(I appreciate that you are taking the time to engage with me politely, especially after I have previously been (rightly or wrongly) impolite due to anger.)
dfranke didn’t make a “correct” assumption, they[1] made an “unnecessary” assumption. I find it really quite surprising and disheartening that the Less Wrong community doesn’t have an interest in making a habit of avoiding these—yes, even to the point of thinking for a tenth of a second longer when using vernacular speech. Good habits, people.
There are numerous other problems here; if the community assumes that everyone in the community is male, then the community is more likely to lose female (or third-gender members) - witness both Alicorn’s and my strong irritation at being misgendered. You might chose to ignore third-gender folk, since they’re not numerous, but ignoring the [potential] presence of the entire female gender is not healthy for the individual or for the community.
If I were strictly third gender and I had complained about someone referring to me as “he/she” or similar, then I think your point here would stand; the commenter would have signalled clearly that they had made no assumptions about my gender, even if they had also signalled at the same time that they had made assumptions about gender in general. I would then be being unreasonable.
Finally, “indignation is not the correct response” because “it’s not a community norm”. Since a good number of people are avoiding gendered assumptions whilst posting here, I think indignation might well be the only way to point out to some people just how rude they are being.
[1] Edited after Perplexed pointed out that dfranke had not explicitly identified as male.
dfranke didn’t make a “correct” assumption, he made an “unnecessary” assumption.
Excuse me, I know you are not the first person to use the pronoun ‘he’ regarding dfranke, but are you certain it is appropriate? (Incidentally, I did notice that you avoided making that assumption in your initial complaint about being labeled a ‘guy’. Has dfranke self-identified as male somewhere since then?)
I’m doing it egregiously and on purpose (if you doubt this read the first paragraph of this comment :D) to satisfy my sense of irony, to (perhaps unethically) see if I could trick other commentors into using the pronoun too, and because there is no possible way in which dfranke could hold me accountable for misidentifying his or her gender, given the debate that has sprung up.
You’re quite right; by paraphrasing shokwave in my rebuttal, I picked up a male pronoun. I’ve now edited the relevant comment to remove this. Thank you, on two levels.
EDIT: I didn’t actually consciously avoid it in my first post.
dfranke didn’t make a “correct” assumption, he made an “unnecessary” assumption.
I should have included “if he wished to gender his pronouns”. I meant to communicate that the assumption he made was the correct one given his information and priors at the time; I grant that it spilled over into saying that gendering his speech was a correct choice and I did not intend that.
I find it really quite surprising and disheartening that the Less Wrong community doesn’t have an interest in making a habit of avoiding these
Actually we do—as I said in the previous comment we are partial to this practice, but it is not (yet) a community norm the way that, say, having read the Sequences, or arguing in good faith allowing for the possibility of changing your mind is. I fully expect it will soon become a norm.
A note on indignation: although it’s a greasy social psychology point, indignation isn’t the correct response unless it is a community norm. Reacting indignantly to something which is normally reacted to neutrally or ignored marks you as the unreasonable one, instead of the person that casually insulted you. Of course, this is only where “correct response” means “response that achieves the goal you want”. (There’s another interpretation of “correct response” that would say that indignation is a correct response, and that it fails to achieve the goal you want is a fact about the environment, not about the response).
if the community assumes that everyone in the community is male, then the community is more likely to lose female or third-gender members
Given the concern that LessWrong already suffers from style and interest deficiencies in such respects, this is a crucial matter. I don’t know how to address it other than to increase my efforts to avoid gendered speech and more often point it out to others.
A note on indignation: although it’s a greasy social psychology point, indignation isn’t the correct response unless it is a community norm.
Leaving aside semantics around “correct,” I agree that getting indignant over X when most people around me think X is unobjectionable often has results I don’t want.
That said, sometimes things become community norms as a consequence of the expressed indignation of individuals and the community’s willingness to align with those individuals.
Predicting when that second result is likely is easy to get wrong. Sometimes it’s worthwhile just to try and see.
Yes. I feel that is an extension on my parenthetical about the other interpretation of correct response—that it could lead to changing the environment.
Predicting when that second result is likely is easy to get wrong.
I’d like to put it down in writing somewhere that I predict a community norm of using nongendered speech, at least on the level of the norm of “read the Sequences”, to be fully formed and applied by six months from now.
By nongendered to you mean ve, ver, vis? Conditional prediction: If there is a move away from “he,she,etc.” I predict “they/them/their” will dominate.
By nongendered speech, I mean speech that does not indicate male or female gender. So they/them/their, ve/ver/vis, ey, or any other gender-neutral pronouns. It also includes my preferred way of avoiding gendered speech—you, the poster, and using the poster’s name. Yes, it’s fairly broad :P
I totally endorse that, and I’m pretty good about it myself (at least, I think I am), but I’d be very surprised if it ever became a reliable LW community norm.
dfranke didn’t make a “correct” assumption, he made an “unnecessary” assumption.
It’s not completely unnecessary, it’s grammatically more convenient to use a specific gender. It’s a question of priorities in deciding what to say, not of factual knowledge. You would be incorrect to argue that no a priori knowledge about your gender exists, or that it doesn’t say “probably male”.
If someone wants to avoid specifying gender, ey have options.
Spivak pronouns look weird and are hard to read for most people who aren’t used to using them. Just use the singular they. Much simpler and has been used colloquially for centuries.
Edit: This seems to be just way too much drama. Can we all just agree that English is a sucky language and that no matter what we do we’re going to be using some kludge and just get along?
I got used to Spivak pronouns in less than a day. People generally are capable of learning new vocabulary, if we don’t indulge their excuse that they aren’t used to it.
(I appreciate that you are taking the time to engage with me politely, especially after I have previously been (rightly or wrongly) impolite due to anger.)
dfranke didn’t make a “correct” assumption, they[1] made an “unnecessary” assumption. I find it really quite surprising and disheartening that the Less Wrong community doesn’t have an interest in making a habit of avoiding these—yes, even to the point of thinking for a tenth of a second longer when using vernacular speech. Good habits, people.
There are numerous other problems here; if the community assumes that everyone in the community is male, then the community is more likely to lose female (or third-gender members) - witness both Alicorn’s and my strong irritation at being misgendered. You might chose to ignore third-gender folk, since they’re not numerous, but ignoring the [potential] presence of the entire female gender is not healthy for the individual or for the community.
If I were strictly third gender and I had complained about someone referring to me as “he/she” or similar, then I think your point here would stand; the commenter would have signalled clearly that they had made no assumptions about my gender, even if they had also signalled at the same time that they had made assumptions about gender in general. I would then be being unreasonable.
Finally, “indignation is not the correct response” because “it’s not a community norm”. Since a good number of people are avoiding gendered assumptions whilst posting here, I think indignation might well be the only way to point out to some people just how rude they are being.
[1] Edited after Perplexed pointed out that dfranke had not explicitly identified as male.
Excuse me, I know you are not the first person to use the pronoun ‘he’ regarding dfranke, but are you certain it is appropriate? (Incidentally, I did notice that you avoided making that assumption in your initial complaint about being labeled a ‘guy’. Has dfranke self-identified as male somewhere since then?)
I’m doing it egregiously and on purpose (if you doubt this read the first paragraph of this comment :D) to satisfy my sense of irony, to (perhaps unethically) see if I could trick other commentors into using the pronoun too, and because there is no possible way in which dfranke could hold me accountable for misidentifying his or her gender, given the debate that has sprung up.
You’re quite right; by paraphrasing shokwave in my rebuttal, I picked up a male pronoun. I’ve now edited the relevant comment to remove this. Thank you, on two levels.
EDIT: I didn’t actually consciously avoid it in my first post.
I should have included “if he wished to gender his pronouns”. I meant to communicate that the assumption he made was the correct one given his information and priors at the time; I grant that it spilled over into saying that gendering his speech was a correct choice and I did not intend that.
Actually we do—as I said in the previous comment we are partial to this practice, but it is not (yet) a community norm the way that, say, having read the Sequences, or arguing in good faith allowing for the possibility of changing your mind is. I fully expect it will soon become a norm.
A note on indignation: although it’s a greasy social psychology point, indignation isn’t the correct response unless it is a community norm. Reacting indignantly to something which is normally reacted to neutrally or ignored marks you as the unreasonable one, instead of the person that casually insulted you. Of course, this is only where “correct response” means “response that achieves the goal you want”. (There’s another interpretation of “correct response” that would say that indignation is a correct response, and that it fails to achieve the goal you want is a fact about the environment, not about the response).
Given the concern that LessWrong already suffers from style and interest deficiencies in such respects, this is a crucial matter. I don’t know how to address it other than to increase my efforts to avoid gendered speech and more often point it out to others.
Leaving aside semantics around “correct,” I agree that getting indignant over X when most people around me think X is unobjectionable often has results I don’t want.
That said, sometimes things become community norms as a consequence of the expressed indignation of individuals and the community’s willingness to align with those individuals.
Predicting when that second result is likely is easy to get wrong. Sometimes it’s worthwhile just to try and see.
Yes. I feel that is an extension on my parenthetical about the other interpretation of correct response—that it could lead to changing the environment.
I’d like to put it down in writing somewhere that I predict a community norm of using nongendered speech, at least on the level of the norm of “read the Sequences”, to be fully formed and applied by six months from now.
By nongendered to you mean ve, ver, vis? Conditional prediction: If there is a move away from “he,she,etc.” I predict “they/them/their” will dominate.
By nongendered speech, I mean speech that does not indicate male or female gender. So they/them/their, ve/ver/vis, ey, or any other gender-neutral pronouns. It also includes my preferred way of avoiding gendered speech—you, the poster, and using the poster’s name. Yes, it’s fairly broad :P
Huh. Confidence interval?
I totally endorse that, and I’m pretty good about it myself (at least, I think I am), but I’d be very surprised if it ever became a reliable LW community norm.
It’s pretty uncalibrated but let’s say 90% confidence interval of 2 months to 2 years.
Upvoted for being willing to put numbers to it. I’ll never remember to come back and check, though.
It’s not completely unnecessary, it’s grammatically more convenient to use a specific gender. It’s a question of priorities in deciding what to say, not of factual knowledge. You would be incorrect to argue that no a priori knowledge about your gender exists, or that it doesn’t say “probably male”.
If someone wants to avoid specifying gender, ey has options.
Spivak pronouns look weird and are hard to read for most people who aren’t used to using them. Just use the singular they. Much simpler and has been used colloquially for centuries.
Edit: This seems to be just way too much drama. Can we all just agree that English is a sucky language and that no matter what we do we’re going to be using some kludge and just get along?
I got used to Spivak pronouns in less than a day. People generally are capable of learning new vocabulary, if we don’t indulge their excuse that they aren’t used to it.
You can learn to use new vocabulary, but this is not the same thing as adjusting aesthetic perception of its use.
It’s “ey has”.
Conjugation fixed.
I can personally attest that dfranke is male.