Just want to say I appreciate you publicly taking this stance (on what appears to be a non-throwaway account, no less). As a fellow LGBT person I feel so alienated from other progressive-leaning people and communities because of my belief in how those who don't share my beliefs should be treated.
When saying these things out loud can be social suicide, well, it means a lot to see someone else say it first. So thanks. I hope tolerance can come back into fashion.
This is all fun and games until a “politically neutral” decision is made by a programming language foundation to refer to all trans people using they/them. How would that make you feel?
The most politically neutral decision in this case would be to let people refer to others with whichever pronouns accord to the speaker's beliefs, without reprimand.
Morality partially stems from autonomy (in the sense that "I should be able to act as I please"). According to autonomy, a person should be able to act freely, and two people should be able to interact similarly. One person's policy will be judged by any other, who is free to act by a distinct policy. But autonomy alone doesn't make for a good person, or a good society. The other factor in morality is non-hypocrisy (in the sense that "I should act how I say I should act").
I've laid out a neutral response. Of course I have my personal beliefs, as one does, but I speak here without pretense. Believe what you will.
Yeah that's the fastest way to breed animosity in these communities. Insisting on calling someone by a name they don't use for themselves is extremely antagonistic.
r/programminglanguages has the right idea: put a pride flag in the logo and a lot of these problems just sort themselves out.
the flag logo has proven surprisingly effective at weeding out bigots. Not just in this thread or the previous one, but also in the moderator mail: we've had at least several instances of mouth breathers writing rants along the lines of "How dare you use colors in your logo!" (that's a very nice "translation" of what's actually written in those cases). Similarly, several comments in this thread have been removed and their authors banned, due to comments that boil down to "I'm not a bigot, I just hate LGBTQ+ people". This will not change, based on the simple premise that such people aren't worth having around in any community, and these people don't contribute anything of value anyway.
And it does work out well, the discussions stay on topic, LGBTQ issues aren't really a community topic despite the flag. Here's how that works out in practice, from today:
Someone says "he", they're corrected with "she", and that's the end of it. In more toxic communities where people are encouraged to use whatever pronouns they want, that simple interaction because a whole thing, where eventually one person calls the other delusional, the other calls them a bigot, and then no one is talking about programming languages. It's an eternal struggle, and for many people who build and maintain programming languages, they prefer to kick out the bigot rather than be called delusional, so everyone can get back to talking about programming languages. Still, there are plenty of online spaces, especially language spaces, where LGBTQ people are made to feel excluded. People upset with the flag or pronouns can join one of those communities, and everyone is happy.
(If anyone is wondering what kind of comments, they're usually veiled or not so veiled threats along the lines of this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45727677. If the mere presence of the flag keeps people like this out, that's fine by me.)
> Here's how that works out in practice, from today:
> Someone says "he", they're corrected with "she", and that's the end of it.
This is a good example of conversational flow in an environment where people are not reprimanded for referring to others with pronouns that accord to the speaker's personal worldview. One person says "he", another person says "she", and everyone tolerates this difference of expression whether they agree with it or not.
Essentially it's the most politically neutral stance on pronouns, as implemented in an everyday conversation.
So you can see why they put it in scare quotes. Just above your reply another says it's politically neutral to adopt whatever pronouns the speaker feels is valid, and not punish them for it. This is "neutral" in that it sides with the speaker regardless of who they are, but is clearly designed to allow bigots to misgender freely. That is the point, "neutral" is not so trivially defined, and often falls on the side of more conservative societal trends.
What would you consider to be truly politically neutral, then? Because it seems we're in agreement that a decision to "refer to all trans people using they/them" would not fit the bill. But whether it's politically neutral or not, it's unnecessarily exclusionary; that's what I take issue with.
(for the record I do realize the phrase 'politically neutral' is vague and unclear, and often used as a conservative dogwhistle, which is why I generally avoid it)
An example of the sort of Code of Conduct I personally feel is the most inclusive and 'politically neutral' in a non-scare-quotes-dogwhistle way is the Hacker News guidelines[0]. I think the moderation in general here does a good job of promoting open discussion across people from a wide variety of backgrounds.
When saying these things out loud can be social suicide, well, it means a lot to see someone else say it first. So thanks. I hope tolerance can come back into fashion.