Occasionally one makes mistakes. On this occasion I have made an enormous one. I hope this post will go some small way to put it right and explain how it came about. I don't seek to excuse anything I said or did.
The entire ugly thread started last week when I replied to this message from ng0: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2017-03/msg00482.html Unfortunately, I replied having read only ng0's postscript and not the context in which it was written. I erroneously thought ng0 was telling us that one should ALWAYS use singular-they when referring to ANY indefinite individual in the third person. It never occured to me (as is obvious when I now read it properly) that this was a request from ng0 to refer to themselves that way. I assumed the context was some patch to the Guix user-manual. I did not read the mail properly and I shouted off before I was in possession of the facts. In my mistaken belief that ng0 was trying to impose upon the world new rules of English grammar, I considered this to be an assault on freedom of speech. I told ng0 I would refuse to comply, having completely misunderstood (and failed to clarify) the request. Ng0's angry response, I attributed to wounded pride, an over-inflated ego and a childish temperament on ng0's part. I now see that this was totally unfounded. Under the circumstances, ng0 had every right to feel extremely insulted and very angry at what I said. The people who sprang to his defence are commendable. In the very long flame-war which followed I thought I was acting in the interests of freedom of speech (and saving the English language at the same time). Had I taken the time to check the facts before opening my mouth, this entire unpleasant episode would have been avoided. I did not do so, and that was inexcusable. I apologise to ng0 without reservation. If I ever have cause to discuss ng0 in the third person, I will of course do so using their pronoun of choice. I apologise too, to the rest of this list for wasting time and resources, on a completely unnecessary flame-war, which could have been avoided if only I had fully read a post before replying. J' -- Avoid eavesdropping. Send strong encrypted email. PGP Public key ID: 1024D/2DE827B3 fingerprint = 8797 A26D 0854 2EAB 0285 A290 8A67 719C 2DE8 27B3 See http://sks-keyservers.net or any PGP keyserver for public key.
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