There's a lot of us and many folks (or maybe just me) haven't met most people or are otherwise unsure about pronouns.
Put them on the people page? Good idea? Bad idea? Too public?
The crappy HTML I wrote to do this is to float left and float right the field.
<td> <a id="tjr"></a> <div class="photo"><img src="../images/people/tjr.png" alt="tjr" width="128" height="150"></div> <div class="icon"><a href="https://twitter.com/tomrittervg"><img src="../images/twitter-small.png" alt="twitter" width="20" height="20"></a></div> <div class="icon"><a href="https://db.torproject.org/fetchkey.cgi?fingerprint=8ACD146EA94CEB12E4EA691566A109189B79658F"><img src="../images/pgp-key.png" alt="pgp key" width="20" height="20"></a></div> <div class="name"><a href="#tjr">Tom Ritter</a></div> <div class="field" style="float:left"><b>IRC:</b> tjr</div> <div class="field" style="float:right">he/him</div> <div class="description">Maintains <a href="https://consensus-health.torproject.org/">Consensus Health </a>, runs one of the bandwidth authorities, and contributes to Tor Browser.</div> </td>
-tom
Hey there,
I’m in favor of pronouns!
I bet there’s two or three other bits or information it’d be useful to know about each other — home time zone comes to mind, but there might be others. I suspect that this info is too public to go on tp.org.
Stripe recently blogged about their internal people page feature ( https://stripe.com/blog/stripe-home) but I can’t imagine where the Tor version of that would live.
TC
On Thu, May 17, 2018 at 8:31 AM Tom Ritter tom@ritter.vg wrote:
There's a lot of us and many folks (or maybe just me) haven't met most people or are otherwise unsure about pronouns.
Put them on the people page? Good idea? Bad idea? Too public?
The crappy HTML I wrote to do this is to float left and float right the field.
<td> <a id="tjr"></a> <div class="photo"><img src="../images/people/tjr.png" alt="tjr" width="128" height="150"></div> <div class="icon"><a href="https://twitter.com/tomrittervg"><img src="../images/twitter-small.png" alt="twitter" width="20" height="20"></a></div> <div class="icon"><a href=" https://db.torproject.org/fetchkey.cgi?fingerprint=8ACD146EA94CEB12E4EA691566A109189B79658F "><img src="../images/pgp-key.png" alt="pgp key" width="20" height="20"></a></div> <div class="name"><a href="#tjr">Tom Ritter</a></div> <div class="field" style="float:left"><b>IRC:</b> tjr</div> <div class="field" style="float:right">he/him</div> <div class="description">Maintains <a href="https://consensus-health.torproject.org/">Consensus Health </a>, runs one of the bandwidth authorities, and contributes to Tor Browser.</div> </td>
-tom _______________________________________________ tor-project mailing list tor-project@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-project
Hi,
On Thu, May 17, 2018 at 6:53 PM, Tommy Collison tommy@collison.ie wrote:
Hey there,
I’m in favor of pronouns!
I bet there’s two or three other bits or information it’d be useful to know about each other — home time zone comes to mind, but there might be others. I suspect that this info is too public to go on tp.org.
Tor's user space is huge and Tor seeks wide audience. Are other similar organizations doing this on their project pages?
Regards, Juha
On 18 May 2018 at 00:53, Nurmi, Juha juha.nurmi@ahmia.fi wrote:
On Thu, May 17, 2018 at 6:53 PM, Tommy Collison tommy@collison.ie wrote:
I bet there’s two or three other bits or information it’d be useful to know about each other — home time zone comes to mind, but there might be others. I suspect that this info is too public to go on tp.org.
Tor's user space is huge and Tor seeks wide audience. Are other similar organizations doing this on their project pages?
Most distributed orgs I know of have a *private* directory with this sort of information. Tommy mentioned Stripe; Mozilla and Google have one also.
They also have people whose job descriptions includes building and maintaining such services though...
-tom
On 18 May 2018 at 07:59, Tom Ritter tom@ritter.vg wrote:
On 18 May 2018 at 00:53, Nurmi, Juha juha.nurmi@ahmia.fi wrote:
On Thu, May 17, 2018 at 6:53 PM, Tommy Collison tommy@collison.ie
wrote:
I bet there’s two or three other bits or information it’d be useful to know about each other — home time zone comes to mind, but there might be others. I suspect that this info is too public to go on tp.org.
Tor's user space is huge and Tor seeks wide audience. Are other similar organizations doing this on their project pages?
Most distributed orgs I know of have a *private* directory with this sort of information. Tommy mentioned Stripe; Mozilla and Google have one also.
They also have people whose job descriptions includes building and maintaining such services though...
-tom
That's true. And sorry, I didn't mean to derail the conversation -- pronouns, great idea! TC
On 05/17/2018 10:31 AM, Tom Ritter wrote:
There's a lot of us and many folks (or maybe just me) haven't met most people or are otherwise unsure about pronouns.
Put them on the people page? Good idea? Bad idea? Too public?
Thanks for suggesting this!
I am in favor of displaying pronouns on the people page. I also think it's very important to make it obvious that they're optional. I would encourage cisgender people to display their pronouns if they feel comfortable doing so, because that helps to normalize the practice.
As one example, I did notice that our friends at Outreachy have what seem to be optional pronouns on their interns page:
https://www.outreachy.org/alums/
Best regards, -Taylor
I find these without context to be very clunky. A brief bio of "Griffin does xyz and in his spare time plays jazz keytar" flows much better and better represents the richness of one's life. I'm slightly biased on this issue as I'm very visibly trans. While people will naturally make assumptions about my gender/sex (no big deal), some focus on that particular piece of my life instead of what I'm actually doing.
On May 18, 2018 3:32:17 PM EDT, Taylor Yu catalyst@torproject.org wrote:
On 05/17/2018 10:31 AM, Tom Ritter wrote:
There's a lot of us and many folks (or maybe just me) haven't met
most
people or are otherwise unsure about pronouns.
Put them on the people page? Good idea? Bad idea? Too public?
Thanks for suggesting this!
I am in favor of displaying pronouns on the people page. I also think it's very important to make it obvious that they're optional. I would encourage cisgender people to display their pronouns if they feel comfortable doing so, because that helps to normalize the practice.
As one example, I did notice that our friends at Outreachy have what seem to be optional pronouns on their interns page:
https://www.outreachy.org/alums/
Best regards, -Taylor _______________________________________________ tor-project mailing list tor-project@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-project
On 18 May 2018 at 15:39, Griffin griffin@cryptolab.net wrote:
I find these without context to be very clunky. A brief bio of "Griffin does xyz and in his spare time plays jazz keytar" flows much better and better represents the richness of one's life. I'm slightly biased on this issue as I'm very visibly trans. While people will naturally make assumptions about my gender/sex (no big deal), some focus on that particular piece of my life instead of what I'm actually doing.
No I think someone 'biased' (you're not biased, you're impacted by this and therefore have a weighty opinion) is exactly what I was hoping to solicit.
I think you're right; I think it would be better if we could amend the brief bios we have there to (optionally) include a pronoun.
Some of _those_ become a little clunky depending on how we do it. Does anyone have suggestions for how to change 'Tor Browser developer.' for example? "They are a Tor Browser developer." seems a bit odd. "Bob is Tor Browser developer, and his interests/experience include blah"?
-tom
On 05/18/2018 03:39 PM, Griffin wrote:
I find these without context to be very clunky. A brief bio of "Griffin does xyz and in his spare time plays jazz keytar" flows much better and better represents the richness of one's life. I'm slightly biased on this issue as I'm very visibly trans. While people will naturally make assumptions about my gender/sex (no big deal), some focus on that particular piece of my life instead of what I'm actually doing.
Thank you for sharing your perspective. I'm glad it's no big deal for you when people make assumptions about your gender. I also appreciate you not wanting people to focus on that aspect of your life.
Are you saying we should refrain altogether from optionally displaying pronouns on the people page in a standardized way? Or are you expressing your desire to opt out of displaying your pronouns like that? Or something else?
I guess I have a different bias. I would find it helpful if we gave people the option to display their pronouns in a standardized way. People are unlikely to guess my correct pronouns, unless they're in the habit of using they/them pronouns by default. Until recently, it was more likely than not for someone to guess my gender or pronouns in a direction that would hurt me.
I've found that people who have already made assumptions about someone's gender are likely to disregard that person's pronouns if those pronouns are used only in running text, as opposed to being displayed in some more explicit way. I personally feel more comfortable announcing my pronouns if other people also announce theirs (which they are free to do or not as they feel comfortable).
Best regards, -Taylor pronouns: they/them
Hi,
On 19 May 2018, at 08:51, Taylor Yu catalyst@torproject.org wrote:
I guess I have a different bias. I would find it helpful if we gave people the option to display their pronouns in a standardized way.
I want it to be easy for other people to find my pronouns.
When I go to check someone's pronouns, it helps to have them in a standard place.
People are unlikely to guess my correct pronouns, unless they're in the habit of using they/them pronouns by default.
Me too! (I used to use "he", now I use "they".)
Until recently, it was more likely than not for someone to guess my gender or pronouns in a direction that would hurt me.
I've found that people who have already made assumptions about someone's gender are likely to disregard that person's pronouns if those pronouns are used only in running text, as opposed to being displayed in some more explicit way. I personally feel more comfortable announcing my pronouns if other people also announce theirs (which they are free to do or not as they feel comfortable).
I think we can support both options.
If we make pronouns optional, and have a place in the header: * some people can use the header * some people can use the description * and others can use neither (or both).
teor pronouns: they/them
It’s no big deal to me because people continuously get it wrong and I shrug it off unless someone’s intentionally being a jerk. I like the idea that we can intuit such things rather than having to declare them, but of course this idea has no basis in reality — I will likely look androgynous forevermore, and people who are non-binary have similar battles.
By ‘biased’ I mean that I both have an opinion on this but also I carry with me the biases present in the trans community c2003, which in some ways were very different than they are now. Which is to say that my opinions don’t speak for everyone and I’m not trying to.
I like having a mini bio that includes one’s pronouns in a natural-sounding way, to emphasize (as Calpernia Addams once put it) “That little thing called a ‘life’ that surrounds our genitals”.
If people are explicitly avoiding using the correct pronouns, that is another issue entirely, and IMO not one that will likely be solved by the People page.
On May 18, 2018, 6:51 PM -0400, Taylor Yu catalyst@torproject.org, wrote:
On 05/18/2018 03:39 PM, Griffin wrote:
I find these without context to be very clunky. A brief bio of "Griffin does xyz and in his spare time plays jazz keytar" flows much better and better represents the richness of one's life. I'm slightly biased on this issue as I'm very visibly trans. While people will naturally make assumptions about my gender/sex (no big deal), some focus on that particular piece of my life instead of what I'm actually doing.
Thank you for sharing your perspective. I'm glad it's no big deal for you when people make assumptions about your gender. I also appreciate you not wanting people to focus on that aspect of your life.
Are you saying we should refrain altogether from optionally displaying pronouns on the people page in a standardized way? Or are you expressing your desire to opt out of displaying your pronouns like that? Or something else?
I guess I have a different bias. I would find it helpful if we gave people the option to display their pronouns in a standardized way. People are unlikely to guess my correct pronouns, unless they're in the habit of using they/them pronouns by default. Until recently, it was more likely than not for someone to guess my gender or pronouns in a direction that would hurt me.
I've found that people who have already made assumptions about someone's gender are likely to disregard that person's pronouns if those pronouns are used only in running text, as opposed to being displayed in some more explicit way. I personally feel more comfortable announcing my pronouns if other people also announce theirs (which they are free to do or not as they feel comfortable).
Best regards, -Taylor pronouns: they/them
In a similar vein, the last two tor meetings I've been two there's been an announcement after the initial bit encouraging people to put their preferred pronouns on their conference badge. Maybe this year we could nip this in the bud and have it part of the table schema Jon pulls the names from when printing the badges?
best, -Richard
On 05/18/2018 12:32 PM, Taylor Yu wrote:
On 05/17/2018 10:31 AM, Tom Ritter wrote:
There's a lot of us and many folks (or maybe just me) haven't met most people or are otherwise unsure about pronouns.
Put them on the people page? Good idea? Bad idea? Too public?
Thanks for suggesting this!
I am in favor of displaying pronouns on the people page. I also think it's very important to make it obvious that they're optional. I would encourage cisgender people to display their pronouns if they feel comfortable doing so, because that helps to normalize the practice.
As one example, I did notice that our friends at Outreachy have what seem to be optional pronouns on their interns page:
https://www.outreachy.org/alums/
Best regards, -Taylor _______________________________________________ tor-project mailing list tor-project@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-project
I make the meeting name tags, and pronouns would be easy to add. I’ll add a column on the meeting wiki. Thanks for the suggestion, Richard!
Cheers, Erin
On May 18, 2018, at 3:24 PM, Richard Pospesel richard@torproject.org wrote:
In a similar vein, the last two tor meetings I've been two there's been an announcement after the initial bit encouraging people to put their preferred pronouns on their conference badge. Maybe this year we could nip this in the bud and have it part of the table schema Jon pulls the names from when printing the badges?
best, -Richard
On 05/18/2018 12:32 PM, Taylor Yu wrote:
On 05/17/2018 10:31 AM, Tom Ritter wrote:
There's a lot of us and many folks (or maybe just me) haven't met most people or are otherwise unsure about pronouns.
Put them on the people page? Good idea? Bad idea? Too public?
Thanks for suggesting this!
I am in favor of displaying pronouns on the people page. I also think it's very important to make it obvious that they're optional. I would encourage cisgender people to display their pronouns if they feel comfortable doing so, because that helps to normalize the practice.
As one example, I did notice that our friends at Outreachy have what seem to be optional pronouns on their interns page:
https://www.outreachy.org/alums/
Best regards, -Taylor _______________________________________________ tor-project mailing list tor-project@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-project
tor-project mailing list tor-project@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-project
+1. Thanks Erin!
-Jon
On May 18, 2018, at 3:36 PM, Erin Wyatt ewyatt@torproject.org wrote:
I make the meeting name tags, and pronouns would be easy to add. I’ll add a column on the meeting wiki. Thanks for the suggestion, Richard!
Cheers, Erin
On May 18, 2018, at 3:24 PM, Richard Pospesel richard@torproject.org wrote:
In a similar vein, the last two tor meetings I've been two there's been an announcement after the initial bit encouraging people to put their preferred pronouns on their conference badge. Maybe this year we could nip this in the bud and have it part of the table schema Jon pulls the names from when printing the badges?
best, -Richard
On 05/18/2018 12:32 PM, Taylor Yu wrote:
On 05/17/2018 10:31 AM, Tom Ritter wrote:
There's a lot of us and many folks (or maybe just me) haven't met most people or are otherwise unsure about pronouns.
Put them on the people page? Good idea? Bad idea? Too public?
Thanks for suggesting this!
I am in favor of displaying pronouns on the people page. I also think it's very important to make it obvious that they're optional. I would encourage cisgender people to display their pronouns if they feel comfortable doing so, because that helps to normalize the practice.
As one example, I did notice that our friends at Outreachy have what seem to be optional pronouns on their interns page:
https://www.outreachy.org/alums/
Best regards, -Taylor _______________________________________________ tor-project mailing list tor-project@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-project
tor-project mailing list tor-project@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-project
tor-project mailing list tor-project@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-project
And Richard. :)
-Jon
On May 18, 2018, at 3:37 PM, Jon Selon jon@torproject.org wrote:
+1. Thanks Erin!
-Jon
On May 18, 2018, at 3:36 PM, Erin Wyatt ewyatt@torproject.org wrote:
I make the meeting name tags, and pronouns would be easy to add. I’ll add a column on the meeting wiki. Thanks for the suggestion, Richard!
Cheers, Erin
On May 18, 2018, at 3:24 PM, Richard Pospesel richard@torproject.org wrote:
In a similar vein, the last two tor meetings I've been two there's been an announcement after the initial bit encouraging people to put their preferred pronouns on their conference badge. Maybe this year we could nip this in the bud and have it part of the table schema Jon pulls the names from when printing the badges?
best, -Richard
On 05/18/2018 12:32 PM, Taylor Yu wrote:
On 05/17/2018 10:31 AM, Tom Ritter wrote:
There's a lot of us and many folks (or maybe just me) haven't met most people or are otherwise unsure about pronouns.
Put them on the people page? Good idea? Bad idea? Too public?
Thanks for suggesting this!
I am in favor of displaying pronouns on the people page. I also think it's very important to make it obvious that they're optional. I would encourage cisgender people to display their pronouns if they feel comfortable doing so, because that helps to normalize the practice.
As one example, I did notice that our friends at Outreachy have what seem to be optional pronouns on their interns page:
https://www.outreachy.org/alums/
Best regards, -Taylor _______________________________________________ tor-project mailing list tor-project@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-project
tor-project mailing list tor-project@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-project
tor-project mailing list tor-project@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-project
On 05/18/2018 05:36 PM, Erin Wyatt wrote:
I make the meeting name tags, and pronouns would be easy to add. I’ll add a column on the meeting wiki. Thanks for the suggestion, Richard!
Thanks, Richard and Erin!
Please make it clear that pronouns are optional on the meeting wiki page.
A few other suggestions:
* To encourage cisgender people to display their pronouns, include text (maybe a footnote on the pronoun column?) like "If strangers tend to assume the correct pronouns for you, please consider displaying your pronouns, even if you feel that is unnecessary. That helps make a more welcoming environment for all of us to display our pronouns, especially those of us who often experience strangers assuming incorrect pronouns for us."
* Mention that if someone doesn't provide pronouns, there will be an unlabeled blank space on their badge that they can use to add pronouns later if they want.
* Mention that there will be blank badges, markers, and blank stickers (maybe we haven't provided stickers before, but I recommend it) if people need to correct their name or pronouns on their badges after they've been printed. (It happens! e.g., me at my first Tor meeting)
* If we provide stickers, maybe preprint some of the more common pronoun sets, along with a fill-in-the-blank sticker.
I welcome feedback about any of the above suggestions.
Best regards, -Taylor
On 20 May 2018, at 11:13, John Gilmore gnu@toad.com wrote:
I welcome feedback about any of the above suggestions.
I have a suggestion. Rather than rewrite the vocabulary of everybody else,
"Rewrite the vocabulary" is a really odd take, John.
Would you say the same thing to someone has an unusual name, or a name with an unusual spelling?
And most English speakers I know regularly use the words he, him, his; she, her; and they, them, their. (Some people use less common pronouns. But some people use less common names, too.)
Part of getting to know people is learning the name(s) and pronouns that they prefer.
how about becoming less touchy about what words people use regarding people whose chosen gender is not completely obvious?
"Less touchy" is another odd take.
Would you say that to someone whose name is harder for you to remember?
If you forget names or pronouns, that's fine. It happens. Some people let it pass, others give a gentle reminder. That's up to them.
If you persist in using the wrong name or pronouns for someone, they may feel hurt or insulted, and avoid talking to you. Or they might just ignore it (or you). That's not being touchy, that's avoiding an awkward situation that you're creating.
And if you do it deliberately, as some kind of statement? Then that's disrespectful and rude. If you're that hostile towards people who don't meet your gender expectations, then you'll be more comfortable if you avoid interacting with us. And so will we.
We can't guess everyone's gender correctly from their appearance. And we shouldn't expect to be able to. Sometimes gender isn't obvious. That's why having a list of names and pronouns is useful.
I wonder if talking about gender in this way is new to you. If it is, then this mailing list isn't the best place for you to learn how different people talk and think about gender.
Teen Vogue has a great FAQ on gender pronouns here: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/they-them-questions-answered
And there are other excellent resources online.
T
I wonder if talking about gender in this way is new to you. If it is, then this mailing list isn't the best place for you to learn how different people talk and think about gender.
Teen Vogue has a great FAQ on gender pronouns here: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/they-them-questions-answered
And there are other excellent resources online.
T
Thanks, teor, I agree with you. - Katie
On Sun, May 20, 2018 at 4:13 AM, John Gilmore gnu@toad.com wrote:
I welcome feedback about any of the above suggestions.
I have a suggestion. Rather than rewrite the vocabulary of everybody else, how about becoming less touchy about what words people use regarding people whose chosen gender is not completely obvious?
I agree with John and let me explain why.
This conversation is concentrated to native English speakers.
For example, Uralic languages (with the most native speakers are Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian) lack of grammatical gender. Logically there is one pronoun for both he and she; for example, hän in Finnish. As a result, logic of language expressing gender is strange for Finnish speakers. This causes Finnish people often mix, for instance, she/he and actor/actress when they try to speak English. For them hän is always correct and neutral!
As a native Finnish speaker my language codes my brain not to see difference and the whole idea is untranslatable to my native language. As a result, I often mix between she/he/hers/his/actor/actress etc. Indeed, I have said something like "About my grandmonther, he is..." in English which translates completely right to my language!
Most of the Tor user are not speaking English as their first language.
Regards, Juha
On 05/20/2018 01:53 AM, Nurmi, Juha wrote:
For example, Uralic languages (with the most native speakers are Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian) lack of grammatical gender.
Do you have different words for mother and father in Finnish? Or does the language completely lack the concept of gender for people?
As a native Finnish speaker my language codes my brain not to see difference and the whole idea is untranslatable to my native language. As a result, I often mix between she/he/hers/his/actor/actress etc. Indeed, I have said something like "About my grandmonther, he is..." in English which translates completely right to my language!
I have stronger expectations for native English speakers than for non-native speakers for using someone's correct pronouns. If you are preemptively explaining why you might make mistakes with people's pronouns because of how your native language lacks gendered pronouns, I sympathize. In that case, I suggest that you apologize briefly if/when you make mistakes and try to do better, rather than explaining beforehand.
If you are instead publicly making excuses for not making an effort to use people's correct pronouns, I invite you to consider whether that helps to make Tor a welcoming environment for people of all genders.
I am familiar with languages that lack gendered pronouns. I grew up in a bilingual household speaking English and Mandarin. My mother still occasionally uses incorrect pronouns for people of all genders because English is not her first language and spoken Mandarin, like Finnish, doesn't have gendered pronouns.
Most of the Tor user are not speaking English as their first language.
I'm aware that many Tor users and contributors don't speak English as their first language. I'm not sure how this affects a decision to offer people the option of displaying their pronouns in a standardized form.
Are you concerned about potential future translations of our people page? If so, we can talk about that: I think there several potential solutions there. I think potential difficulties with translation should not mean denying people the option of displaying their pronouns.
If instead you want to talk about whether we should refer to people using the pronouns they have asked us to use for them, this mailing list is really not an appropriate place for that.
Best regards, -Taylor
Hi Juha,
On 20 May 2018, at 16:53, Nurmi, Juha juha.nurmi@ahmia.fi wrote:
For example, Uralic languages (with the most native speakers are Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian) lack of grammatical gender. Logically there is one pronoun for both he and she; for example, hän in Finnish. As a result, logic of language expressing gender is strange for Finnish speakers. This causes Finnish people often mix, for instance, she/he and actor/actress when they try to speak English. For them hän is always correct and neutral!
In the past, I have assumed you used "he". Would you like us to use "they" as your pronoun?
For example:
Juha said that he is going to Mexico. Or Juha said that they are going to Mexico.
If you don't have a preferred pronoun, that's also ok.
T
Hi Juha,
I agree with John and let me explain why.
This conversation is concentrated to native English speakers.
For example, Uralic languages (with the most native speakers are Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian) lack of grammatical gender. Logically there is one pronoun for both he and she; for example, hän in Finnish. As a result, logic of language expressing gender is strange for Finnish speakers. This causes Finnish people often mix, for instance, she/he and actor/actress when they try to speak English. For them hän is always correct and neutral!
I'm a self taught English speaker and my native language is a gender neutral one, like yours. But I disagree with you and John and am actually concerned by his trolling efforts to waste hours and hours of our collective time that could be spent on doing better things.
While I tend to ignore emails coming from John (as I've long lost assuming good faith), I figured I'd reply to yours as it may have come from a different place. We're all coming from different backgrounds (and cultures) but here we're talking and writing in English and collectively, have chosen this language as our main communication channel. It only makes sense to respect the etiquette of the language if we want to maintain the rule of "be excellent to each other" and have a healthier and more inclusive community, which in my personal opinion is something we might not have always been the best at, but hey we're having this conversation so there are improvements.
As a native Finnish speaker my language codes my brain not to see difference and the whole idea is untranslatable to my native language. As a result, I often mix between she/he/hers/his/actor/actress etc. Indeed, I have said something like "About my grandmonther, he is..." in English which translates completely right to my language!
I too make this mistake a lot. And that is okay. If you catch yourself making that mistake, you can always correct yourself. It takes about 2 seconds. And if you don't, that's okay too. As long as it's an honest mistake and you don't deliberately continue to call somebody with the wrong pronouns. My rule of thumb is that I default to they/them in my language to avoid people's feelings.
Most of the Tor user are not speaking English as their first language.
This is true, and for many years, I've been an advocate to move away from focusing too much on the English speaking user-base. This is a fine argument to have under another topic and when it's related to our products and definitely not under this topic. It's not our place to decide who wants to be called what and how.
Live and let live.
Peace,
So if I was going to try and get a pulse of what people think we should do here, I've got:
Do: If anything is done, contact everyone on the people page and make sure everyone has the opportunity to participate.
Do: Offer that individuals re-word their bio to include a pronoun.
Probably: Figure out an uncluttered way to indicate a pronoun apart from the bio. Idea 1: My initial float-right Idea 2: Linked to pronoun.is Idea 3: Bump irc down and put pronoun first Idea 4: Bump irc to the right and put pronoun right below name
Of these, I like 2 and 4. Putting irc to the right groups it with contact information. Putting Pronoun under the name links it with name. Linking to pronoun.is should (hopefully) allow us to use the minimal wording 'he', 'they', 'e', etc but provide full context.
What I've got is: https://imgur.com/a/uIc0CqO
And if you opt to not specify the pronoun specifically, irc will still stay to the right.
<td> <a id="tjr"></a> <div class="photo"><img src="../images/people/tjr.png" alt="tjr" width="128" height="150"></div> <div class="icon"><a href="https://twitter.com/tomrittervg"><img src="../images/twitter-small.png" alt="twitter" width="20" height="20"></a></div> <div class="icon"><a href="https://db.torproject.org/fetchkey.cgi?fingerprint=8ACD146EA94CEB12E4EA691566A109189B79658F"><img src="../images/pgp-key.png" alt="pgp key" width="20" height="20"></a></div> <div class="name"><a href="#tjr">Tom Ritter</a></div> <div class="field-pronoun" style="float:left"><a href="https://pronoun.is/he">he</a></div> <div class="field-irc" style="float:right;margin-right:5px;"><b>IRC:</b> tjr</div> <div class="description" style="margin-top:15px">Maintains <a href="https://consensus-health.torproject.org/">Consensus Health </a>, runs one of the bandwidth authorities, and contributes to Tor Browser.</div> </td>
-tom
On 21 May 2018 at 21:08, Nima Fatemi nima@torproject.org wrote:
Hi Juha,
I agree with John and let me explain why.
This conversation is concentrated to native English speakers.
For example, Uralic languages (with the most native speakers are Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian) lack of grammatical gender. Logically there is one pronoun for both he and she; for example, hän in Finnish. As a result, logic of language expressing gender is strange for Finnish speakers. This causes Finnish people often mix, for instance, she/he and actor/actress when they try to speak English. For them hän is always correct and neutral!
I'm a self taught English speaker and my native language is a gender neutral one, like yours. But I disagree with you and John and am actually concerned by his trolling efforts to waste hours and hours of our collective time that could be spent on doing better things.
While I tend to ignore emails coming from John (as I've long lost assuming good faith), I figured I'd reply to yours as it may have come from a different place. We're all coming from different backgrounds (and cultures) but here we're talking and writing in English and collectively, have chosen this language as our main communication channel. It only makes sense to respect the etiquette of the language if we want to maintain the rule of "be excellent to each other" and have a healthier and more inclusive community, which in my personal opinion is something we might not have always been the best at, but hey we're having this conversation so there are improvements.
As a native Finnish speaker my language codes my brain not to see difference and the whole idea is untranslatable to my native language. As a result, I often mix between she/he/hers/his/actor/actress etc. Indeed, I have said something like "About my grandmonther, he is..." in English which translates completely right to my language!
I too make this mistake a lot. And that is okay. If you catch yourself making that mistake, you can always correct yourself. It takes about 2 seconds. And if you don't, that's okay too. As long as it's an honest mistake and you don't deliberately continue to call somebody with the wrong pronouns. My rule of thumb is that I default to they/them in my language to avoid people's feelings.
Most of the Tor user are not speaking English as their first language.
This is true, and for many years, I've been an advocate to move away from focusing too much on the English speaking user-base. This is a fine argument to have under another topic and when it's related to our products and definitely not under this topic. It's not our place to decide who wants to be called what and how.
Live and let live.
Peace,
Nima 0X58C4B928A3E218F6 | @mrphs
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" --Evelyn Beatrice Hall _______________________________________________ tor-project mailing list tor-project@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-project
On Fri, May 18, 2018 at 02:32:17PM -0500, Taylor Yu wrote:
On 05/17/2018 10:31 AM, Tom Ritter wrote:
There's a lot of us and many folks (or maybe just me) haven't met most people or are otherwise unsure about pronouns.
Put them on the people page? Good idea? Bad idea? Too public?
Thanks for suggesting this!
I am in favor of displaying pronouns on the people page. I also think it's very important to make it obvious that they're optional. I would encourage cisgender people to display their pronouns if they feel comfortable doing so, because that helps to normalize the practice.
I agree. All the information on the people page is currently optional anyway (including being listed, at all), so adding another piece of optional information like this shouldn't be a problem.
I'm in favor of adding this. It is especially useful for new community members, in addition to long-time contributors who simply haven't had the opportunity of meeting everyone.
Hi Matt. My only concern (as the maintainer of that page) is that it doesn't get cluttered. If folks would find pronouns useful, someone leads the effort to get 'em all, and comes up with a tasteful way of displaying them then feel free!
Are there any options folks will want besides: he, her, or they? If it's a narrow enumeration like that then I wonder if we can do something iconic (with the Twitter and gpg links).
Cheers! -Damian
On Fri, May 18, 2018, 4:10 PM Matthew Finkel matthew.finkel@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, May 18, 2018 at 02:32:17PM -0500, Taylor Yu wrote:
On 05/17/2018 10:31 AM, Tom Ritter wrote:
There's a lot of us and many folks (or maybe just me) haven't met most people or are otherwise unsure about pronouns.
Put them on the people page? Good idea? Bad idea? Too public?
Thanks for suggesting this!
I am in favor of displaying pronouns on the people page. I also think it's very important to make it obvious that they're optional. I would encourage cisgender people to display their pronouns if they feel comfortable doing so, because that helps to normalize the practice.
I agree. All the information on the people page is currently optional anyway (including being listed, at all), so adding another piece of optional information like this shouldn't be a problem.
I'm in favor of adding this. It is especially useful for new community members, in addition to long-time contributors who simply haven't had the opportunity of meeting everyone. _______________________________________________ tor-project mailing list tor-project@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-project
On 19 May 2018, at 09:32, Damian Johnson atagar@torproject.org wrote:
Hi Matt. My only concern (as the maintainer of that page) is that it doesn't get cluttered. If folks would find pronouns useful, someone leads the effort to get 'em all,
Pronouns are optional, so there's no need to get them all.
If it's easier to do a group update, we can start collecting a list, wait a week, and then do the change.
and comes up with a tasteful way of displaying them then feel free!
Are there any options folks will want besides: he, her, or they?
Some people use other preferred pronouns.
Here are some examples of other preferred pronouns: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-person_pronoun#Summary
If it's a narrow enumeration like that then I wonder if we can do something iconic (with the Twitter and gpg links).
There are no standard icons for pronouns. The male and female symbols ♂ and ♀ are used in medicine. (Using them would be confusing and problematic.) There is no standard symbol for "they".
It really is best if we spell it out: * they/them/their * she/her * he/him/his * e/em/eir
If that's too long, we could show the common form ("they"), with a tooltip for the other inflections ("they/them/their").
T
On Fri, May 18, 2018 at 8:40 PM, teor teor2345@gmail.com wrote:
On 19 May 2018, at 09:32, Damian Johnson atagar@torproject.org wrote:
Hi Matt. My only concern (as the maintainer of that page) is that it doesn't get cluttered. If folks would find pronouns useful, someone leads the effort to get 'em all,
Pronouns are optional, so there's no need to get them all.
If it's easier to do a group update, we can start collecting a list, wait a week, and then do the change.
and comes up with a tasteful way of displaying them then feel free!
Are there any options folks will want besides: he, her, or they?
Some people use other preferred pronouns.
Here are some examples of other preferred pronouns: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-person_pronoun#Summary
If it's a narrow enumeration like that then I wonder if we can do something iconic (with the Twitter and gpg links).
There are no standard icons for pronouns. The male and female symbols ♂ and ♀ are used in medicine. (Using them would be confusing and problematic.) There is no standard symbol for "they".
It really is best if we spell it out:
- they/them/their
- she/her
- he/him/his
- e/em/eir
If that's too long, we could show the common form ("they"), with a tooltip for the other inflections ("they/them/their").
I've seen some free software projects include links to various pages on https://pronoun.is/ , like https://pronoun.is/he . So we could have eg <a href="https://pronoun.is/she" class="pronoun">she</a> to keep the layout simple, if that proves necessary.
It allows custom stuff, like https://pronoun.is/%C3%B0e/%C3%B0em/%C3%B0e/%C3%B0er/%C3%B0ers/%C3%B0emself .
The site is AGPL3, if we consider it critical to self-host. :)
Thanks teor.
Pronouns are optional, so there's no need to get them all.
If it's easier to do a group update, we can start collecting a list, wait a week, and then do the change.
Yup, all information on the page is optional *but* it's consistently collected. My ask here wasn't that it must be listed for everyone but that we should collect them in the same way as the other information. Which is to say reach out individually to everyone on the page to ask if and what pronoun they'd prefer.
Some people use other preferred pronouns.
Here are some examples of other preferred pronouns: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-person_pronoun#Summary
Interesting. I suspect in our community he/she/they will be enough but interesting to know there are things like 'eir'.
There are no standard icons for pronouns. The male and female symbols ♂ and ♀ are used in medicine. (Using them would be confusing and problematic.) There is no standard symbol for "they".
Seems there are iconographic options, but on reflection it probably would indeed be better to just spell it out along with irc nicks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_symbols#Gender_symbols https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_symbol
On 05/17/2018 10:31 AM, Tom Ritter wrote:
<div class="name"><a href="#tjr">Tom Ritter</a></div> <div class="field" style="float:left"><b>IRC:</b> tjr</div> <div class="field" style="float:right">he/him</div>
Maybe it would be good to give it a distinct DIV class, like "name" has? That might help with accessibility. (Does anyone with accessibility experience have comments on this?) Also displaying it directly under the name might be better.
-Taylor
As a followup to this; I collected a few dozen responses to my email and Damian was gracious enough to update the page for us. There are still two outstanding responses that came in after his update; so consider this a final reminder if you haven't replied and would like to; and we'll update the page one last time shortly.
-tom
On 17 May 2018 at 15:31, Tom Ritter tom@ritter.vg wrote:
There's a lot of us and many folks (or maybe just me) haven't met most people or are otherwise unsure about pronouns.
Put them on the people page? Good idea? Bad idea? Too public?
The crappy HTML I wrote to do this is to float left and float right the field.
<td> <a id="tjr"></a> <div class="photo"><img src="../images/people/tjr.png" alt="tjr" width="128" height="150"></div> <div class="icon"><a href="https://twitter.com/tomrittervg"><img src="../images/twitter-small.png" alt="twitter" width="20" height="20"></a></div> <div class="icon"><a href="https://db.torproject.org/fetchkey.cgi?fingerprint=8ACD146EA94CEB12E4EA691566A109189B79658F"><img src="../images/pgp-key.png" alt="pgp key" width="20" height="20"></a></div> <div class="name"><a href="#tjr">Tom Ritter</a></div> <div class="field" style="float:left"><b>IRC:</b> tjr</div> <div class="field" style="float:right">he/him</div> <div class="description">Maintains <a href="https://consensus-health.torproject.org/">Consensus Health </a>, runs one of the bandwidth authorities, and contributes to Tor Browser.</div> </td>
-tom
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