> Removing your face-recognition function because it's less effective on black faces is certainly a substantial ideological commitment.

Deploying your face-recognition function for something critical that impacts user quality of life, even if it doesn't recognize black faces well, is an ideological commitment by default.

> That's not generally true.

It's absolutely generally true. We generally call people by the name they request; if they don't like us referring to their race or features in a certain way, we stop.

> We don't give noble or professional titles

Are you suggesting that having a naturally born penis is some kind of equivalent signifier to being a P.Eng?

> focused on the feelings of some very small groups

I think you are underestimating how big of a change is afoot in the 13-25 demographic.

> You're telling me if a short, bald, overweight guy with a beard likes to be referred to as a tall, thin blonde woman with lustrous hair - "we" immediately stop seeing his height, his lack of hair, his girth and his beard? I don't know who that "we" is but that'd require some major training in delusion, Mr. O'Brien.

That's straw-man and snark across the board.

If that short person wants to be called "she" and to stop pointing out she's bald, those are reasonable asks.

I'm cross-eyed when I don't wear my glasses. Do you insist on pointing that out to my face repeatedly even when I ask you not to? Do you insist on gossiping about it to other people in a way that I would consider derogatory if I heard? Do you insist on a shortened version of my name that I don't like? If so, I think you're being a jerk. Ditto if you refuse to comply with requests from other people that I consider reasonable.

> Do you insist on pointing that out to my face repeatedly

If it's not relevant, then of course there's no point of pointing that out. But if we are talking about a task that requires visual acuity, and I point out that you seem to have an issue in that department, then you may feel bad, but that doesn't change the facts. And if the task does require knowing that, then your feeling bad does not overcome that. For example, if you need glasses to drive safely, then your driver license should say that, and if you feel bad about it, then you'd feel bad and the license still should say it.

If you are short, and feel bad about it, I wouldn't point it out each five minutes "repeatedly". There's no reason to do that. But if you come to join a basketball team, claiming you are actually gigantic - I'll tell you "dude, sorry, but you're short", and if you feel bad about it, then you feel bad. It's between you and your therapist.

It so happens that humans are sexually dimorphic species, and thus the notion of this is relevant in human cultures (in different ways for different cultures, of course). Thus if a bearded guy claims he's a woman, I may ignore it when it's irrelevant, but if it becomes relevant, I'll tell him "dude, sorry, but you're a dude".

> Do you insist on a shortened version of my name that I don't like?

Names are rarely carrying any meaning, they are generally arbitrary, so there's no reason to prefer one to another, unless it's done for nefarious purposes (like identity theft or tax evasion). So I see no reasonable cause to prefer one version of the name to another.

> Ditto if you refuse to comply with requests from other people that I consider reasonable.c

Note that I am a jerk if I refuse requests that you consider reasonable. Somehow your personal opinion of what reasonable becomes the law of the world, and my personal opinion of what's reasonable doesn't even enter the picture. Funny how it works?

> Note that I am a jerk if I refuse requests that you consider reasonable.

Note that's not quite what I said: I said that if you refuse requests that I consider reasonable, that I will think you're a jerk.

> I may ignore it when it's irrelevant, but if it becomes relevant

Like, what, if she asks you on a date? Otherwise, largely, none of your business. And if it's the date thing, I'd encourage you to decline kindly.

> But if we are talking about a task that requires visual acuity, and I point out that you seem to have an issue in that department

Then you'd actually be wrong. It's largely cosmetic.

> But if you come to join a basketball team, claiming you are actually gigantic

Bad example. Basketball skills can be judged independent of height.

If I'm 5 feet tall, very fast, and can regularly score baskets from across the court, then I think the team will want me. Might even nickname me "Giant".

While if I'm 8' tall and can barely move, then they will not want me on the team.

> It so happens that humans are sexually dimorphic species

You omitted "for the most part". Even leaving aside questions of culture (including cultures with more than two genders), there are hermaphrodites.

> if a bearded guy claims he's a woman

Who decided "guy" in your example?

What if a bearded woman claims she's a woman?

> so there's no reason to prefer one to another

If you really believe that, then you don't seem to have much experience with names. Certainly not enough for others to assign much weight to your comment.

As Data said, when correcting Dr. Pulaski, "One is my name. The other is not." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WssBJeExiOM .

There's a long history of people changing their names, for any number of reasons, and not wanting to be referred to by their old name.

Or, consider when a Chinese person picks an English name to use, instead of making English speakers use their name.

I know a Beverly who used his middle name, because "Beverly" is usually associated with women, while his parents named him after a male ancestor named Beverly. ("It was at one time a common masculine given name, but is now almost exclusively a feminine name due to the popularity of a 1904 novel, Beverly of Graustark by George Barr McCutcheon" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beverly_(name) ).

Names are very cultural and context dependent. You might refer to me as "Stinky" when talking about our time together in school, "Smitty" when in the bowling league, and "Judge Smith" when in my courtroom.

> In terms of how much difference it makes to someone going to dinner with them in a casual social context? Yes, it probably is.

Anyone can date whomever they want based on whatever criteria they want.

But if someone wants to be called "he" despite not being born with a penis-- what's the big deal? Are you being harmed so much by complying?

> > if they don't like us referring to their race or features in a certain way, we stop.

> Maybe to their face.

Well, here we're talking about the code we're writing that will presumably be telling them "to their face" in some context. And, polite company defers to wishes of people even behind their back and doesn't insist on trivializing their deepest insecurities once they're out of earshot, or being able to call someone the n-word when they're not there.

> particularly characteristics that gave someone an advantage

Do you think being deeply uncomfortable with your birth-assigned gender and wanting to be called "he" gives you a big advantage? (Please don't bring up the sports thing, because it's not what we're talking about and that's a completely different kettle of fish).

> Are you harmed so much by saying there are five lights when there are four?

Definitions and language change. I know of people who get deeply offended when "decimated" is used to not strictly mean exactly a 10% reduction, despite language not meaning quite that forever. "He" meaning "chooses to present as male and/or would really like to be referred to in ways that are associated with maleness" rather than "was born with a penis" seems OK.

Insisting on labelling someone based on your historical idea of language and what you think they should be called is not really a great way to choose to do things. I mean, you can insist on calling someone the N-word because that's "just calling a spade a spade", but...

> A mention of gender in code is probably not talking about the author's gender.

It's probably talking about a user's or a customer's gender. e.g. eventually getting in someone's face with it.

> for assuming that the same dynamics don't apply in other areas. Virtually everything that we're able to objectively measure, we find significant sex differences.

I struggle to respond to this one. I mean-- really, really seriously-- "so what?" I mean, it seems that you're upset that stereotypes might not work as well.

Basically every simple characteristic A we measure about humans is correlated with many different complex outcomes B with terrific variation.

Yes, people who present with female characteristics at birth are shorter than me on average, but not all. Most are worse at basketball than the average man, but not all. There are some differences in spatial tasks on average than men, but some outperform most men. Most show lower measures of aggression than men, but... Etc.

I mean, do you need to get gender of birth correct- or race, or natural hair color, or nation of upbringing, etc, so you can make judgments based on stereotypes better (which may be real biological correlates)? I think we should always be acting based on the actual individual ahead of us based on the actual measure in question, rather than some proxy.

And even if you really, really want stereotypes to work-- people born male who choose to present as female vary on a whole lot of measures, on average, from the overall male average. And sex hormones change a number of these measures, both immediately and with sustained usage. So, the measure is pretty broken in the first place, because of terrific individual variation and being affected by the gender transition process.

> (though I'd appreciate it if words weren't changed under me by fiat and I wasn't gaslit about what I'd been taught they meant)

Sorry, words change under us.

If you grew up hearing that retarded meant a very specific clinical thing, and then a bunch of people use it as an insult... you shouldn't be surprised, for instance, that those people and their families don't want to be referred by that term anymore or hear it in use.

It's not their fault or your fault, that it became a pejorative. But everyone has to deal with the aftermath anyways.

> but I do insist on being able to convey the concept of looking and seeming like a woman/man irrespective of the person's own opinions

"Likes to be called she, but hasn't transitioned".

Yes, it's getting a bit more complicated. Part of that at one point in time, your sex assigned at birth set everything about your life-- socially acceptable occupation, expected mannerisms, means of dress, acceptable social partners, allowed interest.

That's become much less over the last 100 years, and the pace of that change has accelerated in the past 5.

Someone born female can choose to be androgynous in a way that doesn't carry a bunch of tomboy female connotations now. That's good for a lot of people who had to struggle to fit into a category before. But it does mean we all have a little more to explain.

> The user is never going to see the code though.

No, but the user is going to see what the code does. Microsoft doesn't want to be in the middle of the debate about people writing code that allows someone to pick "nonbinary" by suggesting one way or another.

> I'm upset at deliberately limiting my ability to draw inferences from the information available.

Look, if your best hint at how good someone is at basketball is that they were an Asian male at birth, it's not a very good hint to draw inferences from. If you need to know that thing, measure it directly, or at least pick a better proxy. If not, leave yourself open to a bit more surprise.

> The fact that people object to anyone actually trying

No, having to continually "prove" your identity to each next skeptical person really sucks, because they're sure you can't be ______ because of _______.

The fact that women objected 50-100 years ago (and really, well, now) to people just habitually considering them "another dumb girl" doesn't somehow validate that girls are actually stupid. It's not like the same bad logic works now on new subjects.

> proves that we all know that the stereotypes actually work pretty well.

Confirmation bias. And even if they did, it can still be terribly unjust.

Sometimes your spade is broken enough that it's hard to use as a spade, or so bent from use that it'd be more reasonable to call it a pickaxe

The social meaning of a "man" or "woman" encompasses a large swath of things. Generally people's mental models of those concepts includes both physical and mental ideas. The issue is, this is not very constant. Some people will inevitably fail to possess some characteristics (like lacking large muscles, or having small breasts). We typically allow these exceptions without questioning it too much. Genitalia, of course, is the exception. In my experience, it is typically regarded as the fundamental cornerstone of gender. The question is, is that really accurate? We assign labels to make sense of the world. So, we tend to stick things in the categories where they fit the most (important) attributes. After all, we don't measure the genetics before calling something a dog, we typically see it bark, wag it's tail, play fetch and decide it's probably a dog, even if we haven't seen it before. If someone looks like a girl, acts like a girl, has had genital recontruction surgery, has a fashion sense, wears makeup, and generally is just another regular person on the street, then for any social interaction they are just like any girl. There is one situation where this isn't true - if they are sexually involved with someone who has the intent of having children. For that purpose, they, like any infertile woman, can't provide children. I can sympathise with a hatred for people trying to force falsehoods on me - I personally have been the annoying atheist friend quite a lot. However, to take that birth genetalia are a cornerstone of gender uncritically doesn't seem very useful, since then the labels "man" or "woman" tell you nothing about how they might act - you may meet a woman, who is perfectly ordinary in every way, who then reveals that she is trans. If birth genitalia is to be the cornerstone of gender, you now have to include someone who looks and acts as any woman would in your definition of "man". To me this seems like it makes the term meaningless, and it makes far more sense to just classify that person as a "woman". Genetalia itself isn't really important to social relationships outside of sex, so for situations outside of sex classifying by it also seems somewhat useless.

The other, much more (imo) defensible argument you expressed was relating socialization. In my experience it is true that socially, boys are conditioned to be more aggressive while girls are often punished for being aggressive. This definitely leads to a difference in how far they are willing to push to fulfill their own needs. However, assertiveness, to an extent, is a useful trait for anyone to have. Imo it shouldn't be seen as a "masculine" trait, but rather a trait men tend to have, since being able to clearly communicate needs and boundaries, and push back when those needs and boundaries get ignored, is an essential skill for anyone, but one that women might be less practiced in due to often receiving higher backlash for doing so.

Of course, there are non trans women who possess that capability. However, in your experience dealing with trans women, has that made your experience in interacting with them closer to an angry man, or closer to any other aggressive woman? It probably varies case by case. From what I've heard the looks of a woman come with the social pressures of a woman, so I'd wager that an aggressive trans woman, on average, wouldn't differ much from an aggressive non trans woman, simply because, so long as they are perceived as women, their anger is taken extremely seriously on several issues (sexual crimes and harassment) and somewhat less seriously on everything else. My personal theory is that this is due to the assumed threat of physical violence with men, while women are often seen as being incapable of/unlikely to commit violence, leading to two lopsided power dynamics rather than one even one. Regardless, I think that basing our definition of gender off of genitalia or genetics doesn't provide a super useful mental model for socialization, which I believe to be the primary good use of gender as a concept.

Sports are one area in which I think you're wrong. If growing up on testosterone were a major contributor to advantages, we'd expect to see a lot more trans athletes at the top of the women's league, the way you anecdotally noted we do with buisness. They have been allowed to compete for quite some time now, so the fact that only recently have the media made a circus about a trans athlete in the olympics suggests to me that they likely do not possess any significant advantage - in my personal experience, I saw someone who could previously do 20 pushups when completely unfit struggle to do 1 a year after starting hormones, so I find it kind of hard to believe they retain any significant advantage, given enough time

We can say that we are humans, or evolved monkeys, or extremely processed stardust; all can be correct, but laws only apply to humans, and no one gets out of jail by claiming to be an inanimate object.

> If someone looks like a girl, acts like a girl, has had genital recontruction surgery, has a fashion sense, wears makeup, and generally is just another regular person on the street, then for any social interaction they are just like any girl.

Sure. I'm not advocating for genital fundamentalism. All I'm asking for is to be able to call someone who looks like a girl and acts like a girl a girl, and vice versa.

> All I'm asking for is to be able to call someone who looks like a girl and acts like a girl a girl, and vice versa.

And if they're deeply uncomfortable with this, and would prefer you remember to use "they", you're not harmed and should defer.

You may have to take a little extra effort to tell someone "They present as female but prefer 'they'" at some point. It's a little bit of cognitive load, but the kind of courtesy we can extend even to vague acquaintances.

And, you know-- if you screw up in good faith, they should be understanding. Of course, there's enough people screwing it up on purpose to be hostile for political and ideological reasons that it's harder for people in this situation to discern whether it's really good faith.

Sorry, if someone doesn't like being called "she", and you really want to call that person "she" -- that's on you. You have other choices, after all.

My other choice is to lie, to willfully mislead whoever I'm talking to (probably a friend). Again, people might not like being called rich or privileged or out of touch, but we would never dream of saying this means you shouldn't call them that.

No-- most people understand how pronouns work now (and the rest are rapidly coming up to speed). It's only people who are deliberately insistent on misunderstanding that are mislead.

Just like the people mislead by 'decimate'.

No, absent other context everyone will understand female to mean having typical female characteristics, almost by definition. Calling someone who is unlike a female in most ways "she" is deceptive even if you consider it "correct", in the same way as making a tomato dish and calling it a fruit salad.

> No, absent other context everyone will understand female to mean having typical female characteristics, almost by definition.

As we've talked about a whole bunch in this thread, language can-- and does-- evolve.

The pronoun thing isn't fixed within extant human cultures. Our language can evolve as mores do.

And, yes, people are occasionally confused by various kinds of new usage, but overall people keep up.

There's no "keeping up" with an unnatural category. It's like the "international except Taiwan" example I gave earlier - the language is forced and artificial and always will be, because it doesn't reflect the underlying reality that these people would be in the other group if you put the boundary in the natural place.

> It's like the "international except Taiwan" example I gave earlier - the language is forced and artificial and always will be, because it doesn't reflect the underlying reality that these people would be in the other group if you put the boundary in the natural place.

If this were true, then we wouldn't have all the examples of languages and cultures that don't put it in that "natural place".

> If this were true, then we wouldn't have all the examples of languages and cultures that don't put it in that "natural place".

What languages and cultures would those be? (The example usually given is "two spirit", but (as has been more widely reported recently) that was largely a fabrication)

Lots of languages have complete gender neutrality in pronouns. They often include arbitrarily or self-assigned signifiers or honorifics, which isn't too far from the direction we seem to be evolving towards. E.g. Kurdish, the Turkic languages, Tagalog (although Spanish influences have caused some appearance of -a and -o suffixes), Armenian, Estonian, etc.

Some languages assign gender to everything grammatically.

English is a rare case of a language without very little grammatical gender except personal pronouns. The only other language that I know of with this characteristic is Persian. Singular "they" dates back to middle English.

Sure, it's possible to not make a distinction at all. But no natural language has a male/female distinction that makes the kind of exceptions that trans people want for themselves.

Plenty of languages have very arbitrary and complex rules for pronouns or other signifiers. You wanting these to be, in English, very closely tied to specific characteristics of expressed gender similar to traditional usage doesn't make it have to be so.

Plenty of humans live in a language where you can't figure out what's in people's pants or whether they're likely to wear a skirt without someone explicitly telling you. Maybe it's time to shrug, and realize that language of English is morphing enough that you're going to experience this same difficulty. Your only choice is whether you passive-aggressively refer to people in ways that they don't like or not.

What's with showing up every day or two to poke at this with a two sentence reply, when you're active elsewhere on hacker news much more often? Just trollin'?

> You wanting these to be, in English, very closely tied to specific characteristics of expressed gender similar to traditional usage doesn't make it have to be so.

Right back at you - it's your side that's trying to impose changes to the meaning of these pronouns by fiat. You can start using then differently if you want, but it's incredibly entitled to demand others conform to your novel definitions.

> Plenty of humans live in a language where you can't figure out what's in people's pants or whether they're likely to wear a skirt without someone explicitly telling you.

I don't object to neutral statements. I object to deliberately misleading ones.

> What's with showing up every day or two to poke at this with a two sentence reply, when you're active elsewhere on hacker news much more often? Just trollin'?

Quite the opposite; this is such a fraught topic that I'm being very careful about what I write, because I know I won't be given the benefit of the doubt over any slight misspeaking.

I never had a reason to call people ugly behind their backs. Calling Romani Romani not a word they don't like isn't dishonest, strange, or rude. I don't know anything about the birth genitals of most people I dine with.

> I don't know anything about the birth genitals of most people I dine with.

Unless you mostly participate in statistically unusual social circles, that's plain incorrect.

The truth is that you can't know anything about their birth genitals with certainty. However, unless you have some unusual condition that prevents you from perceiving sex-associated characteristics, then if somebody looks male/female to you, you know with very high confidence what their birth genitals were. One can quibble about the exact level of confidence, and it depends on what social circles you self-select into (because that affects your base rates), but for most people the certainty is fairly close to 100%.

Of course that may not be the lived experience of people who are trans themselves, because of who they associate with, and that may contribute to some of the unnecessary vitriol on the topic

In any case, what matters is what you do with that knowledge.

A frat buddy of mine was a trans man. I would have never known if old fart assholes hadn't pitched a fit about him being elected our chapter president.

Regarding calling Romani Romani, this can be a touchy subject, just as a heads-up. For years being asked where I'm from or being referred to as Russian, even without me present (e.g., I overheard or inferred people discussed this), made me uncomfortable. It's fading recently only because of the war and the overt hatred directed at me by nationality online making me more confrontational about it.

I observe this happening with some people of other nationalities too, depending on individual personality. (It doesn't tend to happen with people from 'global north', of course, who tend to lack any confidence issues on this front.)

I'm sorry that you've had to face prejudice. But hopefully a whole lot of discussion about your origin is more about idle curiosity than judgment. (And if you don't really want to talk about it, that's understandable and fine, too).

There's nothing wrong with being Russian. (Supporting Russia's position in the war, whether you're Russian or not, though... someone can have a problem with that).

We're all enriched when we share the best parts of our backgrounds and upbringings with each other.

Thanks for warm words. I can't imagine sharing Russian government's position on this war (whatever they call it), and I'm ashamed I hadn't caught on and started working towards another citizenship earlier as it's been happening since 2014 really.

Honestly, the most awkward IRL nationality-related interactions for me now is when non-Russians express support for whatever Russian government does. Feels like they'd expect me to be pleased but I have to reject sympathy on those grounds.

(That said, to reiterate my on-topic point, the discomfort I used to feel when nationality was discussed went on for years before this all started/before I was aware that this was going on, and was not tied to specific government's actions.)

> Maybe to their face. We certainly don't stop describing those people honestly in general

It's routine politeness to comply with wishes on how someone wants to be called without them present, no? Would like to hear if this is culture-specific.

I generally don't care what variation of my name I'm called, but I can imagine myself wanting to be called by a specific name other than what's in my ID and I'd expect you to comply, and if you don't then I can totally see me considering it an infraction even if you don't do it to my face. I mean, there'd be a reason I asked for it in the first place, right?

Of course, non-compliance shouldn't make you a target for crowd-sourced justice (to a degree it'd be my personal issue if it's a touchy subject for me), but unless you are mildly sociopathic you should understand that ignoring this request paints you as mentally weak (if unable to remember) or domination-seeking/insulting (if done on purpose), and that it could be a reason for me to avoid interacting with you.

I don't think it's any more optional with gender (probably less since, unlike with names, there're barely any pronunciation barriers with pronouns across languages). I've met people for whom it was a touchy subject and I could empathise.