| 5 Nov 2021 |
 jonringer | Personally, I still have a lot of cognitive dissonance around the usage of "they" to mean a single individual. It goes against what I learned in school (third person plural pronoun), and feels like my understanding of my own language needs to be re-defined.
I'm still fine in referring to someone as they, it just causes me some cognitive dissonance (or "emotial labor" I think is the term) each time as I'm having to unlearn "they" and relearn someone else's "they".
This is probably a bad example, as language constructs aren't consistent even within the same language or culture groups. But you wanted an example, and for some reason I chose this one.
Then again, I'm probably just a bigot. So I don't understand. | 17:45:09 |
 joepie91 🏳️🌈 | jonringer: no, I think that example is fine, actually | 17:45:58 |
| joepie91 🏳️🌈 | jonringer: so if I understand correctly, it's not so much the "being expected to use they" that's your concern here, but rather a 'fear of consequences' for not getting it perfectly right or forgetting to do it? | 17:47:04 |
| jonringer | Also, another user was banned over this very issue as well. their statement and punishment | 17:47:11 |
| jonringer | * Also, another user was banned over this very issue as well. their statement and punishment | 17:47:26 |
| jonringer | Both. The time I forget to use the other usage, will be final eggshell. and I'll be genesis 2.0 | 17:48:03 |
| jonringer | Also, this is just one example. The language 98 opens the door to many similar instances. | 17:48:34 |
| joepie91 🏳️🌈 | jonringer: hold on, I want to get this specific example a bit clearer first :p | 17:49:03 |
| jonringer | I have a bit more context in this post. https://github.com/NixOS/rfcs/pull/114#discussion_r743828914 | 17:49:40 |
| joepie91 🏳️🌈 | jonringer: you say that it's "both" that concern you, but in your initial message you said "I'm still fine in referring to someone as they" - I'm not sure how to reconcile those two things | 17:49:51 |
| joepie91 🏳️🌈 | (I do have some comments on the genesis ban, but I'll save those for later, I want to understand your concern first) | 17:50:27 |
| joepie91 🏳️🌈 | * (I do have some comments on the genesis ban, but I'll save those for later, I want to accurately understand your concern first) | 17:50:36 |
| jonringer | joepie91 🏳️🌈: I'm very libertarian, as long as you are impeding my life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness. I don't really care what you do. So if someone prefers a pronoun, I'm indifferent at an emotion and personal level. It just isn't the "social norm" I'm familiar with. | 17:51:11 |
| jonringer | * joepie91 🏳️🌈: I'm very libertarian, as long as you are not impeding my life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness. I don't really care what you do. So if someone prefers a pronoun, I'm indifferent at an emotion and personal level. It just isn't the "social norm" I'm familiar with. | 17:51:20 |
| jonringer | * joepie91 🏳️🌈: I'm very libertarian, as long as you are not impeding my life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness. I don't really care what you do. So if someone prefers a pronoun, I'm indifferent at an emotion and personal level. It's just isn't the "social norm" I'm familiar with. | 17:51:37 |
|  7c6f434c joined the room. | 17:52:04 |
| jonringer | * joepie91 🏳️🌈: I'm very libertarian, as long as you are not impeding my life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness. I don't really care what you do. So if someone prefers a pronoun, I'm indifferent at an emotion and personal level. It's just isn't the "social norm" I'm familiar with.
The "social norm" landscape could change tomorrow, while I'm under my little OSS rock, and commit some grievous act of insensitivity.
| 17:52:24 |
| jonringer | I'm probably digging myself into a hole I did not intend. And feel like these discussions are now looking for ways to find "vulnerabilities" in what I say, or take what I said out of context. I will excuse myself. | 17:54:16 |
| jonringer left the room. | 17:54:32 |
| joepie91 🏳️🌈 | jonringer: okay, so let me try to rephrase my summary of your concern: you are fine with eg. respecting someone's pronouns or otherwise doing your part in adapting to social norms in a community, but your concern is that those norms might be 'overzealously' applied in cases where you failed to follow them through no fault of your own, for example because you were not aware of them or because they are difficult for you personally to adapt to? | 17:54:48 |
| joepie91 🏳️🌈 | (please hold, all) | 17:57:30 |
| joepie91 🏳️🌈 | okay, jonringer has decided not to continue with the conversation for personal reasons - hopefully this is a redundant request, but obviously please do not use the above to attack them | 18:14:43 |
| joepie91 🏳️🌈 | I think my understanding of their concern is accurate enough, however, and it seems to be a concern about overzealous application of social norms that one has difficulty adjusting to or that one simply doesn't know about - and I suspect that that is also what drove the suggestion to explicitly define acceptable behaviour in an RFC, to address this problem by having an unambiguous list of acceptable and unacceptable things so that one doesn't run that risk | 18:16:35 |
| joepie91 🏳️🌈 | I believe the intention of RFC 98 was to prevent this by prioritizing deescalation over repercussions, ie. giving people room to adjust and make mistakes, and from jonringer's earlier comments about arbitration I believe that they share that goal - but I think it's safe to conclude that RFC 98 is currently not making this intention clear enough | 18:18:23 |
| joepie91 🏳️🌈 | (I don't like talking for other people, but that seems like the only possible option here :/) | 18:18:52 |
| joepie91 🏳️🌈 | ash (it/its) 🏳️⚧️: ^ so that is probably something to consider | 18:19:05 |
 ash (it/its) 🏳️⚧️ | thank you, that kind of feedback is very appreciated | 18:19:31 |
| ash (it/its) 🏳️⚧️ | please convey my appreciation to jonringer if he's receptive | 18:19:45 |
| joepie91 🏳️🌈 | In reply to @domenkozar:matrix.org
if there's was ever a sign of oppressive authoritarianism in our community it's this kind of stuff happening on the very RFC that is saying to prevent it also, one note I want to make here: the problem we're running into here is kind of the community management equivalent of the self-hosting problem... we do not yet have structures in place for conflict resolution and/or intervention in unresolvable cases of disruptive behaviour, that's why this RFC exists, but that's also why it's extremely difficult to keep a high signal:noise ratio on the discussion of the RFC | 18:30:54 |
 Jonas Chevalier | I think this can be fixed by changing the wording in the RFC by the way | 18:31:02 |
