My only experience with it was in a bar I used to frequent in Los Angeles, though I think they were more transvestite than transgender. Pronouns never came up there. We just used names.
It’s easy for me to use any name given when introduced. If you introduce yourself to me with a feminine name when you appear quite male, it’s no skin off my teeth.
Pronouns are more difficult simply because of my embedded native language of English dictating gender. While difficult, it’s no more inconvenient than to slow myself down, think about what I’m saying, and try to use what’s preferred. If I should slip up, then maybe a brief, “oops, sorry about that,” is in order.
The hardest thing for me is if I have known you as one name and now I’ve got to use a new name. This has nothing to do with gender or politics however. It’s just how my brain stores things. My sister uses a different first name in adulthood than when we were kids, and I never have been able to adapt. Since my sister is awesome and understands me, she gives me a pass on this.
Bottom line, the linguistics can be difficult for us oldies, but that doesn’t give us reason to fear, hate, or persecute.
The hardest thing for me is if I have know you as one name and now I’ve got to use a new name. This has nothing to do with gender or politics however. It’s just how my brain stores things. My sister uses a different first name in adulthood than when we were kids, and I never have been able to adapt.
That’s interesting. I’m certainly not young myself (approaching 47), and while I had no problem with remembering the new name for my high school friend who had transitioned in the years between us knowing each other then and getting back in touch, I have so much trouble remembering to call my own (cisgender) daughter by the shortened version of her full name, which she’d prefer. Maybe because my friend also changed her gender and, obviously, her look so it’s easier to remember when I talk to her?
Luckily most people are going to be like your sister.
Sometimes people have their own shit going on that might make them “overreact” to your slip ups.
Weirdly you’ll see people that trust you more react more strongly but it’s not a you problem. They’re likely venting against constant micro aggressions in a “safer” space, so try and be forgiving:)
You’re right about it taking more work the longer you’ve known someone the harder it gets… It takes zero time for me to register “they/them” for someone I just met… But I still fuck up with a 20 year friend that switched 5 years ago…
Just remembering it’s not about you and as long as you try your best you’ll be fine.
I think (in general) any one should be just allowed to say “oops” in any situation, in any case, however bad it is, to note he/she/(add any extra pronouns) has said/done and gone something that should not have happened or taken place. It’s like software crashing of thinking, which happens and will happen more than we would like to.
And yet, in both cases, there is a significant subset of people who don’t see it that way. They see it as your personal fault/failure as a human being from not knowing the right pronoun, or that the software crashing is your fault.
If I’m genuinely trying to adapt to something, I’ve got no time for intolerance toward my errors en route to learning. That’s on the other person regardless of makeup or identity.
I have never met anyone in real life that doesn’t address you the way you ask them to. My language, however, does not have gender neutral pronouns so the “did you just assume X gender” question is kinda annoying.
Like this is a question that people ask and not a troll ragebait. People most positively misgender on purpose upon inspection that a person is trans. If a cis person says "but I am a boy" they will bend over apologizing.
I definitely have, just last week my girlfriend got intentionally misgendered multiple times while going to get her gender marker changed, by a social security agent. Some people can be incredibly cruel like that. An overwhelming majority of people are not like that though, in my experience, but the sting of cruelty is louder than passive acceptance.
A lot of the transgender people I’ve befriended and even dated. They all stick to the simple things.
They don’t really care about whatever the hell the pronouns have gone to. They just wanted to be the opposite sex. Some, wanted to be no gender. Others, were genderfluid. They weren’t pretentious by coming up with 50 different genders and 50 more ways to call them by.
Yeah but you know, if you want to be taken seriously, you need to be a little more realistic.
I’m having a hard time taking zie, zim, zis and all that seriously. Even if they have meanings, you’re really sounding like you’re treating your identity like it’s a title a child gives themselves to like it’s a flavor of the week.
Neo pronouns are essentially just another experimental project to combat some of the linguistic issues behind using they/them singular pronouns. Consider you use singular they/them pronouns for people you don’t know ("I found someone’s cell phone, I will try to get it back to them. ") or some people get confused if their attention wanders and someone starts talking about a non-binary person whether you are talking about a single person or not.
Some non-binary people find they/them pronoun options to be dehumanizing or dislike the linguistic effect problem… However there isn’t a cultural concensus on a strictly singluar non-gendered pronoun. There are a handful of established neo-pronouns but they are akin to regional varieties born out of very specific communities but non-binary people are not a monolith. Even inside our communities there’s a lot of variation. The attempt to try and normalize new language across is board isn’t high on a lot of people’s priority list who are fine with the path of least resistance because they are dealing with a lot right now. People who use neo pronouns know it’s a big cognitive ask but they are doing it for the same reasons any trans person who asks for an accommodation - a quality of life issue. Something about the status quo is actively not working for them. It’s not based out of a desire for attention or a way to feel unique - quite the opposite usually it is nerve wracking asking for an accommodation knowing people will likely treat you as lesser for asking.
So just because you have what you need out of an accommodation you are going to turn around and put up barriers for other people who are not served by your level of accommodation?
If they/them pronouns work for you that’s awesome. It’s in a way another path of least resistance… But there are some people do hope for more from their nearest and dearest. Generally speaking they like all of us take what we can get from the people who legitimately wish them well.
Turning around and dumping on someone else’s accommodation the same way others dump on yours so you get to feel “respectable” is pretty classless. Maybe take a step back and realize the company you keep when you act like that.
Don’t stereotype people by the online facade. I’ve met maybe one weird trans person who fits the stereotype but most of the time they are normal people
I’ve met plenty of people who fit stereotypes, and are not normal well-intention ed people. Trans or straight or cis or whatever. Plenty of people just lean into their own stereotype purposefully… these are also the same folks who are obsessed with social media, trends, and policing what is ‘cool’ or ‘strong’ or whatever image they want so desperately to project.
I put pronoun police into the same category as bro-dozer drivers. insecure assholes who are desperate to be recognized.
Perhaps we could all just use he/her for everyone because its less typing (e and r right next to each other vs im on him or he on she) and less space taken up on screens and paper? It would end run the haterade bigots looking to stir shit up and the self serving jackasses that inject themselves as the main character in every else’s life choices and experiences.
In my own case, I only really take issue with the singular vs plural pronouns because they/them implies multiple people. Declaring they/them as your pronoun feels like an awkward adjustment to force on everyone else, not at all from a gender fluid or gendered language position, just from a logical expedience of exactness of language position.
We make all this shit up anyway, so let’s just collectively define a shortest pronoun to represent individuals universally. Equality of respect among peers.
I’ve been arguing this for a while and I don’t understand why so many people are against it.
He/Him: okay i guess
She/Her: weird change and doesn’t fit previous convention
He/Her: actually builds off of each other
That and while the distinction between Male and Female pronouns is kind of pointless, having a distinction between singular and plural pronouns is actually a helpful feature.
I mean, my only real argument is about efficiency and language exactness for the sake of clarity of meaning. Here’s a version based on my suggestion:
“This person understands pronouns, if everyone was like her then no one would use they are them to refer to one person.”
I’m not attacking pronoun users, I’m advocating for more efficient pronoun usage rather than arbitrarily requiring others to redefine their pronoun usage for every single individual that wants to use a different unique pronoun. Why, you ask? A pronoun is a shortened identifier than can be used in many different instances to represent a noun, in general, individual pronouns are a substitute for individual names.
Your name is the actually unique identifier more-so than any pronoun is or needs to be.
They/them as a singular is really not the confusing. You’d have to come up with an extremely contrived example for it to be problematic. People have been using ‘they’ as a singular pronoun for centuries when the gender isn’t known: “Someone left their umbrella, I hope they come back for it.”
It’s not that contrived to have two subjects in a sentence be a single person and a group of people. I have personally been in situations where someone was confused about the use of the singular them. Obviously it’s possible to understand in most circumstances, but why not make it easier? Especially when it’s a simple solution that also stops most of the misgendering people experience.
‘They/them’ has been used for singular people for centuries.
The Oxford English Dictionary traces singular they back to 1375, where it appears in the medieval romance William and the Werewolf. Except for the old-style language of that poem, its use of singular they to refer to an unnamed person seems very modern. Here’s the Middle English version: ‘Hastely hiȝed eche . . . þei neyȝþed so neiȝh . . . þere william & his worþi lef were liand i-fere.’ In modern English, that’s: ‘Each man hurried . . . till they drew near . . . where William and his darling were lying together.’
Yes and languages evolve. I also worry that your same sort of historial logic can be used in favor of preserving gendered language and traditional gender definitions that is contrary to the goals here.
I’m arguing for a standard usage, he/her for everyone covers always having a singular standardized pronoun so that they/them can be used as plural pronouns without the potential confusion that you may be talking about more than one person in the same literal contextual frame of a discussion. Preciseness of language improves the quality of communication.
Even in that example, and perhaps the modern English translation is just incorrect in its wording, “Each man hurried… til they drew near” is still a plural representative form of usage, as ‘each man’ is an implied amount of more than a singular man.
To say “Each man hurried… til he drew near… where William and his darling were lying together” creates a confusion of singular subject and does not work since ‘each man’ and ‘they’ represents more than a single self identifying entity.
No, not cool. Languages do in fact change over time, regardless of what you or I may think, do or want.
I never demanded others conform to what I want, I argued in favor of an idea that has evolved over time from my own personal growth and life experiences, and it’s a suggestion that is certainly open for discussion.
This was shared as a thought out consideration meant to improve on existing language in several ways, including:
as a compromise and simplified solution on pronoun gendering,
more exactness when discussing single individuals or multiple individuals,
and as a pronoun that is inclusive of everyone without having to talk down to people you disagree with.
I don’t know if you just constantly see red when you go to reply on certain thread topics, but not everything is or needs to be a reactionary agitative internet fight. Have a nice day.
So that means that’s the best way for it to work in the future? Having a distinction between singular and plural is useful, so why *not adjust our language and repurpose the not useful gendered pronouns?
I understand that, my point is that they’re not useful. Or at least it would be much more useful to have a singular and a plural pronoun, because that distinction is more relevant to modern speech.
Language is as useful as people make it and people have been happy to use the singular ‘they’ along with gendered pronouns for centuries. I don’t see the issue.
Are we not intelligent enough to make language whatever we want it to be? We actually do that all the time with political correctness and ungendering words like policeman.
I’m not obligating anything or asking for any accommodation. I’m trying to make an argument for a better system than what we currently have, whereas you just seem to be saying ‘change is stupid’.
No, I’m saying you can’t force people to change their language if they don’t want to no matter how much better you personally think it would be some other way. You can ask, but I don’t know why anyone would agree in this case.
Dude, we’re probably the only 2 people on earth who are going to see this conversation, how am I trying to force anything? The responses you’ve given have made you seem like a very close minded person. If you don’t agree with what I’m saying that’s fine, but if you’re going to engage in a debate then please address the things I’m actually saying. Otherwise I’m just going to stop responding.
Cool, I wasn’t talking about this conversation and I was addressing what you were actually saying, so I’m guessing you’ll have no problem continuing to respond.
Doesn’t work because of the ratios of the populations. For a majority group, their interaction with the minority group is 1 in 100 interactions. For the minority group, they are interacting with the majority group 99 of 100 times.
Being mindful 1 time every 100 is not a big deal. Hearing something hurtful 99% of your day every day is a very big deal and could easily be the most difficult thing in your life.
You can disagree with the reason the minority group is feeling hurt, you can’t proclaim that they aren’t feeling hurt.
And with that being the situation you can only decide whether you have the empathy and belief in common humanity to do your small part in reducing the amount of hurt in the world. Or not.
It’s not about consent or validation, it’s about being harassed. I’m not sure why that isn’t clear to you. Do you think trans people have an easy life?
me misgendering you is not harassment. i honestly don’t care and you shouldn’t either. people that want to die on that hill are wasting everyone’s time. move on. don’t engage with people who don’t take the time to respect your whatever.
But accidentally misgendering someone is often considered paramount to taking part in the holocaust. I’m not mean, I’m just lazy, and I don’t want to talk on egg shells to make sure I accurately read someone’s gender correctly. You can only take some much unjustified vilification before you start to think “you know what? fuck you. I’m going to misgender you out of spite”.
guilty as charged. I’m an equal opportunity asshole these days and don’t really care. no one is going to help change the things that are important to me, so I’m really not interested in your sad song.
Expecting you to treat people with basic respect is not policing your words. Do you go around calling black people the negroes? I hope not. Is it because you think that’s extremely disrespectful? I hope so.
It doesn’t take much effort to spot black people. I know how to treat them with respect because that’s easy. Again, I’m just lazy a little spiteful. Sorry not sorry.
It’s really not the big effort you seem to think it is. If someone looks like a man to you, you refer to them with masculine pronouns and if they correct you, you apologize and go with the pronouns they prefer.
The point is that you don’t keep doing it when they tell you that you’re using the wrong pronouns.
Why do you think people should only care about what you care about and not care about the things you don’t care about?
You sound like you come from a position of privilege and have not been treated with the maliciousness and even violence trans people have to deal with on a daily basis.
I suppose asking you to put yourself in their shoes would be too much?
The system I am actually trying to dismantle is what is oppressing these people, not me. I have my sights set on the big targets and find the trans movement to be a divisive distraction. I have sympathy but it’s not really my battle. My battle is one that affects all of us, not just some of us.
You are part of that system if you don’t give them the basic respect of self-identity they are due. If that is not part of your fight, you’re part of the problem.
there’s a very good chance that the same bigots that use the N word are the same enemy as the one that supports the right. JK Rowling is not my enemy though.
I see. Bigotry against black people is to be fought against but bigotry against trans people is acceptable. I wonder what other marginalized groups you think that should just accept the bigotry hurled at them?
And as I thought, the issue here is that you yourself are a bigot.
Why not toss other queer people into that category while you’re at it? Are gay men are no different from bronies and furries and they should just tolerate being called f*s? Or are those disgusting trans people that make you feel icky the only people who get harassed and attacked for their immutable characteristics that should just suck it up and take all the hatred thrown at them?
I accidentally misgender trans people all the time. Never have I ever been accused of being transphobic because I handle it like calling someone the wrong name accidentally. I quickly correct myself and move on, and actively do my best to remember their pronouns going forward.
Sure, it takes half a braincell of effort at first, but then it becomes easier. This is a strategy known as “not being a dick”.
That said I call everyone Carl because I’m too lazy to learn everyone’s name, and I don’t want to walk on eggshells to make sure I don’t call someone the wrong name accidentally./s
IDK, to me it’s not that much different than trying to keep someone’s religious denomination straight. I really just don’t care what particular branch of stupid you’re into.
But hey, that’s me, a cys white male living their life oblivious to your personal struggle. Fuck me, am I right? If you want to have a conversation about toppling capitalism, you might get my attention.
I’m also a cis white dude, but I’ve grown past the stage of saying “woah is me I’m standing in a place of privilege”. That attitude does nothing for anyone.
Allow yourself to be called out, because that’s how you get called in. If you want change, you have to be willing to be uncomfortable, because that’s what growing feels like. That discomfort is part of you having empathy for others, but it will go away as you learn to love and respect those who are not like you.
I get it, it’s easy to want to focus on how patriarchal systems have put us in a strange position of being both an aggressor and a victim, and it’s easier to face being a victim than considering how we’ve been complicit in this system. We do need to talk about men’s new role in an egalitarian society, and how we can best support men going forward, but being apathetic towards the dignity of others is not how you topple capitalism.
That problem is never the worst in someone’s life, though. If they have that problem, they also have the problems of people calling the police if they use a public bathroom, or being killed on a first date… Slightly bigger problems.
Was sitting in a particular seat the entirety of the civil rights movement? Is being addressed by your correct pronouns the entirety of the trans movement? Are they both smaller manifestations of much larger issues of bigotry and bias that shitty people can isolate to try and mock and trivialize the hardships that minorities and marginalized people face?
and most decent transfolks don’t give a shit about prounouns. they just want to be left alone and stop being made into child raping monsters by politicans looking to scare up the voter base.
I mean… I care about pronouns, so do most of my trans friends, and I’d like to think we’re all “decent” trans folks. It sucks when someone misgenders you. I would also like the conservatives in my country to stop using trans rights as a wedge issue. I can care about both of these things at the same time.
I’d like people to stop screaming at me for misgendering them when I meant no ill-will. Just like I don’t scream at people when they ask me if I’m Italian or when they mispronounce my surname.
God forbid we don’t get pissed off at people for making mistakes, especially strangers.
Oh, you’re the same user who was lying in another comment thread about trans people beating you up in a coffee shop.
Ironic that you’re commenting about politicians making up stories about trans people to scare voters, seeing as you’re doing the same thing to win an argument on the Internet.
My personal favorite for singular gender neutral pronouns are Zi/zir/zirs/zirself or Ze/zer/zers/zerself.
Xe is just trying to be Zi/Ze and it would be confusing for Chinese people. There’s also female connotations with X genome vs Y genome. Which is he Ye is also meh.
I wouldn’t mind Ve, ver, vers, verself either.
Ze sounds more unique and it’s kinda neat how it’s Gen Z helping push it too.
Otherwise just use the pronouns they prefer.
Having to write official documents while having to use they/them is annoying without gender neutral terms coming into it.
English really just needs a better gender neutral singular and plural pronouns. Since they has been used for plural most of my life it feels like better singulars are the way to go, but it doesn’t really matter. Just someone make it official please lol.
Who are you to tell anyone whether they are a man or a woman? What gives you the right to tell someone else who they are? What even business is it of yours?
I’d say it’s best to be in a community where people respect each other’s identities. But your mileage may vary.
So flat chested women are not women? Or women with XY chromosomes but no vagina (yes that’s a thing) are not women? What about those born without a butt hole? What does that make them? Or if someone gets a sex change and now match your definition?
My experience has been that transgendered people will correct you politely when accidentally misgendered. They get it. They don’t like it, but they get it.
It’s the cisgendered people who get offended when they are accidentally misgendered (i.e. calling a cis-female who has masculine features “he/him”).
No different than assuming a fat woman is pregnant or a man with a high voice is gay. And the embarrassment is felt all the same, for both parties.
Okay imagine that… but with an internal crushing anxiety knowing that under best case there will be probably around five somewhat invasive follow up long answer questions either about your personal history or about trans people’s existence in general. Then an optional depressing thing people think is them being magnanimous where they say “I don’t get it but okay.” OR they look at you like you grew another head and walk swiftly away to watch/glare you with furtive long stares or try and speed run whatever brief social interaction you are participating in like you have the plague.
People genuinely do care considering Jordan Peterson’s entire career is based on the whole “you can’t force me to use your pronouns” bullshit that no one was trying to force him to do in the first place.
No, I’m saying bigots and assholes care. You can be sane and be a bigot and/or an asshole. And there a huge number of such people.
And if you mean that people who know what their gender is are loony and would prefer it if people didn’t get it wrong, you are probably loony yourself.
Your point seems to be than anyone who cares about repeatedly being called “she” when they’re a man is crazy rather than just a man who doesn’t want to be called “she” all the time.
I will start by saying I am very open minded and really don’t agree with a lot of what Peterson says. I’m also pro LGBT and leaving people be who they are and love the life that makes them happy… But he’s right that we shouldn’t be forced to use someone’s pronouns. At the time there was discussion about making this a law. If someone wants to be a prick let them. Better to know who they are.
You mean harassing someone at work will get you fired. That’s true no matter what type of harassment it is. That has nothing to do with pronouns. You could get fired for repeatedly calling someone at work a panda.
I have personally seen many instances of people getting banned or suspended from communities for either misgendering people (intentionally or not), or refusing to use their preferred pronouns.
But due to a real concern of retaliation or getting banned here myself, I will not be providing specific examples.
Sorry, it’s not my job to prove your claims. If there are real world instances of violence, I’m sure you can provide them and show they were definitely unprovoked.
Thanks for the apology. I really hate the LGBT hate. I don’t understand what’s wrong with letting people live their own lives the way they want, if they aren’t physically affecting others. Shame my original post got downvoted so much. I didn’t think it was offensive.
Edit: also thank you for correcting my misconception over the law! I’ll make sure to correct people going forward.
lots of people are being harassed and intimidated into it though. lots of people take an absolutist stance on pronouns, and if you misgender someone or don’t ask them what their pronoun is, you are considered a ‘bad person’.
labeling and harassing people into social conformity is being forced to do something.
What people? I have never seen anyone get angry about being accidentally misgendered.
No one is being “harassed” or “intimidated” into calling people what they want to be called. You’re just an asshole if you don’t do it because you’re not giving them a very basic amount of respect: the acknowledgement of the right to be who they are.
I have, many times. Don’t know where you live… oftentimes it’s not ever the trans person getting mad… it’s a straight cis person with a hero complex goes around as a self appointed pronoun police officer and calls you names if you even ask them wtf the deal is.
On the one hand we have people who have said “trans people are usually very polite about correcting you if you misgender them.” (Which has also been my experience as well)
On the other hand we have you saying “trans people are always rude jerks!”
The only difference between the two scenarios is… You. Pair that with how you have been talking about trans people in all of your posts and I have to conclude that you are the problem here, and there must be something you are doing that is making trans people and trans allies aggressive towards you.
On the contrary in fact, I’ve seen people be very forgiving if you accidentally screw up but genuinely mean well. I accidentally misgendered a friend of mine once, and when I realized it I immediately started profusely apologizing. They appreciated it but said it was all good.
At the end of the day, everything can be distilled down to one maxim – be genuinely kind to people, and 99% of people will respond in kind and forgive mistakes.
Sure, anyone can make a mistake. Trans people know that just as well as cis people. If you just say sorry and correct yourself, most trans people would probably be fine with it. It’s the people who do it on purpose that are the problem.
Wow this sounds really reasonable, wtf kinda drugs is Peterson on if he thinks it restricts free speech…
TLDR: bill C-16 adds gender identity and expression to the list of discrimination protections, a list which already includes gender, ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation. So yeah right now you can’t fire someone for being black, under C-16 this will also apply to trans people. Ontario already has this in their provincial laws, so Peterson is already living under such a “regime”.
Wow this sounds really reasonable, wtf kinda drugs is Peterson on if he thinks it restricts free speech…
If I recall, Peterson’s entire idea on that was that it would result in misgendering being considered hate speech, though it’s been a while so I might be misremembering.
It was made a law, it’s also a law in many parts of the US. It’s not about preventing random people from being pricks, it’s about discouraging harassment from employers, school administrations, and government officials. They’re prohibited from persistently misgendering you in the same way they’re prohibited from calling you slurs. I struggle to imagine a scenario where life would be improved by removing those sensible guard rails on civil society.
Nobody is “forced to use pronouns” at present but this stance misses the point. It looks at the harms of misgendering as a situation that doesn’t cause other inequities and harms.
For the average social interaction where you are on equal terms but can walk away being misgendered is something a lot of us hate but live with like any small annoyance. It is like stubbing your toe. Not fun but whatever it’s fine that’s just “someone being a prick”. But if deliberate misgendering is allowed to happen over a long period in a workplace setting it is not something we get to walk away from. If we have to regularly interact with that person or lose our ability to feed and house ourselves then we are forced to have mental health problems because someone essentially doesn’t like being told what to do. Having to deal with panic attacks at work because you had to be locked in a room with someone hitting every trauma trigger you have exposed to the world or else you have to find a new and maybe worse job is a barrier to participation in society.
If it’s in a medical setting where we have to balance our health outcomes knowing that if we don’t comply with the misgendering our care is impacted because a doctor holds our lives or the relief from pain in their hands. A lot of trans people become shy and don’t seek help early and often because they equate doctors visits with a sense of powerlessness and shame knowing that they can’t stand up for themselves. In that instance it’s not just “someone being a dick” you are placing someone’s complete physical wellbeing before someone’s egotistical need to be “right” about you.
If a trans person in a social club and misgendering isn’t checked by a majority it can mean that they might not have a choice on whether or not to go. The world becomes a smaller place when you have gender related trauma.
Deliberate misgendering in a professional setting isn’t just “someone showing you they are a prick” the burden always falls upon trans people disproportionately because our participation in society often forces us to compromise directly on our health and there are real traumas and weaknesses that underlie our transness. If someone was openly making rape jokes around someone you knew had sexual assault trauma you’d step in right? Why not the same for someone with gender related traumas?
What Peterson is railing against is protections for participation in regular society through professional setting misgendering cases.
the problem is, in the tech world, many transgender people seem to make their entire existence revolve around their gender identity and then try to force inclusion politics on everyone.
Let me fix that for ya. In the real world many cisgender bigots make trans people entire existence about their gender, and then try to enforce cis-sexist ideologies on sports, healthcare, culture and education.
If you were regularly harassed by being called a gender that you aren’t after spending years pretending to not be that gender because other people wouldn’t like it, you might care.
Just like you might care if you were black and someone refused to stop calling you ‘negro.’
I just can’t imagine caring about this very much. Sure, when I was an angsty teen, but as an adult “what people think” about me is just so far down the list of things I care about.
Maybe because you come from a place of privilege where you didn’t have to hide who you really are due to a vast amount of society hating you for it and just want a little bit of courtesy from the people around them instead of endless hatred?
Your perception and opinions is likely why you don’t know of any adults who fret over third person pronouns. You are not a safe person to bring those concerns up to so no one is going to out themselves around you. I assure you it’s more common than you think.
Generally speaking we’re looking to gain quality of life. If someone negatively reacting is a bigger problem than the internal dysphoria triggers then we take the loss and just quietly hope we don’t have to be around you for long.
the fundies are just as full of performance moral grandstanding hypocracy as the pronoun nutbags.
I don’t understand. What is the middle ground between “you should refer to trans people by their chosen gender” and “you shouldn’t refer to trans people by their chosen gender”? Do you flip a coin?
From what I recall from briefly studying German, there’s still a masculine/feminine/neuter pronoun in all 4 cases. Couldn’t you just use the appropriate one in each case?
Okay, then you use whichever English pronoun you wish to use. Again, pretty simple. I really don’t think this is something you couldn’t have figured out for yourself just by spending time around English speakers or even just watching English-language media or listening to English-language music.
Es geht nur um das Geschlecht, also er/sie/es. Mann kann das gleiche auf deutsch machen, die Fälle haben eigentlich nichts damit zu tun.
Es geht nur darum, wie sich der Person fühlt. Leute mit eine biologische “Zwischen-Zustand” sind ein gutes Beispiel für uns “0815” leute. Sollte ich sie oder er sagen zur eine Person mit weiblichen Büßen und einen Penis? Die leute (und auch andere die sich als nicht Standard fühlen) wollen einfach selber einschneiden wie man sie adressiert.
(Entschuldigung wegen meinen Grammatik-Fehlern, mein Deutsch wird ständig schlimmer)
Yep, pretty much what UNY0N said. It is about the gender, not the pronouns per se. It is an English thing that they have gendered pronouns when mostly all other stuff in the language is (assumed not) gendered. Such meticulus discussion of pronouns detached from gender makes me wonder what your reaction would be if someone held a door open for you and then called you Fraulein. Would you feel misgendered then?
Most commonly used English pronouns are typically listed as “he/him”, “she/her”. Sometimes people add possessive forms as well ("ie “she/her/hers”. “They/them”, “she/they”, “he/they”, “they/he”, “they/she”, “he/she”, “any” are other common options. There’s not hard rules though.
English also has cases, we just don’t think of them much. It’s why pronouns are typically given as nominative/objective pairs: she/her, they/them, etc. So, similarly in German you’d probably only need to give one or two examples to make it clear which set to use. Or give all four.
Sorry, why is it such a hardship for you if someone says “don’t call me he, please, call me grit?” What does it matter if it sounds funny or weird? Lots of things in English sound funny or weird. We drive on a parkway and park on a driveway.
You’re right, but you can never be left…darn that’s even wrong but not even right. You could say we’re uneven right 👍. Like the word fuck. I can fuck up but haven’t ever fucked down! But there are many ways to fuck up and non of those ways is doggy style. You can fuck someone up, but you can’t fuck them up doggy style. You can only fuck them doggy style. The only way to fuck is up, but there are a huge number of ways to fuck. Like you can’t fuck forward, but you can fuck missionary. But although you can run forward towards a goal, you can never run missionary towards a goal. Two guys can’t fuck scissor style, they can get into that position but it would be painful. Now you can back up and back down, but you can’t back left or right. You can back up a little to the left but your can’t fuck up a little to the left. English is so dumb!
It’s clear that you’re not trying to make a point here.
You didn’t comment here to discuss but just to throw your hate for pronouns onto other people
Ask yourself if you actually want to create positive change. You clearly have an opinion on the matter. Regardless of your opinion being reasonable or not, you already ruined your chance to get your point across by being a total ass
You will never convince anyone by being an asshole. So don’t be one.
And if you just want to express your frustrations then go to your therapist.
You do realize that language evolves and changes, what sounds odd to us may not in 20 years and what sounds normal now may have sounded odd 20 years ago.
Yes there are some rules, but also those rules are subject to change too.
Saying stuff like this 40 years ago would sound absurd: Google it, search it up, tweet it, download it, upload it, post it.
Language changes, thou cannest changeth with it or thee will eventually and indubitably sound like a right silly nincompoop, knave!
I think my point here is that I certainly didn’t get to live in a trans open world. The only openly gay people in my class in jr high and highschool were shun to a corner. They were outcasts. Imagine learning their pronouns… There was no such thing back in the 90’s.
Now you can’t expect people of my age to not find the language strange at all. But my point should be pretty clear, the way to start is through youth. They and not us are the ones that change language. Once they reach their 40’s and 50’s there will be a new wave that will bring more changes with them. So if you don’t catch the waves such as the COVID baby boom, you miss a generation. School is where new language trends will be set.
Similarly is it that big of a hardship that someone accidentally misgenders you? Because if that is a prolem in your life I am super envious of your life. It sounds amazing. Please trade lives with me so that I can have your tiny ridiculous problems.
Well this tweet is mocking the hardship of using different pronouns. It is specifically critisizing the notion that this let’s be real malicious syntax causes ‘hardship’ for someone, writing off the 8 billion people who’s language isn’t native english as morons with a tiny ridiculous problem. IT SPECIFICALLY DOES NOT MENTION INTENTION, it frames not calling someone by their correct pronoun for WHATEVER reason as a person who is either mentally incapable, privilaged, or a whining bitch.
It mentions no conditions, no clarification, it writes off everyone who fails to comply, as people WHO HAVE NO RIGHT TO COMPLAIN.
So does your comment. "Sorry, why is it such a hardship for you if someone says “don’t call me he, please, call me grit?” - Having grand expectations of MY compliance, yet not applying the same standards for yourself. Why is it such a hardship? What POSSIBLE hardship can you experience conforming to me?
Wow. You really don’t understand what he’s saying.
Also, why on Earth would he be talking about non-native English speakers if he’s an American writer who writes novels in English for English-speakers? Does he really need to add “except for all of you who don’t speak English” or does everyone (except you apparently) realize that without him having to add that bit of unnecessary clarification?
Yes? Because english is the global language? It does not belong to English speaking countries anymore? You lost that with forced colonization? There is no countries on the internet? It is funny how when it comes to MY concerns, and me being offended and being talked down to, the clarification is suddenly ‘uneccesary’, and ‘realised by everyone’.
Bruh… Just use they and them. If people get pissy about it just tell them you struggle really hard with memory and this is your way of making sure you treat everyone with kindness.
Nice reply. I had to remove my comment because it seemed offensive. It was just poking fun at English as a whole. But whatever. Thanks for the suggestion though.
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