This is my interpretation: quantify the masculinity/femininity of a response between 0 and 1 (where 0 is masculine and 1 feminine). You are making the correct statement that you cannot both have a function that returns 1 for females and 0 for males and also returns the same value for both sexes. Alicorn is asking where you would set the return value of your function that doesn’t take sex as an input.
Because if you say “I treat everyone equally by always responding with a 0,” then while you satisfy the sex-blindness requirement you have a disproportionate impact, just as if you always responded with a 1. Alicorn’s suggestion is that you could move the 0 to something else. One gets into trouble when trying to figure out whether the target should be .5 or .1, though (assuming we’re 90% male here).
I almost agree, except that this sets up a false dichotomy between a style palatable to men and one palatable to women. I think it’s quite possible, without too much effort, to craft a style that improves in both those respects over one’s ‘default’ style.
That was my interpretation of the Alicorn/Perplexed conversation; my feeling is that politeness is positively received by most people of both genders but women tend to care more about it. It’s a nontrivial problem to be polite quickly, and many people dislike having their time wasted, but man is that a useful skill to have/learn.
This is my interpretation: quantify the masculinity/femininity of a response between 0 and 1 (where 0 is masculine and 1 feminine). You are making the correct statement that you cannot both have a function that returns 1 for females and 0 for males and also returns the same value for both sexes. Alicorn is asking where you would set the return value of your function that doesn’t take sex as an input.
Because if you say “I treat everyone equally by always responding with a 0,” then while you satisfy the sex-blindness requirement you have a disproportionate impact, just as if you always responded with a 1. Alicorn’s suggestion is that you could move the 0 to something else. One gets into trouble when trying to figure out whether the target should be .5 or .1, though (assuming we’re 90% male here).
I almost agree, except that this sets up a false dichotomy between a style palatable to men and one palatable to women. I think it’s quite possible, without too much effort, to craft a style that improves in both those respects over one’s ‘default’ style.
That was my interpretation of the Alicorn/Perplexed conversation; my feeling is that politeness is positively received by most people of both genders but women tend to care more about it. It’s a nontrivial problem to be polite quickly, and many people dislike having their time wasted, but man is that a useful skill to have/learn.