Why taking responsibility for other people's feelings doesn't work

Question

The whole kerfluffle around pronouns centers around a singular premise. This premise was first asserted in the "Stack Overflow is Not Very Welcoming, it's Time for That to Change" blog post:

Too many people experience Stack Overflow as a hostile or elitist place, especially newer coders, women, people of color, and others in marginalized groups.

The only evidence that has been given that this is true is that (paraphrasing):

Some people have told us this is how they feel, and because everyone's feelings are valid, then it must be true.

Well.

I'm not going to re-litigate that here. And honestly, I think there's very little chance that anything I say here will effect any meaningful change at SE corporate, but I must try anyway, because I love this platform and its communities, and I see them being destroyed from the inside out over policies that I believe will not actually help the groups they are supposedly meant to help, and might actually hurt them.

I'm going to quote a passage from an interview with Bill Maher about political correctness, because he says it better than I ever could:

I grew up in a household with two liberal parents who were ahead of their time. My father and mother told me about civil rights. I knew what the right thing was. The difference is that liberals protect people, and P.C. people protect feelings. They don’t do anything. They’re pointing at other people who are somehow falling short of their standards, which could have changed three weeks ago. They’re constantly moving the goalposts so they can go, “Gotcha!”

When I was growing up, the most liberal thing you could do is not see color. Well, that’s wrong now. You see color, always, so you can register your white privilege. But I grew up in the Martin Luther King era: Judge by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. I still think that’s the best way to do it. Not see it.

If someone walks in the room, after a minute, I should not be thinking about color. And I am not. That’s how I have always been. I have actual black friends. I don’t think they want me to be always thinking: Black person. Black person. I’m talking to a black person.

The Stack Exchange platform works so well precisely because it has a philosophy of staying on topic. The way I used to moderate worked so well because I don't take sides. This is an international platform; you're never going to satisfy everyone's sensibilities.

But everyone can agree to form a community of professionals around a single area of subject matter, and the backgrounds of its participants should not matter at all. That's different than taking the position that we need to protect everyone's personal feelings, or that we must change the demographics of our sites because we don't like the numbers we get from our surveys.

Stack Exchange works so well precisely because, unlike forums and chat rooms, it focuses on that singular purpose. Dragging advocacy of political causes into the platform is fundamentally opposed to that purpose.

Answer 1

This was posted too late in the UTC day for anyone to have the votes this deserves, so here is +100.

The platform worked great for programming questions because it cut through the noise and clutter and kept people on subject. Nobody cares if you are a dog on the internet. Nobody even cares what text editor you use.¹ What matters is only what is relevant to answering the question. What language are you coding in? What framework(s) are you using? What does your input look like?

The platform worked great for religious and humanities questions because it cut through the noise and clutter and kept people on subject. We could leave the issue of who was apostate² out of the equation and answer questions inside a limited scope.

Using the platform to take a side on a political and cultural issue and forcing conformity to that side on moderators completely undermines the one thing this platform was great at.

¹ _{As long as you use vim.}
² _{Christianity.SE vs. Survivor}

Answer 2

I have said it before many times, but it never hurts to repeat it:

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Moderation, downvoting and close voting and feelings

Any kind of system with moderation based on quality will hurt people's feelings. You cannot moderate in a nice way. This is where the Welcoming policy failed. The problem was not generally in SO being a sexist and racist place, but being a moderated place.

When you receive a downvote, and when your question is closed it will always feel bad. When it feels bad, most of the time people will not try to see how they failed and what they did wrong. They will put the blame on others.

If you by any chance are part of some minority (or some other - fresh developers are most likely not a minority) group, it will often seem that the bad feedback you get is because you are part of that group and that you have been discriminated because of that.

Having said that, in communities this large there will always be incidences of really bad behavior. There is no way to avoid that. But what matters is that the Stack Exchange network has mechanisms that can deal with such things fast. This is what makes some communities at large sexist, racist, or unwelcoming on any other basis or not.

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As a woman, I have never been treated badly on SO because I am a woman. I have never been treated badly on SO. Period.

The only offensive comments I got were from posters of poor questions when I was politely telling them their question should be improved or is off topic. I never cared much for those, because they don't represent the real community here.

Answer 3

The difference is that liberals protect people, and P.C. people protect feelings

I really like this quote. I've never thought about it in these terms, but now that you mention it, I've finally figured out what this whole drama reminds me of: Sentimentality (see below).

Sentimentality has no place on stacks. You're exactly right when you say the great thing about the stack sites is that we stay on topic and the backgrounds of people shouldn't matter at all (that's a bit more difficult to resolve on one of the sites I participate in, Parenting, but it holds even there).

An excerpt from an author who I don't agree with in everything he writes, but he did have some relevant things to say about sentimentality (a definition: an excess of emotion that is false, mawkish, and over-valued by comparison with reason):

The public expression of sentimentality has important consequences. In the first place, it demands a response from those who witness it. This response has generally to be sympathetic and affirmatory, unless the witness is prepared to risk a confrontation with the sentimental person and be accused of hardness of heart or outright cruelty. There is therefore something coercive or bullying about public displays of sentimentality. Join in, or at least refrain from criticism.

And later (talking in context of a murdered black man and his surviving parents):

Of course, there were instances of racism both in the distant and recent past that were worse and less easily overcome than this; but none of those instances justified or could ever justify treating with reverence the opinions of individuals within groups that were once, or still are, the object of unfair discrimination, as if they were sacrosanct and without further need of justification. Exactly how dangerous this sentimental way of thinking is, at least potentially, and just how destructive of rationality and the rule of law, is revealed by the report on the murder of Stephen Lawrence. It will be remembered that the report suggested that a racist incident should be defined as one which any witness to it considered to be racist; it also suggested that there should be in place ‘strategies for the prevention, recording, investigation and prosecution of racist incidents,’ and that these strategies should be implemented throughout the public administration. Since earlier in the report it was acknowledged that racist incidents did not necessarily involve breaking any law, what is here proposed is a reign of arbitrary punishment of people for alleged acts or omissions, defence against which is logically impossible. Accusation and guilt have become entirely synonymous.

Not much effort of the imagination is required to understand the consequences of such proposals if implemented, which are thoroughly totalitarian in inspiration.61 The idea that victims, real or imagined, should be given infinite power to determine the functioning of the public service would, of course, soon lead to demands for extension of that power to all parts of society. There is a very considerable element of sadism in all this (it would certainly end in violence), and once again the connection between sentimentality and brutality is exposed.

The habit of taking alleged victimisation at its own estimate is now a common one. For example, in one hospital of which I had knowledge before my retirement, staff who complained of having been bullied could take comfort from the hospital personnel department’s official definition of bullying: a person was being bullied if he thought that he was being bullied. Once again, there was no requirement that, to establish the justifiability of a complaint, there should be objective evidence of the behaviour complained of: a mere look, a tone of voice, a kind gesture, even nothing at all, indeed a total absence of any contact whatsoever, could be interpreted as bullying.

The correct idea that the powerless in any organisation need some protection against the powerful has here been sentimentally transformed into the idea that the less powerful are always accurate and truthful when it comes to their account of their relations with the more powerful.

(From "Spoilt Rotten: The Toxic Cult of Sentimentality", by Theodore Dalrymple).

It's eerie how closely this mirrors your second (paraphrased) quote:

"some people have told us this is how they feel, and because everyone's feelings are valid, then it must be true."

Answer 4

Here's where it fails.

When you're asking a question on an SE site, factors such as your gender, your orientation, the colour of your skin: they don't matter and they shouldn't matter. If somebody uses those factors as an excuse to downvote, or answer condescendingly, or otherwise not be nice, I think we can all agree - whether in agreement with the CoC or not - that they need to be slapped down for it.

Where the CoC and the "taking responsibility for others feelings" approach fails miserably is that it's just a superficial response to the underlying problem. It's just doing something for the sake of doing something so you can be seen to be doing something and say that you're doing something. But the underlying problem is still there; it hasn't gone away.

Worse, it fails miserably because it takes those things I said at the outset don't and shouldn't matter, and it makes them matter.

If there's a problem, and if one wants to deal with the problem, then the best way to do it is by dealing with the problem. That shouldn't even have needed to be said. Hand out slap downs to bad actors, tackle people who are behaving abusively, do what needs to be done to clean up the filth. Just don't dress it up in pretty words that enable you to say "look how great we are" without actually achieving anything but alienating a huge proportion of your user base.

Answer 5

Here is the hypocrisy in the that you told us it must be true statement, the veteran users told them that the blog post Jay Hanlon published made them feel like they were being accused of blanket bigotry and racism when they are/were the first line of defense against hateful and abusive language on the site.

We were the most active in finding and reporting such issues.

SOCVR was a bastion of a defense against bad content even more so than anything else we did. Toxic and abusive content and spam was handled within minutes of it being brought to peoples attention in the room. That said, extremely abusive content aimed at specific groups of people was rare compared to the run-of-the-mill abusive content aimed at people that left comments on highly downvoted questions as answers, because, ironically they did not have the reputation to comment themselves.

The funny thing is we told you over and over, and you never even acknowledged we were saying anything. You just doubled down over and over again on the new people should be treated with kid gloves because all the not-new people are the problem.

Well, we can all see where that has gotten you already in the short time (about a year) since I completely had my Stack Overflow account deleted. I might just be one person that quit, but I am not the only person that quit contributing. The number of people actively curating the content (and I include abusive comments and language in that) has dropped tremendously on Stack Overflow in the last 18 months.

I am sure statistics are showing you more than we can see publicly, and I am sure those same numbers will show you this is just accelerating the problem issues instead of solving them.

You had a good run, but in the end, you are destroying yourself from the inside out.

Answer 6

Do you think it is staying on topic if someone comments on a question "this is why women shouldn't be allowed to learn JavaScript?" It's not, is it? And a mod would remove that comment, right?

So when women tell you that those sorts of comments (and other slightly more subtle ones that last longer) hurt them and contribute to driving them out of the industry, your response is

"some people have told us this is how they feel, and because everyone's feelings are valid, then it must be true."

Let's stay on topic by not letting people introduce off topic nastiness on technical and non technical sites, ok? Not by defending whatever people want to blurt out because nobody should ever have to think before blurting or ever be asked to take other people's feelings into consideration.

Thought experiment: whenever you hear or read a sentence with "political correctness" in it, try substituting "politeness" or "compassion" or "empathy" and see if you still think it's so great.

Dragging compassion into the platform is fundamentally opposed to that purpose.

Hm.

Also, I would have hoped that politeness, compassion (this poor developer can't understand an error message! I can help!) and empathy (I remember when I struggled with that last year) aren't being dragged in but have always been here. Some people are asking them to be strengthened and extended to more people.

Answer 7

I think that by now the community has made it abundantly clear what it wants by numerous contributions and quite a few downvote orgies and the company has made it equally clear that it's dead set on its course for "inclusion and welcomeness" and publishing the new code of conduct and all the rest that disengagement is the only possible option if one is disagreeing. I think there is zero chance for any change in the near future.

Having said that, it might be interesting to come back in like a year and observe. They may be discussing the next amendments to the code of conduct then amidst a slow decline of the platform. Or maybe even it worked and people suddenly behaved much more than when only being told to be nice and assume good intentions. Who knows. Or the effect in practice is rather small, because the moderators will be reluctant to use a relatively blunt knife except in extreme cases. It seems quite complex stuff to reliably estimate the impact. Surely there will be many more discussions about people being offended and decisions who has the highest right to be offended.

Let me digress a bit about colorblindness. I fully agree that equality means not seeing the color, but just because some people don't see it (the good ones) doesn't mean all don't and that's why it still is a topic. We still have to speak and to think about it, even if we ourselves don't see it in principle. Affirmative actions were regarded as a good thing and maybe still are. Of course I'm too young and too far away geographically to really know what it means.

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P.S.: The whole debate of 2019 about the code of conduct changes slowly faded into oblivion. It turned out that in practice the changed code of conduct didn't change much and that people weren't so interested in it after the company made some compromises. Now in 2023 there is even another iteration of the code, which is even longer to read, but compared to 2019 almost nobody is really interested in it. People already behave very well and the improvements in the code of conduct are relatively small. Was it much ado about nothing then in 2019? It surely looks like it was a bit overblown by both sides way back then and also avoidable. Or people simply forgot about it? Maybe Monica Cellio could still be on this platform if only all would have acted more cool-headed.

Answer 8

I'm fairly sure your post is being interpreted as meaning:

1. Familiar prejudices (like racism) are bad and we should act against them. In these cases, we don't blame the victims for being upset by racism; we indeed take responsibility for other people's feelings. In fact, we go even further: we take preventative action against people's feelings being hurt by racism. Racism is considered not okay at Stack Exchange.

2. Unfamiliar prejudices (like transphobia) are not our problem; we don't need to take responsibility for other people's feelings. Transphobia is considered kinda okay at Stack Exchange.

The injustice of "not taking sides"...

When it comes to racism, how does someone "not take sides"? Very likely from most people's perspective, racism is _not_ considered a valid side: not taking sides amounts to taking action against racism.

However, transphobia is considered a valid side: not taking sides amounts to inaction against transphobia...

...and we argue "we're just here for the Q&A" to justify this inaction against transphobia (along with other unfamiliar prejudices).

Answer 9

I'm going to use your Bill Maher example mixed with some of my own personal experience here.

You see, I did not grow up in a very liberal and progressive family. I didn't have many friends growing up who were people of color and when I did make friends with a few people as an adult I tried very hard to treat them like I would anyone else. One day one of my friends pulled me aside and said, "I don't think you are a bad person, which is why I am even telling you this, but some of the things you say are racist."

Yes, she flat out called me a racist. And yes I wanted to argue with her and tell her she was wrong. And I wanted to have her explain to me exactly what it was I was doing wrong. I wanted her to prove it. I am very glad I didn't.

You see, I was so busy trying to treat everyone the same, but what I didn't realize is that I treated white people in a way that didn't hurt white people, but absolutely did hurt people of color.

To this day I have to be critical of the way I act and the way I talk to make sure the way I am behaving is reasonable towards the people I want to be reasonable towards. If you want to argue that that degree of thoughtfulness shouldn't be apart of engaging in meaningful society then I say you are wrong. Everyone is responsible for their own acts, for the hurts that they cause no matter how malicious or simply carelessly blind.

Ignorance is no excuse.

Answer 10

You have completely missed the point, as has Bill Maher. It's not about feelings.

Back in the 1980s, people were moaning about people being too PC, because they objected to having buildings named after the people who owned their great grandparents. It wasn't about their feelings though; it was about the fact that continuing to celebrate and honour slave owners by naming buildings after them perpetuated the inequality and oppression of black people.

The same thing here. Pronouns are not about feelings; they are about systematic bigotry that does real, actual harm to trans/non-binary people.

The people with hurt feelings here are the ones who can't even make the minimal effort to use the pronouns that someone requested, because they find it too upsetting to be polite. It's the ultimate political correctness.

Answer 11

Stack Exchange works so well precisely because, unlike forums and chat rooms, it focuses on that singular purpose. Dragging advocacy of political causes into the platform is fundamentally opposed to that purpose.

By regulating that racism, sexism, antisemitism, trans- and homophobia have no place here via the CoC, Stack Exchange is arguably making it easier to focus on that purpose and reducing the amount of political activism.

These rules make it easier to focus on the topic at hand and not dissolve into a discussion about hateful commentary, because that commentary can easily be deleted via the CoC.

If everyone were following these basic rules and focusing on the subject matter, there would be no problem.

Answer 12

Taking responsibility for people's feelings is the meaning of living together in society imho, and communities are like micro-societies. The idea that content exists completely dissociated from posters doesn't make any sense to me. I wouldn't want to contribute to such a place, and AI might as well take my place if that were the case. The licensing model doesn't result in denying authorship, quite the opposite really. It celebrates it, through sharing and remix.

I just don't buy into this neutrality argument, which is really to me just a way for traditionalists to shy away from stating their true opinion about the topic. Pseudo-religious beliefs about things being the enmity of God's design, whether openly stated or not, or other beliefs based on fear-mongering concerning the safety of children and all, shouldn't be used to deny individual choice in a place I would love. A modern nation of rights can't be a theocracy and neither can a modern community. Taking into account an individual's aspirations and the way they see themselves and their place in the universe is paramount for me, and will make them want to contribute more. And isn't their contribution what people who oppose this care about? Did God contribute a single piece of content here? No, human beings did. It is the obfuscation of the lack of separation between religious beliefs and state/business, that "neutrality", which makes the topic of individual choice political, not individual choice and its acceptance, which is the prerogative of free human beings. Political just means not abiding by the far right dogma or agenda and that old order of things that can never change and is set and one size fits all stone. I don't care for it. And I'm a Christian. And since there is no moral high ground to these anyway, as old or recent history shows, denying their denial is what true neutrality really means to me.

People shouldn't let themselves be defined by the limited bygone views of others, and communities shouldn't enable this logic either in my opinion. I take the side of enabling people and diversity. The last thing I would want is for "neutrality" to make this place the place where a unique type of people barely hiding their opinion comfort themselves in their ways and make up excuses for denying people and excluding changes which are taking place, in the name of the licensing model and said "neutrality". I would find that inorganic, unbecoming and offensive.

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Word golf version:

Content means nothing without the people who make it happen, and conceited carelessness is not a value I long for, one so inclined can always climb a stairway back to heaven or a tree for that matter, but society and community is not the place for that imho, so I disagree.