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like, who cares if they can't wrap their head around people using pronouns different from the norm. you don't have to understand what makes someone hate he/she/they. just show some basic human decency and respect the people who use them. it doesn't hurt you, and it means to world to whoever is asking.
I actually use comrade sometimes when I don't know someone's pronouns.
my responses from earlier:
yeah, the same way your name refers to you, pronouns do as well. both are also capable of gendering you. for example, I’m trans and I prefer to be gendered as a woman. same way, some NB people do in fact want to be gendered but as some gender that doesn’t fit within our binary – so there are no pronouns for them to use and they’re forced to create new ones.
but really, this comes down to really basic respect for the identity and self-determination of another person. it ultimately does not matter why someone wishes to be referred to a certain way. would you balk at addressing someone by a particular name? what if they’re parents gave it to them? what if it’s a joke in your culture but serious in theirs? why do you get to be the arbiter of how someone else is referred to?
the key point is that people outside the binary have genders, would like to be gendered, and the existing pronouns do not meet the bill because they either refer to binary gender or are neutral.
I think my feelings about it is...
stop and consider why your feelings are what matter here.
this is honestly the point that's been getting to me all day. there sure are a hell of a lot of cis people with opinions about other people's pronouns and they're willing to go pretty fucking far* to make sure we all know it.
Personally though I’d rather have only one pronoun in English, your choice as to if it’s comrade or they.
this would suck pretty badly for me. my pronouns are emphatically not they/them or comrade.
(*): CW: transphobia, suicide
spoiler
Removed Comment My new opinion is the only good removed is a dead removed. Kill yourself bitch by Sarcasm24
reason: Not too hard to guess what those slurs were. Bigotry, harassment, TERF shit. Fuck off.
I am explicitly telling you that that's not true. if you directly address me with they/them knowing that, you are intentionally misgendering. I am far from unique on this and it's true for some of both cis and trans people.
neutral is more masc than I am. but seriously, I don't owe you even that explanation. who the hell are you to tell me how I should feel when I'm addressed a particular way? they/them makes me feel othered. why do you need more than that?
they/them makes me feel othered. why do you need more than that?
I think you’re just looking for things to get upset about
Go fuck yourself forever, WOW
what? I literally used it as an example of why something wouldn't work. what I'm upset about is the presumption that you know how I feel better than I do.
Arguments from tradition and authority eh? Fuck off with that reactionary shit lmao
- prescriptivism is only one and fairly outdated view of language.
- the grammatical usage of the term does not negate its connotations in actual use. moreover, I can neither justify myself to you nor provide you a satisfactory logical explanation because there isn't one -- I asked people to call me they/them for a while and discovered through experience that it does not sit well with me. why do you feel entitled to police how I feel about myself
So in that case if I’m referring to you but don’t know your pronouns, what do you prefer??? They/them is just like, the role of that in English. It’s meant to be a word without gender connotation, like, I’m trans and I don’t get why you can’t just be accommodating to people. Do you mean on here on Chapo.chat you wouldn’t like it, or like does that apply to real life too where your pronouns aren’t next to your name and people just gotta go neutral until they know.
if you don't know my pronouns, you're either going to guess, go with they/them, or ask me. how can my preference matter until you ask me? if you ask me, I'm going to tell you she/her. if you guess or go with they/them, I'm going to correct you at my first opportunity.
I'm not talking about what people should do before they know. I'm saying that once they do, they/them are not my pronouns and it's incorrect to use them for me.
on this website, if you're referring to me it's because you can see my username so my flair is visible - they/them is consequently not appropriate.
use the flair next to someone's name, what's complicated about this?
Oh, this was never made clear and from an outsider's perspective it looked like you meant that using they/them at any point was transphobic, even when your preferences weren't known
this was in response to a thread that started based on someone saying they would prefer a world where we used no pronouns but they or comrade. I replied that that would suck for me because my pronouns are not they/them. people then started arguing with me that those pronouns must apply to me whatever my feelings. at what point was I not clear that I'm talking about my pronouns?
this would suck pretty badly for me. my pronouns are emphatically not they/them or comrade.
I am explicitly telling you that that’s not true. if you directly address me with they/them knowing that, you are intentionally misgendering. I am far from unique on this and it’s true for some of both cis and trans people.
I think they're on the grammatical gender train but I don't have the patience or wherewithal left to unpack that tonight.
I hope I’m not insulting anyone while trying to educate myself
no, but other people are being insulting and it's overall a miserable experience to be constantly asked to justify your own existence. I honestly think this is my sixth or seventh time having virtually this same exact conversation in about 3 hours.
Mostly I’m just posting them because putting things in writing makes me actually think about what I’m thinking/get a critical understanding of why an “unorthodox” pronoun confuses me/what it means to identify as “doe”.
the key here is that you in a very fundamental way, you can't understand someone else's gender. no one can. we all just have to trust each other, even when the ask seems strange. I explained how someone ends up at uncommon neopronouns in reply to you a little up thread.
With regards to only one pronoun - that was more of an allusion to a society that put way less emphasis on gender.
we want to abolish the social construct, not the things that make us different from one another. why would we need to collapse down to one pronoun? in a world where we've abolished the cishetero patriarchy, there's no reason to police how people choose to express their gender identities. and there's even less reason, if that's possible, to police someone's gender identity.
But in such a society (i.e. one where people didn’t assume a gender based on your outward appearance, and gender wasn’t something you are obligated to perform) would pronouns be as important?
how could I possibly know? I'm me and that means I'm the composite of my years of experience in this society. if you took me today and transported me to that world, my gender identity would still be exactly as important to me. and why shouldn't it remain important to people in that world? again, the harm in gender comes from the social construct, not from how people identity or ask to be referred to.
https://libcom.org/library/gender-nihilism-anti-manifesto
Thanks for taking the time to talk to me about it even though you might be sick of it! I appreciate the work you’re putting into the community.
this actually means a lot given my day. thank you.
This makes a lot of sense to me - I think I’ve had previously a more naive view of neopronouns like “choose the pronouns that conform most closely to the way you want society to view you”
yeah, you'll hear this described as the notion of gender as a performance. that idea is obviously very hard on NB people and trans people who can't pass because it demands recognition by an other to be yourself.
Looking at it from the lens of “I’d like to be called this even if you don’t understand what that means” makes doe make a lot more sense to me
it goes deeper than that. I can't even properly justify, even were a gun to be put to my head, why I'm a woman, why I prefer she/her pronouns over even they/them, or much else about it. for me, these are fundamentally experiential truths about myself.
Yes, but lots of other aspects of identity that are arguably just as important to some people as gender aren’t elevated to having their own pronouns,
yeah, it's the one where our languages push that categorization on us. but consider, are are our languages structured that way because of societal choices or because people naturally tend towards gendered expression? can that question even be answered?
making pronouns gendered makes gender an effectively obligate activity when not everyone wants that necessarily
absolutely, which is why people should always be free to choose what suits them.
you might be right, but it's one of those things we can't know until we get there.
Same, big throw back to my cat/girl phase, lmfao.. Enver had requested it but it seemed better to just go through with it than invalidate someone. I thought at least people would think it'd be a quirky trans thing, haha. :P
