<p>I don't fault your decision, @glen_b, and I think SE has behaved very poorly in all of this. But I want to call people here's attention to something that re-colored my opinions on all of this a little bit.</p>

<p>I have no inside information, but I'd like other moderators to consider very strongly before resigning. With @glen_b going and @whuber apparently considering it, it's very easy to see a path towards this site more-or-less imploding, which I think all of us would consider a bad thing.</p>

<hr/>

<p>For context: I'm transgender, a reasonably active user on stats.SE (not in the top 10 all-time rep, but well within the top 100), and not yet publicly out (hence not using my main account here, since people in my life know it).</p>

<p>My understanding, based on obsessively following meta for the past week, is that <em>"asked some questions about a particular aspect of this policy and how it would work in practice"</em> is not really a full description of Monica's actions.</p>

<p>Specifically, a trans mod <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/334248/an-update-to-our-community-and-an-apology?cb=1#comment1093793_334289">has said</a></p>

<blockquote>
  <p>She referred to someone using gender neutral pronouns in an edit to her post as something that is physically nauseating to her.</p>
</blockquote>

<p><em>(It seems that this may not be an accurate paraphrase – <a href="https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5765/moderator-resignation/5769?noredirect=1#comment19160_5769">gung couldn't find it</a>, and Monica <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/334248/an-update-to-our-community-and-an-apology?cb=1#comment1094139_334289">doesn't remember using the word "nausea,"</a> but didn't dispute the general sentiment.)</em> I also believe that Monica has said she's willing to use gender-neutral neopronouns like "xe"/"xer", just not "they"/"them".</p>

<p>But the idea that her prescriptivist opinion about a pronoun usage is <em>so strong</em> that it makes her feel physically ill to consider it...well, it sure lowers my (previously high) opinion of her, and it sure makes me feel unwelcome to think that someone in a position of such respect and power on this network held their fairly arbitrary linguistic opinion as <em>so</em> much more important than respecting the humanity of a group of people like me.</p>

<p>This isn't purely academic; I again don't know any of the behind the scenes stuff, but a different trans mod <a href="https://literature.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1195/resignation-notice">resigned the day before Monica's firing</a>, saying</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>By other mods, by staff, and by the entrenched power structure of Stack Exchange, I have been made to feel unwelcome for my queerness.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Singular "they" is really <em>not that big a deal</em>. In general it <a href="https://public.oed.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-singular-they/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">has a <em>very</em> long history</a>, and even for the relatively newer usage as someone's only pronoun, it's just a really small ask. (It's probably about as novel as that usage of "ask" just was.) As linguist Geoff Nunberg says in an article called "<a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/08/06/744121321/even-a-grammar-geezer-like-me-can-get-used-to-gender-neutral-pronouns" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Even A Grammar Geezer Like Me Can Get Used To Gender Neutral Pronouns</a>",</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>It's not a lot to ask — just a small courtesy and sign of respect. In fact, the accommodations we're being asked to make to nonbinary individuals are much less far-reaching than the linguistic changes that feminists called for 50 years ago. Yet the reactions this time have been even more vehement than they were back then.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Refusing this small courtesy – particularly when third-person pronouns really come up <em>so rarely</em> on SE anyway – is really <em>not nice</em> to a group of people who are already marginalized both in broader society and also to a fair extent on the network.</p>

<hr/>

<p>Basically: SE has clearly behaved poorly here. I 100% support people feeling that they can no longer donate so much time to a for-profit entity that treats its volunteers this way.</p>

<p>But a lot of people across the network seem to be thinking that Monica's actions are completely without blame, or that this is all just nonsense so the company can seem "woke" or whatever. I want to emphasize that the actions she seems to have taken <em>do</em> harm people.</p>

<p>I'm very sorry to see you go, @glen_b. I'm very sorry that SE behaved this way that has I think unambiguously made things worse even for queer users here, at least in the short term. And I would be horribly sorry to see such a dumb chain of events stemming from such a silly opinion lead to the collapse of a site I really enjoy, that has benefited me tremendously, and has helped so many people.</p>
