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Stack Exchange Removes Moderator For Preferred Pronouns Policy (theregister.co.uk) 800

An anonymous reader shares a report: In the past month or so, about 20 volunteer moderators out of about 600 have distanced themselves from Stack Exchange, the online network of Q&A communities, to protest corporate policy changes and the removal of a moderator, Monica Cellio, over alleged violations of as-yet unpublished Code of Conduct changes. Cellio on Friday posted her account of what happened, claiming that her moderator status had been revoked by a Stack Exchange employee on the assumption Cellio "will in the future violate a thoughtcrime-style provision of a Code of Conduct change that hasn't been made yet." Cellio raised concerns that the Q&A site's revised Code of Conduct would require people to use other people's preferred gender pronouns -- a phrase that advocacy group Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education (GLSEN) says should be simply "pronouns" to assert that their chosen pronouns are mandatory and not optional.

Caleb Maclennan, a Stack Exchange moderator who resigned in protest of Cellio's treatment, offered his own take on the dust-up. He suggests Stack Exchange intends to treat refusal to use a person's designated pronouns as a code of conduct violation. In a post on Monday evening, Cellio offered more details about what happened to complement Maclennan's account. "In January a mod asked a discussion question on the mod team: should we require that people use preferred pronouns?" she explains. "My answer said we must not call people what they don't want to be called, but there are multiple ways to avoid misgendering and we should not require a specific one. 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. Things went downhill from there. In response to an email from The Register, Stack Exchange director of community Sara Chipps said, "On Friday, we revoked privileges for one Stack Exchange moderator when they refused to abide by our Code of Conduct (CoC) after being asked to change their behavior multiple times. The disagreement stemmed from an interpretation of a certain policy, but our CoC is not up for debate."

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Stack Exchange Removes Moderator For Preferred Pronouns Policy

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  • Today (Score:3, Insightful)

    by snkhere ( 3869897 ) on Thursday October 03, 2019 @11:17AM (#59265658)
    Today I identify as an airplane and I prefer not to have pronouns. What now, bigots?
  • by Qbertino ( 265505 ) <moiraNO@SPAMmodparlor.com> on Thursday October 03, 2019 @11:17AM (#59265662)

    ... when this total non-issue about neurotic pseudo-activists pushing their non-agenda into common law and others screaming "OMG, compelled speach, the fascists are upon us!" finally will disappear?

    • by DudeBlokeLadFellow ( 6206386 ) on Thursday October 03, 2019 @11:24AM (#59265706)
      When society realizes - again - that trannies really are mentally ill people, and that we don't need to turn civilization on its head just for the sake of the feelings a fraction of 1% of the populace. In other words, never. Sick and insane is the new normal.
      • by kenai_alpenglow ( 2709587 ) on Thursday October 03, 2019 @11:39AM (#59265826)
        or when we just put our egos behind and don't take offense when none was intended. I almost said "and grow a" ....better stop there before I get fined.
    • by onyxruby ( 118189 ) <onyxruby@ c o m c a s t . net> on Thursday October 03, 2019 @12:10PM (#59266082)

      I would imagine this will disappear when the attempts to compel language (and thus thought) by today's modern day fascists disappear. Forcing someone to use certain language under duress of cancel culture is no better than the fascists of old.

      Offend the wrong group and we'll fine you $250.000! Offend the wrong group and we'll put you in you in jail for being politically incorrect. Use this pronoun or lose your job, do it again and we'll cancel your career!!! The woke thought police have no tolerance for dissent! It's all more than a little bit dystopian.

      • by jeff4747 ( 256583 ) on Thursday October 03, 2019 @02:53PM (#59267122)

        So what do you think is the appropriate societal response to you using a racial slur?

        "Oh, but that's different!!"

        No, it really isn't. It's using words deliberately intended to offend someone in order to demean them.

        • What is the appropriate societal response to using a racial slur? That is a fair question. I remember when the guidance was "sticks and stone may break my bones but words will never hurt me". The premise being that people can be jerks and you need to get over it and get on with it.

          Do I believe that it's okay to ostracize someone, ruin their relationships, get them fired and destroy their career? No. Do I believe it's appropriate to call them a Jackass in response? Yes. Better yet talk to that person and ope

  • by bazmail ( 764941 ) on Thursday October 03, 2019 @11:21AM (#59265678)
    now even stack overflow has caught a nasty case of woke-itis.


    where does this end?
    • Re: ahhh jeez... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Thursday October 03, 2019 @11:41AM (#59265838) Homepage Journal

      > where does this end?

      With a meritocratic competitor.

      And now that I know that good answers on Stack may be missing because their authors aren't compliant with the woke thoughtcrime of the day, its value just dropped substantially for me.

      For mercy's sake, many of the good answers there are from people "on the spectrum" who can't even reliably engage in regular social norms, much less rules that change by the week as the leftist Twitter winds blow.

      That's it - I am pissed at Stack for discriminating against our very good friends the Autists. It's disgusting and sad.

  • by Impy the Impiuos Imp ( 442658 ) on Thursday October 03, 2019 @11:27AM (#59265722) Journal

    40 years ago, someone wrote a letter to Dear Abby, when "Ms." started coming into fashion.

    "Should I call a woman I have just met Mrs., or Miss, or Ms.?"

    Answer: Call her Ms. unless you know she prefers Mrs. or Miss.

    The modern problem, though, is the use of reeducation camps, not just for violators, but for those who even question the wisdom of it. There's your evidence something is wrong, well beyond the virtue signalling aspect of it.

  • by HanzoSpam ( 713251 ) on Thursday October 03, 2019 @11:32AM (#59265760)

    Stay the hell away from anything that features a Code of Conduct.

  • by WaffleMonster ( 969671 ) on Thursday October 03, 2019 @11:32AM (#59265762)

    "Chipps's reply refers to the unnamed moderator using the plural "they,"..."

    All stack domains now banned on this network.

  • Big CoC up (Score:4, Funny)

    by captbollocks ( 779475 ) on Thursday October 03, 2019 @11:54AM (#59265946)

    Sounds like the Code of Conduct (CoC) is a bit hard to swallow.....

  • by xanthos ( 73578 ) <[xanthos] [at] [toke.com]> on Thursday October 03, 2019 @11:55AM (#59265954)
    nobody on the Internet knows you are a dog.
  • Self-contradiction (Score:5, Interesting)

    by koavf ( 1099649 ) on Thursday October 03, 2019 @11:55AM (#59265960) Homepage
    The Register goes into a bit more detail toward the end about Chipps actually contradicts the Code of Conduct herself (emphasis added):

    On Friday, we revoked privileges for one Stack Exchange moderator when they refused to abide by our Code of Conduct (CoC) after being asked to change their behavior multiple times.

    (The former admin uses feminine pronouns to refer to herself and explicitly states that she does not use singular they.) Aside from some pretty gross "SJWs run amok" regressivism in this thread, it is obvious that Stack Exchange overreacted here: it's fine to demand to not be called something but it's not fine to expect that you can positively demand every particular circumlocution that you prefer. If someone personally dislikes "chairwoman" and chooses to not use it, that is not bigotry.

  • by twocows ( 1216842 ) on Thursday October 03, 2019 @12:09PM (#59266068)
    I remember thinking that the gender neutral pronoun stuff (xir zir etc.) was extremely silly when I first heard about it in like 2010, 2011. I still think it's silly but now that people sometimes flip out if you use the wrong verbal shortcut to reference them, I'm starting to think maybe it was a tolerable solution to a very stupid problem. Language exists to facilitate the communication of ideas and concepts. Pronouns in particular are a shortcut that allows you to reference something without constantly referring to its full name. If the shortcut becomes more troublesome than the thing it refers to, what's even the point of using it?

    Tangent: There's of course an overlapping problem here of people identifying with one cluster of cultural preconceptions (aka a particular gender) and other people declining to acknowledge that. My take on that is that if these preconception clusters (like gender) are causing this much drama, maybe it's time to move past them. Maybe Joe isn't a guy, girl, genderqueer, or whatever other litany of 99 gender combinations I don't bother remembering. Maybe Joe is just Joe, for all the things that entails. And for the laws and practices that we have that rely on gender, maybe we should reconsider whether we should separate on that basis at all, and if we should, if maybe biological sex wouldn't be a better fit (e.g. for health-related things like pregnancy).
    • Re:Communication (Score:4, Interesting)

      by eepok ( 545733 ) on Thursday October 03, 2019 @12:35PM (#59266292) Homepage

      I'm with this guy. I think most of the proposed gender-neutral pronouns/descriptor sound silly. I especially don't like the use of "X" as it implies an association with counter-culture, not normalcy, and is thus less likely to be accepted in normal conversation. Xir, LatinX, ChicanX, etc. all sound so... 1st-year undergraduate. I especially take offense to LatinX-- "Latino" is already gender neutral.

      When I say, "We are a group of Latinos," you can't know if we're all men or a mix of men & women. LatinA is gendered. If I say, "We're a group of Latinas," you know that we're all women. Moreover, I can't even SAY LatinX in Spanish. Even MOREover, screw you for trying (poorly) to de-gender my language. If someone's going to change how the Spanish language works, it should be the people who use the Spanish language.

      Despite all that, I'm more than willing to adopt a new gender-neutral pronoun now than I used to be (just so people will shut up), but I doubt we'll ever start using one because we'll never get majority buy-in on any particular word. Here's my suggestion. It's just bland enough to work.

      He/Him/His - Masculine
      She/Her/Hers - Feminine
      Sa/Sim/Ser - Irrelevant

  • by KirbyCombat ( 1142225 ) on Thursday October 03, 2019 @12:15PM (#59266118)

    I was recently at the mandatory training where the first speaker told us that gender is not, and has NEVER BEEN, about body parts and chromosomes. Gender is how you see yourself in society and is very fluid. You can be different genders at different times of the day. To me, this makes the concept of gender meaningless. Unless someone has told you their gender in the last five minutes, you have no idea what gender they are. I have no idea what anyone in this rooms gender is, and no one knows what my gender is.

    The second speaker then proceeded to tell how they knew that they were a woman trapped in a mans body when they were 6 years old. This seemed to me to be a glaring contradiction. But what the heck.

    And there are an infinite number of genders. And anyone that "forces" a gender on someone is causing them irreparable psychological harm, and should be immediately fired. And that no one can tell you that your gender identity is invalid.

    To which, I replied that my gender is "normal". Well, evidently there are invalid gender identities. And you can tell someone that their gender identity is invalid. And I am obviously a man.

    So how do they know what gender someone is when they doing their social justice hiring and promoting of "women"? Actually, I'm a woman and no one can say otherwise, right?

  • by The_Other_Kelly ( 44440 ) on Thursday October 03, 2019 @12:53PM (#59266408) Journal

    There has existed, for a long time, the ACM code of ethics.
    Copies abound online.

    It is sound, rational and expresses well: the Ethos of Engineering.

    Should anyone propose a Code of Conduct, say:
            "Great Idea! Let's use the ACM one!"

    IF in response, you hear:
            "No! You have to use ours",
    then you *know* that you face manipulation, by the politically motivated.

    Reject them!

    Otherwise, nothing you do or say will be sufficient to appease them.
    They seek obedience. Dominion.

    Accepting their Code of Conduct, gives them power over you,
    which they *will* yield. "Ethical engineers would agree to X, Y, Z, ..."

    An open-ended, never ending litany of complaint and demand.

    Ultimately, you will have no-one else to blame, but yourself.

    Reject the politicization of engineering.
    Defend the Enlightenment.

    ACM, for the win.

  • Fuck this. (Score:4, Informative)

    by LenKagetsu ( 6196102 ) on Friday October 04, 2019 @03:33AM (#59268978)
    I'm an intersex male, I am literally ignored and systematically discriminated against, intersex people are persecuted by orders of magnitude more than gay and trans people, intersex people are given almost zero representation in media, intersex people are subjected to genital mutilation to make them "normal", intersex males are likely to be forced into being girls, intersexed people have their choices taken away, intersex people are 2% of the population. Intersex people who try to get a hold of their medical records to find the truth are given the runaround. Parents of intersex children are pressured into "fixing" their kid's genitals, usually into a useless facimile of a vagina. Intersex people have a hard time having their marriage legally recognized. Doctors will lie to the faces of the parents of intersex children saying that if they're not "normal" they will be "psychologically damaged" even though there is literally zero evidence of this, because my fucked up genitals ARE my normal, it's not YOUR normal, you might as well smear wood stain on a black albino to make them "normal".

    I spent most of my life not knowing if I was male or female, and my parents elected to give me a gender neutral name so I could decide what I was, but I always considered myself a man. This caused problems for me in school, high school, and employment. It took me nearly three decades to find someone who would accept the fact that I am both sterile and incapable of sex, and only because she is in the same boat due to a hormonal disorder.

    Growing up I wasn't allowed to have sleepovers because of intersexism, and my mother had to sue my primary school to not segregate me as a "third gender" from things as simple as getting changed for PE or using a bathroom, and to not discuss my status as an intersex in hushed tones in the staff room. People say that any relationship I have "doesn't count" because sex is physically impossible for me.

    My father was convicted of assault and battery because he put well-deserved hands on a doctor who demanded that my genitals be "fixed" beyond repairing my urethra and even threatened to have me taken away from my parents, he missed my first birthday while in prison. Even though I consider myself male, I have had to all but scream that I am a man at people who address me as a "they" or worse, a "xie", and I recently had to demand discipline against a coworker who outed my condition by stating I was "non-binary". People have excluded and singled me out with their pronoun parade in a false attempt to be inclusive, even though I am as much of a man as a eunuch is. I am chromosomally male, I dress male, I call myself a male, and I have a penis with no function, the only thing about me that is not male is my name and if you ask people to name famous people called "Ashton" you will get Ashton Kutcher and Ashton Agar long before someone names Ashton Shepherd.

    Meanwhile, these people cry crocodile tears over someone "assuming" a gender. My objectively measurable disorder is treated like a disease that affects nobody that needs to be fixed, while a subjectively measurable gender expression or identity is put on a pedastal that is one wrong pronoun away from a rampage. I have spent the past eight years blocking LGBT community (not gender or sexuality minorities in general, just LGBT community) assholes trying to drag me into their cult to where I've gone back into the closet for my own safety. I've even had people tell me that my intersexness is "all in my head", "completely made up", and so on, because the LGBT harassment mob decided to add an I on their alphabet soup.

    Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. I recommend reading Intersex Society of North America's website if you would like to learn more. [isna.org]

    /rant

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