Revision e78ca06c-7504-4f33-94d6-cfcae82b436e - Meta Stack Exchange

Thanks for the letter. Now that the [crux of the story](https://christianity.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6718/brothers-i-must-go) has been laid out by [Caleb](https://christianity.meta.stackexchange.com/users/30/caleb), my opinion of Stack Overflow Inc. has reached a new low. 

> In light of what we went through just to open this site, **the
> touch-stone issue is almost comical. Pronouns. No seriously, pronouns.**
> 
> Personally I have yet to face the specific issue, nobody to my
> knowledge has taken offense at the pronouns I used for them. But the
> "law" laid down quite suddenly and directly to moderators by several
> staff members was that henceforth we all had to do whatever was
> requested of us. It used to be that the ground rules were limited to a
> "be nice" policy that could have been boiled down to "if you can't say
> something nice don't say anything at all", and how that was enforced
> varied a bit by site. Even though I often disagree with the world at
> large on what is considered nice and constructive, I can usually
> figure out how to live within a system with boundaries. You can do X,
> but not Y. Given the framework of this secular platform those were
> rules I could play by.
> 
> What changed is this: now it isn't enough to not be rude to people you
> disagree with, the new policy forces us to positively affirm things we
> don't agree with. Even disengaging has been ruled out as an allowable
> solution, since that's discrimination and potentially hurtful. That
> avoidance of potentially compromising scenarios is not allowed has
> been directly affirmed by staff members several times over the
> weekend.
> 
> **If person A comes along and demands that I refer to them by their
> "preferred pronoun" (even if it is a mismatch for their genetic sex or
> the grammar of the language being spoken) and I refuse, that's
> considered an insult. Now if I avoid pronouns altogether by sticking
> to proper names or disengaging from the individual, that's being
> considered an insult too.**

I *might* have been on the same page with Stack Exchange had they restricted themselves to making legislations on what a user *is not* allowed to say. **However, they decided to *mandate* users to use a pronoun of another person's choice even if they don't feel comfortable doing so, and over and above not even giving them the *choice* to disengage, in the guise of "protecting people's feelings".** <sup>†</sup> This is an utterly stupid and absolutely reprehensible move. In fact, it makes me very much fear about the direction the site is headed into, in the name of making itself more "welcoming" for so-called "minority groups" and "new users". 

Henceforth, I have decided to abort all my community moderation activities on all Stack Exchange sites, including but not limited to editing posts, handling review queues, and guiding new users, until the company mends the damage it has caused and puts forth a public apology. **I'm sad to say that I now feel that I've wasted a lot of my time in essentially [working and creating value for free](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/333980/437611) for a company that doesn't even give the bare minimum respect to its primary userbase.** Nah, not anymore. 

<sup>†: For the record, I am personally *not comfortable* with using singular 'they' or any of the gazillion non-binary pronouns like 'zhe', 'sie', 'hir', 'co', etc. although I would agree to go with the former if *explicitly* requested by an individual.</sup>