I'm very sad that they charged full steam ahead on the CoC update in the midst of the mess they made, precisely *because* it's damaging the people they said they were trying to support. Members of the queer community have *told* them "you made things worse for us", but there's been no response. It's appalling.
People are also trying to separate the issues, but seem to be largely failing. It's all bound up together in the public mind because of how SE botched the announcement on top of their botched treatment of me.
There's also been a lot of twisting and misrepresentation on both sides. Some want a policy of "you must use these specific pronouns, and you must inject gender into everything even where it doesn't belong or you're a bigot". (That's pretty close to Sara Chipps's original position, though those aren't her words.) That's clearly unworkable. On the other hand, some are saying crap like "those pronouns are fake" and "well then I get to make up my own words too", which makes it worse. And yes, we've seen the "attack helicopter" thing several times already.
In the midst of all this, anybody trying to express a nuanced position that *happens* to look similar to things that some bigots do gets accused of dog-whistling and bigotry and gets shut down. The logical fallacy of "bigots do X; you did X; therefore you are a bigot" is in play. This was apparently in play in Teachers' Lounge back in mid-September, but I didn't yet recognize it. (I'm not up on all the current dog-whistles...)
Professional writers are trained to avoid unnecessary gender references, which can be unclear and/or give offense. Apparently the UN even has guidelines on this, which I was quite surprised to learn. (Section 3. Some of the earlier stuff is dated, but that part is solid and, in my experience, current professional practice.) This doesn't mean anybody's being disrespectful; quite the opposite. In addition, we almost never *need* third-person singular pronouns on the parts of Stack Exchange I use; we talk about spam flags or unclear questions or users (as a class) or site features or whatever, or we might link to a specific post or refer to a user by name, but we don't generally talk about individual people. We might talk *with* individual people, but that's second-person which in English is ungendered, so that's fine.
So against that backdrop -- rare if any need, and an existing, respectful writing style -- I asked questions, seeking to continue to do what I do. One person pointed out that if I use "he" and "she" but not singular "they" then I'm discriminating against nonbinary folks now that some of them use that pronoun. That's a position I hadn't considered before, and I agreed that would be bad and I wouldn't do that. Some folks claimed that I was "twisting" my writing style to avoid recognizing people, which isn't at all true. (I guess we've got some amount of "*I'm* not a good enough writer to do that and therefore nobody could be"? I practice my craft; I am in fact good enough to do that.)
Now they've rushed out sloppy CoC updates, calling down the maelstrom they should have expected, and all the arguments -- extreme and nuanced, sincere and trolling -- are flying around. When people are upset they aren't in the headspace to consider nuanced positions, so it just means a lot of shouting. SE, for their part, has lobbed this into the community, left conflicting comments all over the place (good luck putting it all together), and otherwise done nothing to calm things down. It's hurting everybody, and it's hurting the queer community worst of all because their *identity* is being dragged through all the mess. Ugh.
I want to, separately, post here about language/writing -- some of the stuff I said in this comment, but more clear and careful and with more context and stuff. But I don't want to be part of making things worse for people I care about, and I fear that anything I say will be twisted and weaponized. So I probably shouldn't even leave this comment, but I don't want to ignore you either.
Sigh. This is not what inclusion means. This is not what diversity means. And it's sure not what respect means.
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Date: 2019-10-16 08:57 pm (UTC)People are also trying to separate the issues, but seem to be largely failing. It's all bound up together in the public mind because of how SE botched the announcement on top of their botched treatment of me.
There's also been a lot of twisting and misrepresentation on both sides. Some want a policy of "you must use these specific pronouns, and you must inject gender into everything even where it doesn't belong or you're a bigot". (That's pretty close to Sara Chipps's original position, though those aren't her words.) That's clearly unworkable. On the other hand, some are saying crap like "those pronouns are fake" and "well then I get to make up my own words too", which makes it worse. And yes, we've seen the "attack helicopter" thing several times already.
In the midst of all this, anybody trying to express a nuanced position that *happens* to look similar to things that some bigots do gets accused of dog-whistling and bigotry and gets shut down. The logical fallacy of "bigots do X; you did X; therefore you are a bigot" is in play. This was apparently in play in Teachers' Lounge back in mid-September, but I didn't yet recognize it. (I'm not up on all the current dog-whistles...)
Professional writers are trained to avoid unnecessary gender references, which can be unclear and/or give offense. Apparently the UN even has guidelines on this, which I was quite surprised to learn. (Section 3. Some of the earlier stuff is dated, but that part is solid and, in my experience, current professional practice.) This doesn't mean anybody's being disrespectful; quite the opposite. In addition, we almost never *need* third-person singular pronouns on the parts of Stack Exchange I use; we talk about spam flags or unclear questions or users (as a class) or site features or whatever, or we might link to a specific post or refer to a user by name, but we don't generally talk about individual people. We might talk *with* individual people, but that's second-person which in English is ungendered, so that's fine.
So against that backdrop -- rare if any need, and an existing, respectful writing style -- I asked questions, seeking to continue to do what I do. One person pointed out that if I use "he" and "she" but not singular "they" then I'm discriminating against nonbinary folks now that some of them use that pronoun. That's a position I hadn't considered before, and I agreed that would be bad and I wouldn't do that. Some folks claimed that I was "twisting" my writing style to avoid recognizing people, which isn't at all true. (I guess we've got some amount of "*I'm* not a good enough writer to do that and therefore nobody could be"? I practice my craft; I am in fact good enough to do that.)
Now they've rushed out sloppy CoC updates, calling down the maelstrom they should have expected, and all the arguments -- extreme and nuanced, sincere and trolling -- are flying around. When people are upset they aren't in the headspace to consider nuanced positions, so it just means a lot of shouting. SE, for their part, has lobbed this into the community, left conflicting comments all over the place (good luck putting it all together), and otherwise done nothing to calm things down. It's hurting everybody, and it's hurting the queer community worst of all because their *identity* is being dragged through all the mess. Ugh.
I want to, separately, post here about language/writing -- some of the stuff I said in this comment, but more clear and careful and with more context and stuff. But I don't want to be part of making things worse for people I care about, and I fear that anything I say will be twisted and weaponized. So I probably shouldn't even leave this comment, but I don't want to ignore you either.
Sigh. This is not what inclusion means. This is not what diversity means. And it's sure not what respect means.