This thread is getting kind of off scattered so let me clear a few things up:
- This feature would be optional. Nobody would be forced to reveal their gender/pronouns. If you don’t care how your opponent perceives you, you are free to leave this field empty, and nothing will be added to your title/player card.
- This feature would not take part in any gender politics. It would not state how many genders there are, if it’s important, etc. It will simply allow the players who prefer a certain pronoun to be able to discreetly declare it without interruptions. This feature could be carefully crafted to sway away from the supposed gender politics, e.g. we would not ask for peoples “gender”, but their “pronouns”.
- This feature could be implemented with a free text field. This is to avoid any language issues (gendered pronouns don’t exist in all languages), as well as to accommodate for different and diverse needs. We would not force “strange pronouns” on anyone as people can also leave this field empty.
- If your opponent chooses to fill in this field, and you see their preferred pronouns in the player/title card, you are free to ignore it. You can refer to your opponent by their stone color, the Sensei’s Library gendered stone color system, etc. I’m sure steps can be taken to make this minimally intrusive to the UI, and you are free to still play in zen mode and never know about this at all. If you are strongly opposed to knowing which pronoun you opponent prefers, I’m sure a complimentary feature could be added in you settings page to always hide it.
- The stated purpose of this feature would be to allow people to talk about you in third person, in a conversation you might not even be present (like on a live stream) to correct them. This is a non-issue to a lot of players. Those players are free to leave this field blank.
I want to reiterate point 2 (since that is where this thread seem to divert): This feature would not care about any gender politics. It would not take sides in the supposed gender politics. We would not try to answer any questions about “how many genders/sexes” there are. It would simply allow the people to whom this is important to declare this information. If this feature was proposing we should force people to declare their gender and provide limited options, that would be taking side. I would never propose such a feature.
I’ve seen many conferences take have stickers ready with the most common pronouns, which participants can grab and stick to their name tag if they like. Conference goers are free to not take these sticker, they are free to ignore them if a co-participant uses them (although it would be considered rude) etc. I don’t see this feature as being any different.