This comment made me think:
> Is using someone's personal pronoun really "showing respect" if you get banned otherwise?
On the way to being the most downvoted post ever on StackOverflow:Meta
81–90 of 110 posts
Re: On the way to being the most downvoted post ever on StackOverflow:Meta
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
The majority of comments have no qualms with respecting one's mode of self-identification, but rather, with the method by which S.E. has chosen to approach it. In other words, the commenters have an issue with the poor execution of a noble idea .
Genuinely, what's the poor execution? They seem to have basically codified "use someone's stated pronouns" with an awareness of the common ways people try to get around it. It seems like anyone who respects how other people identify will have hard time running up against this policy.
Must be nice to assume everyone is a native English speaker. Do you not believe foreign language speakers have equal rights to transpeople?
Re: On the way to being the most downvoted post ever on StackOverflow:Meta
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are you talking about? English is verifiably not as gendered as Spanish, at the very least. All nouns in Spanish require a gender article (el/la or los/las). In English, you do not have to figure out whether "día" should be prefixed with el or la -- and in the case of "día" despite it ending in "a" which usually implies feminine and la, it's actually masculine and is properly "el día." That doesn't even bring in…
Look more closely at Latin gendering rules, not romance language gendering rules. In Latin, gender comes from the suffix. It's typically carried over in suffixes from Latin: Words ending in "a" are feminine, words ending in "um" are masculine. Or, look through common English names and see how often they follow Latin gender suffixes. Adam / Ada is an example. ("Am" is a male suffix.)
nit: the suffix -um in latin typically indicates a neuter grammatical gender. -us is usually masculine, and only in its accusative form it becomes -um. there are exceptions though, e.g. feminine 'manus' (hand). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_declension
Re: On the way to being the most downvoted post ever on StackOverflow:Meta
#84I don’t know if I’ve ever written a single pronoun on stack overflow. 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.
> If I find the need for a pronoun, I will use “they” and not be bothered by it.
That will possibly get you a warning and, if you keep doing it, a ban. If you're using any pronouns and the person has written their preferred pronouns on their profile, you must use those.
I believe that the whole issue is virtue signalling. It has none to very little actual practical value but is highly contentious (especially with draconian punishments for minor infractions), it's great as a signal and useless as a policy.
Re: On the way to being the most downvoted post ever on StackOverflow:Meta
#85Now it seems StackOverflow knows how YouTube feels whenever they post a YouTube Rewind video. That one got absolutely downvoted to all hell, and for similar reasons to this post. 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.
This "mess" is an attempt to encourage/enforce basic decency in their community. Why do you think they should "change course"?
Are you suggesting that basic decency wasn't a thing on SO/SE before? I can count the number of rude interactions I've witnessed on two hands, and all of them were either people being angry about their shitty questions being flagged or fundamental disagreements over how software development should be done.
This wasn't a significant problem for the community as a whole. Certainly, any individual might be hurt when it happens, but let's keep some perspective. I've also not heard anything about mods not being able to deal with instances when it happened. There were people trying to be within an inch of the rules (on other issues, I've never seen gender being an issue at all), and they were all easily dealt with because SO never claimed to apply any rules by the letter only.
Granted, I'm speaking for the technical sites, law.se or pets.se may be terrible places, but I doubt it. Where did you witness that lack of basic decency?
Re: On the way to being the most downvoted post ever on StackOverflow:Meta
#86I think the blowback is really just about cognitive load. There's only so much you can expend on social mores before the actual subject you're discussing gets eclipsed. Everyone deserves equal respect, but I understand that when I'm not in the majority in a situation that my perspectives/language may be alien to some of those in the majority- I don't hold it against them unless there is explicit hostility. I find mys…
Absolutely "They". They they they they they. English already has a perfectly good gender-neutral pronoun. I explicitly list my pronouns as "He/his or they/their" because I think the neopronouns are ultimately a way to gatekeep inclusivity, which is ironic.
Singular they always gets me confused about how many people we're talking about. As a non-native speaker, I wouldn't call this solution perfectly good.
Re: On the way to being the most downvoted post ever on StackOverflow:Meta
#87I don’t know if I’ve ever written a single pronoun on stack overflow. 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.
> If I find the need for a pronoun, I will use “they” and not be bothered by it. That will possibly get you a warning and, if you keep doing it, a ban. If you're using any pronouns and the person has written their preferred pronouns on their profile, you must use those. I believe that the whole issue is virtue signalling. It has none to very little actual practical value but is highly contentious (especially with dra…
It absolutely says the opposite of that.
> Q15: Is it expected that people go to "About me" to check whether someone has pronouns there when interacting in Q&A?
No. That would be good practice, but it is not required.
Re: On the way to being the most downvoted post ever on StackOverflow:Meta
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I'll wave my fists wherever I see fit and if I end up hurting someone by punching them I'll apologise to that person and move on." Maybe stop waving your fists about?
As a marginalized person who has both been physically assaulted for my identity as well as been subjected to hate & discrimination, let me be clear that equivocation between words and violence is not helpful.
I didn't mean for it to sound like an equivocation, and reading it back I see how it could be seen that way. I should have worded it better.
What I'm trying to say is that we should all be aware that our actions occur in a context, and thinking about the possible implications of those actions is a good thing. This is true whether that action is a physical action, or speech, or even inaction etc. The attitude of the OP appeared to be more "I am free to do x and I'm not going to give any thought to what the possible consequences might be before I do x", which isn't particularly fun for everyone else.
Re: On the way to being the most downvoted post ever on StackOverflow:Meta
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If I find the need for a pronoun, I will use “they” and not be bothered by it. That will possibly get you a warning and, if you keep doing it, a ban. If you're using any pronouns and the person has written their preferred pronouns on their profile, you must use those. I believe that the whole issue is virtue signalling. It has none to very little actual practical value but is highly contentious (especially with dra…
It absolutely says the opposite of that. > Q15: Is it expected that people go to "About me" to check whether someone has pronouns there when interacting in Q&A? No. That would be good practice, but it is not required.
Oh, thanks for pointing that out. I had read the whole shebang yesterday and that Q&A has been added since then. Before the CoC was made public, the (unofficially) communicated approach was that checking the profile was to be mandatory.
Re: On the way to being the most downvoted post ever on StackOverflow:Meta
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I explicitly list my pronouns as "He/his or they/their" […] This reminds me of an interview I had with a recruiter from Slack HQ. The first question the interviewer asked was which pronoun should I be called? The question threw me off for a moment but after reflecting about it for a while I thought it was a good strategy to make themselves look inclusive. If you are in California and want to work at Slack, know tha…
This is what confuses me the most: the pronouns usually listed by people who insist on listing them are third person pronouns. How do you use a third person pronoun when talking to somebody to reference the very same person? Or are "he/him/his" etc actually second person pronouns? I.e. if somebody listed pronouns as "they/them/their" should I say "Hi, how are they doing? Can I offer them something to drink?". I hope…
It makes no sense to me either. When you reply to a person, you never use a pronoun apart from 'you' when you refer to them.