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He specifically said that calling Charles Clymer a he with no other mark of disrespect is against the rules. Soon that will extend to linking articles that talk about Charle's "deadname," because that's just how this sort of thing works, and because those are the social rules in the indie game dev scene Zorba is trying to gain status in.
If you think that's unlikely, a few years ago the mods were laughing at the idea of the current rules. And look where we are now.
Darwin knows how this works too, and what "rhetorical strategies" to use to accelerate it and claim yet another space for his party.
I don't even remember who Charles Clymer is (just Googled, okay, some trans woman with a public facing job) or the thread you are evidently still butthurt about, but as for the bolded part, this is not modhatted, but for the record, if you used this line of attack in another thread, I probably would mod you for lack of charity. Not because it's Zorba, and certainly not because he asked me to, but when someone gives a reason for doing something (and agree or disagree, Zorba explained the reasons for saying "Don't be an asshole to trans people just because they disgust you"), do not drop your sneers about how the "real" reason they're doing it is because they're trying to curry favor with people who probably have no idea about the Motte. (If Zorba's concern was really looking good to woke developers, I doubt he'd want them to know anything about the Motte.)
Where are we now? What current rules are you talking about? There's one rule (singular) which to be frank, even the mods aren't entirely clear about but which almost never comes up except when someone is making a point of being an ass. I've never modded someone for referring to a trans woman as "he" and I wouldn't unless the poster was being an asshole about it.
"Don't be an asshole" is a hard rule to complain about, but if using the pronouns that you think are correct for trans people == 'being an asshole', then this amounts to ceding the field, no?
Probably not conducive to truthful discussion either.
And now you seem to be saying that sometimes this would be ok, sometimes 'being an asshole', which in some ways makes it worse -- if it's always or never assholery we could frame our discussion accordingly, but personally I have no idea where that line would be. Either you accept the framework or not.
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