, a thing that you could win or lose and with tactics and strategies that you could use to help you defeat your opponent. The point under debate was basically irrelevant, and should be able to 'win' no matter which side you where debating, truth be damned. If you conceded ground to your opponent or admitted that you where wrong about something you'd said, you lost.

Having a clear, rational and reasonable debate was never something that was taught or encouraged.

Re: An Update to Our Community and an Apology

#385

Post by dragonwriter »

pariahHN wrote: post #89
xenocyon wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying that most people don't agree with extreme positions is a bit of a tautology, since positions are defined as "extreme" if few people agree with them. There is therefore nothing universal or fundamentally meaningful about this label, and the same position (e.g. support of interracial marriage) may be considered a perfectly normal or a radically extremist position depending on the time and place.

Eh, in some instances you can define extremeness relative to alternatives, not number of believers. Execution as a punishment is more extreme than a fine regardless of how many people favor execution over fines. I would argue that generally a position being extreme results in fewer believers, not that fewer believers results in a position being extreme.

> Eh, in some instances you can define extremeness relative to alternatives, not number of believers.

Relative extremeness, sure, but that makes something more or less extreme, not “extreme” without a comparative.

> Execution as a punishment is more extreme than a fine regardless of how many people favor execution over fines.

But execution for most serious crimes was for a very long time a standard position, not an extreme one, while not executing people was an extreme position (though it's now pretty standard in most of the world, with broad—or indeed any—use of execution being an extreme position.)

> I would argue that generally a position being extreme results in fewer believers, not that fewer believers results in a position being extreme.

If you would argue that, go ahead, but you've provided neither evidence nor much argumentation, just conflation of absolute and relative uses of “extreme”, and your example of capital punishment seems to disprove your thesis.

Re: An Update to Our Community and an Apology

#386

Post by pbhjpbhj »

dang wrote: post #362
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why you don't have banners, on stories that have had editorial changes, to say what the editorial changes are. For example (not suggestions for text) "story reposted with different timestamps", "title changed from 'X is the best thing eva'", "link changed from 'www.superspammy.co.net'", or whatever. Is transparency of editorial actions bad somehow?

tptacek's reply is correct. The other thing is that we try to be careful about not compromising HN's minimalism, which would be so easy to do.

"no discussion of moderation" (like the rule on not discussing downvotes) seems to handle the first part.

Often, but not consistently AFAICT, a moderator (such as yourself Dang) will add a comment to the effect that a title was changed or a link was rewritten, it's just hidden in the comments; that's a strange thing to do if you fear discussions devolving towards meta topics.

Problems arise when people comment on a story when the substantive parts of the story then have been changed.

As for the second part, surely optional features (as there are already, eg "display dead") don't _compromise_ minimalism.

Re: An Update to Our Community and an Apology

#387

Post by chipotle_coyote »

atq2119 wrote: post #378
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What is being asked of people in the gendering debate is to go against this correlation sometimes." Yes. Exactly. That's what's being asked of them. To follow someone's request out of courtesy. Again: why is this difficult?

In your quote, you conveniently left out the part about cognitive dissonance. That's what answers your question. It's possible that you personally don't feel this cognitive dissonance, or that you feel it but it simply doesn't bother you. People's subjective experiences can be quite diverse, though, and you need to accept that. Let me put it another way. Person X asks person Y to take person Z's feelings into account…

The choice here is:

(1) Bob suffers cognitive dissonance when he calls Angela, a transgender woman, "she".

(2) Angela, who has suffered the cognitive dissonance of gender dysphoria for years, has that revisited on her by Bob's insistence on calling her "he".

So, yeah. I'm privileging Angela over Bob here, because it is his mild discomfort versus her lived-in experience.

Bluntly, nobody has been driven into lifelong therapy and suicidal depression by having to refer to someone by a different set of pronouns. If you want to insist I'm a jerk for denying that these two experiences of "cognitive dissonance" are equivalent, you know, so be it.

Re: An Update to Our Community and an Apology

#388

Post by atq2119 »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #387
atq2119 wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your quote, you conveniently left out the part about cognitive dissonance. That's what answers your question. It's possible that you personally don't feel this cognitive dissonance, or that you feel it but it simply doesn't bother you. People's subjective experiences can be quite diverse, though, and you need to accept that. Let me put it another way. Person X asks person Y to take person Z's feelings into account…

The choice here is: (1) Bob suffers cognitive dissonance when he calls Angela, a transgender woman, "she". (2) Angela, who has suffered the cognitive dissonance of gender dysphoria for years, has that revisited on her by Bob's insistence on calling her "he". So, yeah. I'm privileging Angela over Bob here, because it is his mild discomfort versus her lived-in experience. Bluntly, nobody has been driven into lifelong t…

I neither wrote nor meant that those two experiences are equivalent. I specifically wrote that one can reasonably draw a conclusion like yours. What I did write is that both experiences are real -- and you denied even that in your earlier comments!

I'd also point out that your example is rather uncharitable. I personally do think Alice is quite justified in asking Bob not to use "he" as a pronoun, but I also think it's acceptable for Bob to prefer using a gender-neutral pronoun such as singular "they". If that had been the example (which it might well have been, especially given the context of this thread overall), your point would be quite a bit weaker, and you ought to feel quite a bit less righteous indignation. After all, if somebody has a problem because of non-neutral pronouns, it'd be rather reasonable to expect them to accept it when people contribute to reducing their use overall -- especially when that also helps to reduce the discomfort of those other people.

Anyway, thank you for acknowledging that other people's feelings exist. Maybe next time you can even use that reconciliatory language I've mentioned.

Re: An Update to Our Community and an Apology

#389

Post by anon12345690 »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #293
michannne wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

first, yes you can call her whatever you want. its called freedom.

second, yea pronouns are different. they are actual nouns in the language used to describe people by what they are. theyre exactly the opposite of names which are completely random things you can claim

third, you know most people use pronouns that match a name and looks? so if you change gender and change your name then people are probably gonna be using the right pronoun anyway

Re: An Update to Our Community and an Apology

#390

Post by anon12345690 »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #370
atq2119 wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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:…

"What is being asked of people in the gendering debate is to go against this correlation sometimes." Yes. Exactly. That's what's being asked of them. To follow someone's request out of courtesy. Again: why is this difficult?

you realize nobody really has a problem with that right?

this isnt a case about a specific person wanting a different pronoun. its about changing ALL language in the site to be gender neutral. that part is dumb. we dont need to worry about using she and he to talk about alice and bob because "they might be trans"

Post reply on HN