It may seem overly specific, but there are many reasons for asking this: You mentioned "I don't believe she had the broader intent that most people using those arguments do": 1.: What, exactly is the "broader intent" that you are talking about here, 2: What leads you to believe that (the majority of?) people who are using these arguments have (exactly) this "broader intent"? 3. How exactly should someone phrase these arguments that would not lead you to assume that there is this "broader intent" behind them?

@Marco13 I'll be blunt then: a lot of the people who use those phrasings/arguments outside of SE are transphobic folks. They're really classic arguments that you run into over and over again (speaking from experience). Just because someone uses them doesn't mean they're transphobic, but enough transphobic people have used them that they've become, as I said, a red flag. I don't know what to tell you as for #3 - maybe think through why you're making those arguments, and why you think they're legitimate? It's hard because it can hurt [e.g., why is grammar more important than someone's identity?]

Even in this context, the thing that stands out is that these are goings on in private non-transparent spaces. If any of this had gone on publicly we would have had some clearer reactions/responses. Instead, people on both sides are able to say "this was said" and "something made me feel bad" and noone has any evidence so everyone ends up playing the victim. A few times people have posted answers with words like "posts have said" and I have repeatedly asked for citations, but these calls fall on deaf ears which makes the whole thing very frustrating. If you enter the cave, expect dragons!

@tudor I literally cannot share transcripts for this, but what is mentioned in this post is pretty broadly agreed upon.

I beg to differ. I have seen so much disagreement over what was said, much of it from people who were "offended". SE went about this all the wrong way which happens when a smaller group think they can make decisions on behalf of a larger group. We really should have had a Meta question along the lines of "How can we help (community X) feel more included?" and "Should we encourage/force people to use self-identifying (neo)pronouns?" etc.

@tudor I find it rather...disingenuous of you to phrase things in the way you did. People are actually and legitimately offended by using the wrong pronouns; no need for the quotation marks. Also, as I said, most LGBTQ+ folks find the use of proper pronouns really important. Would a broader meta question have just gotten the answer you want, or would it have gotten the answer that truly would help the LGBT community? I can't say I'm nearly as sure as you appear to be.

@tudor How can the community assist in welcoming LGBTQ users?

Yes, but that's my point. You have assigned meaning to my quotation marks and phrasing, when in actual fact, the quotation marks are there because I wasn't privvy to the private conversation. In other words, I was quoting them. In addition, you are conflating my point with a larger issue which I have not mentioned and is entirely irrelevant to my point about visibility.

@duplode, yes, but unfortunately that question appeared after the damage was done, and management seemed to have taken no interest in it. :-|

(1/3) "blunt" is fine - that's what question 3. was about. There are people who are opposed to LGBT+, for an awful number of reasons. And even though you did not answer 1., I assume (and correct me if I'm wrong) that the "broader intent" was that these people (are "transphobic", for lack of a better word and) want to denigrate others. Obviously, believing that someone who brings up these arguments is transphobic only because transphobic people also bring them up does not make any sense (I mean, at all).

(2/3) You may call this "red flags". I call it a "hasty and erroneous conclusion" that I've seen (and experienced) here far too often in the past few weeks: Someone makes a perfectly neutral, objective statement, and people twist and distort this into something that is "anti-LGBT". There are people who make arguments that are clearly "anti-LGBT", but others are simply talking about grammar and coerced speech.

(3/3) You aksed "Why is grammar more important than someone's identity?", which leads to question 3. which you did not answer: How can I make people assume that I mean exactly what I say? "Being blunt", as in "saying (precisely and clearly) what I mean", obviously doesn't work. I will not use neopronouns, because nobody has the right to dictate the language of others. I say that, without being "anti-LGBT": The gender, sexuality or self-image of others is totally none of my business.

Also, they took the first target they saw, not the most appropriate one. There was a moderator who made a blatant, CoC-violating attack on a non-binary moderator back in 2018 (more recently than an old pronoun discussion that's been brought up sometimes). The targeted moderator quit about nine months later, I imagine in large part because of that. That person is still a moderator. I, on the other hand, didn't violate the current CoC; what I said in 2018 would have violated the September 2019 CoC, but we shouldn't be doing retcons.

@MonicaCellio yeah, that's...yeah. Very accurate. I wasn't sure how much I could actually share about what was in the TL. I did submit a report to SE about that this morning, actually, which will presumably be handled in 6 to 8 weeks. (Also, does this appropriately represent your position on pronouns? I don't want to misrepresent it.)

@heather people who witnessed it submitted reports in 2018, too. SE was aware. // Re your question, it would be good to note that I write gender-free in general; it's not like I single anyone out for special pronoun treatment. My objection to singular they goes back to the original sense of "unspecified individual"; the pronoun also being used for non-binary is new. (This also makes it no longer gender-neutral.) Either way, it causes the same writing problems for me and for readers, and it is a much deeper issue than a mere preference.

@MonicaCellio Ah, thank you, will update to address that. // As for SE being aware, doesn't hurt to report it again. Is there any other way to escalate the issue?

I'm not the person to ask about how to escalate issues with SE, apparently. :-( And I agree: if you see something say something.

No, SE's stance is that if you're going to say what two plus two equals, that you say "four". Not "pi" or "a million" or "I reject the existence of four" or "I don't believe that two plus two is four and I'm going to say ninety instead". If you don't want to say "four", you can use a lot of other things: |||| or 4 or 2+2 or just two plus two itself. If you don't want to talk about what two plus two is, you can walk away, without saying more on the topic. It's really not hard to get this right.

@ace_HongKongIndependence See what happened when transphobic people started to say "attack helicopter". But this is not new, we have been allowing trolls and extremists shape our speech for a long time already.

Unfortunately, when Monica attempted to share these experiences, the phrasing she used - reasoning about "grammar" and "compelled speech" [...] echoed common arguments from people who have much worse motives than Monica did [...] These are classic 'arguments' when talking about these issues, and so they became signal flags. --- I sincerely don't want to give offense, but shouldn't a discussion like this not be about the arguments, instead of the possible bad faith of other people? It sounds like it is accepted these arguments justify an ad hominem.

@ace_HongKongIndependence and Nij: I see what the goal of this question/analogy was, and it's good for pointing out how problematic it is to set up certain "rules". But eventually, comparing this to mathematics doesn't do the complexity of the topic justice, and allows to drift away from the topic into analogies that are overstretched and increasingly hard to "map" to the real problem. (As a starter, Nij: I could say "two plus two equals pi", when I define "pi=4" - mathematicians can do that. I could give further examples, but the point is that this wouldn't lead anywhere here...)

@Gloweye [1/2] I think everyone here agrees Monica's firing was a gross overreaction, for that reason among others. Looking beyond SE's mistakes, I'd note those arguments, even when made by well-intentioned and non-hateful folks, are quite often not only undercooked but also suggest a lack of awareness of what is at stake for those who ask for their pronouns to be respected. Untangling those issues is not easy, and tends to get harder when discussions get heated.

@Gloweye [2/2] As a case in point -- and I must admit I'm slightly scared of pointing to it, given how much heat it has already generated -- Xirema's answer elsewhere, which tackles this aspect of the problem head on, attracted a lot of indignant complaints about vilifying, lumping in and what not, even though it starts by explicitly addressing the distinction between bad actors and people making bad arguments in good faith.

@duplode I've read that answer, and while there are a number of good points made, it doesn't address why "compelled speech is bad" is invalid. It doesn't even state something along the lines of "Because people getting hurt is worse than compelled speech", which is something I could understand, if not agree with. It does seem to imply that "any argument made against neopronouns is inherently bigoted, because making that argument already makes [us] feel unsafe" (paraphrased by me). And that just doesn't sound like any kind of logic to me.

Please do understand that I consider the possibility it's about me - I am somewhat on the spectrum, and I've literally never felt unsafe online, despite the generic death threats everyone gets if you beat someone in an online game. I might simply not be sensitive enough to pick up on the aggression that others feel. And while I fully accept having to treat everyone equally online, I would very much prefer to understand why others take the position that they're taking.

@Gloweye [1/2] Xirema goes into extra detail on compelled speech in a chat link over there. My two cents: the thing being compelled according to the compelled speech argument would be a positive claim about someone's gender identity, which would supposedly be made upon using their chosen pronouns. This stance is in tension with the guiding principle of the CoC change, namely, that the gender identity of users here should not be up for debate. The possible compromise is the one the new FAQ clarifies: it is okay to adjust one's writing style to unconspicuously avoid needing certain pronouns.

[2/2] Giving the objectors further leeway than that would mean allowing gender identities to be disputed. Note that is what I'd call the "strong version" of the argument. There are weaker versions going around on MSE, such as that requiring a specific pronoun would be compelled speech regardless of any claims about gender, or even that asking for writing style adjustments along the lines of the FAQ would be compelled speech. I don't think these weaker versions are persuasive; at any rate, they suggest a certain lack of clarity about what underlies the rallying cries about compelled speech.

@Gloweye There is no logic, it is a matter of principle. Alice wants to be addressed by a certain pronoun, Bob does not want to use that pronoun for Alice. SE says Bob should prevail. No rationale can be provided for that since we don't even know who Alice and Bob are, let alone why they want what they want. Alice gets their way as a matter of principle. Unless Bob manages not to do what they do not want to do without Alice noticing (= without getting caught), of course.

@Goyo Did you mix A and B at some point? In any case, I think that some (maybe many, certainly not all) writing style adjustments may be acceptable for some (maybe many, certainly not all) who otherwise object things like being forced to use arbitrary, made-up words (aka neopronouns). As such, many statements from the original CoC (and some from the updated one or the FAQ) may simply have been too strict. (My impression is that this may indeed be the "trick" mentioned in meta.stackexchange.com/q/336887 , but ... who knows...)

@Marco13 (1) OMG! Yes I did. It should be "SE says Alice should prevail". (2) Yes I do expect that to happen. I don't think the original FAQ is more strict but more confusing and inconsistent. The current one is far from perfect but a huge improvement in that regard. (3) I'd rather not speculate but I lean towards the simpler explanations.