It started with the pronoun stickers.
-This year, there were pronoun stickers in everyone's conference swag bags ("[...] so we can all help each other get things right. Wear them in solidarity with others too. Help us make [the conference] welcoming and inclusive for all"). Leaving aside [philosophical objections](/2018/Feb/the-categories-were-made-for-man-to-make-predictions/#anchor-pronoun-sticker-discourse) for a moment, I want you to consider [the stress this can inflict](https://theunitofcaring.tumblr.com/post/172800552516/so-i-havent-posted-about-this-since-college) on people who have [_some_ form](https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/05/using-gender-neutral-pronouns-could-actually-misgender-people.html) of gender-related problems but who have chosen some [set of mitigating interventions](/2017/Jan/the-line-in-the-sand-or-my-slippery-slope-anchoring-action-plan/) other than transitioning.
+This year, there were pronoun stickers in everyone's conference swag bags ("[...] so we can all help each other get things right. Wear them in solidarity with others too. Help us make [the conference] welcoming and inclusive for all"), including _they/them/theirs_, _ze/zir/zirs_ (!), and blanks (!!). Leaving aside [philosophical objections](/2018/Feb/the-categories-were-made-for-man-to-make-predictions/#anchor-pronoun-sticker-discourse) for a moment, I want you to consider [the mild stress this kind of thing can inflict](https://theunitofcaring.tumblr.com/post/172800552516/so-i-havent-posted-about-this-since-college) on people who have [_some_ form](https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/05/using-gender-neutral-pronouns-could-actually-misgender-people.html) of gender-related problems but who have chosen some [set of mitigating interventions](/2017/Jan/the-line-in-the-sand-or-my-slippery-slope-anchoring-action-plan/) other than transitioning.
-Which sticker am I supposed to put on if I am to show solidarity? The _he/him/his_ sticker would be the obvious, straightforward choice. After all, that is, in fact, the third-person pronoun people use for me. But in a context where I'm being offered a _choice_, I _don't want_ to choose the male option, because that makes it look like I "identify" with my maleness—as if I were _cis_ in the strong sense of having a "gender identity" matching one's "assigned sex at birth", rather than in the [weaker sense](https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2015/01/28/cis-by-default/) of being a reactionary coward whose pathological need for a backwards-compatible social identity is preventing her from becoming her best self.
+Which sticker am I supposed to put on if I am to show solidarity? The _he/him/his_ sticker would be the obvious, straightforward choice. After all, that is, in fact, the third-person pronoun people use for me. But in a context where I'm being offered a _choice_, I _don't want_ to choose the male option, because that makes it look like I "identify" with my maleness—as if I were _cis_ in the strong sense of having a "gender identity" matching my "assigned" sex, rather than in the [weaker sense](https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2015/01/28/cis-by-default/) of being a reactionary coward whose pathological need for a backwards-compatible social identity is preventing her from becoming her best self.
-At the same time, the _she/her/hers_ sticker
+At the same time, I can't wear the _she/her/hers_ sticker. And I think there's a sense in which _can't_ really is a better choice of words than _don't want to_. It's not that I don't enjoy being refered to as _she_ in a context where that makes sense, like when I'm [crossplaying at a fandom convention](/tag/cosplay/), or in the Secret Blanchardian Conspiracy Chatroom, or in the ironic last sentence of the preceding paragraph. It's that, in real life, when I'm not playing dress-up and I can't hide my face behind the fog of net, _people are going to notice_ that I'm male and habitually use the English language pronoun for males on such occasions that they need to refer to me in the third person. I _could_ attach a sticker to my badge instructing them otherwise, but only in the same sense that I could tell them that black is white and cats are dogs—that is, probably not with a straight face.
+But none of this really matters: if you don't want to wear a sticker, you can just not wear one, with no discernible social consequences. (At least, not this year!)
+
+I did get asked for my pronouns once (the first day, by someone who I think was not yet aware of the stickers)—the only time I've been asked for
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+-------
+
+and get on with enjoying the conference and meeting all sorts of interesting people with exciting technical things to say!
+
+On the first day, between training sessions, I sat down at the table of someone who was eloquently denouncing the hideously overcomplicated code they encountered in the "Quux-f1deb75f" community—which made sense, they explained, because the people who wrote those libraries were Trump supporters and Nazis and libertarians.
+
+Oh, that's interesting, I said. Do you think there's a big correlation between political views and code quality? With a good linter to operationalize _quality_, this is potentially amenable to empirical study ...
+
+At some point, the conversation paused to introduce ourselves. I gave my name as "Mark" ... and then the person asked, "What are your pronouns?"
+
+[...]
+
+Obviously, I would have no objection if the presentation had _harshly criticized_ Eric Raymond for some specific bad thing that he said, or if the authors had chosen to quote some author they liked rather than an author they didn't like, or if they had decided that the "itch-scratching" metaphor was sufficiently widespread as to be part of the commons and not worth attributing to anyone. But to verbatim quote
+
+[...]
+
+It is humbling to contemplate the possibility that the only reason I haven't suffered any consequences for my writing is simply because I'm _not important enough_ to be a target—in either direction. (That is: no one hates this blog enough to bother reversing the pseudonym and making trouble for me in real life, and, conversely, my open-source and professional work isn't notable enough for anyone to bother digging to see if I have a secret gender-heresy blog.)
[...]
Rod Vagg linked to Quillette
Opal guy said trans people are delusional
+I did a good job of—how do you say?—hiding my power level.
+
"It's just that the people listening think you're an asshole and they're showing you the door"
think I'm an asshole and are showing me the door https://xkcd.com/1357/
-
the Uber driver who picked me up from the airport was named Omar and was from Mexico
he did not know any nonbinary people
https://meteuphoric.com/2017/08/30/what-you-cant-say-to-a-sympathetic-ear/
-
"There are views we have decided are unacceptable and we will ostracize you for having them." https://twitter.com/seldo/status/714272018976284672
find the contributor covenant PR where someone wanted to carve out a personal Twitter exemption, and the counterargument mentioned naming the project in the profile
-https://where.coraline.codes/blog/oscon/
\ No newline at end of file
+https://where.coraline.codes/blog/oscon/
+
+Jerrica independently idenfitied it as a microaggression
+
+https://www.nateliason.com/blog/social-disobedience
+
+singular they for named individuals with an Anglosphere name or a beard in their profile photo
+
+I interrupted a woman, trying to finish her sentence
+
+heritability of politics actually makes sense: the moral foundations are the "true" trait, but in a particular country, that could predictably mean being a democrat
+
+https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2018/09/05/landscapes/
+
+"Politics of Process Defense" http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8120
+
+https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-are-shifting-the-rest-of-their-identity-to-match-their-politics/
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff