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I regularly write emails on mailing lists in reply to people whose gender and pronoun I do not know. Sometimes their name is ambiguous (as an American English speaker — maybe it’s reasonably clear in another language or region). Sometimes someone’s name is in an alphabet or other orthography that I can’t read at all. In general, this isn’t a problem, and I usually manage without pronouns.

In fact, I would find a policy that would require me to know someone’s pronoun at all to be deeply problematic. Imagine for a moment a purely binary world in which everyone was simply male or female. I would still prefer to think of kernel contributors I’ve never met as people, not as men or women. Adding LGBTQ+ into the mix changes nothing. If someone sends me a patch to review, my response should not depend on whether the sender is male, female, “they”, “xe”, or anything else.

So I tend to agree with Monica’s publicly stated point: if I’m going to use a potentially gendered pronoun to refer to someone, I should respect their preferences. But I don’t think I should be required to do so in the first place.

For what it’s worth, there are contexts where personalized pronouns are a nonstarter. If someone is anonymously reviewing an academic paper or a blinded resume, the reviewer must not know the pronoun in question.

Fully agree - I believe one of the core stated issues about writing in a non-gendered way when the "preferred gender pronoun" is known is that is it can be considered rude and disrespectful to the persons identification. And, to me, this seems quite forced and too "inclusive". I have absolutely no issues with any preferences, identifications or anything similar, but I don't think anything positive for any community can come out of characterizing people as rude when they simply try to write/speak in a way that is as neutral as possible, and instead require them to go out of their way to find and recognize the person's preferred pronoun. Especially so when the topic/context is one that has nothing to with the person / gender / identification - as is mostly the case on sites like SE...

Is using "they" as third-person pronoun across the board potentially problematic on SE?

I can get that a person identifying as "she" shouldn't be referred to as "he" and vice-versa, but if somebody's having issues with the only all-inclusive alternative, it's not something anyone should be expected to accommodate for.

I seriously hope this is a straw man. Same thing as the few individuals who make a ruckus whenever they're not referred to as "Dr". If I'm forced to keep track of people's gender identities to be able to contribute, I'm out.

> She made it clear talking to a journalist from The Register

I'm not sure what you're referring to: Monica didn't talk to anyone at The Register..? Only Stack Overflow knew that article was coming.

If there was a formal policy in place, Monica would not violate it. If the differences were unresolvable, she would have resigned, but only after looking for a compromise.

Under no circumstances would she have broken with policy and needed to be forcibly removed. We have eight years of character evidence from her, including several posts from Stack Exchange employees over the years commending her reasonableness and contributions. Sara Chipps' actions ignore all of that and assumed the worst.

I fixed my wording relating to the Register article; it's getting a little confusing to try and track all the different comment threads, edits, and updates.

As for the rest of your comment, that seems to contradict claims made by others, including other moderators, but alright. Even granting it to be 100% true, that suggests as most that she should have resigned (or been removed) this week instead of a week and a half ago, right?

Potentially. The policy still hasn't been finalized, so I'm not ready to assume that it's something she wouldn't have been able to comply with.

> She made it clear in a post quoted by The Register that she refused to use the singular they in any circumstance, even when it was known that it was someone's preferred pronoun.

So just fire her pre-emptively without warning because she might violate a policy that's not yet in place?

> she was repeatedly asked to rethink her stance on this by other moderators, and repeatedly refused

I don't know what transcript that refers to, but her account reads very different:

https://judaism.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5193/stack-...

> I raised some issues with the formation of the policy and asked some questions, the vast majority of which were never answered.

[..]

> On Monday I received email from a different CM explaining why they were making the change and mis-stating some issues I had raised. Concerned that I had not made myself clear in my haste to respond quickly on Friday, I replied with some questions. This was an amicable exchange; I thought we were having a productive conversation. I was promised a reply by this past Friday.

> Instead, I saw my diamond disappear before my eyes and briefly saw an announcement from a CM in TL that contained false allegations against me. When I tried to respond I was booted from the room. Around this time I received email firing me. This email did not cite anything I have done wrong; this was a pre-emptive move that runs counter to how SE tells moderators to treat users when considering suspensions. (Moderators suspend in response to behavior, not speculatively.)

I agree that it wasn't a mistake though: a mistake is pressing the wrong button. This is just a shoddy way to treat people, and a shoddy way to not-apologize for it.

> SO could have done a better job in terms of the process, timing, and communication

Namely a.) not fire for precrime, b.) not ever c.) respond to questions as promised, rather than answering with a ban for no valid reason.

Yeah, that's a good point. If they're keeping the rule that you must use someone's preferred pronouns, then it sounds like Monica can no longer be a mod there regardless of their conversation.

And, I guess, that's the crux of the problem really. Does SO want people like her around? Ostensibly they do, if they're trying to have sites for Judaism, Islam, etc. But it seems incompatible with the new CoC. Monica offered the half measure of only using names, but it seems a hard needle to thread if you're trying to support incompatible ideologies. I think SO is going to have to give up something, and I'm betting it's going to be the goal of being a central place to discuss religion.

You mentioned:

> She made it clear in a comment quoted by The Register that she refused to use the singular they in any circumstance, even when it was known that it was someone's preferred pronoun.

But this is more subtle than that. Monica didn't say that she would use "he" or "she" even when someone prefers "they". She said that she would write in a gender-neutral manner while avoiding gendered pronouns altogether.

Here is the full context of Monica's stance:

> I completely agree that it is rude to call people what they don't want to be called; knowingly misgendering someone is not ok. But the policy was about positive, not negative, use of pronouns. I pointed out that as a professional writer I, by training, write in a gender-neutral way specifically to avoid gender landmines, and sought clarification that this would continue to be ok. To my surprise, other moderators in the room said that not using (third-person singular) pronouns at all is misgendering. The employee never clarified, and this is one of the questions I asked in email. In my email I said clearly that I'm on board with "use preferred pronouns when using pronouns", but from the fact that they fired me without warning (or answering the question), I conclude that that's not the policy. I haven't seen an actual policy, though I am being accused of violating it.

Link: https://judaism.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5193/stack-...