No gendered pronouns in personnel reports: this week in the strange death of Canada

[Keith&Co.]

Private: "Captain, he's got us pinned down!"
Sergeant: "They has us pinned down."
Private: "Wait, there's more than one?!?" (raises head to look for additional snipers)
Sergeant: "No, no! I'm just using gender neut--" (private's head explodes)

You imagine people writing official personnel reports?
About the enemy?
Under fire?

 

[Trausti]

Private: "Captain, he's got us pinned down!"
Sergeant: "They has us pinned down."
Private: "Wait, there's more than one?!?" (raises head to look for additional snipers)
Sergeant: "No, no! I'm just using gender neut--" (private's head explodes)

You imagine people writing official personnel reports?
About the enemy?
Under fire?

You imagine this will be restricted to personnel reports? Did you miss 2019?

 

[Keith&Co.]

Private: "Captain, he's got us pinned down!"
Sergeant: "They has us pinned down."
Private: "Wait, there's more than one?!?" (raises head to look for additional snipers)
Sergeant: "No, no! I'm just using gender neut--" (private's head explodes)

You imagine people writing official personnel reports?
About the enemy?
Under fire?

You imagine this will be restricted to personnel reports?

I'm pretty sure a slippery-slope-argument-from-absudity is just stupid,myeah.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Private: "Captain, he's got us pinned down!"
Sergeant: "They has us pinned down."
Private: "Wait, there's more than one?!?" (raises head to look for additional snipers)
Sergeant: "No, no! I'm just using gender neut--" (private's head explodes)

You imagine people writing official personnel reports?
About the enemy?
Under fire?

I'm more worried about a group being pinned down by one person.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

superiors, who are required to write personnel reports for those who serve under them, will not be allowed to use the pronouns of that person’s choosing

That's probably the whole point, right there.
Probably a lot of requests for the policy if they have a Lawrence in transition to Loretta, when do we officially change from 'he' to 'her'?
Start of treatment? Application for treatment? Slicification of the Pickle?
And someone responded with a universal, "Okay, fine, NO ONE gets gender in their evals. Happy? You're all 'they.' Now, leave me alone."

This is not PC run amok. This is bureaucracy taking the shortest path to ground.

I suspect the point is to have the personnel appraisals remain gender-neutral so that selection boards for promotion can't be accused of bias against female or non-binary candidates. Something in that vein. It's difficult to say for certain, but references to GBA+ and related federal policies make it seem plausible.

https://www.ourcommons.ca/Content/Committee/421/NDDN/Reports/RP10573700/nddnrp17/nddnrp17-e.pdf

That certainly would be a reasonable reason. The most effective way to avoid bias is to ensure the people making the decision don't have the potentially biasing information in the first place. I have long been for colorblind approaches, but I've always thought of it as sanitizing the data rather than ensuring it's created sterile in the first place.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It could hardly be that, as names are allowed, and most names imply a person's sex.

The military normally works with last names. There was a bit in the paper here a while back about a military couple--who did not at first realize they were Ebony and Ivory because of the exclusive use of last names.

 

[Jokodo]

I suspect the point is to have the personnel appraisals remain gender-neutral so that selection boards for promotion can't be accused of bias against female or non-binary candidates. Something in that vein. It's difficult to say for certain, but references to GBA+ and related federal policies make it seem plausible.

https://www.ourcommons.ca/Content/Committee/421/NDDN/Reports/RP10573700/nddnrp17/nddnrp17-e.pdf

That certainly would be a reasonable reason. The most effective way to avoid bias is to ensure the people making the decision don't have the potentially biasing information in the first place. I have long been for colorblind approaches, but I've always thought of it as sanitizing the data rather than ensuring it's created sterile in the first place.

Sanitizing the data is much easier and less error-prone if you can simply do a search-and-replace for the name rather than having to remember to also search and replace all occurrences of he/she, her/him, herself/himself, except those as might refer to a third person.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Private: "Captain, he's got us pinned down!"
Sergeant: "They has us pinned down."
Private: "Wait, there's more than one?!?" (raises head to look for additional snipers)
Sergeant: "No, no! I'm just using gender neut--" (private's head explodes)

The weird thing is that "they" is a singular pronoun and I get it. For example. "My uber driver is here. They are outside." But we say this because we don't know if they are a man or a woman. To have a man or a woman say "call me they" is stupid because we know they are a man or a woman. Singular they only works when we didn't even see the person yet.

You really think someone would know the gender of a sniper that has them pinned???

 

[Elixir]

Private: "Captain, he's got us pinned down!"
Sergeant: "They has us pinned down."
Private: "Wait, there's more than one?!?" (raises head to look for additional snipers)
Sergeant: "No, no! I'm just using gender neut--" (private's head explodes)

The weird thing is that "they" is a singular pronoun and I get it. For example. "My uber driver is here. They are outside." But we say this because we don't know if they are a man or a woman. To have a man or a woman say "call me they" is stupid because we know they are a man or a woman. Singular they only works when we didn't even see the person yet.

You really think someone would know the gender of a sniper that has them pinned???

It's important information for a misogynist trumpsucker to have. If it's a woman they're pretty sure they can't be hit.

 

[KeepTalking]

I suspect the point is to have the personnel appraisals remain gender-neutral so that selection boards for promotion can't be accused of bias against female or non-binary candidates. Something in that vein. It's difficult to say for certain, but references to GBA+ and related federal policies make it seem plausible.

https://www.ourcommons.ca/Content/Committee/421/NDDN/Reports/RP10573700/nddnrp17/nddnrp17-e.pdf

That certainly would be a reasonable reason. The most effective way to avoid bias is to ensure the people making the decision don't have the potentially biasing information in the first place. I have long been for colorblind approaches, but I've always thought of it as sanitizing the data rather than ensuring it's created sterile in the first place.

Sanitizing the data is much easier and less error-prone if you can simply do a search-and-replace for the name rather than having to remember to also search and replace all occurrences of he/she, her/him, herself/himself, except those as might refer to a third person.

It is trivially easy to write code to replace those gender specific pronouns with the appropriate gender specific pronouns. No reason to exclude third parties from the replacement, presumably you would initially refer to them by name, or some other descriptor, and replacing the pronoun in subsequent mentions should not be a problem.

 

[Jokodo]

Sanitizing the data is much easier and less error-prone if you can simply do a search-and-replace for the name rather than having to remember to also search and replace all occurrences of he/she, her/him, herself/himself, except those as might refer to a third person.

It is trivially easy to write code to replace those gender specific pronouns with the appropriate gender specific pronouns. No reason to exclude third parties from the replacement, presumably you would initially refer to them by name, or some other descriptor, and replacing the pronoun in subsequent mentions should not be a problem.

Unambiguous identification of pronoun referents is still a hard problem in NLP - and why bother when, with a simple instruction on how to write the reports, `sed` can do the job?

 

[repoman]

The anticipation for women to maybe have a pregnancy, maternity leave and changes in priority after kids is being removed from the evaluation mix. Are physical capabilities as well?

What about cases where women in the past got ahead faster than a man because of affirmative action? Does this make that impossible?

 

[KeepTalking]

Sanitizing the data is much easier and less error-prone if you can simply do a search-and-replace for the name rather than having to remember to also search and replace all occurrences of he/she, her/him, herself/himself, except those as might refer to a third person.

It is trivially easy to write code to replace those gender specific pronouns with the appropriate gender specific pronouns. No reason to exclude third parties from the replacement, presumably you would initially refer to them by name, or some other descriptor, and replacing the pronoun in subsequent mentions should not be a problem.

Unambiguous identification of pronoun referents is still a hard problem in NLP - and why bother when, with a simple instruction on how to write the reports, `sed` can do the job?

Just looking at it from a coding perspective, as I was doing, replacing his/her with 'their', and he/she with 'they' is in fact trivially easy. Given that this is only in reference to personnel reports, I doubt there would be much ambiguity with regard to pronoun use. It would be a different case if one were to try to do so with a piece of creative writing. Regardless, I wasn't even trying to advocate for Loren's position, it should be even easier for those writing the reports to remember to use the non gender specific pronouns in the first place.

 

[Jarhyn]

Wow, look what we have here. A whole thread that's just whinging about how a good compromise hurts their position.

How does this kill Canada? Oh wow, people being expected to use people's names to resolve ambiguous pronouns, what ever will we do.

Granted I think we can all remember literally every person we know's unique name if we really don't want to say "they". A person's listed name is generally going to be sufficient unless some place has some "legal name only" policy, and has some shit ass judges that make it hard to change.

Expecting competence and literacy for those doing personnel reports, killing Canada bit but bit.

 

[Jarhyn]

The fact is, it is trivially easy, when there is a biased result, to find the most apparent patterns look to Rule One of corporate (and government) ethics: if it looks bad, it is bad. If someone has made visible hiring or other decisions of merit consistently that divide on lines of how people look, dress, or talk instead of how they work, what they say, and what they accomplish, that is already bad. It doesn't really matter why they made the decisions they did. It looks bad, and if it looks bad it's bad.

Don't do shit that looks bad.

The question is, does the reality on the ground look bad?

Or do you propose we don't expect investigators to know how to do their jobs? Or that we stop expecting them to do it?

 

[Metaphor]

Wow, look what we have here. A whole thread that's just whinging about how a good compromise hurts their position.

What's a good compromise? There's no "compromise". This is a directive on pronoun use.

How does this kill Canada? Oh wow, people being expected to use people's names to resolve ambiguous pronouns, what ever will we do.

Did you read the article? It is not about using names to resolve "ambiguous" pronouns.

Also, I did not say this "killed" Canada.

Granted I think we can all remember literally every person we know's unique name if we really don't want to say "they". A person's listed name is generally going to be sufficient unless some place has some "legal name only" policy, and has some shit ass judges that make it hard to change.

Expecting competence and literacy for those doing personnel reports, killing Canada bit but bit.

I don't think you read the article at all.

 

[Metaphor]

The fact is, it is trivially easy, when there is a biased result, to find the most apparent patterns look to Rule One of corporate (and government) ethics: if it looks bad, it is bad. If someone has made visible hiring or other decisions of merit consistently that divide on lines of how people look, dress, or talk instead of how they work, what they say, and what they accomplish, that is already bad. It doesn't really matter why they made the decisions they did. It looks bad, and if it looks bad it's bad.

Don't do shit that looks bad.

The question is, does the reality on the ground look bad?

Or do you propose we don't expect investigators to know how to do their jobs? Or that we stop expecting them to do it?

What on earth are you talking about? Was this meant to be a response to another thread?

 

[Jokodo]

What's a good compromise? There's no "compromise". This is a directive on pronoun use.



Did you read the article? It is not about using names to resolve "ambiguous" pronouns.

Also, I did not say this "killed" Canada.

Let me quote the thread title: "this week in the strange death of Canada"

Stop the drama already, it's ridiculous.

 

[Jokodo]

Unambiguous identification of pronoun referents is still a hard problem in NLP - and why bother when, with a simple instruction on how to write the reports, `sed` can do the job?

Just looking at it from a coding perspective, as I was doing, replacing his/her with 'their', and he/she with 'they' is in fact trivially easy. Given that this is only in reference to personnel reports, I doubt there would be much ambiguity with regard to pronoun use. It would be a different case if one were to try to do so with a piece of creative writing. Regardless, I wasn't even trying to advocate for Loren's position, it should be even easier for those writing the reports to remember to use the non gender specific pronouns in the first place.

Talking of private Jane Doe, "When admiral Joe Smith visited the base, she <verbed> him" is unambiguous in a way "they <verbed> them" isn't. Automatically replacing all occurrences of "she" but not "he" with "they" resulting in "they <verbed> him" will reveal to a technically literate reader that the person under evaluation was a she. Making the writers of reports use gender neutral pronouns (and thus evade constructions altogether that are otherwise ambiguous) solves that problem in a way your code doesn't.

 

[Metaphor]

What's a good compromise? There's no "compromise". This is a directive on pronoun use.



Did you read the article? It is not about using names to resolve "ambiguous" pronouns.

Also, I did not say this "killed" Canada.

Let me quote the thread title: "this week in the strange death of Canada"

Stop the drama already, it's ridiculous.

I don't know if English is your first language, but "No gendered pronouns in personnel reports: this week in the strange death of Canada" does not equal "banning gendered pronouns killed Canada". It just doesn't.

Some reasonable interpretations of the thread title may be:

• Canada is dying (or dead) and the banning of gendered pronouns is one of the events that contributed to that dying. It would not be the sole event because a singular cause conflicts with the "this week in" part of the title.
• Canada is dying and the banning of gendered pronouns is a sign that it is dying, among many other signs that happen over weeks and months and years.

Banning gendered pronouns in military personnel reports is not something that would kill a country. It's the zeitgeist that's killing Canada, and the zeitgeist that causes the proscription of language and the criminalisation of speech.