How can the community assist in welcoming LGBTQ users?

Question

This is a followup to my question Are there specific issues with unwelcoming behavior toward LGBTQ persons on Stack Exchange? . StrongBad, in a comment replying to one of my comments, suggested that I go ahead and ask something along these lines. This question is directed at those who have experienced unwelcoming behavior.

I'm so confused over the nature of the unwelcoming behavior that others have alluded to. If I can't figure out what is happening because it gets deleted quickly, there's little I can do to work toward preventing future occurrences.

What, specifically, can individuals in the community do to support those who have experienced gender bias? I'm asking you -- those of you who have experienced bias related to being LGBTQ or some other sort of gender bias. What do you want or need us to do so that you feel welcomed?

• Are you looking primarily for greater awareness of the issues you commonly face? That is, there is nothing really that specific for us to do except to attend sensitivity training, show greater empathy, etc.
• Do you want us to be more vigilant in voting down and flagging unwelcoming content so that it gets deleted quicker?
• Are there a few specific users that you want to be "taught a lesson", and the rest of us are caught up in the crossfire?
• Do you want us to proactively ask you for your pronouns or other biographical or identity details before we engage with you? (I apologize for accidentally misgendering Aza in my previous question, but there's nothing on her profile to indicate her gender or that she wants people to be particularly sensitive in this regard towards her. Perhaps I could have sent her a note "Hey Aza, I'm going to reference you in an upcoming post, what are your pronouns?", but that seems so awkward.)
• Do you want help with lobbying Stack Exchange into making changes to the existing system such as adding support for adding pronouns, sexual orientation, etc. to user profiles?

Answer 1

I have experienced problems at SE around the use of gendered pronouns.

Background:

I am a female SE participant who works very hard to remain gender neutral on SE. When I was getting started at a particular male-dominated SE site, I found it quite beneficial in building up reputation and respect to fly under the gender radar there. I was careful to avoid writing anything there that would give any hints as to my gender.

Several years ago, there was a user at that site with whom I had some ongoing tension. I’ll call him User A. (His gender was clear from his user name or his personal home page, easily found via google by using the information he posted in his SE profile.)

User A outed me as a female participant in a discussion comment. That page received thousands of views and I flagged his comment. I patiently attempted to work through the problem with the site moderators, but they said they could not edit his comment or remove it, and they said they could not force User A to dialogue with me, or with them, about the problem. I was shocked. I carefully explained how gender affects interactions on that site, and I explained that my opinions would have much less credibility on that site if my gender were known. I explained that I didn’t want to publicly correct User A regarding my gender, because that would either mean confirming the gender attribution he had made, or being untruthful, which I have an aversion to.

Eventually I found a discreet way of communicating with User A. He explained that I had posted something on a different SE site regarding breastfeeding, in which my actual gender was clear. Once he pointed that out, I went back and edited that post. In the new version, I just said "we," so it wouldn't be clear which parent (me, or my husband) was the one who was doing the breastfeeding. User A removed the problematic comment and we both removed all traces of the conversation.

I felt that the site moderators could have easily and quickly solved the problem, by simply removing the comment that referred to me as "she."

So, how can people be supportive?

• Let's get in the habit of not assuming others' gender, unless it's been made obvious (through name, profile, image, posts or comments).

• Moderators can be watching for this issue when responding to flags.

• Let's all practice greater empathy. When we write something, let's ask ourselves, How would I feel if someone directed that to me?

• SE can lead the way in practicing greater empathy, by reinstating Monica Cellio pending an open discussion of the proposed changes to the Code of Conduct. In my experience, Monica approaches moderation with empathy and humanity, and has been a model moderator.

  Maybe it will become necessary to ask her to step down due to irreconcilable differences, later on, during an open discussion of the proposal -- but we're not there yet.

  By removing her prematurely, SE is causing more harm than good to the principles of tolerance, inclusion and respect.

Answer 2

Yeah, this ended up being an unstructured mess. There's a summarized version at the end, but the rest contains reasoning and some hits at the unreleased CoC, as it has been presented by the two answers posted to two different resignation posts on other metas.

What do you want or need us to do so that you feel welcomed?

The new CoC as it has been presented this far overcomplicates it a lot. Speaking for myself, I'm perfectly fine with "they" instead of a random gendered pronoun, and I'm pretty sure most people are. SE isn't built up as a social media where gender is listed. Even if it is, there's far too many variations to properly cover it.

For an instance, there's people who don't have pronouns at all, and prefer to have their name used instead, there's people who change pronouns daily, there's people who use multiple pronouns, some who use all, some who use all except one or more, and all kinds of variations in between.

My point is: don't overthink it. Most on-site interactions actually don't touch pronouns, with a possible exception to meta sites. Personally, if I'm in doubt, I use "they" or avoid pronouns entirely if I'm on main or meta. Chat is different, and I'll rather ask if I need to. Using names is, as far as I know, the variant the fewest amount of consider offensive. I actually haven't met anyone who has felt offended by name use (provided it's not deadnaming, which is bad either way, but doesn't really apply online).

Generally, if you're in doubt and it makes sense to ask (it would likely be considered noise on main/meta), ask. And even after you've asked, I doubt anyone minds if you fall back to their name. Speaking for myself, I like hearing my name from time to time.

Do you want us to proactively ask you for your pronouns or other biographical or identity details before we engage with you?

If it doesn't make sense to ask, no. Again, chat is a lot better for these types of things. Optimally, we'd have a system for adding pronouns to names, but that gets complicated fast with all the variations. Not to forget that some people don't want to list their gender, and requiring it can ironically be unwelcoming too.

While a lot of people know their pronouns, there's still people who aren't sure what they are, and prefer to not list anything or even see that option. Not to forget people who aren't out of the closet. Both these might be a minority of a minority, but they matter, and their problems are real.

This part needs its own paragraph because of a misleading definition elsewhere; "they", aside the plural use, is widely regarded as a gender-neutral pronoun. Now for the misleading definition; "they" does not have to refer to non-binary people. I know some non-binary people, one of which is fine with he/she/they. I also know one who prefers it/its, but who's fine with "they" too in the sense that using "they" isn't considered offensive or hurtful. Non-binary people can use all kinds of different pronouns.

Moreover, non-binary isn't technically a gender - it's a spectrum of gender identities that include all kinds of identities. Quite literally, non-binary means something outside a binary system (here: male and female). The "implications" vary from person to person, and I don't have a chance of listing all the variations. I actually don't know all myself - more on that later.

Honestly, I doubt anyone will call you unwelcoming for using "they". Personally, I find that a lot of people just assume programmers here are male, at least among new users. "sir" and "bro" is also thrown around an unnecessary amount regardless of the receiver, and this practice needs to die in a fire, preferably yesterday.

Misgendering is a slippery slope. There's some people who can't be misgendered (that's those who use all pronouns, and don't really care which are used). Some people use multiple pronouns and can be harder to misgender (if one or more fall in the "binary" pronouns).

Personally, I only consider misgendering a problem if it's repeated, and it's clearly malicious. That being, if someone uses "he/him" about me, I'll correct them. I don't like it, but I'm not going to hate the other person for that. Note that not all people take this approach; some people are hurt the first time. I've gotten a bit of a laid-back approach to it. However, repeated use in a way that's pretty obviously an invalidation attempt is directly hurtful.

Again, this isn't complicated: listen to people. There are a lot of unique approaches to pronouns out there (trust me - I'm in multiple LGBTQ servers on Discord, one of which is a server exclusively for transpeople and non-binary people).

That being said, no one is required to learn all the pronouns - there's a lot of them _{Live site: https://pronoun.is/all-pronouns}. There's also no point in learning all of them, but if someone tells you they use a pronoun you haven't heard before, all you need to do is remember that the person uses that pronoun, and you're good.

TL;DR:

What do you want or need us to do so that you feel welcomed?

• Listen! Discarding people's pronouns or identity because "it has to be proven" is offensive. If someone tells you their pronouns, accept it and use it. Some might sound weird at first, but a lot of things sound weird the first time they're heard.
• Don't use gendered pronouns without clarifying first. Or, as written more elegantly in the first answer - avoid assuming gender. Prefer gender-neutral language or names if you're in doubt.
  • Remember that some people don't use pronouns. Listen to them and find out what they use instead.
• Make changes to the CoC - but please don't make it so strict it fails to include other members of LGBTQ who may not be as visible (including, but far from limited to people who are still figuring out their identities, people who use multiple pronouns, etc). Allow names, allow "they", but make sure it doesn't allow for intentional misgendering.
• Flag behavior that's clearly abusive. Under this comes a second request (albeit not for users): make comment moderation tools better for everyone to help find abusive behavior and mitigate problems fast.
• Don't be like SE. We have feelings too

Answer 3

Please stop giving credence to the idea that using a person's pronouns is somehow onerous.

The very fact that you can find people on this site who openly think that it is acceptable to use some pronouns, but to refuse to use others is unwelcoming and emotionally draining for people who have struggled to find language with which to accept themselves.

The fact that people feel able to debate this is unwelcoming.

Most of time in the Stack Exchange world you just don't need a person's pronouns (which are only used in the third person). In many reply contexts you end up using the second person and addressing a person directly. On some occasions you will find yourself referring to another post by author "the answer by CB" and only very occasionally is a third person pronoun needed (e.g. "What CB fails to mention in their answer ..."). At this point you can simply look at a person's profile - it'll only be a click away - if they state their pronouns then use the pronouns which they state, otherwise use something gender neutral such as "they".

It really is very simple, and it means a lot to many people.

Answer 4

You can listen.

When we say that things are a bit difficult you could say "How so?" And maybe watch your tone when you say it lest you come off as saying "I demand you prove it to me." (I don't think your previous question crossed that line, but it was close) When we do give examples don't pop out the woodwork to explain why our examples aren't valid. Please, just listen. Accept that we may be telling the truth and that even if we are wrong or misguided we are just trying to tell you how it looks to us. Take the time to consider your response and do so with compassion and patience and deference. Maybe then the civil discourse will flow more freely.

Answer 5

Believe our issues instead of mocking them.

In so much of this conversation, a queer person trying to express the problem with Stack Overflow is immediately pounced on by a defensive dude reacting like it's the most ridiculous thing he's ever heard.

The worst examples are deleted now, as the worst examples tend to be, and that's a positive sign that the community is trying, but don't go asking for receipts because, look at my reputation score, I don't and can't have them.

Stop celebrating transphobia.

When a moderator resigns and posts a long ramble that denies the validity of trans people as his parting words, and the post gets hundreds of net upvotes, it indicates that the power user community generally agrees with transphobia, or at least doesn't think it's as much of a problem as losing one of their own. On a queer-friendly site, that post would have a negative score, or just be removed until he came up with a better statement.

On many smaller occasions across this Meta site, people are posting transphobic things as well, like telling us that our pronouns are wrong, that we are liars, or that we are mentally ill. They get net upvotes as well.

Don't let transphobia stand. Call it out. Call out the people who say it's not that bad. When a transphobic person leaves, let them, don't martyr them.

Trans folks are on the front line of the politics of LGBTQ+ issues at the moment, and even the cis parts of the LGBTQ+ community can see what's happening.

Fix structural misogyny.

Misogyny affects a majority of the queer community:

• Queer cis women suffer from misogyny in the usual way.
• Trans women suffer from misogyny navigating their life as women.
• Trans men suffer from misogyny because they once were perceived as women, and possibly still are by some, and they also grew up experiencing it.
• Non-binary folks get the worst of everything.

Of course straight cis women are also affected by misogyny on Stack Overflow. Women's issues and LGBTQ+ issues go hand in hand here.

Structural misogyny takes forms like:

• Women who call out problems, such as April Wensel, are disbelieved by the core community of this site.
• The processes of this site favor asking, answering, and moderating questions in the manner typical of cis men. When you have suffered from misogyny, you use more cautious and appeasing language, which this site doesn't reward.
• More reputation points go to men than women, because men fit better into the community as it is, giving men more control over the site in a self-reinforcing cycle.

You can't support the LGBTQ+ community without supporting women, and you can't support women without believing them.

Broaden your idea of what the community is.

The core community that created this toxicity isn't going to fix it on its own. So the question isn't just what you can do, it's what the women who left can do if you get them to come back. It's what the queer folks you're getting too defensive about can do. It's what the new users can do.

Strengthen the code of conduct.

Hoo wow I bet Meta isn't going to like this point.

A code of conduct is a fairly essential tool in maintaining a respectful, inclusive community. Most successful open source projects, for example, have a strong code of conduct by now. SO is clearly lagging behind if putting anything as basic as "don't misgender people" in the Code of Conduct (note: I don't know the actual language any more than you do) is a shock to the community.

Inclusion, without a code of conduct to support it, will be chipped away until it's nothing.

Answer 6

Don't expect us to educate you.

Educating people is terribly draining, don't expect us to do it. We might be willing to help you learn, but don't specifically ask us to do so. Instead, ask the community and hope someone will be willing to answer. And, in any case, Google is your friend, use it.

Don't get defensive when we talk about an issue we are facing.

Don't, never ever, say that "not all [category of people] are like that". We know and it's very tiring to hear this excuse all day long.

Also, don't imply that we are oversensitive. Maybe we are, maybe we aren't (and we probably aren't). But, in any case, it's not an excuse to make us feel bad and unwelcome.

Make everything in your power to hide transphobic stuff from us.

Flag them, edit them, vote to delete them. If something is clearly out of line and people aren't reacting quickly enough, don't wait for the answer to be deleted​, remove the offensive part yourself (yes, sometimes it's the whole answer).

Do not passively watch when someone says something offensive.

Be an ally, protect us, show us that we aren't alone and that you don't stand by that.

Listen to us.

Sometimes, allies say stuff that aren't true. It's okay. But listen to us when we correct you. As the people who suffer from the oppression, we know best what is and isn't right for us.

Use your downvotes.

There is nothing more depressing than seeing something transphobic highly upvoted and without any downvotes.

Don't take any risk.

If you see something borderline, flag it/edit it. I'm all for "assuming good intent", but when it can hurt someone else feeling (even unintentionally), then I would rather be too cautious than not enough.