Is the current outrage by the long time community contributors really about pronouns/trans people/Monica? [closed]

Question

This question has nothing to do with whether or not SE wants to fix things or engage with the community, the answers to that are already known: ‘nothing to fix’ and ‘no’. This is about the origins of the discontent with the way the long time veteran community as a whole has been vilified and blamed for the few rate bad actors in the past and used as a scape-goat for whatever the corporate entity has in mind for their future to save their reputation or whatever.

TL;DR

It is not and never has been

It is not, and it is not about Monica either, she is caught in the middle of something, made a public example of as a warning, and all that was completely avoidable regardless of her opinion on the pronouns and the CoC.

It is just the logical backlash against the continuation of the blanket vilification that the Stack Overflow community experienced with the Jay Hanlon blog post, but now applied/implemented against the entire StackExchange of communities.

There are many that are on the autistic spectrum that are probably an inordinate percentage of the technical communities, especially Stack Overflow, and when they get accused of malice when there is none and without any proof in the comments and their flags of abuse are ignored and they are sent curt messages by the moderators handling the flags to suck it up, or that they are mocking someone when they are asking a legit question in all sincerity, it seems like a double standard and hypocrisy at its most egregious cases.

I am done with the abuse here, from the moderation staff, from those that just want to lash out at everyone and accuse everyone of everything implicitly just because that is the popular thing to do right now. And to paraphrase Jay Hanlon,

I know when I am not wanted or appreciated, you know how? Because, you told me so ...

The first 3 or 4 dozen times should have been enough of a message, but then again, those of use that are on the spectrum do not get the hint as easily as others.

And to those that think, good the problem people are self removing themselves, good riddance, I put 10 years into SO, had a huge impact number and never once was abusive to any group. I was vocal when people attacked me or my character in public comments and their comments were allowed to stand because they were part of the cool kids weaponizing the first CoC changes, because well they were better at manipulating language and people to language lawyer their abuse as polite, when one person did comment in my defense that polite abuse is still abuse they got their comment deleted as well. You are losing allies, with no sarcasm, your online paradise you are creating, I hope you get what you want.

This outcome, this place the sites are in, is not unexpected and could be completely predicted and completely avoided.

Answer 1

My personal view is that you're right that the backlash isn't really about pronouns or trans people. I would argue that the core of the anger is really about 2 main things:

1. The view that StackExchange doesn't listen to or care about the community of core users, and
2. The firing of Monica Cellio and the lack of response to it.

There are definitely people who feel strongly about pronouns specifically, and there are definitely some issues with the specific changes to the CoC (more specifically, the explication of those changes in the FAQ), but I think the degree of anger comes from those 2 points above.

If people felt that SE cared about them and the site and if Monica hadn't been fired, I think identical changes would have gone over much better. And, conversely, I think SE could have made much smaller changes but still gotten a similar response because of the lack of faith and trust in them.

Answer 2

We outraged people don't like to be lumped together as if we're all outraged for the same reasons. It just makes some of us angrier. It's like pouring gasoline on the sun. Then our reasons for outrage are even more divergent. It's a vicious cycle. At least one person has already burst into flames. I am not joking.

Answer 3

It is more about the further potential abuse of weaponization of the CoC than anything else.

The irony that an unpublished CoC was weaponized against a moderator because they pointed out that it could be a problem with uniform enforcement and weaponization that they were then proactively removed because of something they might do when the CoC was published and would take effect is not lost on most of us.

If you think this is what the uproar is about, you are just seeing what you want to see and completely ignoring the bigger issue, because the bigger issue is much more nuanced. Your everyone is to blame assertion is kind of the heart of the problem, blank statements of guilt by definition tend to lump the innocent in with the guilty, regardless of how tiny the percentage of guilty there are, which ironically is what was the seed of all the discontent almost 2 years ago, the powers that be are telling everyone they are guilty of being bigots/racists/sexists and that SE enabled them to be, and especially those that think they are not are the worst offenders.²

² If you’re shaking your head thinking, “not me,” I’d encourage you to take these implicit bias tests, specifically the Race IAT and the Gender-Career IAT. If you’re like me, they’re going to hurt.

See, I get it, the I do not see _____ are the the same as the I see ____ and I ignore it. Like Ibrim X Kendi says, (to paraphrase an statement he made in an NPR interview) it is not enough to be not racist, you need to be an anti-racist, and that is to see race, acknowledge it and actively ignore/not consider it.

This last situation is just the final disrespectful straw that many long time community members just could not tolerate in silence anymore. Ironic is it not?

At this point, them acknowledging this and making a real apology is about as likely as Emperor Palpatine apologizing for Order 66 in the up coming Star Wars movie.