@rene: I'm asking for Stack Exchange-the-company to answer this question now, rather than springing the change on us later. Hopefully, they will at least be willing to go that far, even if they maintain that Monica "violated" some rule.

@ChristianRau: Clarified the wording a bit (future tense for future events).

@PrincessOlivia: They don't have a couple weeks. The Workplace is down to two mods. In a couple weeks, there may be sites with no mods.

@DanNeely: "Down to two" means they have two left. 5 - 3 = 2, so I'm not sure what your point is?

@DanBron: I am intentionally keeping this as neutrally worded as possible because I do not want to get into a shouting match with people who have a demonstrated history of taking their collective ball and going home when they are criticized in public. If you want to ask "pointed Qs about how it protects the veterans," please do so in a separate question.

@DanBron: You are entitled to your opinion.

@Kevin This sheds a little bit of light. Seems to have something to do with SE enforcing the use of proper pronouns for gender non-binary people.

@Geronimo: While I can understand where that is coming from, quoting a poem about Nazi Germany in relation to gender pronoun usage seems a bit excessive to me. I have to wonder if this would've been such a big deal if they just would've had a little more transparency around the whole thing...

@Kevin yes, that part seems a bit out of context. Though I do sympathize with the disagreement to mandate communication in such an exact fashion from volunteers (to the level of enforcing what pronouns can be used, not just "be nice"). And also that non-communication would be considered a violation of CoC.

@Geronimo: This is grayer than many people are willing to admit, on both sides. Obviously, if someone tells you they are a man, or a woman, you're going to take their word for it; there are no genital inspections in real life, much less on the internet. So the question is whether we force trans individuals to hide their trans-ness in order to benefit from that assumption, or we force everyone else to use the preferred pronouns of openly trans people. Reasonable people will object to each of those alternatives, but I see no third way.

(That's not to say, however, that we should adhere to some kind of golden mean. Indeed, my entire point is that one side has to win and the other has to lose. I'd prefer not to let this descend too far into politics, so I won't state my preference here, but I do have one.)

@Kevin well stated, I prefer to stay unpolitical also. In that light however wouldn't a third way be obviating force from the context? In other words: not forcing the hiding and not forcing the recognition though of course, continuing to force the non-descrimination policy.

@Geronimo: Then you're presenting trans people with the rather unfair choice of hiding their trans-ness or accepting deliberate mis-gendering from others. That's still a form of coercion ("Hide, or we'll be nasty to you.").

For additional context: as a member of a minority in other fronts I appreciate recognition sometimes but personally I would feel obtuse demanding it and enforcing it on others.

@Kevin the spirit of it would not be "Hide, or we'll be nasty to you" more: "Hide or not as you see fit, we won't be nasty to you either way"

Like I said, this isn't an easy problem to deal with.

But I don't think it's that simple.

Trans folks have struggled with gender dysphoria for large chunks of their lives.

Many of them suffer from depression or other issues.

It's not fair to make them relive all of that, every day.

And it's also not fair to demand they closet themselves.

I recognize that people want the right to use language as they see fit...

but I just don't agree with them. Language can hurt whether you intended it or not.

But of course, my opinion has very little bearing on what the policy actually is, which is why I tried very hard to keep it out of both question and answer.

Well thank you, and I can see your point of view. Hopefully going into the future, these past wrongs can be disassociated from the use of pronouns as the culture becomes more tolerant.

You're welcome, and thanks for listening to me.