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.
The problem I have with neopronouns is that they’re not pronouns. Pronouns are rough descriptors of large groups of people, to be shorthand. If you go by “he,” “she,” or “they,” people can understand that and get the general gist of how you identify and want to be treated. They are useful tools of communication.
Neopronouns generally completely lack that utility. If I create my own unique pronoun, I’m forcing everyone to learn an entirely new set of words that apply only to me. Functionally, what is the difference between that and just learning your name and personality?
Pronouns are only useful because they are rough shorthands for broad groups of people. If a “pronoun” only applies to one out of 10 million people, it is no longer a pronoun, it is simply a name.
My current universal solution in such cases is either directly using names/handles or defaulting to even more general terms such as person/individual/user. Slightly clunkier linguistically and less personal but saves valuable brainspace.
There are plenty of neopronouns that are used by lots of people. In scandinavia we’ve adopted a common non-binary neopronoun f.ex, and english has lots of different ones that are very commonly used
Edit: Also not relevant, this post is about moderating misgendering. You’ve conveyed your problem, but you’ve not actually responded to anything in the post or in my comment.
My post was a response to yours arguing to always respect neopronouns. My problem with it is that this rule untenable. Your f.ex example is fine, as it’s used by a large number of people, it’s something that can actually be learned and applied.
The problem is that you cannot simply always respect neopronouns, as whenever you establish a zero-tolerance, zero-though principle like “always respect neo-pronouns, full stop,” there will be bullies that take advantage of that. There will be bad-faith actors who purposefully concoct “pronouns” that they obviously do not use. Like, what do you do if someone says their pronouns are racial slurs? You going to start respecting those pronouns?
Neo-pronouns have utility when a group of people use them and there is clear understanding around them. Those created by a single deranged or bad-faith individual need not be respected.
Some parts of the internet would call what you are doing concern trolling. Let’s assume it isn’t. This hasn’t happened yet at blåhaj, and I haven’t seen it happen elsewhere. Ada makes it clear in the post that this wouldn’t be acceptable and that someone with a slur as their pronoun would simply be removed.
Also I would like to note this part in Adas post:
Why is it that none of you want to do this? Why do you all come here and lash out against neopronouns? You’ve already said it doesn’t make sense to you, but you are free to just leave and not participate, or to not engage with neopronoun users.
So you’re saying neopronouns have to be learned every time, and they’re bad because they’re confusing and effortful. But My neopronouns don’t have to be explained, on a basic level at least. Most people are familiar with capitalised pronouns, often from reading texts like the Bible. Given that My pronouns are a few hundred years old and somewhat familiar to most people, would you say My pronouns aren’t neopronouns at all, but instead perfectly fine regular pronouns?
Well, Grail, there had to be an explanation for them.
Besides that, some of us reject the notion of importance that is associated with capitalized pronouns. Everything indicates that there are no gods, only humanity. As such I personally tend to give every human the same basic respect, which also includes not elevating anybody above their peers as it by proxy would indicate others being lesser.
If a person were to attempt to elevate themselves above others by demanding special treatment & associating themselves with the notion of godhood by demanding capitalization, I would not oblige. Now, “god” is very clearly incapable of noticing any disrespect when referred to as he/she/it and nobody is hurt by that. However, a human might be.
The clear consequence being the only way to reconcile non-obligation and non-hurtfulness is referring to such a person by their name or not at all. So, I hope my fellow human now understands why I won’t be capitalizing any pronouns.
I completely agree. And that’s why I’m confused, because it seems to Me that this line here contradicts the rest of your comment. You and I both agree that capitalisation shouldn’t indicate special treatment. So what’s the problem?
The mere act of capitalizing pronouns is a special treatment. That special treatment is commonly demanded by religious people for their gods, usually the abrahamic god. Leveraging this, others demand similar special treatment for themselves, to elevate their status above other people. I will refer to neither gods nor them in this manner
Everyone deserves the right to use their chosen pronouns. There’s nothing special about that.
So you think you’re God? How comic book villain of you…
No, absolutely not. I think “God” should never be a proper noun. https://medium.com/@viridiangrail/god-should-never-be-a-proper-noun-4684aed46cb0
I think I’m a god. I’m a goddess of madness, rebirth, and mirrors. Born of the void in the time before time, imprisoned within consensus reality with the coming of the law-beings, escaped and sworn to vengeance against the rulers of this world for all the wrong they have done. Hope that clears everything up.
Removed by mod
Also, my pronouns are “neopronouns are abused and often idiotic.” If you refer to me as anything other than this, you’re misgendering me.
Absolutely, I understand. I’ll make an effort to always refer to neopronouns are abused and often idiotic by neopronouns are abused and often idiotic’s preferred pronouns.
And you don’t see how that makes communication completely impossible? Just read that sentence, it make no sense at all. The purpose of having a trans community is to have just that - a community. “Communication” shares the same root. If you cannot effectively communicate, you cannot have a community.
I use capitalised pronouns. If we’re going to have this discussion, I’d rather that neopronouns are abused and often idiotic used My preferred pronouns.