I paid a visit to Hal Abelson. “Your calculations do show differences in accuracy, but what’s the harm? Why should people care?” Hal’s questions lingered with me. “Is being misclassified harmful?” “Does it matter if a parliament member is misgendered?” Maybe the example I had chosen was not compelling enough, or maybe having a committee of all men made them less sensitive to the implications of misgendering women? To me this was akin to announcing, “She was hit by a brick; look at the evidence” and then being asked, “How do we know being hit by a brick is harmful?” I could not assume everyone
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