At the end of the day, one of our FullMods did already respond in the thread regarding its initial purpose of potentially adding a feature to the site itself. I believe that should settle the immediate purpose of the thread.

In my language additionally to pronouns, almost every noun, adjective and article indicates gender. So I cannot just think “they” or “$username” and not assume gender. My brain (just like all of those who have less gendered languages) always assumes gender. But even if I had a way of keeping gender out of my language, I am still living in a society where gender is assumed for everyone. (I definitely have the assumption that most users on this platform are male.)

Might be, you are “usually correct“ although you don’t care. But for quite some people your “oops, I made this mistake once, please just correct my mistake” is the same for most people. Meaning: A lot of people are “by mistake” misgendering specific persons that don’t fit their expectations. So to those often misgendered persons, it’s a painful everyday situation to get misgendered and they might have no resources left to correct all those people who spend their one mistake on exactly them.

Something like a pronoun field could safe all people from getting misgendered.

And since it’s an information that’s basic to my language, I need it whenever I think or talk about a person or interact with them. So on a place where people interact, I’d very much appreciate it, if this information was as easily accessible as the personal information “name”.

(They pronouns for me, please.)

Also to make up a “we” versus “they” already implies that people who don’t fit your expectations (who are the “diverse” to your “normal”) are excluded up front and have to fight to be included in a not “diverse” community. But so far I thought SRC isn’t a platform that only allows binary dya cis people to speedrun. So hopefully the idea was that anyone can speedrun and be part of the community and not be excluded as “diverse” or has to accept getting misgendered.

How about a 140-character bio where users can write what they want.

Mine would say "he/him, frequently traveling, Tweet me to reach me, always down for a Titan Souls randomizer race" It's a way to very briefly introduce yourself if you have strong preferences on how you should be addressed.

I'm pretty sure the mods have little say on what gets implemented, so if you think this is a decent solution feel free to take it and put it in the feedback thread. I'm not the first to suggest this idea.

The only people who have a problem with it are people who think it's "made up" or it's "too hard". Learning anything takes time. More information shouldn't be a problem. One little short line with predefined choices shouldn't be a problem. One little short line that's optional shouldn't be a problem. Congrats on being someone that doesn't feel a way that makes a large portion of your social interactions terrible. Congrats on not having to question if what you feel is valid and having to hear people joke about how you feel being a joke and unimportant. Congrats on not having the world tell you how you feel. Be glad you don't have to live with that because I wouldn't wish it on anybody.

As for the feedback thread, nice.

TL;DR: Be a decent human and stop complaining unless it's something that you have to suffer through sometimes.

?

Yesterday I realised the option to add pronouns to your profile (either in a profile bio or a specific pronoun field) is first and foremost helpful to people who are aware of gender issues anyway but isn't able to change the mentality of certain people in the community over night. I see so many streamers greet new followers with "Welcome, man!" or say things like "Let's go, boys!" even if they know women and non-binary people are watching their streams. It's because we are used to the idea that every gamer, speedrunner, etc. is a cis man. But that's not the case. I'm aware the majority of gamers in general and speedrunners in particular is male but that doesn't make it right. Especially when you consider how hurtful it is for trans people to be addressed with the wrong gender. Regardless of intent, getting called "man" just hurts me and that even happened to me with people who know I'm a girl. So am I saying adding pronouns to profiles is useless because of the mentality many people have? Not at all. I'm fully aware it won't change things overnight and it won't stop people from being intentionally hurtful. But it could raise awareness for the fact that there are in fact gamers and speedrunners who are not male, for the fact that the speedrunning community is diverse (not only) in regards to gender. If, for example, people would see users in this fourum with "she/her" or "they/them" pronouns on a daily basis (which should be seen under the profile picture or when you hover over the username in my opinion) it would hopefully slowly change our assumption that gamers and speedrunners are male by default. And I hope this will lead to more people using more gender neutral language. It's so easy to say "Welcome, friend!" or "Let's go, folks!", it's a small thing with a big impact for certain people in the community.

I don't think assuming everyone is male is the predominantly case though. Especially in the small speedrunning community, where there are plenty of trans people. As I pointed out before there are things that lead people to assume one way or the other. In chat it would be the user name, in a forum the avatar too. Your name is Laika, who was a female dog and your portrait has a lgbt flag, so any reasonable person would assume to use she. It's just like one's real name and appearance in real life. People feel weird about adding a gender tag, because the irl equivalent would be tattooing your gender on your face. When it comes to greetings it feels extreme to get offended at something playful like boys/dudes/girls. Being misgendered is obviously unpleasant. When someone does it on purpose it is offensive. There are gonna be respectful people and there are gonna be pieces of shit beyond reason. People ARE gonna make mistakes sometimes and it should be ok if they correct themselves. Living in fear of that happening should not be a thing, that is not a healthy mindset. I think one easy step is for people that really care about this to make sure their username reflects their identity well and is not ambiguous.

With that said, I respectfully suggest that we lock this thread. The given feedback will be taken into consideration, which was actual question of the initial post in this thread. In the future, I strongly suggest to use the feedback thread, simply because of centralization.