Their position is that intention doesn't matter, what matters is how an action is received.

But this opens up an enormous hole for abuse! Somebody might be offended by just anything, if they choose to!

How dare you! /s

It covers the case when someone makes an inappropriate joke then defends themselves saying it was just a joke.

The person being inappropriate will always hide behind their intent because they can only argue about their own role in the exchange (e.g. they can't argue that the target person/group isn't really hurt).

When a conversation is derailed away from the damage caused to the intent, the harasser wins. What are you going to do? Establishing a default assumption takes that away. Always have good defaults :)

This is largely true, but there remains the issue that there are some people who, for whatever reason, almost seem to go out of their way to assume bad intent and interpret what was said or written in the worst possible way.

There is probably some sad history behind many of those individuals, but reasonable people can disagree about how to deal with the situation.

The current fashion implies that as soon as one such person enters the community, everybody has to start metaphorically walking on tip toes.

Maybe a better outcome overall would be for the person to get therapy.

Everybody has a line somewhere for what they consider "too easily offended". This is true even for the staunchest defenders of the current fashion, because even they understand implicitly that offense can be faked.

So yeah, you need good defaults, but that's really a discussion about where exactly that line should be drawn. I doubt either extreme is the right answer.

Perhaps we can pair serial 'it was just a joke' with serial 'that's offensive' people in an infinite outrage loop and then go on with our lives?

> It covers the case when someone makes an inappropriate joke then defends themselves saying it was just a joke.

Tell them to not make these jokes here and flag their account, repeat a handful of times and kick them out if it persists despite warnings. No need to interpret intent, no ability to hide behind ignorance after several warnings.

> Always have good defaults :)

It is impossible to harass people if you just ban every new account under the assumption of guilt.

Having a position of always assuming good intentions can be gamed by people with bad intentions.

Do you really not see that the opposite is also true? Having a position where good intentions are not assumed can be gamed far more easily by people with bad intentions

Do you really not see that either extreme is more exploitable and less resilient than a more pragmatic middle ground? Personally, my guess is that the optimum is usually towards assuming the best, but that it shifts depending on the level of antagonism present.

It also is an issue for all others. FX I don’t know if it is appropriate to say “you guys” to a mixed crowd anymore, but if I hadn’t seen that some people get upset about that I wouldn’t think twice about it and just emulated American movies. Buffy isn’t exactly sexist and she says it often and to a mixed crowd.

At least in English you have the neutral word "they". In french you only have the plural of "he" or "she". This means that when you point to a mixed crowd, you must choose which of the plurals you use.

The grammatical rule is that one male flips the plural gender to male. If you do not know the sexes, the plural is male.

As a French, the construction comes naturally because we've been taught that at school since kindergarten. This always sounded a bit weird, though.

I do not approve some "grammatical inclusivity" horrors that are being invented from time to time, but some innovative-but-not-distruptive changes would be welcome.

>As a French, the construction comes naturally because we've been taught that at school since kindergarten. This always sounded a bit weird, though.

If you follow the grammatical history of French, the neutral gender just got folded into masculine.

>but some innovative-but-not-distruptive changes would be welcome

You can't really produce grammar by decree, at best you can systematize what already exists. The only "sane" way to have explicit neutral in French would be to go back in time, reimplement declensions and possibly mangle phonology in the process. That won't happen. All forms of "inclusive writing" are from the outset destined and meant to be an elitist signal rather than an actual linguistic feature. They won't survive and they'll been seen in the future as a strange, idiosyncratic trend of the age. A bit like Renaissance orthography, where countless letters were added without meaning to simply look fancier.

> If you follow the grammatical history of French, the neutral gender just got folded into masculine.

This is not just grammatical history, this is the current grammar rules.

However some people are trying to force a change of the rule by making up new words and rules, such as "iels" instead of "ils/elles".

Like I said, I do not approve of the horrible ideas we have, with dots everywhere - this transforms words that are fine as they are. I am for simplification, though (nothing to do with the current topic, just a thought).

What I am missing are the concepts young people are bringing in more and more, where they have words that become unisex (potes for instance). I listen to my children and (without any scientific analysis), it sounds to me that there is less of a boy/girl cut that there was in my times (this may be regional - this is for west of Paris).

And I agree with you that only naturally appearing changes will stay, not the ones forced on us. A typical example are the surrealist ideas of the 90's to have French equivalents for everything computer. Some stayed, the majority is now part of comedies.

German is also developing (unofficial) gender-neutral nouns using an asterisk ending but I think it’s also an open discussion about how best to handle it. It’s mostly often seen when referring to a person’s role, position or job in a way that includes all genders and non-binary people. I speak the language but it’s not my mother tongue so native German speakers might explain it better.

There's two types of gender-neutral nouns in German being used:

- apprehending markers like -*in, -_in, -In [1]

- forming a gerund from a verb describing the activity

e.g. the word "Bäcker" - engl. "baker" - could be written as "Bäcker*in" or "Backende" (from "backen", the verb), depending on the speaker. Note that the gerund form eliminates conveying info about gender, unlike an "universal" marker like *in.

[1] for plural forms, those are expanded to -*innen, -_innen and -Innen

As in things like ~fireman~ -> fire*? How do you pronounce it?

Basically you take the word stem, add the asterisk and then append the female ending, you pronounce it by putting a stop where the * is and then saying the feminine ending (at least that’s how I’ve seen it done). This probably wouldn’t work in French since they hate putting stops anywhere :)

Some info and alternatives here https://www.goethe.de/ins/th/en/m/spr/mag/21967217.html

The thing is, since we don't have a separate neutral in French, masculine is also used for neutral. Which means it isn't that weird when we use masculine for groups with women, as we also use genders for everyday objects. A desk is masculine for some reason, and a table feminine.

Well, to me saying "ils sont là!" when there is a crowd of 200 girls and one boy is still weird :) I would probably say "elles sont là!" despite it not being grammatical.

As for the genders of nouns, my native English French speaking friends are usually in pain.

I feel the same, and I think it's fair to switch to feminine in these cases. My point was just that it sounds a bit less weird than saying "elles sont là" when there is 200 girls and a boy.

If you're in a mixed crowd that cares how you say "you guys" you should probably rethink whether you want to associate with these people.

It makes it easier to fight trolls who hide behind bad faith arguments.

Changing it enables a certain kind of flame-war where people become entrenched in thinking the other side is out to get them and actually evil. Assuming the best intentions is a good way to make sure you combat what someone is doing rather than attacking them as a person.

"Did you intend to say that you dislike me because I'm gay?" is a pretty easy way to route out a troll.

Sincere apology or not, you get to know.

I've been moderating communities for 15 years, I've seen tricks from all manner of trolls and handling trolls with an even hand is still tricky; but being genuinely inquisitive is usually the easiest way to get around it. Even when tensions are high it makes people feel heard and understand their impact.

"I'm just highlight how fragile and deranged you are, funny how you instantly tied it to homosexuality though, must be suppressed hatred! I'm surprised your wife's boyfriend lets you post such stupid garbage."/s

You don't get to know anything. Good trolls have also been trolling for 15 years, they've seen tricks from all manner of jannies... See where I'm going with that?

Saying that, I do agree with you, staying inquisitive and positive with bad trolls typically tampers down their rage.

Direct and to the point.

Do you have any other examples?

I wish it was that easy. Very often trolls feed on attention and love the sealioning.

It makes sense to be objective rather than assuming good intentions.

Assuming good intentions enable troll to engage in endless sealioning.