There’s definitely some additional nuance (like a pronouns in bio/username situation) but this should cover the broad needs of anyone who is approaching this with good faith.
Ask them, “why do you care so much about what genitals you think I have?”
I hate “he or she” so much. JUST SAY THEY. It sounds so clunky.
There’s a lot of transphobes that use they/them to not acknowledge the pronouns of trans people, but also to skirt around anti-misgendering rules of social media. I call it “passive-aggressive misgendering”.
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Then you might just be a dick. If someone has their pronouns clearly visible, it isn’t that hard to use them.
Do you feel the same about names?
Based If yes. If no, cringe.
Do you know the names of everyone you interact with? Every grocer, barman, stranger?
Definitely :( and it’s a super hurtful thing.
But! of course! that only happens when the offending person knows the pronouns and uses they/them anyway (right side of the flowchart). I see you are already getting downvotes from people who are so riled up they assumed for ya you meant both cases. Ugh.
Thanks for being normal ❤️
I’d say default should be to offer your own name/pronouns to encourage someone to share rather than asking.
Super fair! I guess I would categorize or lump that in as a tactful and warm way of “asking” but I absolutely am with you for that suggestion. 🤗
And then i use they and they get offended that i didnt use their preffered pronoun(true both for stupid conservatives and for some trans people who just have to try to ruin 10 years of progress in gender neutral pronouns)
Calling someone they/them when you don’t know their pronouns is fine, and them being upset doesn’t ruin anything for anyone else. Neither you nor they are harming “10 years of progress in gender neutral pronouns” as you put it. What a strange narrative.
This is the way: Introduce yourself with your own pronouns, before assuming any for the other. This will trigger them to respond in kind and then you know.
This is the why: Calling someone they/them when you don’t know or forgot, is ok but not best…because if someone is passing, and is called they/them, which aren’t their pronouns, can raise suspicions that the person is nb, or trans, putting them in an unsafe position. If you call everyone they/them, that you think looks trans enough to have questionable pronouns, and label cis people as their gender, then this is othering. And unfortunately this is how it plays out in real life, hardly anyone “they/thems” everyone…99 percent quick scan and assign pronouns. And if they can’t, they assign they/them othering many people.
If I don’t get pronouns back on introduction, then I gender people based on how they look. if someone is obviously fem presenting or at least trying to, then those are the pronouns I use, and vice versa. And if someone looks androgynous guess what I use they/them.
As a binary trans woman I’d rather you guess than use they/them. Those aren’t my pronouns and it’s obvious that they’re not.
Labels have meaning as do the pronouns that go with them
I like my gender alot, I worked hard and still do to get and keep myself passing. I would rather not to have my gender neutered by some everyone’s included tucute bullshit.
They/theming everyone misgenders most people.
And the 10 years that this shit narrative has been pushed has been the false narrative that gender doesn’t exist. Gender abolition is not a good thing, and idgaf about hurting the feelings of identities that have co-opted a medical condition and turned it into a fashion statement of who can have more colors in their hair, piercings in their face, dumpier clothing, and shit takes on gender theory while loudly proclaiming to be the experts shouting down actual transex people accusing them falsely of transphobia.
This is why the right loves to pushback against us. Pretty soon I’m not going to have access to life-saving medication because men with beards can claim womanhood and normalize the bulge. Or that men’s rooms need tampons. That trans men can be lesbians, and that men can get pregnant. Absolutely delusional and made this community a cesspool of support for shit causes that obfuscated the need for our protection pushing binary transex persons out of the trans umbrella.
Can we just start misgendering republicans?
no that is the tool of the enemy we have no need of it
This is so rubbish. Almost everyone is a he or she, so just use that. On the very very very rare instance you get it wrong, say sorry and use the correct one from then on. Unless you forget, the appologise again when corrected. Yes I am imply it is on the person who got called the wrong pronoun to correct the one who made the mistake.
I have a really hard time recognizing people’s gender so I usually go along with the same pronouns others use and then inevitably feel really bad about it because of how often it’s wrong. In languages without an accepted they/them equivalent I just flip flop but in English I really don’t understand the need to use he/she unless it’s ambiguous whether there are one or more people being spoken about.
Wouldn’t it be much easier to use the grammatically well established singular they/them. That way you never run into an issue. Surely you’d do that when you encounter a name that can be used as both a female and a male name (Jessie, Les etc)
If were going from whats «grammatically well established» i would argue he/she is a lot more established
Tbh just saying they is easier, took a few weeks/months to train myself to do it and now I’m just cringing whenever I hear something that’s like “he or she could be doing this thing” when “they” is just more efficient anyway. They’re just as established. I think “they” is an older term but I’d have to look into the etymology on that.
So I’m not sure how reliable it is given the age of the data but it looks like there’s some indication that “they” fell in use up to the late 1900s but before ~1860 it was actually more common than now. I’m now curious if there’s any more info on this.
He/She is fine for when you know the gender of someone. When you don’t they is really well established - it was used by Chaucer. So they if you don’t know because they might go by something else, they for someone with a name like Leslie who could be a he or a she outside of any discussion about trans identities.
grammatically well established singular they/them
I mean, historically it’s well established, but you can’t deny that language has evolved in many places (at least in America) that they/them feels plural. I’m not saying they/them shouldn’t be gender neutral singular pronouns, but in the dialect I was raised, it only feels correct in indeterminate situations, like “whoever stole my bike, I hope they get arrested.”
Obviously language can continue to evolve where singular-they feels correct in any scenario, but if you’re talking about “much easier” then that includes the random rules people collectively hallucinate.
This implies you can not tell the person’s gender, which for most people is perfectly obvious. So often can cause offence. I realize not using they/them can also cause offence, but just much less often.
I tend to agree, but I do get where the other viewpoint comes from. I’m from a country where I don’t believe this is a major point of contention, as long as we’re respectful with each other I don’t think people feel the need to make a big deal out of this, but I’m aware I’m speaking from a bubble here, others may disagree.
I do work in an international company with many anglophones from the UK and USA, and it’s a much bigger point there, to the point certain expressions are banned, e.g. addressing a group as guys. I speculate that it’s a bit of a cultural thing, and a language thing. As others mention, a lot of languages are Ill suited to naturally use gender neutrality. English is quite malleable that way.
I’ve never met a person in real life who got upset because someone used the wrong pronoun once. Assuming people’s gender is fine, as long as you don’t double down on your assumption when someone corrects you
Also, if you mistakenly use the wrong pronouns, apologize and respect their wishes.
We’re humans after all, and mistakes happens. No one is asking you to be perfect. People just want you to be a decent person.
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Nope, the allt right hate they too now. Make a new apologist flow chart that are regime approved mate
shoot my bad 🙇♀️
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
I read this in frank reynold’s voice
owie! :3 owie! :3 ouch :3 oof! :3
🤨❓
How to choose the correct pronouns
I followed this one chart and was instantly promoted to CFO.
We really did great work designing this fantastic flowchart.
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I actually prefer it as the neutral singular, but everyone decided that was dehumanizing. To me it feels natural because if you don’t know an animal’s or a baby’s gender, you call it it.
People didn’t so much “decide” that, as it was used that way by bigots specifically because it was historically only used for animals and objects. They used it as a slur to hurt folks in our community, and like any attempt to reclaim a slur, even though the reclamation is an act of power, there are going to be people who were targetted by the slur who struggle with the concept of reclamation.
make he/him gender neutral
???why not just use they/them like we have been for centuries lmao. your plan would cause so many problems.
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Just a quick heads up but, linguistically speaking, you are mistaken with what you said about “they/them”.
It doesn’t refer to multiple people?
To quote from Cambridge University’s (founded 1209 ce in England) English dictionary:
We use they and them to refer back to the indefinite pronouns someone, anyone, everyone when we do not know the number or gender.
don’t make me tap the tom scott video
Maybe you misunderstood my actual comment. I’m saying we should use he/him as the general neutral pronoun. That Tom Scott video is saying the same thing as me, just with a different solution.
You said my plan would cause “so many problems”, and outside of the obvious transition problem, I still see no problems.
- problem 1: why are you choosing he/him to be gender neutral and not she/her? it gives the impression that grammatical maleness is default and you are going to get pushback for that, whether your intentions are sexist or not.
- problem 2: making he/him gender neutral strips the identity from male and masculine people.
- problem 3: you’re suggesting a massive overhaul when there’s literally already a word in place.
and NO they/them doesn’t “refer to multiple.” the tom scott video abjectly disagrees with you on that, so don’t twist things. even Shakespeare used they/them to refer to singular people.
honestly this conversation is pointless and boring so i’ll end it here.
I agree. Also thanks for letting the video.
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“If someone dropped their wallet would you tell them?”
Perfectly normal and already understood.
use “Ms or Mrs”
- It was Miss for unmarried women before Ms was coined and popularised for “none of your business whether I’m married or not” so Ms was acceptable regardless
- Doesn’t Mrs look like it’s missing a possessive apostrophe, a Mr’s woman?
And your main point, degender the male pronouns, it wouldn’t work. “Man” used to mean people, male men and female men and child men – boys and girls – had different words, some of which are still around. That’s why people say there’s nothing gendered in “chairman” (which 50 years ago was logically equal to “chairperson”, unless you count other species as people).
Or call them that human over there? I do that sometimes as a joke.
Avoiding pronouns altogether until clarification is obtained can certainly be a strategy too!
What’s your stance on snap nicknames for identification purposes?
i don’t know what that means
“What’s up with mophead over there?”
“Have you seen big-ears lately?”
A snap nickname is any vaguely descriptive (and mildly rude) nickname given to someone.
unrelated idk just do what makes people comfortable
Last time I did that I got corrected by a furry.
Lmao
wait a second, I don’t think that’s a furry…
Scalies?
Use their name, if you know it.
They/them it is!
yuss!
AND HOLY SHIT does it get toxic. for some reason there’s no will for even this basic level of nuance. currently watching an entire anti-blahaj hate crusade over a simple misunderstanding where the left and the right conclusions of the chart got conflated as though they are the same thing.
then i tried to help clarify and got called insults.
just… so sad :(
Dare I ask?
[email protected] I guess
see my comment history if you are truly interested. fair warning: it’s fucken bad.
Edit 3: I’ve been trying to talk to her most of the day. It’s not proving fruitful. I’m holding out hope for her but she’s just continuing to tantrum.
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/37755294
Short version: elder queer
makes postreplies to a post on beehaw asking if it’s actually okay to stick with they/them pronouns for everyone because OOP’w autistic brain discards gender as irrelevant information (like how you cant remember your dreams or what you had for breakfast last week), so she tends to forget people’s pronouns. This caused OOP to accidentally misgender someone who thought she knew their pronouns, and she’s worried about hurting other people’s feelings. OP angrily insists that they/them is how you address people you don’t know the gender of, full stop, and then goes on a rant about how kids these days are little babies etc. Then a mod saw that post, interpreted this as gatekeeping who gets to be nb, and banned her from all of blahaj.zone.To be clear, she is being an ass there throwing a big tantrum over getting banned. I think she will calm down soon. This seems like the
BTW, I also have this problem, Ive just learned to do a better job of hiding it because for some fucking reason when transphobes (and traumatized trans friends) hear me ask “I forgot X’s gender, what was it again?” they hear “Oh no, the trans-genderism and the pronouns is so confusing, they should stick with calling themselves by their peepee and vajoojay like the founding fathers intended” and then i wake up the next day with no friends. So I’ve just learned to not ask for help and correct myself when i fuck up. It was also hard to learn that the apology has to be through your immediate actions by immediately correcting yourself and moving on; it is so easy to panic and apologize like you just ran over their cat, but dramatic apology + autistic RBF = what looks like passive aggressive sarcasm.
I get why this happens, and I can’t be mad at trans people for being traumatized by all the transphobes. After the 3rd or 4th time you find out someone you thought was your friend secretly wants to call you a slur, you start getting paranoid. And more importantly for this subject, if someone told me that our mutual friend X misgendered someone, I am immediately blocking X’s number, passing the word on to my friends, and shunning X for the rest of their life, no questions asked because that’s how transphobes should be treated.
Edit: forgot she said she is a lesbian. Changed the pronouns
Edit 2: thank you kind commenter for pointing out that OP was one of the commenters on the beehaw post, not the poster. Read the comments, she came across as an old yelling about how kids these days are too soft. Edited my summary to reflect this.
Important detail: the person who posted that question isn’t the one who got banned, it was one of the commenters
Ah, missed that.
Edit: they just replied to my comment on their post. They’re still ranting about the baby gays being soft. Smh
Ah yeah. I banned her. Not because she defaults to they/them, but because she was victim blaming queer folk as the cause of their own oppression, and using a lot of thinly veiled insults against gender diverse folk
And for what it’s worth, I’m almost certainly a similar age to her
Aren’t you afraid of just creating an echo chamber where no criticism is possible at all?
You can disagree with their idea of what the effect is of people being (perceived as) overly sensitive to pronouns, but isn’t it a topic that should be discussed in the queer space, and shouldn’t there be room for such points of view?
If they’d be personally attacking people, i can get giving them a temp ban a few times and see if they learn how to behave, but perma banning fellow queers from your queer discussion space because their opinions don’t match yours really doesn’t sound like a good basis for a heatlhy space to talk about queer issues.
And great that you’re similar in age survived being young and queer better, does that invalidate their experience?
Aren’t you afraid of just creating an echo chamber where no criticism is possible at all?
In a world where we are being erased, attacked, harassed and turned in to political footballs, where every major social media platform has explicitly green lit attacks and harassment on us, concerns over “echo chambers” aren’t even on my list.
Bigotry is bigotry. It has no place here. The user in question wasn’t banned for defaulting to they/them. She was banned because she was actively blaming the victims of transphobia for the transphobia they received. She isn’t gender diverse herself, she is a cis woman who decided that the people asking for their pronouns to be respected are the real cause of the bigotry we face.
On top of that, she also threw a lot of comments that made it clear what she really things of gender diverse folk. “ attention seeking brats”. “ Younger queers need faux outrage to feel important”, “ if some chud gets all hissy about their pronouns”. “ As a cis lesbian who’s gender nonconforming, I’ve spent years putting up with their pronoun based faux “oppression” temper tantrums out of an effort to be “accepting” only to watch larger society completely flip on us”
tl;dr - a cis woman victim blaming gender diverse folk and gatekeeping them at the same time got banned.
And great that you’re similar in age survived being young and queer better, does that invalidate their experience?
No, age doesn’t invalidate alternative perspectives. That was the very point I was making. The user in question was using her age as an “elder queer” to invalidate the younger queer folk. She clearly included me in the “young queer” category in some of her coments. I pointed out my age to highlight that being an “elder queer” that has been exposed to awful shit isn’t an excuse to invalidate folks.
She isn’t gender diverse herself, she is a cis woman who decided that the people asking for their pronouns to be respected are the real cause of the bigotry we face.
They way i read it their point, it was about people being aggressive in having their pronouns being respected, even in situations where there’s clearly no malice or when their pronouns just aren’t known. I have no clue if that’s actually happening, but if it is, i can imagine that’s not very benificial to the cause.
But yeah, they do seem to generalize too much, and then blame everything on the next generation. why don’t you just ban them for a week, and send them a message that while there might be something to their point, generalizing the heck out of it and blaiming the new generation for everything isn’t the solution either, and not the best way to approach this discussion.
Maybe a bit of empathy an genuine feedback can make them a good faith contributor that has similar experiences in their life?
They way i read it their point, it was about people being aggressive in having their pronouns being respected, even in situations where there’s clearly no malice or when their pronouns just aren’t known
Yes, that’s what she’s angry about, but it’s not why she was banned.
why don’t you just ban them for a week, and send them a message that while there might be something to their point, generalizing the heck out of it and blaiming the new generation for everything isn’t the solution either, and not the best way to approach this discussion.
Because then she just comes back and slips under the radar, and I have no way of knowing if anything is changed, unless I follow up on it. If she wants to access the instance, she can approach me and we can talk about what it will take. It’s permanent in the sense that it won’t automatically expire, not in the sense that it can’t be removed.
Maybe a bit of empathy an genuine feedback can make them a good faith contributor that has similar experiences in their life?
You are more than welcome to make that attempt and have that discussion, however, in my experience, mods and admins reaching out after bans to try and have these conversations don’t change opinions, they just further inflame the sense of injustice the person is feeling.
I don’t have the resources or will to try and manually talk around every person who throws around bigotry for what they believe are genuine reasons, nor to expose the rest of the community to gatekeeping whilst they “work through it”. And honestly, most folk who feel as strongly as she does aren’t open to being talked around in any case.
Yeah, the more I try to talk with her, the more obvious it is that she’s not willing to stop projecting. I hope she sleeps on this and realizes she’s being closeminded.
I think one of the issues is that several of the people involved in that crusade were also banned from blahaj.
People tend to not disclose their conflict of interest.
That’s a very probably true analysis :(
Relevant meme post of what brought on a lot of those bans for onlookers.
Could you please tell the context behing that post?
first three paragraphs of this history post: https://lemmy.cafe/post/12094663
