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.
Aside from Them jumping the gun, causing an unwarranted dog piling on a well loved mod of a small community that was essentially a safe space for some, resulting in that user leaving Lemmy and the community completely dying, I have read at least one article of Theirs that called people who did not volunteer for war murderers, or something to that effect, I just remember it being an excessively nasty and unnuanced take.
In another article They also advocated for being generally unlikeable, which had some good points but ultimately goes against everything I think is good about being a leftist.
I recall that in general conversation They were often argumentative and quick to anger too, not someone I ever wanted to interact with, though frankly my memory on that aspect is shaky at best.