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.

  • KatzastropheEnglish
    234·
    2 days ago

    Lots of people in here who don’t get pronouns or trans people, for those I recommend this article:

    https://medium.com/@viridiangrail/so-you-found-out-youre-agender-because-you-don-t-understand-trans-people-886fdee6f178

    There’s a very real chance you guys might be agender cis, which is super fascinating because it’s barely looked into, due to how agender cis people usually don’t even know that their experience isn’t universal.

    • koper@feddit.nlEnglish
      9·
      2 days ago

      I was interested until I saw the author and it clicked. Must be a broken clock situation.

        • Sasha [They/Them]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          31·
          22 hours ago

          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.

      • KatzastropheEnglish
        74·
        2 days ago

        Just because someone might not have the same opinions as you, or even in some cases opinions you consider dead wrong it doesn’t mean they are always wrong.

        Think of political parties, in one case a party you usually align yourself with makes a terrible decision, and in another case a party you hate makes a decision you would wholeheartedly support. Does that mean your prior preferred party is suddenly on the same level as your hated party? Depends, of course, but we can’t deny that we can’t expect everyone to share the exact same values as us. Variety is the spice of life, and sometimes even someone we consider to be right/wrong will surprise us in negative or positive ways.

    • Draconic NEO@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      41·
      1 day ago

      I never saw that article before but I do like it, I have noticed that a lot of people who I know that identify as cisgender don’t seem to have an internal sense of gender or pay much mind to gender but I didn’t think anyone else thought that too. It’s nice to see my idea isn’t as unpopular as I initially thought.

    • running_ragged@lemmy.world
      51·
      2 days ago

      Thanks for sharing this. As an older person working to sort out their gender identity later on in life it’s nice to have more ideas to consider.

      I’ve wondered if gender identity is a bit like our other senses where we can practice and get better at discerning the signals we’ve always been receiving, but haven’t always known what they mean.

      How much is trainable and how much is innate.

      Anyway thanks again for sharing this.

      • Grail (capitalised)@aussie.zoneEnglish
        25·
        1 day ago

        It sure is trainable to some extent. I didn’t think I suffered from gender dysphoria when I first realised I was trans. I was only able to connect with gender euphoria to realise My identity. But after I experimented with My gender and tried on some new pronouns and self-images, I realised I hated being a male. I was miserable, but I wasn’t able to see My misery, because I thought it was just life. It’s like when someone with tinnitus doesn’t even realise they have it, because they’ve forgotten what silence sounds like. When I started thinking of Myself as trans, I experienced that metaphorical silence, and then I could hear the metaphorical ringing that was My dysphoria.