Forgive me if this was addressed, but I don't think it was. During a previous struggle session in a statement from the mod team something was said along the lines of "the he/hims aren't beating the allegations".
Personally I do not think this is acceptable, to me this is just using "he/hims" as a proxy for saying men. No one in IRL settings uses "he/hims" as a term to describe people who use him/him pronouns, no one is categorized into a grouping in general based on their pronouns as it is just a preferred pronoun not a characteristic like gender identity.
If there is misogyny going on, just say there is misogyny among users, their pronouns do not change the content of what they said, if someone with he/him pronouns and someone with she/her pronouns typed the exact same degrading thing about a woman, their pronouns would not factor into whether what they said was misogynistic or not.
I am bringing this up as it seems like people in the mod chat are still using "he/hims" to refer to people who have indicated they prefer he/him as their pronouns, you might think this is progressive because you are not directly making a gender identity assumption, but I believe this is in fact reactionary and you are just using pronouns as a proxy for the gender that is most commonly associated with the given pronoun i.e. men in the case of saying "he/hims".
I think this is at least counterproductive and at most harmful, if knowing someone's gender identity is relevant or useful, it should just be asked for.
The point of having pronouns is to accommodate and to treat people with respect and dignity about what they prefer to be called. Using pronouns as a proxy for gender identity undermines this as, treating someone with dignity would involve asking them directly what their gender identity is, not making judgments or assumptions based off of their preferred pronouns.
The only thing that having he/him pronouns indicates is that the person prefers to be referred to with the pronouns he and him. They are just personal pronouns, they are not equivalent to an ethnicity, a gender identity, a gender expression, etc.
If someone with he/him pronouns seems like they are misogynistic, that may have something to do with their gender identity, but it has nothing to do with their pronouns. It is not fair nor accurate to make assumptions of gender identity from pronouns and I think this should be avoided.
This is not to undermine any concerns about misogyny, but misogyny can and should be fought against regardless of what pronouns are involved in any instance of it.
Thanks for reading this, please know all I want is for pronouns and gender identity not to be conflated and to create a safe and respectful space for all users. And I think a good way to work towards this would be to stop using "he/hims", "she/hers", "they/thems", etc. as a way to refer to people who specify they would like to be referred to as those pronouns.
I'm not sure I understand the significance of the difference between preferred pronouns and gender identity in this sense. Saying "he/hims" to mean "people with male gender identity" makes sense to me on the surface. Aren't masculine pronouns for masculine people? Is it that some people use multiple sets of pronouns? Or I guess people who identify as gender fluid sometimes use he/him pronouns while not identifying as male? Not asking to contradict, just asking so I can better understand.
Edit: Thanks for taking the time to respond y'all! Makes total sense.
masc pronouns and terms can be used by people who aren't men (e.g. I, an afab lesbian, go by "uncle crime" with my niblings, or how me and my sapphic friends call each other "bro" and "sir" and "dude" a lot) just like female pronouns and terms can be used by people who aren't women (e.g. the way some queer men refer to each other as "girl" or "sis" or use she/her pronouns for each other)
there isn't a direct relationship between terminology and gender identity
Here’s one way I’ve been thinking about this: Before I realized I was trans, there was a time on this site where I did use he/him pronouns but felt very uncomfortable being grouped in with men for reasons I’m now aware of, but wasn’t fully aware of then. Would it be fair to identify my past self as a “man” or would that be offensive? If someone did that now, I’d obviously feel like I was being misgendered and take offense. There are also maybe certain aspects of misogyny I might not be as attuned to yet since for most of my life I wasn’t treated as a woman typically would be. There are also trans men who use he/him pronouns and who may have been targets of misogyny due to the gender they were wrongly perceived as.
So… I realize this is complicated and maybe difficult to make sense of, but that’s kind of the point I think. Gender is complicated. People are complicated. Trying to oversimplify pronouns and gender in order to pinpoint problems can itself become problematic, and I believe this is OP’s concern if I’m reading the post correctly. I think if the issue is that there is a tendency of some cishet men on the site to either ignore or perpetuate misogyny (and I absolutely believe there is), then it seems more productive to call out the problematic behavior itself while highlighting how it may related to their status in society as cishet men, rather than to just boil it down to “he/hims” and risk unnecessarily harmful friendly fire.
I’m up way past my bedtime and need sleep, but I hope that makes sense and doesn’t come off as contrarian or something. I think this is the first time I’ve really gotten these specific thoughts and feelings out on the site since thinking about the issue, so please feel free to give constructive feedback if anything I’m saying here seems problematic.
I would say this is what I was going for, I also just frankly wouldn't want to be referred to as a "they/them" and it makes me uncomfortable that people are being referred to as something analogous to that
Additionally the argument isn't valid at all in this situation. If it was just a bunch of "he/hims" then maybe we could have a discussion, but it wasn't, so it's complete bullshit. It was just an excuse to not do introspection "everyone I disagree with is a man"
I don't think for everyone, he/him pronouns indicate being masculine or identifying as a man, I don't think that's a controversial thing to say. If that was the case people wouldn't bother referring to people with he/him pronouns as "he/hims" here they would just say men. I think that what you said about people who use multiple pronouns and people who identity as gender fluid, would fit cases of someone using he/him pronouns at various points, but not* identifying as a man.