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    The new policy, as given in the TL and later in email, strongly implied that we must use people's preferred pronouns. I would never knowingly misgender with wrong pronouns, but that's not the issue. As a professional I, by training, write in a gender-neutral way, and other mods told me that is "misgendering". I asked for clarification in TL and email, thinking that couldn't possibly be what they meant -- that we would need to actually inject pronouns where we wouldn't otherwise use them. I guess that's the rule because they're claiming I'm going to violate the CoC, but they never answered.
    – Monica Cellio
    Commented Oct 2, 2019 at 0:32
  • 18
    I haven't read the policy, but I got the gist from the TL and other posts. It is the extreme focus on a single word, while saying "dunno" about everything else, that makes this look performative to me. That makes it look like they are trying to tick the inclusivity checkbox, without actually doing the hard work of finding out what matters. And while misgendering and pronouns matter, it was clearly not the focus of the discussion. The rule you state doesnt make sense, except for that checkbox.
    – AviD
    Commented Oct 2, 2019 at 0:52
  • 11
    I never saw formal wording. I don't know if it exists; obviously I don't have access to recent TL discussions.
    – Monica Cellio
    Commented Oct 2, 2019 at 1:05
  • @MonicaCellio I didnt see formal wording either. I did see a lot of repeated claims about their reasoning (and about you).
    – AviD
    Commented Oct 2, 2019 at 7:09
  • 14
    Given the incorrect claims they've made in public, I can only imagine it's orders of magnitude worse in TL. While that room is private, let's also remember that it's private to 600+ people, and smearing a person in front of ex-colleagues is not professional behavior. Oh well; nothing I can do about that except hope that the moderators there -- the vast majority of whom have the integrity one would expect of someone in that role -- will either call them on it or ignore it.
    – Monica Cellio
    Commented Oct 2, 2019 at 14:10
  • 25
    @MonicaCellio - For two days now I have been shaking my head as I've read and reread this Sara Chipps quote: "We take our CoC very seriously. It was created to foster a community of kindness, collaboration, and mutual respect." That seems ironic, given that (a) you have embodied those ideals as much as anyone I've come across on the Stack Exchange, and (b) the way they handled this debacle was decidedly unkind, not collaborative, and disrespectful.
    – J.R. means 'Just Reinstate'
    Commented Oct 2, 2019 at 14:51
  • 11
    To paraphrase what you wrote on another topic: The code of pronoun conduct is not about inclusiveness. It is not a real instrument for respect. AviD's law of pronoun compliance: pronoun compliance reduces the risk of the penalties of non-compliance.
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Commented Oct 2, 2019 at 21:26
  • lol @Gilles . I'm not sure I completely agree with "my" law here, I do think it is an important part of conduct (and all those people affected by it are saying so) - but as in this case it can be misused to have the opposite effect from the intended respect.
    – AviD
    Commented Oct 3, 2019 at 6:37