Comment by progman32 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by progman32 | Hacker News Reader

Codes of conduct tend to be driven by (and serve to protect) the group's intended purpose. Gender is a big part of our language for many reasons, some better than others. We should be aware of our goals when dictating what is and isn't acceptable, especially on a technical Q&A forum like StackExchange.

Wanting to know someone's gender can be reasonable. But... on StackExchange? I can count on a single set of digits the number of times I've personally witnessed someone knowing someone else's gender leading to anything better than a neutral outcome. Doctors factor highly in that list. Then dates. Online people... well, only when it was extremely on-topic. Like a time I saw someone getting advice on 6-point racing harnesses vs. 5-point (re: strap geometry to protect the lower body).

As an example, let's take scicomp.stackexchange.com (computational science). Neither a participant's sex nor their gender is an appropriate topic there, with few exceptions. Is a reasonable policy there to avoid all gendered pronouns when referring to other users, unless there's an on-topic reason? Is using "they" or the user's handle worse than bringing gender into the conversation, when this is clearly off-topic? Monica seems to be negotiating for the option to use gender-neutral language. What are the pitfalls if we mandate it? The language can be a little awkward at first but that's a small molehill to die on.

Personally, I've always found it strange that we collectively broadcast our gender so far and wide. We don't continually mention each other's race, hair color, handedness, or preferred sleeping position on every tenth word, yet we often know someone's gender even before we know their name. Why is it so?

Thoughts? Very curious to hear from others. To be clear I have no problem with someone expressing their sexuality, gender, or other aspects of their individuality. I'm a fairly odd cat myself (particulars are irrelevant) and I relish being able to express myself authentically when it's helpful to some goal. I guess I'm mostly challenging the central role gender plays in our language, and asking whether or not we should change this to allow people more flexibility in what they disclose.

> technical Q&A forum like StackExchange.

I believe most of these issues have risen after SE has opened doors to topics beyond tech. As soon as you stop talking about things but about people, you will encounter people problems.

> We don't continually mention each other's race, hair color, handedness, or preferred sleeping position on every tenth word,

In many written languages, and English in particular, you have gendered pronouns which you more or less have to use. Sentences that avoid referring to people with pronouns are awkward and forced.

> yet we often know someone's gender even before we know their name. Why is it so?

In real world relations you often see a person first and "assume their gender" based on how they look, before knowing their name. In some cultures the greeting is different depending on the gender of the other person.

Actually the name alone might not help as names can be gender neutral or families not having gender specific endings (like Slavic languages).

Indeed, there are languages (Baltic ones) here even 'Hello' has multiple versions depending on the target person.

> Sentences that avoid referring to people with pronouns are awkward and forced.

Your post avoided pronouns. Was it awkward and forced?

This is how I write so no. But I did not actively choose to avoid using pronouns, only gendered ones. In this case it was easy because there was not much need for them anyways.

"I" and "you" are pronouns in the post.

Rewrite the post without them; it will be awkward.

It's not just cultures, it's languages!

In my native Hebrew, I'd greet a man like "מה שלומך" "Ma Shlomcha" ("How Are You" literally, "How is your peace?") and a woman gets the female noun form/pronounciation "Ma Shlomech").

Nouns and Verbs have gender in Hebrew

Gender/sex roles are a part of a bigger cultural story we all participate in. Sex is in everything. You can't remove it, without losing an essential part of humanity.

A lot of young men work hard for symbols of masculinity as a form of validation. A job that doesn't pay can still be rewarding in part if it increases the validity or reputation of your sex drive. Gender can change how you reward people.

Compsci may be discussing video games where women prefer completion and fantasy while men prefer destruction and competition. Knowing the gender of the writer and the context of the post can cut down the time and awkward social questions needed to deliver the relevant information.

Gender can change your attitude for risk taking. Suggesting a low risk low reward solution to a young guy looking to prove himself will likely get ignored.

Estimations of the trustworthiness and gut level assessment of competence of a answerer offering an answer that has an unknown quality to the questioner can be assessed on non-rational levels like their competence in other areas of life, including perceived gender role success or attractiveness.

You can't cut out the gender of the speaker and maintain a human conversation that uses most tools of conversation available. Some people work towards a better sex life via money and competence. Cutting out the ability to discern what is important to the questioner makes for spammy answers before you figure out what he/she wants.

It is fundamentally anti-human to cut out the motive force that propagates the species or recreation from a discussion about what people want to achieve in life. It may work as an experiment or produce hyper rational results and be heralded a success. I don't think people will favour the move over all.

The removal of pronouns is fine for the symbol of masculinity at the moment, as a part of a much bigger story. But the symbol of femininity is taking a hit for it, whether you want to continue that trend or reverse it is up to you.

It is true that sex and gender is important cultural factor, but it is also stereotypical and reductionist to take a complex person full of individuality and reduce them down to a single bit of information; is it a he or she.

Taking a historical perspective with gender equality, there is two opposing camps pushing in opposite directions but with the same goal. One side want to eliminate gender, seeing that the shared humanity, traits and behavior is vastly larger than any differences. The other side want to highlight the diversity of gender while maintaining equal value for both.

So looking at both camps, gender is extremely important to people and essential part of humanity, while at the same time the least important part of an complex individual. It is important for gender equality and at the same time an unnecessary detail among a sea of commonalities.

As I identify myself as belonging to one specific camp, I would strongly disagree with the claim that "you can't cut out the gender of the speaker and maintain a human conversation". I try to do that every day and in particular when I see a gender stereotypical (or non-stereotypical) situation. If I meet a male kindergarder teacher I treat them as a individual interesting in working with children, and if I meet a female mechanic I treat them as an individual interested in working with cars. Cutting out the gender of the person makes it easier to maintain that human conversation.

Those two camps "eliminate gender" and "obtain every gender" are not rational positions. They are the simple categories of nothing and everything applied to gender. We don't need to push our definition of gender into the chaos of everything or nothing. A black and white binary. The meeting in the middle of those two is he/she. We have had it forever and though many will heroically go out to the edges, to boldy go where no man has gone before, to find something new you will end up with the same when you come back.

Your virtuous behaviour towards female mechanics and male teachers already has a name. It's politeness.

I understand the US wants to shrug off the last remnants of the UK's culture as it no longer works in our new authoritarian world. You can throw away the gendered line from one of the greatest accomplishments science produced "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind". You can take down the pictures of all the gloomy old men that advanced 'mankind' and call it whatever you want.

But there doesn't seem to be a reason to believe that reality is any different from the past. The advance of gendered science gives us greater understanding of the world, and new ways to be polite. There isn't a requirement to change english to suit. You can simply be polite to everybody involved on an individual basis.

The idea of gender equality is fundamentally impossible to begin with, we have unassailable differences and preferences. The feminine role should be celebrated for what it is and not jammed into the masculine role for the sake of future politics.

> The language can be a little awkward at first but that's a small molehill to die on.

It's my understanding that the issue is conflicting self expression. If in some circumstance the author feels something is awkward, are they allowed to make a judgement call?

And, as moderators, are they given the agency to also make judgement calls in how they moderate?

I guess you could call that a molehill, but I don't know why we need to put people out who feel otherwise. Seems like extending the same courtesy as using preferred pronouns, in a way.

> conflicting self expression

Hm, yes! That's indeed a tricky part. My specific proposal oversimplifies the situation. The term "chosen mode of respect" is cropping up recently, perhaps an amicable solution lies the direction of mutually expecting and accepting each other's respect, and not assuming malice quite as easily.

All this being said if disagreements often escalate all the way to a CoC incident, that's a sign of a disrespectful community that needs more than just a document.

In any case it is encouraging that conversations such as this can still be productive in some forums, like this one.

Edit: Looks like people have been editing others' posts to use gender-neutral wording for a while, to various degrees of acceptance:

https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/373422/is-editing-c...

https://stackoverflow.com/review/suggested-edits/23659540

There are more. I didn't realize people could edit other people's posts. This adds a whole new complicated dimension.

>central role gender plays in our language,

You mean 'English'. (Although most[all?] Indo-European languages do have a gender concept)

There are languages that have no gender specific pronouns (or cases) and the best/funny part is that native speakers of a similar languages tend to call everything 'he' in English.

Personally I don't care what people would call me at all, if the rest of the argument/discussion is on point.

Yes I was a unclear. I meant "our" to imply the language being used in this very conversation. I should have used "this".

My first language is Italian. Even though almost everything is gendered in that language, gender tends to fade into a purely grammatical role. Unless it relates to humans.

> tend to call everything 'he' in English

yes I've noticed this too. Like referring to a machine... "he" will encode the frame into mp4 and pass it to the database...

Your last comment reminds me of an interesting anecdote I observed. Mom and son, the son having new long hair. Mom asked regarding the hair, "aren't you worried people will mistake you for a girl?"

She was genuinely surprised and confused when the son replied that they didn't give a toss if someone does. The landscape is changing fast.

I'd note that in English, the default pronoun actually is "he". The movement to remove that is relatively new and almost purely politically driven.

The most frequent case for me, even on the purely technical sites, is talking about the question author in third person (because writing "question author" or their username [which they might choose to change later!] repeatedly is not really an option).

But even ignoring that, there are several other avenues of communication on SO/SE beyond QA. Comments, different chat rooms, flags, mod messages... And a few of those can be intrinsically personal, so avoiding pronouns may be difficult there too.

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