elementary OS is imploding

Thom Holwerda 2022-03-09 Linux 78 Comments

The comments have pointed out that the person I was linking to is a transphobic bigot, and that deadnaming was taking place. I had no idea this was the case, and was entirely unaware of the situation. Still, that is not an excuse, and I should have done better due diligence to ensure this didn’t happen. Rest assured, there was no ill intent on my part whatsoever – just ignorance of the people involved.

My sincerest apologies to everyone involved, and I will strive to do better.

elementaryOS was never going to be long for this world. They go years without releases, new releases require fresh installations (often no upgrade path), the only way to install software out of the box is through their virtually empty application store (you need to manually enable things like apt repositories), and so on.

A lot of people suggest elementaryOS as a distribution for beginners, but I never understood why – it will leave users locked into an operating system that barely has any applications, requires fresh installations, and requires a ton of manual fiddling and command line work to make more usable and capable. At that point, you might as well jump straight to Mint, pop!_OS, Fedora, or any of the other truly capable, user friendly, foolproof Linux distributions that don’t try to lock users out of all kinds of useful features and applications.

It’s no surprise to me that the company behind elementaryOS has been unable to make any money. It always gave me major Lindows/Linspire vibes.

About The Author

Thom Holwerda

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78 Comments

2022-03-09 9:57 pm

JPL
Newsworthiness and merits + demerits of elementaryOS entirely aside, Lunduke’s insistence on deadnaming Danielle Foré is deliberate, in bad faith, and extremely gross.

2022-03-09 11:02 pm

HankG
Yeah nice reminder why I stopped following all his content. I don’t know what his malfunction is but I don’t have to support it with clicks, impressions, etc. Sadly I did read the substack to confirm that he did it in this post rather than this being something he did a while ago. I can get comparable and better content elsewhere and do.
2022-03-10 12:01 am

Thom Holwerda
I had absolutely no idea. I didn’t know any deadnaming was going on at all, since I don’t know the people involved to that level. I feel terrible linking to this garbage now, and am fixing this right away.

My sincerest apologies.

2022-03-10 5:28 am

badpixel
Cancel Culture is a real danger.

Remove traces of every{body,thing} we don’t agree with…so orwellian…is it the future we really want?

Freedom and ability to face the truth is what should we expect from FLOSS/Freedom community….but it’s taking reverse….

2022-03-10 5:31 am

Thom Holwerda
Everyone is free to be a dick. Everyone is also free to not entertain dickitude.

Cancel culture does not exist. Only consequence culture. If you can’t deal with the consequences of being a dick, that’s your problem, not mine or anyone else’s.

2022-03-10 6:54 am

Alfman verbose=1
Thom Holwerda,

Everyone is free to be a dick. Everyone is also free to not entertain dickitude.

Cancel culture does not exist. Only consequence culture. If you can’t deal with the consequences of being a dick, that’s your problem, not mine or anyone else’s.

I know absolutely nothing about this guy either, no idea who he is and I’m not really interested in learning more about him.

However in general I don’t think we ought to pretend that cancel culture is not real. I don’t deny that some people are real dicks and I don’t have any sympathy for those who are mean to others – they can be heartbreakingly mean. But other times people just get caught with an opinion that’s on the wrong side of a mob that is out for blood/revenge/whatever. I don’t really like the idea of forcing people to self censor to participate in society.

I know this topic is going to rustle people’s feathers because it’s been so politicized. It’s ironic, but there’s a real risk of (re)creating a society where only certain opinions can be spoken out loud while those with unpopular opinions have to hide in fear and shame.
2022-03-10 8:41 am

MattPie
(replying to Alfman, not sure why there’s no reply button on that post)
It’s ironic, but there’s a real risk of (re)creating a society where only certain opinions can be spoken out loud while those with unpopular opinions have to hide in fear and shame.

Honestly, that’s the way it’s always been. In the USA, unless you’re a White Male (which I am) you always had to gauge your words and be careful. Women, PoC, etc. all had to be very careful how they present themselves otherwise they’d attract very negative attention.

The reason it’s so fraught now people aren’t getting the free pass for spouting awful nonsense like refusing to call people by the name they choose. Those people, largely being white dudes, are not used to there being consequences to what they say.

(I’m generalizing a lot here and frankly there’s not a better way to describe something that is a phenomenon of the racial makeup of the USA and other “western” nations. It’s certainly not limited to the west, whites, or anything else, but that’s what most of the current examples involve. As a white dude, I’ve been grappling with the idea that I do have more freedom than others and how that affects my perspective.)
2022-03-10 9:06 am

HankG
MattPie,

Exactly! This was the exact conversation I had with a straight white Christian male friend when this whole cancel culture nonsense started crossing the noise floor a few years ago, displacing the then “political correctness” pearl clutching since the label had grown old. I totally understand how there can be whiplash but its often them complaining about what everyone else had to do this whole time and with far more severe consequences. I’m all for approaching good faith screw ups with grace. I’m also for calling out bad faith serial abusers and treating them accordingly. Lunduke definitely falls into the latter category. This isn’t the first time he’s done something like this and it won’t be the last because to him stuff like dead naming is a feature not a bug in his performance.
2022-03-10 9:31 am

Alfman verbose=1
MattPie,

Honestly, that’s the way it’s always been. In the USA, unless you’re a White Male (which I am) you always had to gauge your words and be careful. Women, PoC, etc. all had to be very careful how they present themselves otherwise they’d attract very negative attention.

Yeah that’s the problem. We’re replacing one mob with another. 🙁
I wish we could evolve past this and recognize vindictiveness as socially harmful in and of itself.
2022-03-10 10:18 am

cb88
Back at you Thom… you could have posted an actual article worthy of the site instead you posted this clickbait… deal with the consequences (namely this site’s quality dropping through the floor).

And to Alfmans point of replacing one mob with anohter… take a long hard look at the Arbery trial… where we have a needless death and socially motivated jailings rather than purely justice… all rooted in preconceptions by all parties involved.
2022-03-10 12:11 pm

Bill Shooter of Bul Platinum Prime
cb88 the reference to Arbery’s case is a clear indicator that you are not arguing from anything resembling good faith. I don’t know what happened to you in your life, but hunting down and killing people based on their skin is bad and worthy of jail time.
2022-03-10 2:10 pm

kurkosdr
Ahh… the two magic words that cancel culture apologies like to use: “accountability” and “consequences”.

Okay, so what happens if a person is unfairly cancelled by mistake, like for example mistakenly accused of racial profiling while actually trying to deal with people who dine and dash?
https://www.businessinsider.com/chipotle-dine-and-dash-drama-2018-11?r=US&IR=T
Or a person mistakenly accused of being a racist because they were photographed cracking their knuckles?
https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/sdge-worker-fired-over-alleged-racist-gesture-says-he-was-cracking-knuckles/2347414/
Or a professor mistakenly accused of being a racist just because someone saw a photo of a completely different person that kind of looked like him?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-40935419

Does the cancel culture mob face any accountability and consequences when they act so stupid? No? Well, that’s the problem here, and that’s why society had chosen to abandon the “pitchforks and torches” method of achieving justice centuries ago (before it came back thanks to the pseudonymity of social media).

And then there is the whole concept of “punishment fitting the crime”, which may be an alien concept to your average Twitter addict who is enraged all the time every time, but it’s actually a real thing (at least when misdeeds are trialled in real courts by real judges and not on social media by Twitter addicts)

If you don’t like dealing with certain people, fine. But don’t go around saying “cancel culture does not exist.” It does exist. Obviously, I can’t do anything about it as an individual other than advocate for stronger anti-unfair-termination laws. But don’t go around crying when cancel culture backfires on you on the ballot because people refuse to vote for parties with a high percentage of cancel culture apologists in their base. Lots of people don’t like self-righteous twats that like to play judge and demand penalties (such as disemployment of a person) without having any of the responsibility of a judge. Or parties that pander to those people (regardless of the policies those parties support). Think of it like getting cancelled where it matters.
2022-03-10 2:19 pm

kurkosdr
BTW even outspoken non-conservatives can feel something is not right:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_y3ktQ4F9s

And guess what, they are right.

For example, in the US, you can tell something is wrong by how narrowly Donald Trump lost the presidential elections despite his mishandling of the COVID-19 epidemic (something even conservatives agree on).
2022-03-10 2:26 pm

kurkosdr
epidemic = pandemic (autocorrect)
2022-03-10 2:34 pm

cb88
Alfman… I’ve seen it portrayed in the media like everyone else but the facts of the case are… a suspect of breaking and entering was seen, the police were called (a fact on record under oath by the local police), they followed him armed, they confronted him and apparently intended to detain him, he then ran and after they perused he attacked them.

At this point the only violence that has exchanged between Arbery and the 3 men is … he attacked them. Nothing the 3 men did was illegal… a citizens arrest is legal as is open carry of weapons, also he was in fact sighted entering a property without permission which is what started all this… again of dubious legality.

After the initial attack Arbery then attempts to wrest the shotgun from one of the men… he is then shot in self defense.

Note these men had many many opportunities before this to have shot him but never did… before he attacked them so you cant’ argue that it was murder because it wasn’t done in passion or accidentally it was in fact in self defense.

There is also the matter of racist comments these 3 guys made… and I also dislike them, however they don’t indicate that they intended to murder him…. just that they were pissed that a guy was robbing them effectively… if he was a white crack head similar derogatory comments would have been made.

If Arbury had not attacked.. he wouldn’t be dead period. It is also worth pointing out that 3 armed men attempting to detain you is NOT adequate cause for attacking them. The whole point of a show of force is also to deter this sort of thing from happening also…

The fact of the matter is the court was biased because that is what the public wanted… effectively a modern day reverse lynching.
2022-03-11 6:01 am

badpixel
I’m not sure if starting discussion by name-calling somebody you don’t agree, is the correct way to anything

I wouldn’t call it ‘consequence culture’, but ‘censorship culture’, ‘political correctness culture’, ‘even ‘totalitarian culture’, ‘anti-freedom culture’ and especially ‘anti-science culture’ (there’s pseudoscience supporting very radical and leftist ideology…but I wouldn’t call that science, because science should be free of ideology).

It’s the main methodology of radical far left, to force their ideology on anybody (AntiFa, etc is not less dangerous then NeoNazist IMHO.)
“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
― George Orwell, 1984 ”
This quotation is probably best description of ‘cancel culture’, or how you call it ‘consequence culture’.
Is this totalitarian world, really the one we want to live in? I do not. All this leftist/rightist separation ans polarization is synthetically made by politicians. Natural state would be that there would be different mix of views on different views, not duopoly, like now…

Leftist turned from free-thinking Atheists to radical left ideology bigots. I really miss the days, when they wanted to be rational, fact/science based, free-minded and free of ideology and have common sense. I hope you would not call Monty Python catholic bigots:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFBOQzSk14c

I call it common sense. I don’t agree that ‘gender’ is synthetic culture construct and is biologically detached from ‘sex’, because ‘gender’ roles developed similarly across totally-separated cultures.
Somebody can claim he is a dog or apple and refuse to be called ‘human’, but will it be true?
As long as somebody doesn’t make harm to anyone, we should let him live the way he/she wants without oppression. But because he/she suffers from some mental illness or something, we cannot start ‘living the lie’ and changing science/fact-based definitions, because somebody cannot accept reality.
2022-03-11 8:58 am

dark2
“Cancel culture does not exist”

Thom, a lot of therapists and ex-convicts would like a word with you.

2022-03-10 8:34 am

HankG
If by “cancel culture” you mean the trait in humans to unfairly shun people, call for boycotts of things they don’t like, etc., then sure. There can even be some overreach by well intentioned people who are trying to make progress in how our society has dealt with fixing systemic abuses of minorities by our society. What I refuse to agree with is that that is the pressing issue not fixing those abuses. I also don’t agree that it is a “leftist” thing, It is again a human thing that both sides can do. But lets not both sides this issue. That’s how we get media pumped up “conventional wisdom” that we need to cover cancel culture 10x more than problems of racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. *and* direct it at people on the left while the right literally passes laws making it a fineable offense to teach topics like the reality of slavery in the US because it makes white people uncomfortable(1) or that gay people exist (2) and get school administrators fired in part for having interracial relationships (3).

People on the right like Lunduke like to say that we should “just let the market decide” on issues like treating minorities a certain way. I don’t agree with that, I believe everyone has fundamental rights that need to be ensured and protected beyond what we have done to date. But since he does and *this* is how you do market-based decision making he and those on the right are being hypocritical about then claiming they are being discriminated against because they are suffering from adverse market forces based on their actions/idea propagation.

Yes there have been cases of people being unfairly treated in this transaction, again as has happened throughout history. I call it out when I see it but won’t spend a disproportionate amount of energy on it like people on the right want us to. I don’t see anything like Lunduke being treated unfairly. I see him having to deal with fair consequences for his actions.

(1) https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/590554-bill-to-ban-lessons-making-white-students-feel-discomfort-advances-in
(2) https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politics-and-policy/dont-say-gay-bill-florida-senate-passes-controversial-lgbtq-school-mea-rcna19133
(3) https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/texas-school-s-first-black-principal-suspended-after-being-accused-of-promoting-conspiracy-theory-of-systemic-racism/ar-AAO2FTl

2022-03-10 2:46 pm

kurkosdr
There can even be some overreach by well-intentioned people who are trying to make progress in how our society has dealt with fixing systemic abuses of minorities by our society.

PROTIP: Some of the people drawing attention to the issue of cancel culture are not annoyed solely about the “over” part in “overreach”, but also the “reach” part. Aka the idea that a Twitter mob can demand “accountability” and then proceed to demand penalties for individuals just like a judge would (for example demand that individuals are disemployed or expelled from institutions) without being subjected to any of the accountability a judge is.

As I said in my previous comment, there is a reason society had chosen to abandon the “pitchforks and torches” method of achieving justice centuries ago (before it came back thanks to the pseudonymity of social media). Also, let me tell you right here and there that I will try to make the “pitchforks and torches” method of achieving justice a thing of the past again, for example by voting for parties that propose stronger anti-unfair-termination laws or for parties that call attention to the issue of cancel culture, even if it means voting for parties whose other policies (such as environmental policy) are sub-optimal or even outright bad, and there is nothing you can do about it. Just so nobody here has no doubts as to where I stand on the issue

Yes there have been cases of people being unfairly treated in this transaction, again as has happened throughout history

The big difference is that, since the emergence of civil rights (and before the emergence of cancel culture), anyone in a position of power to hand out penalties is held accountable if they mistreat people, or at least they are if they act as stupid as the cancel culture mob acts. See the two links below for the kind of stupidity I am talking about:
https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/sdge-worker-fired-over-alleged-racist-gesture-says-he-was-cracking-knuckles/2347414/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-40935419

But cancel culture apologists like to gloss over that not-so-minor detail…

2022-03-10 10:04 am

DigitalHippie
In my opinion you should have left the link (I suppose there was a link) in the article so everyone viewing the story a bit later, like me, can see what this is all about, form their own opinion about it and maybe learn something. Even if you don’t agree with the content of the original article.

2022-03-10 10:21 am

Morgan
I mostly agree, however I would take the extra step of linking to an archive.org copy of the article instead of the original. No need to reward the bigot with traffic to his site.

2022-03-10 12:26 pm

mail4asim
This is an excellent suggestion..
2022-03-10 1:44 pm

motang
I would second that.
2022-03-10 2:23 pm

DigitalHippie
Not wanting to defend Bryan but is there any proof that he was using the “old” name on purpose and in bad faith? As opposed to just being used to it. Many people, including me, don’t have much experience in transgender related topics so it’s easy to say or write something that people might find offensive. That doesn’t neccessarily mean any bad intent. At least not from me 😉
2022-03-10 7:04 pm

Morgan
@DigitalHippie:

Yes, he copied and pasted directly from Danielle’s Twitter feed which prominently shows her name and her pronouns (she/her). Deadnaming her was intentional, and given his existing reputation for transphobia and bigotry, it’s blatantly obvious.

2022-03-10 7:58 am

ndrw
Newsworthiness and merits + demerits of elementaryOS entirely aside

So why do you bother commenting? Just to attack a messenger, I presume.

I have read the article (easy enough to google it) and he is making valid and balanced points about the dispute between ElementaryOS founders.

Thom has criticized decisions ElementaryOS devs have made and I agree with all the points he raised. But these issues haven’t appeared out of nowhere. They are a reflection of a vision of the founders, project governance, relationship between people involved in the project. The more the founders/devs are detached from their users and driven by an idealistic agenda the worse the results. ElementaryOS is not the only example of a project with governance problems (ekhm Firefox, ekhm Gnome).
2022-03-10 9:14 am

cb88
You know it used to be people held it against each other when they did actual bad things to each other now we just make up shit… so we can be mad at each other and get offended over things that people that are being real would scoff at.

So, you know shame on lunduke but only for being a kinda d-bagish…but we already know this. Shame on everyone else for making a huge deal out of some nonsense…

Not to mention this article is trash and has no place on this site. Or do we fully embrace this as the new osnews that cares more about social justice issues than operating systems…. the latter just being a justification for the fluff article?
2022-03-14 3:02 pm

bassbeast
I’ll get hate but f*ck it, I hate the pink hair Marxist crowd that thinks they can force their belief on others, as a libertarian I find this truly disgusting.

You can have your skin tattooed green, have horns grafted and claim yourself a Kaiju if you want, you are free to mutilate yourself however you see fit….but I am under NO obligation to call you Godzilla, mmkay?

That is how a free society works, you are allowed to do whatever you want to your body and call yourself anything you want, I am free to accept or reject it, just as I can sit here and say I’m Batman and my pronouns are “Master Bruce” and “Mr Wayne sir” but you should not be forced to accept or acknowledge that anymore than you should be forced to listen to my 4 hour rant on how Zach Snyder totally got my character wrong in BvS, like I would stop whupping that whiny goody two shoes just cuz he said Martha? as if!

2022-03-09 10:08 pm

leb002

I’m a long time osnews reader and just created an account to say that lunduke is, like the comment above says, being transphobic and misnaming Danielle Fore completely on purpose. He’s a right wing Q whatever nutcase.

Thom should be ashamed of posting this just because he, for whatever reasons, dislikes elementary. Another step on the slippery slope to becoming a full on right winger, just like his cheerleading for the US army, I guess.

2022-03-09 11:11 pm

HankG
I had an enjoyable ElementaryOS experience for about a year or so. With the update needing a fresh install I decided to give Garuda a try instead. It works as well or better but it is a rolling release which has its advantages too. If I had kept up using Elementary I’d probably have started sending them money. Since I didn’t I never got that far. I fund other distros I use substantially to help them out. I still find it a shame what is going on.

Cassidy’s follow up says he doesn’t think ElementaryOS will die but obviously an organization that can’t afford staff has a problem. That’d be the second bigger Linux Distros to hit the skids recently with staffing issues. Solus being the other.
2022-03-10 3:29 am

tux2bsd
In general the Scientologists keep their bullshit to themselves, if only the woke mob could take notes…

2022-03-09 10:26 pm

DefineDecision

Others have said the Lunduke problems better than me, so I’ll just chime in with what makes elementary more sympathetic to me anyways: the fact it’s a Linux distro doesn’t matter because that’s just plumbing. What matters is creating a usable desktop with a sustainable application ecosystem (the whole AppCentre thing). Comparing it to say, Fedora is apples and oranges. It wasn’t all the way there to its goals, but it had a lot of ambition. With that ambition is the need to actually develop it though.

Regarding the drama; it’s unfortunate, I see both sides of it. Personally, I’m more sympathetic to Danielle’s argument, but it’s not how the company was structured. I’m hoping for the best, but expecting the worst.

2022-03-10 2:46 am

Nemerian

So, a distro that’s both poorly done, and masking it with interpersonal drama on top?
Of course.

2022-03-10 3:43 am

bubi
It’s what it is. Technology makes people crazy.
2022-03-10 8:38 am

HankG
Is it poorly done? I found it very enjoyable to use, with the exception of the not being able between major versions. I will say that I only had experience trying to work with software that was in their app store and I had it on a machine that was pretty much just used for internet browsing, word processing, etc.

2022-03-10 4:22 am

fx__

I had no idea Lunduke was like this, that’s disappointing because I actually liked some of his videos but I unsubscribed from his YouTube channel just now.

2022-03-10 9:56 am

Alfman verbose=1

So it’s been sidelined, but does anyone care to talk about the actual topic? Haha.

Whenever I see projects like this suffering over thousands of dollars while the giants are making trillions, it makes me wonder about the viability of these alternatives. They have their fans obviously, but is that enough to sustain them long term? With software, development costs are relatively fixed and the marginal costs are extremely low. A small team can make good products, but if they’re constantly struggling to raise money from their small userbase, that may not be enough to support them.

We call “linux” an alternative, but it’s still relatively huge compared to many in the long tail. Linux has the critical mass needed to get funding, but many of these smaller projects do not. Do we live in a world where a few giants can thrive while almost everyone else ultimately fails?

2022-03-11 9:56 am

dark2
Outside of the Linux community echo chamber, most people consider the success of Ubuntu and Fedora to be related to their server support contracts, and not desktop. These small projects will simply never have the budget or time to make a competing OS. Look at Fuchsia’s progress: A billion dollar company still taking 8 years to develop a brand new OS because that’s about how long it takes. The OS world is a world where only giants can thrive because of the time and budget needed to make a new one (outside of hobby/research ones).

2022-03-11 11:26 am

Alfman verbose=1
dark2,

Outside of the Linux community echo chamber, most people consider the success of Ubuntu and Fedora to be related to their server support contracts, and not desktop.

Yeah, that seems to be the case.

These small projects will simply never have the budget or time to make a competing OS. The OS world is a world where only giants can thrive because of the time and budget needed to make a new one (outside of hobby/research ones).

I think small teams occasionally can succeed in building the OS, but they’ll probably take an economic loss in the process and won’t have the resources to market their product against established incumbents. Even microsoft failed to take a meaningful share of the mobile market with a working product in hand because the apple/google duopoly had already carved up the market. So for developers who are not independently wealthy It becomes a long term struggle to be profitable or at least sustainable. Mark Shuttleworth pulled it off with ubuntu and IMHO linux has benefited greatly as a result, but his being worth half a billion gave him the ability to bankroll his project in a manor that isn’t typically available to others. It’s good that it worked for him, but he didn’t trail blaze a path that an average team could follow given their economic realities. Not to mention doing so would mean competing with ubuntu.

I guess maybe if someone could convince other billionaires to take an interest in other alternative operating systems, they’d have better chances although I don’t know that’s plausible and it would still be very tough to capture market share from rivals who are stronger today.

2022-03-10 9:58 am

NathanJHill

This is not good news, as Elementary OS has been one of the more intriguing Linux options out there. And specifically trying to encourage developers to code pretty and unique apps is admirable. Thanks for sharing the story – even if the author of that blog is awful.

2022-03-10 3:11 pm

Drunkula

Silly me. I had to lookup what deadnaming was. Now I know.

2022-03-11 1:35 am

tux2bsd
Ludicrous isn’t it. Like I posted yesterday, “mysteriously” deleted:

Scientologists keep most of their nonsense to themselves, if only the woke mob had the decency…

2022-03-11 4:37 am

jalnl
You can’t compare a secretive religion that destroys people’s lives with people that call out social injustice (if that’s what you mean by “woke mob”).

Like I wrote below, “If I decide to go by “Jack” instead of “Pete”, and you call me “Pete” while you know I want to be called “Jack”, you’re a dick. If you do the same to a trans person, you’re also a bigot, as you’re denying that other person their social transition.”

2022-03-12 4:43 am

gfx1
Calling Danielle Daniel or Dan seems to be bad? Something to get upset about? If a guy desides he wants to were a dress let him be confused.

2022-03-10 3:38 pm

kurkosdr

Deadnaming? That’s the horrible crime that makes him a bigot?

There is still no full consensus as to whether gender is purely a social construct. I mean, if gender is purely a social construct, why do we divide sports by gender, which is a practice based on the assumption that gender is a concept with at least some basis in biological reality? I have never received a real answer from anyone on this.

Would I personally deadname someone or call them pronouns they don’t want to be called with? Nope, because I want to be nice to people. Should Lunduke be more accommodating toward other contributors? Yes (you can be a twat without being a bigot, and lunduke looks like a twat). Do people without a medical certificate proving biological transition get to call people who refer to them with wrong names and pronouns bigots? Well, that depends on whether gender is a purely social construct or whether it has at least some basis on biological reality, and the jury is still out on that.

So, for the time being, I wouldn’t deadname someone or call them wrong pronouns, but I also wouldn’t call other people bigots for deadnaming or misgendering a person who hasn’t biologically transitioned.

Disclaimer: Not religious, so no strong opinions on the subject, but I refuse to accept the whole “it’s a social construct because we say it’s a social construct” argument when there is at least some evidence it’s not (sports). Aka, I will not go along to get along.

2022-03-10 7:13 pm

Morgan
I mean, if gender is purely a social construct, why do we divide sports by gender, which is a practice based on the assumption that gender is a concept with at least some basis in biological reality?

“I mean, if race is purely a social construct, why did we treat African Americans the way we did in American history, including enslaving them and segregating them, which was a practice based on the assumption that the white man was superior to the black man?”

That is what you sound like. Also, just because we have always and still do separate sports by gender doesn’t mean we *should* separate sports by gender. Again, see the above logical fallacy that any one “race” is superior to another.

So, for the time being, I wouldn’t deadname someone or call them wrong pronouns, but I also wouldn’t call other people bigots for deadnaming or misgendering a person who hasn’t biologically transitioned.

That’s noble of you, but in this particular case the deadnaming was an obvious dig at Danielle. As I posted above, the quotes were taken directly from her Twitter feed, which prominently shows her name and preferred pronouns, and Bryan is infamous for his bigotry and transphobia. To try to excuse him because “maybe he didn’t know/didn’t mean to” after reading the comments here that inform you of such, is disingenuous.

2022-03-10 7:40 pm

kurkosdr
Also, just because we have always and still do separate sports by gender doesn’t mean we *should* separate sports by gender.

Finally, someone said it: If gender is a social construct, then we should stop separating sports by gender. Because you can’t have it both.

Not many people have the nerve to say that, because doing so would effectively prevent biological women from gaining any medals, and as a result is politically non-viable.

But then there is the issue we are also separating prisons by gender. Do you think prisons should be separated by gender?

2022-03-11 12:58 pm

Morgan
But then there is the issue we are also separating prisons by gender. Do you think prisons should be separated by gender?

Having worked in law enforcement and specifically as a jail officer when I was younger, I say absolutely, positively yes. Not just gender, but age, medical history, disability, type and severity of charges, criminal history, gang/terrorist/hate group affiliations, and psychological assessment all factor into housing decisions in jails and prisons. This is for the safety of the inmates as well as the staff. You’re trying to raise a strawman you know absolutely nothing about with someone who absolutely does know what he’s talking about. Try again.

2022-03-11 4:46 pm

Alfman verbose=1
Morgan,

Having worked in law enforcement and specifically as a jail officer when I was younger,

You know what, picturing lurch as a jail officer is absolutely hilarious 🙂
2022-03-11 6:44 pm

Morgan
@Alfman:

Believe it or not, that was my nickname among the inmates and coworkers too! I’m 6’4″ and was skinny back then so it fit. He’s my favorite Addams family member so I kept the moniker. 🙂
2022-03-13 12:45 pm

cybergorf
Here you go: someone else gave you a name and called you by that.
Luckily you liked the moniker, but they would not have stopped calling you “Lurch” if you didn’t…
You had to deal with it, and it’s not traumatizing.
But “deadnaming” is?
2022-03-13 1:02 pm

Alfman verbose=1
cybergorf,

Here you go: someone else gave you a name and called you by that.
Luckily you liked the moniker, but they would not have stopped calling you “Lurch” if you didn’t…
You had to deal with it, and it’s not traumatizing.
But “deadnaming” is?

I was picturing his avatar’s character as a jail officer. For anyone unfamiliar with the character, his name is literally “Lurch”.
https://www.ultraswank.net/podcast/7920-lurch/
2022-03-14 7:05 am

Morgan
@cybergorf:

I get that you’re just trolling, but I’m going to respond as if you are sincere.

You’re trying to compare a nickname given to me that I thought was funny and cool, but didn’t choose for myself, with someone who chooses a new name based on their true self and asking others to respect said change. It’s not at all the same thing. I didn’t legally change my name to “Lurch”, and really no one currently calls me that, I just use the Lurch avatar online as a personal joke that I find funny and silly. It pleases me to do so but I don’t expect or ask anyone to call me that because it’s not my name, my name is Morgan.

For someone who is trans, their entire old identity has changed, and their name change is part of it (and to be clear, not all trans people change their names). In most cases it’s a legal name change as well. Calling someone by their former name who has legally changed their name is nonsensical and incorrect, it doesn’t matter if they are trans or not, but especially for trans folks it’s offensive because you’re treating them as if they are still the person they didn’t want to be and left behind so they could be their true self.

I don’t have a stake in this; I’m cis and I know only a handful of trans people in person and a few more online, but I have enough common sense and empathy to understand that intentionally deadnaming anyone is offensive and bigoted.
2022-03-15 1:21 am

cybergorf
My point was:
Names are usually given by someone else. Hence the term “given name”.
Be it by your parents, or as a nickname later in life or sometimes even long after someone is dead like e.g. “William the Conqueror”.
So mostly it is not up to ourselves, what name we are called.
2022-03-15 7:21 pm

cybergorf
@Morgan
“I get that you’re just trolling, but I’m going to respond as if you are sincere.”

One last thought:
Please do not accuse others, that happen to have an other perspective or just do not agree of “trolling”.

2022-03-10 8:38 pm

Alfman verbose=1
Morgan,

That is what you sound like. Also, just because we have always and still do separate sports by gender doesn’t mean we *should* separate sports by gender. Again, see the above logical fallacy that any one “race” is superior to another.

Not for nothing but there are reasons other than transphobia to separate sexes in competitive sports…thus the different opinions. I understand why you are upset but it is not remotely fair to compare this to racism. It is a complex & nuanced issue that good people can feel conflicted about.

2022-03-11 4:15 am

jalnl
It’s not as much not “fair” to compare it to racism, but it is dangerous as well, as we’ve seen the same discussion back in the days whether being gay was a “choice” vs. “biology”. “Race” is a social construct, but based (at least in the US) on a biological reality. Nobody can “choose” their race (yes, I’m aware there are edge cases!), but people can “choose” to present as the opposite gender. What we indeed need to realize is that no matter whether gender is a social construct (it certainly is), and whether biological sex exist (it certainly does), that’s still no good reason to intentionally hurt people just because you disagree with how they want to live their lives.

2022-03-11 4:31 am

jalnl
Deadnaming? That’s the horrible crime that makes him a bigot?

“Calling a black person a n*r, that’s the horrible crime that makes him a racist?” – err… yeah, exactly that. When you intentionally deadname a trans person because you either deny their transness or just want to hurt them makes you a bigot.

Would I personally deadname someone or call them pronouns they don’t want to be called with? Nope, because I want to be nice to people.

Even to people, it seems, you can’t really stand. Even to people who you think shouldn’t complain if they are abused or bullied, and there’s nothing you are going to do about when you see it happening. As long as you’re “nice” you’re happy with yourself. I bet you even let them use your bathroom!

Do people without a medical certificate proving biological transition get to call people who refer to them with wrong names and pronouns bigots?

There is no such thing as “biological transition”. There’s social transition, there’s HRT, and there’s surgery, in that order. Perhaps you’re thinking only of the latter, or the latter two. However, the name change is in the first, the social transition. If someone asks you to use a different name, and you deliberatly don’t do that, you’re being a huge dick. If I decide to go by “Jack” instead of “Pete”, and you call me “Pete” while you know I want to be called “Jack”, you’re a dick. If you do the same to a trans person, you’re also a bigot, as you’re denying that other person their social transition.

Well, that depends on whether gender is a purely social construct or whether it has at least some basis on biological reality, and the jury is still out on that.

There’s no jury “out on that”, you’re strawmanning here. Gender is a purely social construct, that has for a large part it’s basis in biological reality. Everywhere around the world, gender has its main devision between “biological male” and “biological female”, but also everywhere around the world we see that it is sometimes possible for people to be seen as the other gender, for whatever reason (e.g. being gay). Sometimes there’s a third gender, or a fourth, even though there are still two main biological sexes.

So, for the time being, I wouldn’t deadname someone or call them wrong pronouns, but I also wouldn’t call other people bigots for deadnaming or misgendering a person who hasn’t biologically transitioned.

And that makes you an enabler of bigotry.

2022-03-11 10:11 am

kurkosdr
Gender is a purely social construct, that has for a large part it’s basis in biological reality.

See, that’s the part I find contradictory. Something is either a social construct aka something that has been made up (like titles of nobility here in the UK), or it has a basis in reality aka biological reality in our case.

You can’t have it both ways.

2022-03-11 10:23 am

Thom Holwerda
Gender vs. sex. This isn’t rocket science.

2022-03-11 11:14 am

kurkosdr
Stature vs height. This isn’t rocket science.

I can demand that you say my stature is “well above average” even though it is thoroughly average as much as I want, but, unless I somehow make it a biological reality via surgery, you don’t actually have to.
2022-03-11 11:22 am

kurkosdr
I mean, you can say my stature is “well above average” (even though it is thoroughly average) if you want to be nice and accommodating towards me, but, unless I make it a biological reality (increase my height via surgery or whatever), you don’t have to.

The fact we separate sports by gender, and the fact we don’t allow people of a stature that is well below a safe limit to ride some amusement rides, means that both gender and stature are based on biological reality and hence are not social constructs.
2022-03-11 12:53 pm

Alfman verbose=1
I kind of find it regrettable that the english language uses sexist pronouns in the first place. It’s completely unnecessary from a linguistic standpoint. It’s exacerbated by the internet where we’re all just people and yet language forces us to make a determination.
2022-03-14 2:49 am

Xanady Asem
Thom, you’re dealing with old white male farts, who have trouble coping with something as simple as a minor change in a GUI, so the whole concept of gender/sexuality being a spectrum is way outside their grasp. It literally is rocket science to them.
2022-03-14 9:49 am

kurkosdr
@javiercero

How about Thom answers the simple question of whether gender is a social construct (aka something that has been made up, like titles of nobility here in the UK) or it has a basis in biological reality (and that’s why we need to separate sports by gender)? Can’t have it both ways.

Anyone can play with the whole “gender vs sex” thing just like anyone can play with the whole “stature vs height” thing, but it doesn’t answer the question.

—

Also, “flat-design” kind of sucks, provenly so: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/flat-ui-less-attention-cause-uncertainty/. Any flat-design advocacy I’ve heard boils down to “it’s good because because I say it’s good” or “it’s good because because it drives demand for hi-dpi displays” (not by flat-design being better than non-flat in hi-dpi displays but by being downright butt-ugly in medium-dpi displays, unlike non-flat design which looks good in both).

Moving buttons around also kind of sucks unless it serves a purpose.

That’s all “progress” in UI design that has happened in the last 10 years or so.
2022-03-14 3:05 pm

Xanady Asem
Thank you for going out of your way to prove my point.
2022-03-15 8:24 am

kurkosdr
@javiercero1

Always glad to be of service, and by that I mean make people like you run out of arguments.

Once again, the whole “gender as a social construct” proponents had to resort to “it’s a social construct because we say it’s a social construct, and don’t you dare question us, please ignore the fact we separate sports by gender due gender being based on biological reality”.

2022-03-10 8:29 pm

The1stImmortal

Thankfully, Wayback has the uncensored version of this post still.
For the record, I really don’t care what label people give the pointer to another person, as long as the pointer can be successfully dereferenced.

2022-03-11 4:10 am

jalnl
Ah, so you don’t care if someone calls a black person a n*r, because you know it’s a pointer to a black person? How extremely priviliged of you.

2022-03-11 6:05 am

bubi
Nobody likes naggers though. Had a couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses stopping by yesterday and they had God himself backing up their claims.
2022-03-11 7:40 am

The1stImmortal
No, that wouldn’t be sufficiently precise to identify the person being referred to in most cases.
I’m not sure what privilege is involved here regardless.

2022-03-11 2:40 am

KonradTheCat

Abso-fucking-lutely

2022-03-11 6:20 am

sixtyfive

Thom, the whole very sad deadnaming thing notwithstanding: now the article is without any sauce. Normally when you post something that raises my eyebrow, I can follow the link(s) and see for myself. As it stands with this, there’s a pretty hefty claim here on the site not backed by anything – no source, no background info, no nothing. Surely it would be good to either remove the article altogether or expand it enough so that it doesn’t look like an unfair and baseless claim towards this project?

2022-03-11 9:39 am

kallisti5

I liked Elementary OS early on, but after the whole “If you’re not paying for Elementary OS you’re stealing it” comment from them, i’ve avoided it like the plague.

Glad I did, none of this is surprising from a group with that attitude.

2022-03-14 9:08 am

sixtyfive
What is _so_ wrong about putting a lot of work into something and then asking for some money? I’m not using it either, but neither am I writing borderline hateful (“like the plague”) comments about it. It’s their choice in the end. Noone is asking you to like it.

2022-03-12 12:18 pm

mbpark

Now he’s saying he’s welcome to all, especially Russians.

How about no.

2022-03-15 9:31 pm

wildbinks

How do I view old article? I’m from China, transgender is a mental illness here so don’t care. ALSO WHAT IS deadname mean? Work for firm who uses Elementary OS, need to know if affect us, we may switch to 统一操作系统 if issue. Sorry if bad English use Baidu translate, thanks.

2022-03-18 11:47 am

rainbowsocks

Hi, long time lurker here, bit late to the party. But yeah three things:

1. Thanks Thom for the apology.

2. IMO it’s a shame if Elementary OS is sinking, because unlike a lot of paint-by-numbers desktop distros they actually did something unique and useful – they created their own desktop environment and apps, and in a way that showcases the Vala language as well. (Sure Vala doesn’t have e.g. Rust’s safety features, but it’s safer than using C directly, and IMO it’s good to bring compiled languages that aren’t C/C++ more into the desktop space.) Even if the UI is a bit of an OSX ripoff, a new desktop and app suite in a safer language is at least something.

3. I’m actually really impressed that the first few commenters were pointing out the article’s transphobia, instead of the wall-to-wall right wing bullshit that I’ve come to associate with OSNews comments in the last few years. I’ve worked in tech on and off for about a decade and always found the industry kind of right leaning and male dominated, but I feel like the OSNews comment section has gotten WAY right of the norm lately. IDK why the change here and now, but it’s good to see that not everyone here is a raging wingnut and/or willing to tolerate raging wingnuts.