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.
When talking about someone, is using the commonly accepted neutral “they” allowed, or is it considered non-tolerable misgendering?
Are you accepting that this is in fact misgendering, but still asking whether it’s an acceptable form of misgendering?
I am assuming it as “not adding gender to the sentence”. Neutral. Leaving it out. Not misgendering. It is how people have always talked about someone when the gender is either unknown, irrelevant, or hard to assume.
I am respecting a site or community’s rule that this is not the case on their space, but it’s such a deviation from the norm that I want it to be clear.
The qualifier “non-tolerable” was clumsy. I was trying to ask if it fell more on “honest mistake, but not allowed” or “assumed to be an intentional transphobic trangression”.
Understandable, but
Not misgendering. It is how people have always talked about someone when the gender is either unknown, irrelevant, or hard to assume
Your later comment suggests you have a particular user in mind, in which case that user’s pronouns are known, relevant, and require no assumption.
I am respecting a site or community’s rule that this is not the case on their space, but it’s such a deviation from the norm that I want it to be clear.
It should be about respecting the individual(/system/thing), not just respecting a rule?
I was trying to ask if it fell more on “honest mistake, but not allowed” or “assumed to be an intentional transphobic trangression”.
It doesn’t sound like an honest mistake. Maybe it was from the user you mentioned who got banned, but it sounds like you’re trying to see if it’s okay for you to do it on purpose.
But maybe I’m misunderstanding! I would like to be
Thanks for responding! I hope you have the patience to help me understand a bit more. :)
I guess we differ on whether you can respectfully refer to someone without gendered language?
Meaning, the mistake was assuming you could be neutral, not on not knowing the requested gender.
E.g. in academia (at least in my country) we tend to talk about authors of a particular paper as “they” whether they are one, several, male, female etc, even if you know their gender. It is consided respectful, unassuming and inclusive.
Do you think it is disrespectful to e.g. say “I love my partner, they bought me legos for christmas” when talking about my spouse to a colleague even I know she’s female? Where my motivation is to not have gender in the conversation?
