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.
It doesn’t matter what a random person’s opinion is. What matters, is what they do about that opinion and the consequences of their actions.
In this case, even if someone is actively and deliberately using an identity they don’t hold to troll and cause trouble, it doesn’t become ok to misgender them or ignore their pronouns. The damage of misgendering and making pronouns something that only get rewarded for good behaviour isn’t to the troll, the damage is to all of the other gender diverse folk who get to see first hand that their acceptance is contingent on good behaviour, that their identity itself can be taken away by people as punishment. Their acceptance is no longer a right, but a privilege. And that shit does not fly. The harm of that is far worse than whatever harm an isolated troll can cause.
Don’t gatekeep peoples identities. That’s it. That’s the rule. And everyone turning it in to something about “dragonfucking” or whatever other bullshit they are bringing in to it is distracting from the issue and causing the very harm I’m talking about, because ultimately, the rule is just “pronouns aren’t a reward for good behaviour. End of story”. Which means even shitty people and trolls get their pronouns respected and acknowledged, whilst they get banned and booted from the community.
And honestly, your comments have made this worse, because now, you, an admin of a remote instance, have made the discussion about whether “dragonfucking” is valid or not, making the conversation about when it’s ok to gatekeep folk, instead of simply saying “don’t gatekeep” alongside “ban trolls”
tl;dr - Gatekeepintg hurts us. You have just empowered the gatekeepers by telling them that sometimes it’s ok to gatekeep. A move that hurts all gender diverse folk, not the trolls, and is ultimately the goal of some trolls.