cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/20091173
I’ve been waiting until after Christmas day to make this post, but some of our communities recently have had a lot of noise and upset over someone that uses neopronouns that most people are unfamiliar with.
So I want to make this clear. A persons pronouns are to be respected. This is true when the user is using neopronouns that you’re unfamiliar with. It’s true even if you think someone is trolling. Pronouns are not rewards for good behaviour. They aren’t only to be respected when you like the person you’re interacting with, or if their pronouns “make sense” to you. Trolls, spammers, twitter users, it doesn’t matter who they are, your options are to respect their pronouns, or to not engage with them.
I really want to re-iterate the importance of this. Gender diverse folk are undermined, invalidated and questioned at every step of our lives. As a community, we need to be working to undo that, not creating more of it, and that means there is no space for treating pronouns (including neopronouns) as a reward for good behaviour.
This isn’t a free reign for trolls and spammers. The rules still apply. Trolling, spamming, etc will continue to be dealt with, but it’s not an excuse to act as if respecting someones pronouns is optional.
A lot of people say the same things about trans folks in terms of gay rights. Some people might be fucking around, but drawing a line in the sand like that is going to inevitably invalidate people with legitimate identities. And if you really don’t want to use them, it’s super easy to just ignore. Idk if I’ve ever even had to refer to someone with third person pronouns on Lemmy.
Some people might be fucking around, but drawing a line in the sand like that is going to inevitably invalidate people with legitimate identities.
All concepts are just lines in the sand, even down into STEM. Lines have to be drawn somewhere. The question is whether the new line drawn or erased disrupts other lines, who it benefits, and what it’s worth. I happen to have a very low opinion of the idea that gender is entirely arbitrary and without any line in the sand, and that “I identify as an attack helicopter” is not a conservative defamation of the trans and NB community, but a legitimate point of view.
And if you really don’t want to use them, it’s super easy to just ignore.
The commenter was removed and banned for disagreeing with the concept that dragonfucker is a gender. On the meta comm for the instance. Under a post by the main admin.
Idk if I’ve ever even had to refer to someone with third person pronouns on Lemmy.
Dragonfucker has been banned from a number of communities for insisting on just that.
the human brain is good enough of a prediction machine to not need a clean linear line in the sand imo, I’d like to believe that our judgement ability is closer to a support vector machine than a simple one dimensional ‘greater than’ statement
e.g. you’d know if someone was actually identifying as an attack helicopter as opposed to trolling by saying so, right? maybe it’s just a phase for them but people have phases (imo) because they need to probe and gather first hand experience to learn
Even if we take the person pug is talking about at face value (which, frankly, we shouldn’t for them in particular), it’s not a gender identity. It’s just an identity. We don’t have a pronoun for every granular identity under the sun, so it’s weird we accept that some people feel the need to have totally unique ones, which goes against the point of pronouns to begin with.
That said, being referred to in the third person would actually be fine imo, but I’ve been primed for that by being a weeb.
That might’ve gone over better if it didn’t read like an angry rant against “idiots”/“adult children”/“spoiled little shits”
I cannot wait for mockery and satire to make a resurgence in the media throughout the 2030s and 40s, as a reaction to the American Left’s insane bent for language policing. It’s going to be wonderful.
No one needs pronouns on the web. If I wanted to quote or refer to the OP, I would simply use the proper noun ‘qaz’ - qaz says, qaz wrote. It reminds me of an absurd Microsoft keynote presentation a couple of years ago where each host not only provided their names as well as a description of their clothing for vision-impaired viewers (useful information), but tacked on their pronouns too. ‘Over to you, Lisa!’ ‘Thanks Bob’.
I have no sympathy for instances like Blahaj in this particular aspect of moderation. This is a social and political millstone you fitted around your own necks.
