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.
I understand the question you are attempting to ask. However within this example if John decided that Johnathon/Johnithian are what John would like as pronouns, but somehow is simultaneously fine with being called John as a name… I believe you would find most people would use John rather than similar and longer names as pronouns (to avoid confusion mostly). If John prefers to be referred to as Johnathon, then most people would follow that or split off entirely and pick up a nickname.
Idealogically anyone should be able to use whatever pronouns they’d like with no rules, limits, or caveats.
Realistically (for now/me), my social interactions are not high enough on my layers of priority, particularly with new groups, that I would consider the need to commit most or really any of anyones’ pronouns to memory. As using those pronouns would require me to speak about someone other than myself, to someone who is not the direct recipient of those words. Being the hermit that I am, my comments throughout nearly the entirety of my time on Lemmy or other online social spaces reaching back to nearly the beginning of my time online does not need or use third person pronouns an absolutely vast amount of those interactions in that time.
As a completely off topic anecdote, the only time I can remember using third person pronouns semi often was while on a forum for the original halo game in which I’d attempt to decipher the horrendous typos and extra keystrokes of people I can only assume were younger children asking questions about the game.