> The mod made statements that vaguely pattern match as onerous hair splitting in order to undermine LGBTQ+ rights.

The actual point is, there's no such thing as a "right to be addressed by one's preferred pronoun". Attempts to introduce such a purported "right" can easily pattern match to many other sorts of compelled speech, which in a genuinely liberal, rights-focused and non-oppressive political culture are generally rejected altogether - for very good reasons dating back to many centuries ago, that have zilch to do with the (very real and concrete, unfortunately) plight of a number of sexual and gender minorities.

Basically, this whole "you must use my preferred pronouns, or else" thing is a huge distraction that does nothing to make LGBTQetc. folks better off.

There absolutely is a right to be treated with respect in professional settings. Part of respecting people is using the names and pronouns they ask you to use.

Does compelling people to use pronouns conflict with the notion of freedom of speech?

In what way would it not? I'm free to call you or anyone else a jerk if I like, but I'm barred from calling you a pronoun you don't like? As if that in any way would change my view of the issue? As if it's anything more than some silly notion of protecting people's feelings?

Why not worry about real injustices? You have no right to be free from being offended or having your feelings hurt, but you should be able to get a job, get married, get medical treatment, etc.

You are in fact not free to call people jerks in a professional context.

You're not? Is the fed going to throw you in prison for doing so?

Of course you're free to call someone at work a jerk. Your boss is also free to fire you. Freedom of speech is a concept that applies to our government, not private entities. That said, we can still discuss whether or not specific limitatations on speech by private entities are a good or bad thing. In this case, I believe it's a bad thing to codify.

Rules which apply to harassment, which almost every forum has in place, still apply. The question is how far do we go? Are we really going to force people to use gender neutral ponouns at all times as a matter of course in order to protect some small portion of an estimated 0.6% of the population's feelings?

Yes, you are technically free to call people jerks as long as you are OK with the consequences, which may include getting fired. The government cannot put filters in front of people's mouths, thankfully.

Repeated and intentional misgendering is similar to racial or ethnic slurs, which also don't belong in professional settings and will ideally also get you fired.

Personally I think the Catholic Church is a great force of evil, but I keep those opinions to myself at work out of respect for my Catholic coworkers. You are free to believe whatever you want about how nonbinary people are just seeking attention or whatever, but you shouldn't misgender people at work.

Who's forcing folks to use gender neutral pronouns "at all times"? You only have to use them for people who have requested it.

The 0.6% number is commonly quoted but is very dubious, since it doesn't account for people who may not be out due to social stigmatization. The real number of people who would be happier with a non-cis identity is probably much higher, somewhere around 5-10% by my estimate.

>Who's forcing folks to use gender neutral pronouns "at all times"? You only have to use them for people who have requested it.

An excerpt from Monica's side of things:

>Under some pressure I said I don't use singular they or words like chairwoman but solve the problem other ways (with examples)." She said the moderator linked to her question and called her a bigot.

From what I have been able to gather, it would have been very difficult to comply with the proposed CoC without literally asking someone what their ponouns are or risk a villation. Whether or not the latter would have been actually enforced I can't say, but it all sounds rather half baked and would have led to a very vague definition of how one person is allowed to address another.

I also don't agree at all with the set of new nonsense pronouns like ze and xi. It's not useful as a language construct and I'm not ready to hand over the linquistic reins to a tiny minority.

>The real number of people who would be happier with a non-cis identity is probably much higher, somewhere around 5-10% by my estimate.

I can see why you doubt the 0.6% number (many people won't admit it), and that's fair, but your number sounds completely fictional. 10%?! C'mon. That requires some backing up.

I think the CoC was badly structured and agree that Monica isn't at fault, for context. I think that it was quite appropriate to fire some other moderators though, like the one for the Christianity SE who point blank refused to gender people correctly.

I know a lot of nonbinary people — many use neopronouns but they are all reasonable people. I don't know anyone who wouldn't also be ok with they/them.

https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/press/in-the-news/27-...

GNC is not the same as trans, but the high numbers do suggest a much greater number of people are happier outside strict gender roles. It wouldn't be too much of an extension to say that this may apply to the pronouns they are happiest with as well.

Agreed, if someone asks me to use she instead of he, or they instead of <whatever>, I'm good with it. Anything else is actual bigotry as there's just no other reasonable reason to not comply.

I also think we get worked up about things that live on the edges. Extreme viewpoints either way which are battled out on the internet, but don't represent the opinions of most people.

The new pronouns though... I don't know, that may take me a while.

Sure, that sounds reasonable to me.

>sometimes means being uncompromising. Fighting for equality is complex.

Fighting for anything is complex. If it wasn't complex it wouldn't take a fight.

But people get blinded by their righteousness and fight in ways that waste time at best, can make people disengage or set their goals back at worst. If anyone thinks they're fighting the good fight, they owe it to their cause to understand their actions.

I often find myself getting ignored or on the wrong side of an accusation for thinking about the "ends vs means" of goals I agree with. I'm running low on patience for getting asked to diminish or overlook hamfisted actions after the fact because the motivation was proper.

Monica prefers "she/her" pronouns; given the context, I think it's best not to use others to refer to her.

Wasn't that actually the crux of the original ban? The moderator argued that using gender neutral pronouns (like they and their) should always be ok and to expect everyone to keep track and use a specific pronoun for everyone was a bit too much to ask? So they banned them because the SO employee thought that you should only use exactly what everyone requests. I have to agree that it's a bit too much to ask in a forum that we all keep track of everyone's preferred gender pronouns rather than using something generic.

> The moderator argued that using gender neutral pronouns (like they and their) should always be ok

IIRC it wasn't even that, Monica was wondering whether it would still be okay to continue writing in a style that would avoid using pronouns altogether.

For example, my previous sentence.

Note the word "wondering". She was not insisting, just discussing the implications of not changing her entire writing style. The situation is complicated by other factors I am not at liberty to discuss, but Monica was not at fault – or if she was, at much less fault than others in the room.

From what I’ve read, it’s the opposite. Someone’s pronouns are they/them and Monica refused to refer to them with those pronouns. Monica will not use singular they, even as a personal pronoun.

According to the MSE FAQ, SO doesn’t care if you get it wrong as long as you’re willing to change the pronouns moving forward to reflect the correct ones. SO also prefers gender neutral writing (not using pronouns or using singular they) if you don’t know the correct pronouns for someone.

They don’t even require using pronouns at all unless avoiding it is really obvious (userx wrote in userx’s question that userx failed to find a solution - obvious example is obvious but I think it makes the point) but telling someone you refuse to use their pronouns is considered rude and moderators are expected to be willing to use correct pronouns.

In most cases, avoiding pronouns in day-to-day interactions is not noticeable. It’s more obvious when you interact with them (or talk about them) regularly.

No one is expecting anyone to memorize hundreds of pronouns for people you only talk to once.

One should always be careful with using pronouns. Especially if the only pronouns are going to be they and them. In this case "so they banned them" who is they and who is them?