What was your opinion on Louis CK and Polanski?
And was that black clingy person the only clingy person you’ve ever met?
Still not willing to challenge your privilege, by the way. Trying to make me defend myself in a “conversation”, but did you even google “privilege”? Did some of the work?
There’s the “people will always find things to be offended”. Just turn everything to “she/her” and say you’re a radical feminist. 
However “there’s no way everyone will be happy” is not a argument to not improve anything, ever. Especially when you are on the privileged side. We all try to improve, accommodate others and make mistakes in the process.
The only real problem is the unwillingness to be part of a better dynamic.
You could also say that you are writing from your own perspective, as a male. So, male pronouns everywhere.
Me, personally, I understand why oppressed groups are angry about everything, because they are fed up.
On the other hand, I would tell someone, if they argued about it “well, Jeth is a man, so he uses his pronouns in his book, it is written from his personal perspective”.
If it were the Official Teaching Book of the Greek Go Association (where the burden of equal treatment would be on the organization and it would matter), I would push for a change and we would have manpower for that change.
That I still appreciate their work and that if they did something wrong it’s a legal matter which shouldn’t bring to a censorship of their works.
You’re missing the point on purpose. Please don’t do that.
And please don’t do this either. Even this is behind the point, since I’m not saying I’m against feminist claims, I’m talking about worrying side-effects of these movements. And I don’t need to Google what you want me to to get what you’re saying.
Anyway this is not going anywhere. I’ve said all I had to say, you’ve listened to nothing and given misleading interpretations to what I wrote. Enough.
It is, if what some people consider “improvement” others will consider an affront. 
For example, when someone told me that all the image textboxes are hard to read because they are in Italics I was quite shocked! I had never considered that issue, because I have the “priviledge” of not having that issue when reading.
I indeed looked it up and turns out most people have issues with long texts with italics. So, that was a valid complaint, with a valid solution.
So, in that case, I did put in the work and manually changed around 2500+ textboxes for all the languages at the time (right click, ctrl + A, Shift+ctrl + I and resize the textbox when needed, 2500+ times) and that took me 3 days, but at the end of that process I could indeed safely say that:
a) It did look better
b) The problem was solved for everyone, since there are no people who say “I get dizzy if it is not in italics”
I hope that you see the difference.
One problem had a clear solution that made all the work worth it and the other simply does not have a clear solution.
Unclear solutions and a vast every-shiffting array of different rules is quite a bigger problem if you ask me.
Imagine if I did put all the work to include all 78 genders and next month out they come and say “hey, now the genders are 80, huzzah for this two new genders” what do I do now?
I mean, yay good for them, but now I have to re-typeset everything? Again? Because they added new genders? How is that not a problem?
You know, what this tells me, is you were dying to tell people how a sexual assaulter and a rapist shouldn’t face repercussions for what they did. You really, really wanted to have stated that.
So, yes, you can’t express an opinion on that, because you can’t empathize with the victims. I agree with your friend, and I’m sure she could guess your callous response.
If only you were able to show the same energy for the victims…
I’m not missing the point. I’m wondering why it is so important to prove to us that a black person, an isolated case, perceived an action of yours as racist, when it weren’t so.
If you made an effort, you would be faced with the reality that a person having something unjust happen to them doesn’t undo the fact that they enjoy a certain privilege.
No I didn’t. You are just misogynistic and you are too fragile to even entertain the thought.
I don’t have anything else to say to you.
What’s the book about?
Give us some context…
See, hiding behind the “what if someone says something” again. I don’t think you even do it on purpose, though, it’s a mechanism that’s there.
I wonder if you can see the difference between discrimination because of a medical condition (which, I may add, has only recently become a valid concern and not even for all conditions) and a social injustice issue for half the population, based on a societal construct.
Nobody asked you to do that, though, did they? It didn’t happen. We could “what if” to oblivion.
Yes, because society is adjusting. Because things have been wrong for too long, so many injustices are erupting all at once.
Just try to be empathetic and try to be accommodating. Don’t just resist any and all because it might become uncomfortable.
You can’t win everyone at your side, but effort is always appreciated.
The monolithic “I won’t, because I can’t please some hypothetical 1000th variation” is not.
Resist the urge, and we’re fine. 
I’m not reading this whole thread, but I want to point out that G. K. Chesterton, in one of his weekly columns for the Illustrated London News in the 1930s, declared that satire was dead. His reason was that satire requires a background of normalness for the humor to work, or even be recognized. Even in his day, the norms were disappearing, and generally not being replaced by new norms. The last 80 years have validated his observation in large part, with innumerable cases of satire being taken seriously. And in recent years the phenomenon has extended across the comedy spectrum. Many stand-up comedians (most prominently Seinfeld) have commented on the difficulty of doing any comedy nowadays. The problem is that good comedy needs to be rooted in reality, so if someone objects to the reality, as many do, it won’t work. This is not new. Humorous cartoons about death, for example, have long been generally forbidden. I learned this when, in my youth, I wrote gags for cartoonists.
According to my limited recollection of school teachings, Greek comedy (“satire”) was a way to chastise wrongdoings of the powerful, using humour as a smokescreen.
So, it was a weapon in the hands of the weak.
When the ones in power (whatever situation) claim something is a “joke”, and “PC won’t let us have our jokes” or “why are they getting mad? it was just a joke”, it usually means they were used to hurting other people with words (which is a legitimate way to hurt someone) and they feel angry they can’t do it anymore.
Also, it’s different when the affected group uses humour as a mechanism to deal with/ overcome a hurtful situation (“death jokes” for example) and when someone in power grabs that joke to further hurt them.
Note: That some acclaimed person wrote something, doesn’t mean it’s gospel. It’s worth pondering, but that’s all.
It’s off topic but Conrad’s post reminded me of this…
It is not a “mechanism” or anything else, but in order to consider a problem as “solved” you have to fiddle with it in depth, else it is just hasty work and just settling for what “seems to work at the moment”. There will always be unforeseen parameters that will give any possible solution a run for its money, but logic decrees that for every problem you embark to solve, the maximum effort should be expended in its analysis.
One of my favorite examples on this “hasty” “good enough” work is the following story:
Once a parent group for a highschool wanted to make a campaign against drugs, so they had the idea of printing the message “Do not take drugs!” on a pencil, with the “Do” on the side of the edge ( oops ).
It seemed like a good idea, until they realised that the medium was flawed, because the kids started to scratch the pencil in order to use it. So their message gradually turned to this:
<=Do not take drugs! =|
<= not take drugs! =|
<= take drugs! =| 
<= drugs! =| 
This also adresses your point about the whole “adjusting” thing. Change is not necessarily an improvement. (H “αλλαγή” που φωνάζουνε από τη δεκαετία του 1980 στη χώρα μας ήταν πολύ έξυπνη ιδέα σαν σλόγκαν. Ψέμματα δεν είπαν. Κανείς τους δεν υποσχέθηκε “βελτίωση” χεχεχε. )
Well, they did ask me for one of those pronouns. So, why not for the rest of them. If it was a totally hypothetical scenario, I could agree with you that the “if” is purely fictional, but since the topic was actually brought up, what makes a complaint about one pronoun “valid” and another pronoun “fictional”?
78 pronouns would do quite a number to my textboxes, I’ll tell you that for a fact 
Anyway, that is all I had to say on this issue.
My bottom line is that, especially for people that are doing some form of art, like comics, a level of irreverence for what other people think - regardless of age, nationality, gender or whatever else - is needed if you are going to have some artistic freedom in your creativity. Art, throughout history, has always stepped on some toes. It is unavoidable. And in some cases - e.g. comedians like George Carlin or philosophers like Diogenes the Cynic - it was actually required
Nobody asked for it to be “solved” here and now. We are all asking for mere improvement. But, of course, if you act like an end-all, be-all solution was asked, it’s easier to say “well, that’s unreasonable 
”.
I don’t know if you realize how much brainpower you invested to fight a simple “be more considerate”, how firmly you are digging your heels to a mere “try”.
By definition, you’re stepping on toes to challenge the status quo. Otherwise, you’re stepping on necks.
Also all I had to say.
For sure, but in respect of the cartoon without any additional context it is sexist and creepy.
And yes I can look at that cartoon and chuckle. But chuckle because I know it can be a distasteful behaviour trait of some males
Some of the conduct thus far in this topic has not been appropriate and has violated our FAQ. Because we strive to maintain a fun and friendly forum where everyone can feel welcome, this is a good time to remind everyone of the forum rules.
From our FAQ:
Thank you.
Gia is one out of very few women on this forum, so of f*ing course she feels the need to say something when a bunch of man assure each other that something is not sexist - probably because they are total experts 
on sexism, I mean, who else would be if not some (mostly) white, (mostly) middle aged guys?!?
Yeah, sure, go ahead everybody and tell the only woman in this discussion that her perception and experience with sexism is completely wrong…
And you know what?! I am also (and as far as I know maybe even the only other) woman here, and that is the reason why I didn’t want to get involved in this discussion - because I already expected it to end like this.
(Btw, I don’t criticize the thread starter - at least he asked himself (and us) if he had drawn an unintentionally sexist comic.)
If you make your best effort at solving the problem, you’ll get past most of the complaints. Just using he/her interchangeably will get you most of the way there, adding in “they” will appease almost everyone that wants more than two genders represented.
If you do all of that, and you still get complaints and don’t know how to address them, then that’s a different issue. If you haven’t done any of that, why concern about the minor aspects to addressing the issue if you haven’t touched the major ones?
I’m sorry, Jeth, I often like your tendency to discuss stuff in depth, but here it sounds a lot like ‘I can’t mix in a few female pronouns, because that wouldn’t cure cancer at the same time.’ While I do not agree with all that Gia said (and who would expect that from a male??? ), I must say she is extremely patient with you.
I just showed the comic to my girlfriend, she just think it’s “bescheuert” but not sexist.
I’m not sure if I can add anything of substance to this discussion now and I just want to say sorry for bad jokes I made earlier.
I think this is a slippery slope. You’re essentially saying you’re choosing to keep all pronouns male, because adding any of the other pronouns would invite the discussion of adding 76 other pronouns as well.
But what is ignored here is that roughly 50% of the world identifies with being addressed by she, while those 76 other pronouns are a) not universally understood (contrary to she) and b) only representative of a very small group of people.
The big problem is of course that only using he ignores roughly half of the world population.
There are ways of writing gender neutral in English, such as by exclusively using they / their instead of he / him and she / her.
I really wish the same thing existed in Dutch…