User talk:SMcCandlish/It

Comment
I have been noticing It's policy and key essays edits recently. Generally, they are impressively good. Then I found this page. I thought that It had been lacking a sense of humour, but It's essay here reminds that the filter of online forums clouds accurate perception. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:20, 17 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Its favorite comedians are George Carlin, Lewis Black, and others in that vein (i.e., sounding too serious, to be funny), which may explain a lot. It has been thinking It should post more humo[u]r material, honestly. So many fires to fight internally and real encyclopedia material to work on, it's hard to remember to take a break and write something just to entertain Itself. It appreciates the kind words about the essay and policy work; It's especially happy that the bold consolidations of material (and missing but obviously consensus-accepted norms) at several MoS pages recently were accepted without much need for alteration or argument. Not sure how much longer It can keep up the "It" act even in one post, though! Hard to even formulate the material. This is how It feel when people want It to write "zie/zir/zirself" or whatever.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ &gt;ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ&lt;  14:28, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
 * SMcCandlish, either I'm displaying more than usually sub-par-intelligence, OR Their "you must use xe if someone wants to you" foibles are basically linguistically impossible below contains a word-order typo. Just thought you'd would want to know, but I'm reluctant to alter someone's talk page. Pincrete (talk) 11:11, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Good eye. I fixed it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:14, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

Whether to keep this
The MfD to try to forcibly censor this has concluded as keep (the other MfD, to delete the version published in Wikipedia Signpost, concluded to keep but blank-out that one, so it's only visible in page history; the community has a more direct interest in editorial control over its e-newspaper than in muzzling userspace essays). A related pair of ANIs went nowhere, and the resulting RfArb case was declined. Since the immediate political struggle over thought-policing in userspace has ended, I will disclose that I've been considering, the entire time, speedily deleting this page after the MfD concluded. I had predicted both MfD outcomes early on (and agreed with blanking the Signpost version), on the technicalities of what userspace and projectspace are and how they differ, and what WP:MFD traditionally permits in them and why. (Also predicted the ANI and RfArb outcomes, for that matter.)

The essay was never intended to be offensive, of course, in either version or venue. It just makes a point about people trying to non-neutrally inject non-standard English stylization into our material, in Wikipedia's own voice, whether it be for commercial, egotistical, religious, or socio-political aims. But it offended some people anyway. I won't stand for being censored, but I don't mind self-redacting under my own power when I get the impression I should.

However, I've worked the material over a bit to make its point clearer, to remove "trigger phrases" that had seemed to tie it more closely to TG/NB use of "neo-pronouns" than was actually intended, to work-in several other people's jokes (Silence of the Lambs, The Addams Family), etc. It's rather different from the Signpost version now. This essay, in any version, certainly has nothing whatsoever to do with mis-gendering transwomen as he, or opposing the now-standardized use of singular they, or even criticizing neo-pronoun use in anyone's private life. It's all about and about various "editors" trying to get Wikipedia to use fake words, strange epithets, over-stylization of monickers, and other non-encyclopedic monkeying with the language to push one agenda or another; neologistic pronoun inventions are just one example.

Frankly, I don't like handing any kind of victory to il-liberal, censorious, in loco parentis browbeaters. They don't deserve it. But TG/NB people don't deserve to feel mocked. I don't think this page mocks them, and I don't think that it should give any impression that it does, after these revisions, but I (really obviously) can't read minds.

I care one whit whether language-change activists are offended, though; their unencyclopedic activities are among the actual targets of the essay. They're a WP:SOAPBOX faction – primarily of privileged, white, cis-gendered, hetero, alt-left busybodies with an untoward, fetishizing fandom toward TG/NB people and various other minorities with whom they share precious little actual life experience (just patronizing and creepily proprietary sympathy), and about whom they grossly over-generalize. It's a weird form of objectification, combined with paternalistic/maternalistic "we speak for you" bullshit, and a thick dollop of "outrage addiction" on top. Too many TG/NB people themselves say these activists are terrible "allies", and they give progressivism in general a bad name. Their "you must use xe if someone wants you to" foibles are basically linguistically impossible (inflectional morphology of a language does not change in response to politicized pressure), and is obnoxious, unreasonable, and self-righteous enough that it provides a huge target for the alt-right to shoot at – targets that the activists don't wear but which are stuck on the backs of actual TG/NB people, who in the vast majority of cases are generally fine with sensitive use of she, he, or singular they, especially in writing they don't control. Advancing the activists' off-site agenda on Wikipedia is a WP:NOTHERE activity that's inimical to the encyclopedia's neutrality and its ability to communicate clearly, and a wrongheaded misuse of this site to "take a stand" over a rather manufactured pseudo-issue. It's publicly masturbatory thrashing in response to real politics that they can't do anything about. Try getting some actual legislators back in office instead of lecturing your neighbors on how to write about your other neighbors. Every time you do the latter, you drive someone a little rightward just to get the fuck away from you.

So: how much enabling of these activistic "allies" is an alleged increase in TG/NB "right to never feel offended" comfort worth? Re-cast, how much is it worth to lampoon the NOTHERE language "reformers" (in an essay that's not really all that good), if TG/NB people felt (possibly still, despite revision, feel) targeted by the material? Just phrasing the question differently politicizes the answer.

So I'm going to sit on the decision for a while. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:19, 7 March 2019 (UTC); 11:55, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I arrived at a decision, summarized here.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:50, 26 November 2020 (UTC)