Hi, On Thu, May 17, 2018 at 6:53 PM, Tommy Collison <tommy@collison.ie> wrote:

Hey there,

I’m in favor of pronouns!

I bet there’s two or three other bits or information it’d be useful to know about each other — home time zone comes to mind, but there might be others. I suspect that this info is too public to go on tp.org.

Tor's user space is huge and Tor seeks wide audience. Are other similar organizations doing this on their project pages? Regards, Juha

On 18 May 2018 at 07:59, Tom Ritter <tom@ritter.vg> wrote:

On 18 May 2018 at 00:53, Nurmi, Juha <juha.nurmi@ahmia.fi> wrote:

...

On Thu, May 17, 2018 at 6:53 PM, Tommy Collison <tommy@collison.ie> wrote:

...

I bet there’s two or three other bits or information it’d be useful to know about each other — home time zone comes to mind, but there might be others. I suspect that this info is too public to go on tp.org.

Tor's user space is huge and Tor seeks wide audience. Are other similar organizations doing this on their project pages?

Most distributed orgs I know of have a *private* directory with this sort of information. Tommy mentioned Stripe; Mozilla and Google have one also.

They also have people whose job descriptions includes building and maintaining such services though...

-tom

That's true. And sorry, I didn't mean to derail the conversation -- pronouns, great idea! TC

I find these without context to be very clunky. A brief bio of "Griffin does xyz and in his spare time plays jazz keytar" flows much better and better represents the richness of one's life. I'm slightly biased on this issue as I'm very visibly trans. While people will naturally make assumptions about my gender/sex (no big deal), some focus on that particular piece of my life instead of what I'm actually doing. On May 18, 2018 3:32:17 PM EDT, Taylor Yu <catalyst@torproject.org> wrote:

On 05/17/2018 10:31 AM, Tom Ritter wrote:

...

There's a lot of us and many folks (or maybe just me) haven't met most people or are otherwise unsure about pronouns.

Put them on the people page? Good idea? Bad idea? Too public?

Thanks for suggesting this!

I am in favor of displaying pronouns on the people page. I also think it's very important to make it obvious that they're optional. I would encourage cisgender people to display their pronouns if they feel comfortable doing so, because that helps to normalize the practice.

As one example, I did notice that our friends at Outreachy have what seem to be optional pronouns on their interns page:

https://www.outreachy.org/alums/

Best regards, -Taylor _______________________________________________ tor-project mailing list tor-project@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-project

-- Transmitted via Minitel -- the New Wave in telephonics!

On 05/18/2018 03:39 PM, Griffin wrote:

I find these without context to be very clunky. A brief bio of "Griffin does xyz and in his spare time plays jazz keytar" flows much better and better represents the richness of one's life. I'm slightly biased on this issue as I'm very visibly trans. While people will naturally make assumptions about my gender/sex (no big deal), some focus on that particular piece of my life instead of what I'm actually doing. Thank you for sharing your perspective. I'm glad it's no big deal for you when people make assumptions about your gender. I also appreciate you not wanting people to focus on that aspect of your life.

Are you saying we should refrain altogether from optionally displaying pronouns on the people page in a standardized way? Or are you expressing your desire to opt out of displaying your pronouns like that? Or something else? I guess I have a different bias. I would find it helpful if we gave people the option to display their pronouns in a standardized way. People are unlikely to guess my correct pronouns, unless they're in the habit of using they/them pronouns by default. Until recently, it was more likely than not for someone to guess my gender or pronouns in a direction that would hurt me. I've found that people who have already made assumptions about someone's gender are likely to disregard that person's pronouns if those pronouns are used only in running text, as opposed to being displayed in some more explicit way. I personally feel more comfortable announcing my pronouns if other people also announce theirs (which they are free to do or not as they feel comfortable). Best regards, -Taylor pronouns: they/them

It’s no big deal to me because people continuously get it wrong and I shrug it off unless someone’s intentionally being a jerk. I like the idea that we can intuit such things rather than having to declare them, but of course this idea has no basis in reality — I will likely look androgynous forevermore, and people who are non-binary have similar battles. By ‘biased’ I mean that I both have an opinion on this but also I carry with me the biases present in the trans community c2003, which in some ways were very different than they are now. Which is to say that my opinions don’t speak for everyone and I’m not trying to. I like having a mini bio that includes one’s pronouns in a natural-sounding way, to emphasize (as Calpernia Addams once put it) “That little thing called a ‘life’ that surrounds our genitals”. If people are explicitly avoiding using the correct pronouns, that is another issue entirely, and IMO not one that will likely be solved by the People page. On May 18, 2018, 6:51 PM -0400, Taylor Yu <catalyst@torproject.org>, wrote:

On 05/18/2018 03:39 PM, Griffin wrote:

...

I find these without context to be very clunky. A brief bio of "Griffin does xyz and in his spare time plays jazz keytar" flows much better and better represents the richness of one's life. I'm slightly biased on this issue as I'm very visibly trans. While people will naturally make assumptions about my gender/sex (no big deal), some focus on that particular piece of my life instead of what I'm actually doing. Thank you for sharing your perspective. I'm glad it's no big deal for you when people make assumptions about your gender. I also appreciate you not wanting people to focus on that aspect of your life.

Are you saying we should refrain altogether from optionally displaying pronouns on the people page in a standardized way? Or are you expressing your desire to opt out of displaying your pronouns like that? Or something else?

I guess I have a different bias. I would find it helpful if we gave people the option to display their pronouns in a standardized way. People are unlikely to guess my correct pronouns, unless they're in the habit of using they/them pronouns by default. Until recently, it was more likely than not for someone to guess my gender or pronouns in a direction that would hurt me.

I've found that people who have already made assumptions about someone's gender are likely to disregard that person's pronouns if those pronouns are used only in running text, as opposed to being displayed in some more explicit way. I personally feel more comfortable announcing my pronouns if other people also announce theirs (which they are free to do or not as they feel comfortable).

Best regards, -Taylor pronouns: they/them

I make the meeting name tags, and pronouns would be easy to add. I’ll add a column on the meeting wiki. Thanks for the suggestion, Richard! Cheers, Erin

On May 18, 2018, at 3:24 PM, Richard Pospesel <richard@torproject.org> wrote:

In a similar vein, the last two tor meetings I've been two there's been an announcement after the initial bit encouraging people to put their preferred pronouns on their conference badge. Maybe this year we could nip this in the bud and have it part of the table schema Jon pulls the names from when printing the badges?

best, -Richard

On 05/18/2018 12:32 PM, Taylor Yu wrote:

...

On 05/17/2018 10:31 AM, Tom Ritter wrote:

...

There's a lot of us and many folks (or maybe just me) haven't met most people or are otherwise unsure about pronouns.

Put them on the people page? Good idea? Bad idea? Too public?

Thanks for suggesting this!

I am in favor of displaying pronouns on the people page. I also think it's very important to make it obvious that they're optional. I would encourage cisgender people to display their pronouns if they feel comfortable doing so, because that helps to normalize the practice.

As one example, I did notice that our friends at Outreachy have what seem to be optional pronouns on their interns page:

https://www.outreachy.org/alums/

Best regards, -Taylor _______________________________________________ tor-project mailing list tor-project@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-project

_______________________________________________ tor-project mailing list tor-project@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-project

And Richard. :) -Jon

On May 18, 2018, at 3:37 PM, Jon Selon <jon@torproject.org> wrote:

+1. Thanks Erin!

-Jon

...

On May 18, 2018, at 3:36 PM, Erin Wyatt <ewyatt@torproject.org> wrote:

I make the meeting name tags, and pronouns would be easy to add. I’ll add a column on the meeting wiki. Thanks for the suggestion, Richard!

Cheers, Erin

...

On May 18, 2018, at 3:24 PM, Richard Pospesel <richard@torproject.org> wrote:

In a similar vein, the last two tor meetings I've been two there's been an announcement after the initial bit encouraging people to put their preferred pronouns on their conference badge. Maybe this year we could nip this in the bud and have it part of the table schema Jon pulls the names from when printing the badges?

best, -Richard

On 05/18/2018 12:32 PM, Taylor Yu wrote:

...

On 05/17/2018 10:31 AM, Tom Ritter wrote:

...

There's a lot of us and many folks (or maybe just me) haven't met most people or are otherwise unsure about pronouns.

Put them on the people page? Good idea? Bad idea? Too public?

Thanks for suggesting this!

I am in favor of displaying pronouns on the people page. I also think it's very important to make it obvious that they're optional. I would encourage cisgender people to display their pronouns if they feel comfortable doing so, because that helps to normalize the practice.

As one example, I did notice that our friends at Outreachy have what seem to be optional pronouns on their interns page:

https://www.outreachy.org/alums/

Best regards, -Taylor _______________________________________________ tor-project mailing list tor-project@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-project

_______________________________________________ tor-project mailing list tor-project@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-project

_______________________________________________ tor-project mailing list tor-project@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-project

I welcome feedback about any of the above suggestions.

I have a suggestion. Rather than rewrite the vocabulary of everybody else, how about becoming less touchy about what words people use regarding people whose chosen gender is not completely obvious? John

I wonder if talking about gender in this way is new to you. If it is, then this mailing list isn't the best place for you to learn how different people talk and think about gender.

Teen Vogue has a great FAQ on gender pronouns here: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/they-them-questions-answered

And there are other excellent resources online.

T Thanks, teor, I agree with you. - Katie

On 05/20/2018 01:53 AM, Nurmi, Juha wrote:

For example, Uralic languages (with the most native speakers are Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian) lack of grammatical gender. Do you have different words for mother and father in Finnish? Or does the language completely lack the concept of gender for people?

As a native Finnish speaker my language codes my brain not to see difference and the whole idea is untranslatable to my native language. As a result, I often mix between she/he/hers/his/actor/actress etc. Indeed, I have said something like "About my grandmonther, he is..." in English which translates completely right to my language!

I have stronger expectations for native English speakers than for non-native speakers for using someone's correct pronouns. If you are preemptively explaining why you might make mistakes with people's pronouns because of how your native language lacks gendered pronouns, I sympathize. In that case, I suggest that you apologize briefly if/when you make mistakes and try to do better, rather than explaining beforehand. If you are instead publicly making excuses for not making an effort to use people's correct pronouns, I invite you to consider whether that helps to make Tor a welcoming environment for people of all genders. I am familiar with languages that lack gendered pronouns. I grew up in a bilingual household speaking English and Mandarin. My mother still occasionally uses incorrect pronouns for people of all genders because English is not her first language and spoken Mandarin, like Finnish, doesn't have gendered pronouns.

Most of the Tor user are not speaking English as their first language.

I'm aware that many Tor users and contributors don't speak English as their first language. I'm not sure how this affects a decision to offer people the option of displaying their pronouns in a standardized form. Are you concerned about potential future translations of our people page? If so, we can talk about that: I think there several potential solutions there. I think potential difficulties with translation should not mean denying people the option of displaying their pronouns. If instead you want to talk about whether we should refer to people using the pronouns they have asked us to use for them, this mailing list is really not an appropriate place for that. Best regards, -Taylor

Hi Juha,

I agree with John and let me explain why.

This conversation is concentrated to native English speakers.

For example, Uralic languages (with the most native speakers are Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian) lack of grammatical gender. Logically there is one pronoun for both he and she; for example, hän in Finnish. As a result, logic of language expressing gender is strange for Finnish speakers. This causes Finnish people often mix, for instance, she/he and actor/actress when they try to speak English. For them hän is always correct and neutral!

I'm a self taught English speaker and my native language is a gender neutral one, like yours. But I disagree with you and John and am actually concerned by his trolling efforts to waste hours and hours of our collective time that could be spent on doing better things. While I tend to ignore emails coming from John (as I've long lost assuming good faith), I figured I'd reply to yours as it may have come from a different place. We're all coming from different backgrounds (and cultures) but here we're talking and writing in English and collectively, have chosen this language as our main communication channel. It only makes sense to respect the etiquette of the language if we want to maintain the rule of "be excellent to each other" and have a healthier and more inclusive community, which in my personal opinion is something we might not have always been the best at, but hey we're having this conversation so there are improvements.

As a native Finnish speaker my language codes my brain not to see difference and the whole idea is untranslatable to my native language. As a result, I often mix between she/he/hers/his/actor/actress etc. Indeed, I have said something like "About my grandmonther, he is..." in English which translates completely right to my language!

I too make this mistake a lot. And that is okay. If you catch yourself making that mistake, you can always correct yourself. It takes about 2 seconds. And if you don't, that's okay too. As long as it's an honest mistake and you don't deliberately continue to call somebody with the wrong pronouns. My rule of thumb is that I default to they/them in my language to avoid people's feelings.

Most of the Tor user are not speaking English as their first language.

This is true, and for many years, I've been an advocate to move away from focusing too much on the English speaking user-base. This is a fine argument to have under another topic and when it's related to our products and definitely not under this topic. It's not our place to decide who wants to be called what and how. Live and let live. Peace, -- Nima 0X58C4B928A3E218F6 | @mrphs "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" --Evelyn Beatrice Hall

On Fri, May 18, 2018 at 02:32:17PM -0500, Taylor Yu wrote:

On 05/17/2018 10:31 AM, Tom Ritter wrote:

...

There's a lot of us and many folks (or maybe just me) haven't met most people or are otherwise unsure about pronouns.

Put them on the people page? Good idea? Bad idea? Too public?

Thanks for suggesting this!

I am in favor of displaying pronouns on the people page. I also think it's very important to make it obvious that they're optional. I would encourage cisgender people to display their pronouns if they feel comfortable doing so, because that helps to normalize the practice.

I agree. All the information on the people page is currently optional anyway (including being listed, at all), so adding another piece of optional information like this shouldn't be a problem. I'm in favor of adding this. It is especially useful for new community members, in addition to long-time contributors who simply haven't had the opportunity of meeting everyone.

On 19 May 2018, at 09:32, Damian Johnson <atagar@torproject.org> wrote:

Hi Matt. My only concern (as the maintainer of that page) is that it doesn't get cluttered. If folks would find pronouns useful, someone leads the effort to get 'em all,

Pronouns are optional, so there's no need to get them all. If it's easier to do a group update, we can start collecting a list, wait a week, and then do the change.

and comes up with a tasteful way of displaying them then feel free!

Are there any options folks will want besides: he, her, or they?

Some people use other preferred pronouns. Here are some examples of other preferred pronouns: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-person_pronoun#Summary

If it's a narrow enumeration like that then I wonder if we can do something iconic (with the Twitter and gpg links).

There are no standard icons for pronouns. The male and female symbols ♂ and ♀ are used in medicine. (Using them would be confusing and problematic.) There is no standard symbol for "they". It really is best if we spell it out: * they/them/their * she/her * he/him/his * e/em/eir If that's too long, we could show the common form ("they"), with a tooltip for the other inflections ("they/them/their"). T

Thanks teor.

Pronouns are optional, so there's no need to get them all.

If it's easier to do a group update, we can start collecting a list, wait a week, and then do the change.

Yup, all information on the page is optional *but* it's consistently collected. My ask here wasn't that it must be listed for everyone but that we should collect them in the same way as the other information. Which is to say reach out individually to everyone on the page to ask if and what pronoun they'd prefer.

Some people use other preferred pronouns.

Here are some examples of other preferred pronouns: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-person_pronoun#Summary

Interesting. I suspect in our community he/she/they will be enough but interesting to know there are things like 'eir'.

There are no standard icons for pronouns. The male and female symbols ♂ and ♀ are used in medicine. (Using them would be confusing and problematic.) There is no standard symbol for "they".

Seems there are iconographic options, but on reflection it probably would indeed be better to just spell it out along with irc nicks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_symbols#Gender_symbols https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_symbol