TLDR: IMO drag is an abusive troll, so I blocked them. IMO Grail is genuine (though terminally online), I haven’t blocked Them yet but They def are close due to having some shitty beliefs on some things (narcissism, politically inactive queers, etc). Also a bonus paragraph about my gender identity because I felt it fit(? IDK I’m tired AF and rambling).
Personally I saw drag’s online behaviour as abusive and trolling so they got my standard response to that kind of behaviour; reported and blocked. On one of my alts I encountered them advocating for someone’s suicide, then I blocked them across all of my accounts instead of just my main. (Looking at the modlog for them should be enough to see their pattern of behaviour )
In terms of Grail on the other hand I don’t respect Their claims of divinity because I’m staunchly atheist. It has nothing to do with Their gender and is purely about Their claims of being a goddess. Will I capitalize Their pronouns when I use them? Sure, if I remember to go back and edit them as my phone likes to auto correct them constantly. (Hell I was in the thread awhile back with them trying to help them come up with a method so that their preferences could easily be seen by others because they were throwing a fit about a mod “misgendering” them by not remembering to capitalize their pronouns (The Post))
In regards to my gender: frankly I don’t give a damn. I don’t have strong opinions about my gender and I present how I please, which wanders about the gender spectrum‡. Personally I feel that agender-genderfluid is basically my label in that regard. Just don’t refer to me in a dehumanizing way and we’ll be fine. I reflect that by not having pronouns in my bios or usernames.
‡ The gender spectrum itself is complex and multi-axial but that’s the short and sweet of it.
IDK man, I’m just here to have a good time and not have to dodge abusive trolls and tip toe through the daisies for people who throw a fit when they get hit with my default way of referring to people (they/them).
Y’all are decent folk around here but I do feel there’s a decent amount who need to step outside and touch grass (myself included)
Most people do not even truly know just how much of an abusive troll drag really is. I’ve already posted about it multiple times, and I’ll add it here if I have to, but I was harassed directly by an alt of that user, which included porn in my DMs, insults, bad faith accusations, encouragement of suicide, and even death threats (combined with a request to admins to give out my IP).
I’m almost completely certain dragonfucker was behind this harassment and abusive behavior towards me. It happened almost immediately after I responded to one of dragonfucker’s posts, that dragonfucker did not like and also wasn’t well received by the community (ended up getting removed) the post itself was ironically an accusation towards me of harassment. Very sus indeed.
Then there’s the whole thing where dragonfucker encouraged trans people to kill red hats before committing suicide, basically encouraging suicide and murder. Then there was dragonfucker’s harassment towards @FlyingSquid@lemmy.world which isn’t talked about often if at all but was really shitty, and I watched it happen in front of me.
Interesting take. I haven’t seen any poor behavior from drag at any point and, unless I’ve missed something, drag seems to be a fine and well-contributing member of this community.
Grail, on the other hand, I have no doubt is a troll. Aside from their consistent behavior, they were heavily involved with mindtraveller (if anyone remembers them) who was also very clearly a troll. Granted, they may also just be heavily narcissistic. Regardless, I refuse to entertain claims of divinity. The assertion that someone must be referred to as a god/goddess/superior being of any form is an assault on my and others’ freedom of religion, spirituality, or lack thereof.
No individual is inherently above or below another, nor will I be intimidated into referring to them as such - be it by them, mods, or anyone else.
drag seems to be a fine and well-contributing member of this community.
idk I can respect drag’s neopronoun but I’d imagine drag would get much less hate if it wasn’t for shit like this
I don’t really see this as encouraging suicide. Drag explicitly stated that another option is preferable. Could’ve been worded better, sure, and it’s in very poor taste, but… I cant say I disagree…
Is nazis dying suddenly a bad thing now?
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Fuck, hadn’t seen stuff like that. Opinion changed.
you, you’re doing it right. behavior is not an excuse to knowingly misgender someone. everything else in this thread is beside the point.
Wanting to fuck dragons isn’t a gender. It’s somewhere between kink and orientation.
Banning the user above for anti-trans rhetoric. Explaining the position here because we’re consistently repeating ourselves and it’s exhausting.
Drag’s user name is Dragon Rider. I would assume the neopronoun “Drag” is a shortening of Dragon but even if not bare with me… Pronouns exist to replace nouns. Our name (or in this case online, our username) is a proper noun. People rejecting pronouns in favor of just using their name isn’t new. I don’t know why the community is so upset about this. You are well within your opinion to not like people. Whatever, you’re allowed to hate Drag as a person. Don’t hate Drag because you dislike Drag’s pronouns.
Even then, why tf do you care that someone wants to be called Drag? I don’t care about alternate account’s NAMES. We can’t prove whether or not Drag has alt accounts and even then, why do you care? Care about Drag’s actions.
The more I end up running into Grail the more they give me narcissist vibes. Especially their stance that “critising narcissism is actually a conservative view point”
Not to mention the amount of times they seem to find excuses to link back to their blog articles.
I’m not sure who mindtraveler was/is but looking at Grail’s recent comment history, yeah I hadn’t seen the worst of their behavior as we’re, in general, in different parts of the site.
Whether or not someone is an abusive troll has no bearing on the respectful use of pronouns. I have two concerns here: ensuring people are respected and not encouraging the trolls. If either or both individuals here are trolling, they’re getting exactly what they want with our collective response.
In response, I made a process guide for online encounters like these. It works regardless of the other party’s motives and better frustrates trolls. If you have the mental/emotional bandwidth, let me know what you think.
Step 1: Treat everyone with respect, including respecting their communication preferences. If it becomes obvious they’re not being serious and/or respectful themselves (ball/sack, dog/shit), then simply disengage and report. Their bad behavior doesn’t justify anyone else’s bad behavior in response, especially because that’s what trolls want.
Step 2: If there’s only suspicion their requests/preferences are somehow a form of trolling, harassment, or the like, either…
2.1: Respectfully ask non-accusatory questions for clarification, then return to step 1
Or
2.2: Disengage, report to a mod, and let them handle this shitRinse and repeat.
There are two overwhelmingly likely results to this little workflow.
- A troll is treated with kindness and respect until it’s found they’re trolling, after which engagement ceases and mods have to deal with their shit. Remember: trolls get off on watching other people’s outrage. No response = no outrage = an unsatisfying trolling session.
- Someone who is not trolling but is having a difficult time being understood is treated with kindness and respect.
Meanwhile, coming out the other side of your mouth:
You insist on dictating what is a valid thing to want to be called, and and outright proclaim your intent to disrespect anyone outside of that, literally because you don’t care enough. While over here justifying yourself by finding reasons they’re bad or irrational people, or why you personally don’t feel their gender is valid, and ultimately hiding behind your own feelings about your own gender as if it should your shitty bigoted take more palatable. Adding a third option doesn’t make you more tolerant when you’re still insisting everyone keep their identities in your comfort zone.
Nothing they said there seems unreasonable. They/them seems like a perfectly normal (and more importantly neutral) default way of referring to people. If I was in person with someone, and they started throwing a fit because I defaulted to they/them for them (which I usually do), I would assume they were a bigot who doesn’t understand pronouns.
Not saying that’s the case with these other people, but I believe there’s a reasonable limitation on how much you can expect strangers to assume/understand on first meeting.
The problem lies with users who default to they/them even after being informed of the correct pronouns, especially users who continue to do so in the same comment thread. Making mistakes is going to happen, but quickly apologizing (even if you’re arguing) and editing your message to resolve the mistake is the bare minimum. Even as a mod I really only recognize a few users and remember their pronouns (honestly, mostly because they overuse the reporting system), but when I engage with or talk about users I check profiles to see if any pronouns are posted in the bio. This is a trans-inclusive queer instance, respecting gender identity (YES EVEN CIS-HETERO PEOPLE) is incredibly important.
… especially on lemmy, where the usernames are visible, but not really emphasized. It’s a different story on people-centered platform, like Mastodon, or Bluesky. But I prefer not to know the usernames already on lemmy.
You say I’m intending to disrespect others but that isn’t my intent at all, as even in my comment there I make my intent clear. My intent is to interact in “small talk” kind of way with people online as that is how I see online interactions. Small talk. And small talk doesn’t require exchanging names to function properly.
In terms of respecting identies, I’m fully willing to respect people’s genders.
When it comes to transhumanism that’s where I start getting a bit wishy washy and I need to do some more pondering on. At this point my thinking is basically, “If you’re identifying as a living thing then IDGAF. You’re you, I’m me, and my brain is about as organized and focused as a garbage dump. I’m probably going to forget in general on most things so I hope you’re okay with ‘they/them’ and other generic ways of referring to you.”
Identifying as non-living things though is where I get a hang up. You’re a living breathing critter on this miserable little mudball suspended in a sunbeam.
As an example: I blocked Drag for being an ass not for what they identify as. My interactions with them were limited but highly abrasive. I haven’t blocked Grail because, though I think identifying as a goddess is something I don’t support, They’re not enough of an ass (behavior wise) to warrant blocking yet. My interactions with them have been limited and mild in general.
They/them are gender neutral / agnostic pronouns for referring to other, typically, living things both singular and plural. I make heavy use of them as they’re easy. Much like how I refer to groups as “Y’all” and “Folks”, or when greeting specific people IRL as “friend” or “bud”.
I see interacting with people online the same way I see interacting with people on the bus or at work, typically fleeting and likely never going to interact with that person again. And interactions happening to the point I learn someone’s name is, at best, rare.
Edit: Hopefully that makes sense? I am trying to be clear on my feelings on things. If not, I’m willing to continue chatting about it.
“i’m fully willing to respect peoples’ genders”
goes on to explain in detail why some peoples’ genders don’t merit respect
continues pretending it’s fine to they/them someone who specifically asked for different pronouns
yeah im done here
The fuck is wrong with you to try to make they/them, a gender neutral term to use when you don’t know gender or pronoun preference of someone, a bad thing to use just 'cause…
no, the bad thing is doubling down on “nah, you get the pronouns i pick for you” after being informed. this user sticking their fingers in their ears and crying about ignorance is a red herring argument to set up some DARVO shit.
based
Edit: but also i want to point out that it sometimes helps to talk to people. Drag for example, might be a 15 year old edge-lord, for all i know. I don’t want to be insulting, but also i would think talking to (plural) them would make more sense than perma-blocking them.
Of course i recognize that barely anyone has the energy to do it. Just mentioning it.
I just don’t engage with those users and things stay chill.
I do enjoy watching the show, though.
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Think about how you feel when getting misgendered or when people don’t accept you being trans. Imagine how it feels for someone who doesn’t fit into the gender binary and has neopronouns to be told that their gender expression sets ‘a bad example’ for the rest of the trans community. If you want to ‘represent trans people’, then as a fellow trans person I’ll say you’re doing a bad job.
Do you think this is the one thing that there are no bot-farm trolls injecting disinformation about?
So what if there are? Lets say there were bot farms out there actively portraying binary trans folk in a way that makes us look like awful trolls that are just making things up. Does that make it ok for folk to start misgendering binary trans folk? Does it make it ok to act as if our pronouns are something that we only receive for good behaviour? Does it stop it from hurting when people actively and deliberately choose to use the wrong pronouns for us?
You know the answer to all of those questions, so you need to ask yourself why you’re ok with it when it happens to gender diverse folk who don’t share your experience/identity. I’m going to guess that the answer is because you think that behaving well, creating less fuss, and being a good little trans person will make the bigots less bigoted towards us. And you think that the neopronoun users are making things worse for us. And that’s just blatantly incorrect. People are transphobic because they’re taught to be transphobic. They find reasons after the fact to validate their bigotry, so that they don’t have to feel like they’re the bad guy in their own story. And because that validation comes after the bigotry, it literally doesn’t matter what we do, the people who have been taught to hate us will find something that validates that hatred. You playing nice doesn’t fix it, all it does is make it worse for folk who don’t fit in to the same box you and I fit in to.
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But I’ve seen people’s opinions on trans people change in front of my eyes because they met me and realized I’m a reasonable person who isn’t here to get into a screaming match with them over nothing.
They didn’t change because “you’re reasonable”. They changed, because trans people stopped being a remote, theoretical thing to hate on. Visibility makes us real to people. Knowing a trans person in your day to day life is the best indicator of whether or not someone is supportive of trans rights. When you become a real person to them, instead of a hypothetical, you break through.
That’s not because you were well behaved. It’s because you were visible, and authentic.
That’s how I got used to neopronouns.
If you don’t think that’s happening, I don’t think you’re paying attention. And if you do think we should just soak that and roll with it?
The odd troll or bot getting through is better than defaulting to gatekeeping.
Because, if those bot farms exist like you suggest, their literal goal is to encourage people to misgender and undermine the validity of gender diverse folk. Going ahead and doing what they want is exactly the wrong response to bots and trolls pushing an agenda like that.
You’re portraying people who use neopronouns in a really unfair way that sounds pretty transphobic to me. The user this whole discussion originated from never even demanded that people use drag’s pronouns. Imo drag has other problematic behaviour that has nothing to do with drag’s gender expression or pronouns. Drag was pretty understanding when it came to people not understanding drag’s pronouns.
You sound exactly like a terf who is afraid that trans women will somehow get in the way of the feminist struggle. Social struggles aren’t won by pointing at someone more marginalised than you and ridiculing them, they’re won by being radically inclusive of all marginalised groups and advocating against oppression of all forms.
Have you actually seen the posts from the people this thread is about?
One of them is literally in the habit of sending people death threats and encouraging suicide. There’s a difference between supporting neopronoun use and being completely blind to literal bad faith trolls.
If you can’t tell the difference I don’t know what to tell you.
Edit: Some of y’all need to go touch some grass.
No one is defending that problematic behaviour. The user should be banned for that (if true) but it has literally nothing to do with them having neopronouns. Read my (and ada’s) comment again and do some introspection before you hurt our community more. Stop being a terf-like transphobe.
I looked up the modlog of the comment and it seemed extremely reasonable imho but now its removed. How can legit discussion about this topic happen when any critical discourse is just removed. I’m honestly disappointed with blahaj.
Wait what happened?
Those users use neopronouns and apparently for a lot of people it’s beyond the limit of their ability to not gatekeep queer people. There was an announcement about it from the admin that was basically “yeah neopronouns are valid, don’t misgender anyone period” and several people completely lost their shit and made threads to bitch about it in.
If you don’t use the pronouns a user lists in their bio when referring to that user you’ll catch a ban. There is a user who has dragon as their pronoun and anyone not using it is being banned.
No. The person you are referring to uses “drag” as pronouns, but is also ok with they/them.
People who can’t simply use either of those options, and insist on getting in to a discussion about what identities they think are valid are the folk getting banned.
If you simply ignore the users whose pronouns you find challenging, or use their pronouns and avoid starting/continuing discourse offering your personal opinions about whether or not someone elses identity is valid, there are no bans.
avoid starting/continuing discourse offering your personal opinions about whether or not someone elses identity is valid, there are no bans.
The OP here is literally starting discourse offering their personal opinions about whether or not someone else’s identity is valid.
nah, i’m blazing right past that and accepting everyone’s identity as valid, the opinion is it’s hilarious and entertaining watching pedants twist themselves in knots to absolve themselves of fundamentally queerphobic and exclusionary takes.
you can equate “accept everyone” with “scrutinize and judge” if you like though, it’s very helpful when people wave their red flags openly.
It’s very simple, just don’t go around willfully misgendering people. if you can’t bring yourself to gender someone correctly simply don’t refer to him/her/them/It/drag. identity should not be gatekept by anyone for any reason, and i wholeheartedly support this policy.
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i would like to correct myself. I’ve spoke to drag, and drag is not a roleplayer. Since my point of view on pronouns and one’s identity in general was incarrect and disproven by @chocosoldier@lemmy.blahaj.zone, i stand corrected, and want the maximum of people who had similar way of thinking to my own, to doubt their argumentation one more time. While drag’s pronouns might sound weird for you grammatically, it could and should exist and be accepted by you if you consider yourself a part of queer community.
hey fam i was raised as a white dude in a still-segregated pocket of the US, i totally understand about culture giving us biases and bigotries and having to recognize and contend with that. deprogramming isn’t easy and i respect you for having come this far.
i’d say that the very idea that anyone else has a say in who you are is antithetical to the aims of the queer rights movement because we struggle to live authentically in accordance with who know we are in spite of who and what society tells us we are or must be. i am a trans woman, it is a part of who and what i am and always has been and no amount of ‘disagreement’ from anyone (including myself, i was in denial for decades) can ever change that. moreover it is a scientific fact that it is important to my mental health that this immutable internal identity is acknowledged and accepted by those around me regardless of whether i put on a satisfactory display of arbitrary gender tropes. i did not wake up one day and decide this for myself, it simply is and i have no choice but to abide what is true, or go back to torturing myself living what i know is a lie.
i don’t expect cis people to get my identity. how even could they? but i don’t need them to. what i need, again not “i want” but what the facts of human psychology dictate that i need in order to be mentally healthy, is for people to accept that my identity is what it is and go along with it. does it seem ridiculous to me? hell, i seem ridiculous to a lot of people!
i don’t get drag’s gender either. i don’t get grail’s. i have thoughts and opinions, who wouldn’t? but that’s not relevant. whether i get it isn’t relevant. what i think or opine about it isn’t relevant. the bar isn’t getting it, the bar is accept people. the bar is not scrutinizing and making judgment calls about what you think should or shouldn’t be a valid gender or pronoun, or worse spinning a narrative where this person doesn’t really deserve to have their identity acknowledged.
this whole thing boils down to whether people are willing to respect someone’s purported identity even if it seems silly to them, and that’s the absolute core of trans rights.
i have thoughts and opinions, who wouldn’t? but that’s not relevant. whether i get it isn’t relevant. what i think or opine about it isn’t relevant. the bar isn’t getting it, the bar is accept people. the bar is not scrutinizing and making judgment calls about what you think should or shouldn’t be a valid gender or pronoun, or worse spinning a narrative where this person doesn’t really deserve to have their identity acknowledged.
This should be framed! That’s it exactly!
I agree, people should not be harassed for the way they identify themself, and i guess you’re right that only you can identify yourself, but i still have questions. Those are personal, tough and existential, so i don’t mind if you prefer not to answer them. They’re vaguely related to the OP topic, some of them entirely unrelated to it, but after the fact that that the Drag incident made blahaj divided, which makes me sad, my wish, to find out the answers is ihe main reason why i’ve decieed to leave my previous comment in the first place.
Let’s take you and what you said, for example: you said, that you have been in denial on the matter of your identity. How have you defined that you always were a woman, and not only since you identified yourself as one? What defines for you your identity as a woman? How have you assured that it’s not a mere act you put on because it makes you feel happy, and that you wouldn’t drop it as soon as you’ll get bored? I’m asking, because i (amab) am kinda uncertain of myself. I came to a conclusion that i still identify myself as male, i still am in fact male, only that i don’t want to conform to the gender norms. So how do you know that you’re not in the same state as me, that you’re actually of other gender, not the one you were assigned at birth? How are you certain that you’re not just mimicking the gender because you’re attracted to it?
Sorry that i bother you with all those questiuns. As i said, i am still uncertaim of myself, so since you’ve decided to transition, that might mean that you’ve found some objective criteria, that will help me define myself as well.
Idk I think it’s okay rule. Use persons preferred pronouns unless you don’t know it then use they/them since it’s basically gender neutral.
Part of the drama is people getting in trouble for using they/them, look at the screenshot being used against Gormadt in this very thread.
It’s a thorny issue to be sure, but I still struggle to see what’s wrong with they/them.
Using they/them when someone asks you not to is a shitty thing to do and should not be acceptable on an instance that’s supposed to be a safe space for queer people.
so many people are willfully missing this very simple point, and it says a lot about how they really think about trans people.
Of course, but it’s not clear at all that’s what’s happening in the screenshot.
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“you get the pronouns i feel like using for you” is some phobe shit, adding a third option doesn’t make it less of a shitty thing to do.
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