i came here to post this very thing.
the recent post on NRD, for example, someone came out to say ‘hey, i use guys all the time, and so does everyone else i know, i don’t see what the big deal is’
i saw some explanations of why it’s a big deal to people, but i also saw a lot of trolling in response, even by one of the admins.
i felt that this was really unfortunate because it reminded of what happened when the NRG page got shut down. there were a lot of ‘when’s men’s night’ posts which were obviously meant to stir up drama, but there were an equal amount of posts from the other side whose sole purpose was the stir things up as well, and very little education presented in a reasonable way to these people
bringing this back to my and @moistloaf’s point, not everyone has had the same education in how and why these things can be a problem for some people. i love the article in how it clearly laid out the hows and whys, but also, i really appreciate that it gave the offenders involved a chance to apologise and allow everyone to move on and not dwell on it. i recall another moment a while ago when @mediohxcore named a deck (whose central component was Marcus Batty) that apparently was a derogatory term in some cultures. he was given the chance to say ‘yep, sorry about that.’ and people accepted that he didn’t know, and we all moved on. i doubt many people recall, and i’m sure i’m not remembering it correctly either. but i think Dan is given a little more leeway as a well-known member of the community.
whereas my own experiences, not nearly as many people know who i am… i posted a picture on NRD that was considered offensive (i didn’t think it was at the time, but i now completely understand why).
anyway, i was messaged 7 times about the picture having been moderated, was told that it might be considered offensive, and then that ‘maybe [i] should be more considerate of [my] fellow community members in the future’
i didn’t even respond, because i had already been accused and found guilty, so an apology didn’t seem warranted or even welcome, so when this first happened, it wasn’t explained to me the hows and whys it was considered offensive, and i ended up bringing it up a couple of times later to share that experience.
it wasn’t until i brought it up in slack many months later that @eric_c i believe pointed out why he found it offensive. now i know. i apologised to eric, and now i don’t bring it up anymore
there was another situation a couple years ago with what pronoun to use with apex. i knew that it was an issue before anyone had even brought it up, but it was apparently a huge thing in the thread, but i remember i had used the it pronoun several times, but missed a he somewhere, and someone came out and talked down to me in a huge tl;dr of text of how misguided and misogynistic i was, how uninformed i must be. i got no credit for realising that it was an issue and having made an effort to go over and correct things. my response at the time was not pleasant, and i want situations like these in the future for people who are corrected to be done so in a way that’s inclusive to them as well. had they simply pointed out that i forgot a he, i would have said ‘yep, sorry about that’, and we could have moved on.
i consider myself a pretty progressive person with a strong liberal leaning in terms of social issues and expected behaviours. i have a lot of education in sociolinguistics, but even i obviously can make mistakes. so when i’m accused of being something i really don’t feel i am, i didn’t think it was very fair at all, and my responses weren’t really representative of who i try to be or feel i am.
i know most of the people in this thread have been reasonable, so this isn’t really targeted at anyone (or even the people from my examples). i just think when problems like these happen, we follow the example of this article and allow some education to happen in a reasonable way, the opportunity for apologies to be made, and that we all move on together as a community