How can the prohibition on pronoun avoidance possibly be enforced?

Question

I also want to know...from our LGBTQ users--are you offended when the person just doesn't include a pronoun at all? Because rules like this are FOR the people they might hurt. When a gender-neutral pronoun is used, does that cause harm? When no pronouns at ALL are used, does that cause harm? I'm asking to see if I can get a different perspective on this, though I have no problem using whatever pronouns a person wants, I'm worried that even though I really don't use them much (I say the OP or poster most of the time) that not using them will bring the hammer down, and I want to know how exactly SE can possibly determine what is in my mind as I write and how they would determine how I "naturally write"?

See below from the new COC...

Q11: If I’m uncomfortable with a particular pronoun, can I just avoid using it?

We are asking everyone to use all stated pronouns as you would naturally write. Explicitly avoiding using someone’s pronouns because you are uncomfortable is a way of refusing to recognize their identity and is a violation of the Code of Conduct.

Q12: Does this mean I’m required to use pronouns when I normally wouldn’t?

We are asking everyone to use all stated pronouns as you would naturally write. You are not required to insert pronouns where you otherwise would not.

If we aren't required to insert pronouns, but we have to use them as we would "naturally write" how can Stack Exchange possibly determine the intent? Q12 speaks to what Monica was saying, which was that she doesn't actually use pronouns in that way. But how can the SE possibly determine, in a given piece of writing if the person writing would have "naturally" written those in?

It becomes less about what the person does or doesn't do, and more about what SE thinks the person THINKS. And I believe that's the problem.

Answer 1

I also want to know...from our LGBTQ users--are you offended when the person just doesn't include a pronoun at all?

Not really. The alternatives are my names (plain or through a ping) or through alternatives such as "OP" when on main or in chat associated with a post. Ungendered second person pronouns (you/your/...) are in my experience never a problem, as far as I know anyway. I'm saying this with a pretty big backing pool of a few hundred people.

Misgendering is a problem for me, but I'm fine with no gendering or gender-neutral pronouns.

When a gender-neutral pronoun is used, does that cause harm?

Some people don't like it, but I've yet to meet anyone who doesn't prefer 'they' over the common alternatives (usually he/him, some times guessing based on name and avatar, if applicable).

Personally, I prefer she/her, but I don't mind they/them.

When no pronouns at ALL are used, does that cause harm?

If it's done right, no. I like hearing my name for one, but there's plenty of ways to write entirely without pronouns, or at least minimize use in a way that's not likely to hurt someone. If you're referencing multiple people, however, it's hard to avoid the use of an identifier.

But how can the SE possibly determine, in a given piece of writing if the person writing would have "naturally" written those in? It becomes less about what the person does or doesn't do, and more about what SE thinks the person THINKS. And I believe that's the problem.

I think you're greatly exaggerating. This is intended as a good faith component in the CoC, and it's to avoid people feeling forced to write pronouns where they normally don't. They're saying "here's some guidelines, implement them any way you want", not "write pronouns or Thau shalt be banished!". The point of it is, write the way you normally do, but if someone tells you to use a specific pronoun, use it. Depending on which site you're on, the average amount of comments using pronouns can be tiny. Chat is a different story, but the format is also more suitable for specifying pronouns.

Nonetheless, my weirdly phrased point is: you're going to make mistakes from time to time. If mods notice a pattern recurring enough to warrant calling it intentional, you might be at risk. But even now, you're not gonna get banned the first time you break a rule (some exceptions with one rep users who obviously only exist to spam). As long as you try being nice and understanding, you're not gonna run into too much trouble.

As for enforceability, like I said, I'm assuming the idea lies in detecting recurring issues. If you noticeably avoid i.e. neopronouns, but still use binary pronouns and 'they' elsewhere, a mod will probably warn you. Patterns are the key here.

Disclaimer: this is based on how I see this being enforced. I'm not a mod, nor have I seen the official enforcement guidelines. I'm also not sure if this is the way it's generally practiced

Answer 2

I can only answer with an example from within my own family.

My sibling's partner has suffered long and deep hurt from the refusal of his birth family to refer to him as 'he/him' after his transition. They go out of their way to refer to him as 'Chris' (or rather his own gender-neutral birth name), or 'my child Chris' or 'my sibling Chris' or 'they'. By doing so they are denying his gender-identity, and doing so deliberately (and passive-aggressively) -- malicious compliance, it has been called elsewhere.

Imagine then the pain that he would be reminded of, if somebody in this venue insisted on avoiding pronouns unnaturally.

It is possible to learn to use somebody's chosen pronouns when you've been made aware of them -- or to default to natural sounding neutral language when you don't know/are not sure. Some of us have been doing so for over 40 years in all walks of our lives.

And if somebody's chosen pronoun contradicts your deeply-held beliefs, or you find you really can't adapt your writing style, it's possible not to engage, or to withdraw gracefully from a conversation online. (Face-to-face is different).

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Edit: this is longer than my original response, so I want to emphasise that I TOTALLY AGREE with the CoC change (while believing that its introduction has been a failure on all levels).

Also, I expect downvotes, but I'm staying true to myself. As everybody should.

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By discussion/reading, I have come belatedly to understand that for some people, it is not a matter of adapting their writing style or disengaging/withdrawing; the change in the CoC fundamentally challenges their deeply-help beliefs and they can't see any way of continuing to participate while staying true to their beliefs. This does not automatically make them 'bad people' (unless and until they demonstrate unmistakeable intent to hurt people, including denying their existence, having been informed what can be included under that umbrella that they may not previously have realised). We should not shun and excoriate people on the basis of their beliefs -- actions/speech (or patterns of actions/speech) is what matters here (and -- more practically -- what is actionable). And a single action isn't grounds for launching a nuclear attack.

I apologise unreservedly for not understanding before why people might find the CoC changes impossible to accept -- when you've never experienced something, it's hard to recognise how it impacts somebody else but that's no excuse for not apologising when you recognise you've been wrong. So, again, I apologise to those who are finding this hard for reasons of belief (while wholeheartedly refuting the argument that belief is an excuse for hurting people).

I may disagree with underlying beliefs, but it can't be gainsayed that some groups are feeling pain because of this change, while others believe it improves matters. I have no sympathy for those who are being denied a route to be deliberately hateful, but I do understand the pain of those who would choose to 'live and let live' and have not previously understood how that can transmute into 'keep quiet, don't rock the boat, don't tell us who you are and you'll be fine'. I DO NOT accept that position -- it favours the people who don't want to know, above the people who are expected to keep quiet. I do understand that the people who are required to accommodate the change might find it impossible to adapt.

I have an analogy that has helped me to realise where some people are coming from.

I have spent my entire life not accepting the usage of 'he' in English as the generic/gender-neutral third-person pronoun -- I was taught by my mother and also at (an all-girls) school that it was wrong, and belittled women, who were the equal to men in all fields (but not their equivalent).

I spent my University years and my years in employment fighting the usage, and am pleased that it is no longer -- in some quarters at least -- the default generic pronoun; and that correcting the usage of 'he' to 'they' in some venues is no longer challenged. There are places it isn't recognised, or is actively ridiculed, and those are places I do my best to avoid, because I can't participate and still stay true to what I believe on the subject.

Let us suppose that the CoC had been modified to mandate the use of 'he' as that generic third-person pronoun. Let us also suppose that the reasoning has been explained and it explains the 'benefits' (however 'benefits' are defined) to a group of people not including me who feel disadvantaged without the change.

As a one-time professional writer, and a sometimes teacher of writing, I'm confident that I could adjust my writing style to avoid using it at all; or I could modify my behaviour not to get into situations where it might be necessary; or both.

But -- and this was my visceral reaction when I thought about it for a few moments -- I could but would I? Doing so requires me (1) to give up 6+ decades of believing otherwise, and (2) give the appearance of condoning the change -- disregarding completely something I believe fundamentally.

My options would all be painful... Swallow my principles? I couldn't do that. Argue against it? I suspect it would be futile, and anyway I might agree reluctantly that it's an improvement for the group it's intended to benefit, and no worse for most people.Decline to participate any more? I would miss SE enormously as a resource, although I've never bought into the idea of it as a 'community'.

Perhaps at best it's a set of distinct communities, with a few points of overlap, but there are places within it where -- even if I lurk, or spend hours researching similar questions and/or crafting questions that won't get closed immediately, I feel that at best I am tolerated, and will never 'belong'; and other places I would never venture because they're toxic, or not relevant to my interests). I suppose I could still lurk, and look for 'community' elsewhere.

I'm fortunate -- the tides of change are not moving in a direction contrary to my beliefs, but I don't envy anyone who finds themself swimming against the tide. (Some of them -- good riddance. But many would be a real loss).

I do believe that the change to the CoC addresses a real issue for a group of people who participate here; and I also understand that it causes a real issue for some other groups.

I regret to say, I don't think there's a solution that doesn't involve pain for some people. If we return to the previous state of affairs, we will hurt those whose presence has been (to be blunt) tolerated on the condition that they keep quiet about who they are and don't make others uncomfortable, otherwise they're expected/driven to go elsewhere -- is that an equitable solution?

If we adopt the new CoC, different groups of people may have to keep quiet about who they are or leave -- is that equitable?

Is it possible to weigh the competing needs of two groups with very differing beliefs and come up with a solution that suits everyone? No, it isn't -- this isn't Physics (my degree subject) or IT (my career) where you can do the work and demonstrate what fits the theory/meets the spec and what is clearly wrong. It's people and beliefs and messy as all-get-out and I don't have a solution.

It will come as no surprise that on balance I favour the CoC change (if I were in position to do so, I would reword the FAQ, and I would definitely handle the whole sorry roll-out differently) but I will no longer dismiss the impact on others as trivial. Which is, I acknowledge, no consolation to those faced with painful decisions.

Answer 3

And I believe that's the problem.

I agree that's a problem (and maybe "the" problem) but to me it just illustrates that this has been massively blown out of proportion.

• I don't see a lot of pronouns being used on SE sites, and for the type of interactions here (comments, chat), it's not often necessary to use them.
• Not many people currently make a point of saying what their pronouns are and although it's likely that more will in the future, it's still going to be just a portion of users.
• Only a subset of people who want a specific pronoun used are going to want "they."
• Not many people will be completely unwilling or unable to use "they" as a singular pronoun.
• Only a subset of the people who won't use singular they will make their aversion known. (That's not just because of what happened to Monica, it's not something that comes up in everyday conversation.)

By the time you combine all the fractions, it's going to be very, very rare for Person A (who won't use singular they), to be communicating with Person B (who wants "they" to be used), and for both of them to know the other person's attitude towards "they," and for there to be no way for Person A to write respectfully and non-awkwardly other than using "they," and for it to be clear that Person A isn't isn't using "they" or has stopped communicating at all soley because of their refusal to use they.

So rare, that it's really only a theoretical possibility. In practice, someone might try to make trouble for Monica or anyone else who says they absolutely won't use singular they, but that's the only scenario I could see it coming up.

Answer 4

I also want to know...from our LGBTQ users--are you offended when the person just doesn't include a pronoun at all?

While I haven't encountered this online, some people have done this to me to deliberately show disrespect while ensuring plausible deniability. They want me to know they reject my gender, but if I raise the issue they can accuse me of being irrational and overreacting.

It's deliberate.

It's hurtful.

And years later I still haven't forgotten.

Answer 5

I am a moderator on The Workplace. My stance on the recent events are well known to those who frequent Meta.

The way I read it is this.

I don’t want to call you by that pronoun. I’m going to refer to you by name, or use grammar instead of saying that word.

This is the problem - the public and clear refusal to do that. For transgender/non binary people, the way they identify themselves is very important. They’ve spent a lot of time and emotional effort identifying themselves. If they have the confidence to want to be identified as “they” then intentionally and publicly not doing that deprives them of their gender identity (and this aspect of their lives is really important to them)

It took me a few weeks to fully understand and process this concept, but I get it and respect it.

I agree that in every day interactions here, this situation isn’t likely to occur that often.

In the vast majority of interactions across the entire site, people are used to addressing each other in a gender neutral manner, because the gender isn’t known (or more usually is irrelevant). We do that without thinking and we do it well.

However, in the small number of interactions where someone says “Can you please address me as ‘they/them’”, we should have the respect to do that.

The FAQ is pretty strongly worded, but it’s reinforcing inclusion and respect for our non gendered users so that they continue having confidence in their identity.

I don’t anticipate running into violations of this CoC clause, I’ve never heard of any examples in my years of being here.

Answer 6

Diclaimer: The following answer doesn't mean that I agree with implementing it (in fact I don't at all). It's an interesting thought experiment, though, and I think it could be made to work:

How could the prohibition on pronoun avoidance possibly be enforced?

I think if SE wanted to, it could enforce it using a fairly simple algorithm that works roughly like so:

Look at all of a users posts, comments etc. Connect all of these items to a likely addressee (this isn't easy to do, but it doesn't have to be perfect; how good the heuristic needs to be could be determined by measuring results. One possible heuristic would be to look for usernames in a post or comment, because usually you refer to someone by name before you use a pronoun)

If a large enough number of items contains the right neopronouns (you can use addressee's user profiles to determine correctness), declare this user as "beyond reproach": The user is obviously trying.

If the user's posts do not contain neopronouns:

Classify these posts and comments into two groups: Group A contains the classic third-person singular pronouns, and group B doesn't (or almost doesn't).

Look at the profiles of all the addressees to find out who has declared pronouns, and who doesn't.

If it turns out that Group A addressees mostly haven't stated pronouns (or stated the usual ones), while Group B addressees have mostly stated gender-neutral or neopronouns, then you flag the person for thoughtcrime a violation of the CoC on pronoun avoidance.

This is just a very rough draft, and it would probably have to work differently in practice, using a machine learning algorithm to train a model with supervised learning. But if you asked an ML specialist to design a model, I'm sure he could come up with one that gave you a number 0.0-1.0 which represented the likelihood that someone is avoiding pronouns with certain people on purpose.

You could go further, still (beyond what the current CoC requires): You could detect people who actively disengage from or avoid interaction with people who have stated pronouns of a certain kind.

BTW, since everyone can get a dump of the whole content, and it's available under a CC license, when I say "you", I actually mean it)

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As an aside: I think that's an awesome example of how Big Data can be used to identify people who think "bad thoughts" (whatever your specific definition of "bad" is), even if they try to hide it. An entity who wants to do that is totalitarian in nature (that's the historian in me speaking).

Answer 7

But how can the SE possibly determine, in a given piece of writing if the person writing would have "naturally" written those in?

It will be a decision by the moderators or community managers, possibly assisted by attentive users who flagged suspicious content before. Possibly also assisting could be some ML/NLP/statistical profiling software tool, but not as final decision maker (for now, I guess).

The moderators will implicitly have a model in their mind of how people write naturally or should write naturally, then they will check against the style of the suspect by checking some of their regular contributions and the contribution in question. In the end there will be a single binary decision and the allegation will be "Did not use pronouns in a case where pronoun usage was required and naturally would have used pronouns.".

Depending on the internal detection threshold, this can happen often or rather seldom and the error rates (would not have used pronouns naturally or would have but hasn't been investigated) might be quite high. There might be some rather clear cases, but there might also be lots of unclear cases. Experience will show how easy this is really.

Even more difficult to detect are those that chose to evade. The allegation would be "Chose not to respond in a case where pronoun usage was required and naturally would have responded." While this solution would minimize friction, it's not completely clear to me if this would still be a violation of the current CoC. But it could be detected by moderators asking themselves questions like "who would normally respond and who did not" and then looking for repeated incidents to gather statistical significance.

So much for the possibilities. Either you go only for very clear cases or you will have to look for the whole history of a users contributions and then decide holistically, possibly with high error margin.

We will see, how it will be handled in practice. A simple approach would be to only go for the open and shut cases.

Answer 8

Let me provide an absurd example where using only a person's username and avoiding any personal pronouns e.g. he/his/him, will make a comment sound unnatural, and interestingly, accusatory in tone.

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In Erin Thursby's post, Erin Thursby asked LGBTQ+ users

“When no pronouns at ALL are used, does that cause harm?”

Here's an example of what it would look like:

But what did Erin Thursby mean by “harm”? Did Erin Thursby mean physical or emotional harm? Unfortunately, Erin Thursby did not specify, so we must assume that Erin Thursby meant emotional harm, the invisible kind, the kind of hurt that embeds itself and becomes a keloid scar, only the disfigurement is invisible to the outside world, no one can actually see it and like any deep scar, it does not fade in time. Instead, the wearer is reminded of the ugly scar whenever someone underestimates the power of words, and is forced to repeat for the umpteenth time, This is who I am, please respect me.

I am sure that Erin Thursby's question was made in very good faith, I am not doubting Erin Thursby's sincerity at all, I don't know Erin Thursby but I am sure that Erin Thursby is a good person who only wants to understand why the LGBTQ+ community is hurting. Personally, I feel its members are being scapegoated by many Meta users for the self-inflicted mess that Stack Exchange currently finds itself embroiled in.

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Like others have done before me, boycotting a person's pronouns that could be she, he, they, eir, xe, co etc. would not be a feasible solution, in actual fact it would be seen, rightly so, as an act of mild aggression a form of trolling and would, justifiably, invite a host of flags. So my answer to the OP's question which I cited above is "Yes, deliberately not using any pronouns for a person whose gender is fluid, is rude, unkind and hurtful.” And finally, the total omission of a person's pronouns, so as to be conspicuous would be in violation of the CoC.