Think I've got a decent anology for why gender pronouns matter. Let me know if y'all like it or think it sucks:
Growing up, some of my childhood friends were Asian. Whenever I visited them, they'd always respectfully request that I remove my shoes before entering their house.
This seemed a little weird to me at the time. My own parents didn't really mind us wearing shoes around our house (as long as they weren't muddy or too visibly gross). But being a decent, respectful human being who cares about his friends, I'd always take my shoes off because it was important to them.
Thinking back, it actually WAS pretty gross that we were ok with wearing shoes around our house. You never really know what you might have stepped on, and you don't want to be trailing that crud around where you're walking barefoot.
Maybe it's good to think of gender pronouns similarly? Even if it's a "minor thing" to you personally based on your experience, it is important to members of our community - and I hope you care about their feelings. And if you DO stop to think about it... gendered pronouns as a concept IS pretty gross - like wearing shoes around the house.
Basically... getting petulant about using preferred pronouns is the equivalent of your friend asking you to take your shoes off... and your reaction is "F you, my shoes are staying on because it's more comfortable for me. My shoes are perfectly clean and how dare you ask." Not a good look.
I've had similar experiences with the taking your shoes off thing. And to give an example that's probably closer related, when i started posting on the old sub, and regularly saw people calling out ableist language there, i'd start avoiding that kind of language in my posts, and quickly noticed how much it helps to bring my point across better, how it automatically made me focus more on criticizing people for what they do and lay out why i object to it when i couldn't take the shortcut of just writing out a word salad about how "stupid" or "insane" their views seem to me. Even when i decided to just resort to name calling, my insults became more powerful, because i had to make them more personal and unusual instead of simply telling others how dumb they were.
This is coming from somebody who, at that time, had both a history of mental illness and some understanding of social darwinism, a passing familiarity with anti-psychiatry and a good grasp of how pathologizing behaviors works as a social control mechanism. So i had both enough lived experience and theoretical knowledge to reject ableist language, but it took comrades setting an actual example to make me change my posting behavior, and that change of behavior to see the secondary benefits it offers.
alternatively, you can just switch to asking people if they huff anti-freeze for fun to fill the gap left by not using ableist slurs as insults while still having the same general energy as an insult. I will say though that my insult game has stepped up a bit since I realised that using slurs as insults was bad because I wAS forced to be more creative.
Think I've got a decent anology for why gender pronouns matter. Let me know if y'all like it or think it sucks:
Growing up, some of my childhood friends were Asian. Whenever I visited them, they'd always respectfully request that I remove my shoes before entering their house.
This seemed a little weird to me at the time. My own parents didn't really mind us wearing shoes around our house (as long as they weren't muddy or too visibly gross). But being a decent, respectful human being who cares about his friends, I'd always take my shoes off because it was important to them.
Thinking back, it actually WAS pretty gross that we were ok with wearing shoes around our house. You never really know what you might have stepped on, and you don't want to be trailing that crud around where you're walking barefoot.
Maybe it's good to think of gender pronouns similarly? Even if it's a "minor thing" to you personally based on your experience, it is important to members of our community - and I hope you care about their feelings. And if you DO stop to think about it... gendered pronouns as a concept IS pretty gross - like wearing shoes around the house.
Basically... getting petulant about using preferred pronouns is the equivalent of your friend asking you to take your shoes off... and your reaction is "F you, my shoes are staying on because it's more comfortable for me. My shoes are perfectly clean and how dare you ask." Not a good look.
I've had similar experiences with the taking your shoes off thing. And to give an example that's probably closer related, when i started posting on the old sub, and regularly saw people calling out ableist language there, i'd start avoiding that kind of language in my posts, and quickly noticed how much it helps to bring my point across better, how it automatically made me focus more on criticizing people for what they do and lay out why i object to it when i couldn't take the shortcut of just writing out a word salad about how "stupid" or "insane" their views seem to me. Even when i decided to just resort to name calling, my insults became more powerful, because i had to make them more personal and unusual instead of simply telling others how dumb they were.
This is coming from somebody who, at that time, had both a history of mental illness and some understanding of social darwinism, a passing familiarity with anti-psychiatry and a good grasp of how pathologizing behaviors works as a social control mechanism. So i had both enough lived experience and theoretical knowledge to reject ableist language, but it took comrades setting an actual example to make me change my posting behavior, and that change of behavior to see the secondary benefits it offers.
alternatively, you can just switch to asking people if they huff anti-freeze for fun to fill the gap left by not using ableist slurs as insults while still having the same general energy as an insult. I will say though that my insult game has stepped up a bit since I realised that using slurs as insults was bad because I wAS forced to be more creative.
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