So do you maintain that it reasonably possible to infer Alicorn’s gender by her nickname?
To the extent that inferring that female gender is more likely from a feminine name is “stereotyping” then sure I endorse stereotyping.
To answer the question again:
So we should not stereotype people’s geneder based on the fact that they post on geeky websites (stereotypically male) but we should stereotype people based on their association with unicorns (stereotypically female, supposedly)?
You should “stereotype” (which you seem to be using to mean ‘update in response to information’) based on both. Social tact dictates that some care should be taken to avoid making mistakes. Getting pronouns wrong is embarrassing, particularly if someone is around to play offense. If you aren’t sure it is safer to rephrase the sentence such that it doesn’t rely on gendered pronouns.
If the nickname was obviously a femmine one, (e.g. ‘Jane’), or even something more exotic but still recognizably femmine (e.g. ‘Aerith’) I would agree.
But you could infer that ‘Alicorn’ was a femmine name only through the association between interest in unicorns and being female (which is specifict to some subcultures). That doesn’t seem to me any less stereotypical than inferring that somebody is male through the association between nerd interests and being male (which, on the other hand, is supported by statistical evidence and AFAIK occurs in any culture).
Social tact dictates that some care should be taken to avoid making mistakes. Getting pronouns wrong is embarrassing, particularly if someone is around to play offense.
Wei Dai argues that offense is a response to a perceived threat to one own status. He also cautions about oversensitivity.
It doesn’t seem to me that getting a pronoun wrong because you didn’t datamine the Internet for personal information just to get a pronoun right is an attack to someone status.
True, you could use gender-neutral constructions. I’m not a native English speaker, but I suspect that many native speakers find constructions such as ‘he or she’, the epicene ‘they’ or paraphrases like ‘this person’ excessively artificial and unidiomatic for informal speech.
After all, why should you assume that somebody over the Internet will be offended if you incorrectly guess the content of their pants? Isn’t equality feminism all about not caring about what kind of genital organs people have got, except on issues directly related to these organs?
If somebody posted a comment like: “Every woman knows that babies are cuter than rabbits. It’s in our maternal instinct. This guy doen’t know what he’s talking about.” then Alicorn could be reasonably offendend, since this comment would imply that she was defective as a woman and hence it would lower her status. But that’s not what was posted. The poster actually liked the article, she (*) just got one pronoun wrong.
(* the ‘Sharon’ signature and the remark about being a mother are definitely enough evidence to infer that the poster is a she)
Wei Dai argues that offense is a response to a perceived threat to one own status. He also cautions about oversensitivity.
Not being oversensitive yourself is a good practice, dismissing the possibility that another will be offended by something you do is called “insensitive”. Yes, sometimes you should take a stand and decide that a person getting offended about a particular thing is their problem, not yours (otherwise you give them complete control over you). However I don’t think someone being mildly (or occasionally significantly) offended when people get their sex wrong is really the place to draw the battle lines.
It doesn’t seem to me that getting a pronoun wrong because you didn’t datamine the Internet for personal information just to get a pronoun right is an attack to someone status.
Some people get offended if you call them a girl when they are a boy and vice versa. That is all. Either ignore this and be considered an ass by said people (and some observers) or take some degree of care to get it right.
To the extent that inferring that female gender is more likely from a feminine name is “stereotyping” then sure I endorse stereotyping.
To answer the question again:
You should “stereotype” (which you seem to be using to mean ‘update in response to information’) based on both. Social tact dictates that some care should be taken to avoid making mistakes. Getting pronouns wrong is embarrassing, particularly if someone is around to play offense. If you aren’t sure it is safer to rephrase the sentence such that it doesn’t rely on gendered pronouns.
If the nickname was obviously a femmine one, (e.g. ‘Jane’), or even something more exotic but still recognizably femmine (e.g. ‘Aerith’) I would agree.
But you could infer that ‘Alicorn’ was a femmine name only through the association between interest in unicorns and being female (which is specifict to some subcultures). That doesn’t seem to me any less stereotypical than inferring that somebody is male through the association between nerd interests and being male (which, on the other hand, is supported by statistical evidence and AFAIK occurs in any culture).
Wei Dai argues that offense is a response to a perceived threat to one own status. He also cautions about oversensitivity.
It doesn’t seem to me that getting a pronoun wrong because you didn’t datamine the Internet for personal information just to get a pronoun right is an attack to someone status.
True, you could use gender-neutral constructions. I’m not a native English speaker, but I suspect that many native speakers find constructions such as ‘he or she’, the epicene ‘they’ or paraphrases like ‘this person’ excessively artificial and unidiomatic for informal speech.
After all, why should you assume that somebody over the Internet will be offended if you incorrectly guess the content of their pants? Isn’t equality feminism all about not caring about what kind of genital organs people have got, except on issues directly related to these organs?
If somebody posted a comment like: “Every woman knows that babies are cuter than rabbits. It’s in our maternal instinct. This guy doen’t know what he’s talking about.” then Alicorn could be reasonably offendend, since this comment would imply that she was defective as a woman and hence it would lower her status. But that’s not what was posted. The poster actually liked the article, she (*) just got one pronoun wrong.
(* the ‘Sharon’ signature and the remark about being a mother are definitely enough evidence to infer that the poster is a she)
Not being oversensitive yourself is a good practice, dismissing the possibility that another will be offended by something you do is called “insensitive”. Yes, sometimes you should take a stand and decide that a person getting offended about a particular thing is their problem, not yours (otherwise you give them complete control over you). However I don’t think someone being mildly (or occasionally significantly) offended when people get their sex wrong is really the place to draw the battle lines.
Some people get offended if you call them a girl when they are a boy and vice versa. That is all. Either ignore this and be considered an ass by said people (and some observers) or take some degree of care to get it right.