User talk:Kaberett
Hello. Re this: Assuming that your "you" is referring at least in part to me, I initially was aghast at the thought that I may have said something hurtful. After reviewing exactly what I did say, I'm simply taken aback at your reaction. Reality check: there was no "joke about offensive language". In response to my decidedly non-flippant first post, in which I provided a link which I thought might offer a helpful parallel to inform the discussion (and, incidentally, strengthen your argument), Bbb23 posted what I took to be a witty grammatical oddity. I, in turn, carried that to a logically absurd conclusion. The humor had nothing to do with the subject of the discussion or the subject of the article or you or me or anyone or any specific thing; it involved a peculiarity of the English language.
Brief deviations from absolute, unswerving adherence to the topic at hand—lighthearted banter, in other words—are common on talk pages and are generally considered harmless. Sorry it went over your head, and sorry if it hurt you in any way. Fwiw, I was prepared to be supportive of your position in the discussion, which parallels my own position in some previous discussions, but if this is the sort of reaction I can expect from someone on the same side of the argument, I believe I'll just steer clear. Cheers, Rivertorch (talk) 17:25, 25 May 2011 (UTC)
- Hi, Rivertorch. Thank you for taking the time to continue the conversation - obviously the meaning I took away from your words was not the one you intended. To clarify: I'm used to conversations on this kind of subject taking place within a social justice/safer spaces framework. In those contexts I've found that it's generally understood that "logically absurd" comparisons (such as the pine tree tree vs homosexual person person) trivialise the hurt caused by the use of slurs and are to be avoided. I was coming at the conversation as a whole from the position of someone familiar with the sentiments of the styleguides linked to elsewiki, and hurt by the use of "genderqueers" in the original article - and as such I was baffled/upset by bbb23's implication that my edits didn't make any sense (i.e. I was already sensitive).
- Add to this the fact that I don't actually think the grammatical point in question was particularly clever or funny (I get as exasperated as the next person by "ATM machine" or "PIN number", but this appears to me to be obviously a different case) - and it ended up with me reading your "Clever." as rather more dismissive of the issues involved in the discussion than you apparently intended, and indeed as suggesting that you hadn't linked to the dictionary article with the intention of being supportive to my position on the terminology.
- I do understand if you still feel the need to step away from the discussion, and apologise for having slipped from explicit I-statements. Kaberett (talk) 17:56, 25 May 2011 (UTC)
- Thanks for explaining. I generally pass my days at Wikipedia without too seriously exasperating even the people who understand me quite well and totally disagree with me, so it was a bit jarring to find I'd pissed off someone due to a simple misunderstanding. I remember belatedly an off-wiki episode a decade or more ago in which the word "clever" played an unhelpful role, so I guess I need to be extra careful about that.
Various style manuals explicitly deprecate the use of "homosexual" as a noun, and I seem to recall that WP:MOS implicitly frowns on such constructions (although I couldn't seem to find the relevant section when I recently looked). Once upon a time, I thought it would be a great idea to rid Wikipedia articles of such instances, but I quickly found that I was opposed not only by the usual suspects but by more than one editor affiliated with WikiProject LGBT studies who thought I was being "politically correct" or perhaps just plain silly. So I decided to abandon any attempts to fix that sort of usage problem except in certain isolated cases where consensus was easy to attain. I guess what I'm saying here is that if "genderqueer" is comparable, then while I believe you're correct, I think you may face a steep uphill battle. Good luck! Rivertorch (talk) 23:53, 25 May 2011 (UTC)
- Thanks for explaining. I generally pass my days at Wikipedia without too seriously exasperating even the people who understand me quite well and totally disagree with me, so it was a bit jarring to find I'd pissed off someone due to a simple misunderstanding. I remember belatedly an off-wiki episode a decade or more ago in which the word "clever" played an unhelpful role, so I guess I need to be extra careful about that.
An article that you have been involved in editing, Genderqueer, has been proposed for a merge with the article Pangender. If you are interested in the merge discussion, please participate by going here, and adding your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. --April Arcus (talk) 07:40, 28 August 2013 (UTC)