From 68e0d811d3521a542182932683fc96ba73638097 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: "M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake" Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2018 21:55:04 -0700 Subject: [PATCH] edits to "Sticker Prices" "An" anecdote. Despite wanting to keep the focus on me and my feelings about the Narrative (rather than picking on my anonymous interlocutor who could have been anyone in the Current Year, really), the "outgroup homogeneity" link opportunity is too perfect to pass up --- content/2018/sticker-prices.md | 4 ++-- 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/content/2018/sticker-prices.md b/content/2018/sticker-prices.md index d240fee..7d8589b 100644 --- a/content/2018/sticker-prices.md +++ b/content/2018/sticker-prices.md @@ -3,7 +3,7 @@ Date: 2018-10-22 05:00 Category: other Tags: anecdotal, software industry, stickers -_(A anecdote of no consequence)_ +_(An anecdote of no consequence)_ This year at a conference for this open-source scene I've been really into lately, 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 [impersonal 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](/2017/Dec/lesser-known-demand-curves/) some form of [mitigation](/2017/Jan/the-line-in-the-sand-or-my-slippery-slope-anchoring-action-plan/) other than transitioning. @@ -17,7 +17,7 @@ But none of this really matters: if you don't want to wear a sticker, you can ju 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 pronouns when I wasn't at an explicitly social-justice-oriented event (like at the local [genderqueer support group](/2017/Jan/title-sequence/), or "Introduction to Feminisms" class at the University in Santa Cruz eleven years ago) or literally wearing a dress (in the cosplay repair lounge at Comic-Con). -I had sat at this person's table to listen to them eloquently denounce at length the many ways in which some code they encountered was horribly overcomplicated—which made sense, they explained, because the 40-year-old men who wrote those libraries were all Trump supporters and Nazis and libertarians. +I had sat at this person's table to listen to them eloquently denounce at length the many ways in which some code they encountered was horribly overcomplicated—which made sense, they explained, because the 40-year-old men who wrote those libraries were all [Trump supporters and Nazis and libertarians](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-group_homogeneity). ("Oh, that's interesting!", I said, "Do you suppose there's that large of a correlation between political ideology and code quality? With a sufficiently smart linter to operationalize quality, this could be amenable to empirical study ...") -- 2.17.1