Absolutely, situations like yours are getting lost in the overall discussion here. There are legitimate reasons for some users to not want to identify with any pronoun. Much love to you :heart-sickle:
A comrade who is questioning or unsure of their identity doesn't have to do anything for you or I or anyone else. Your comments toward Senora sound much more like bullying than solidarity, the latter of which is the entire point of pronoun tags in the first place.
Yeah I find it weird to be so adamant about making everyone define their pronouns and gender. I know several trans/NB people who enjoy the anonymity of forums like this that allow them to forget about gender, pronouns and everything else that surrounds it. I thought part of the purpose of this forum was not to be like twitter or facebook where your account does not stay with you and doesn't have any bearing on who you are outside of political views.
I'm a cis guy who set my pronouns day one. It's a good sign of solidarity and this site is cool for doing it. But the way this has been handled is a complete and utter shitshow. Ironically, "not setting your pronouns is transphobic" is a really binary way of looking at the situation. By setting up such a hardline stance, the users became hardline as well. I've seen a lot of really cruel posting from people who I would consider to be my comrades. I think we all need to chill out a little, including myself. This feels uncharacteristic for this site and these hard lines in the sand do not help our cause.
I don’t think none was an option before the original post that set this off, so people were being shamed and called transphobic for not choosing when there were inadequate options.
call me transphobic or a boomer or whatever but I dont really see myself referring to anyone as a deer regardless of their want. I imagine I would more likely just not refer to them at all.
that is...transphobic to misgender someone because you don't see their neo-pronoun as valid. they/them is a neopronoun in the scope of things. at one point in english she/her was a neopronoun. you cant just be the arbiter of pronouns.
I'm going to jump off a bridge. We are never going to achieve liberation, the imperial core will forever be self-obsessed people that care about personal validation over people's liberation and we will be talking about fucking deer pronouns until the last drop of potable water evaporates or the last two "leftists" burn to death from climate disaster.
My problem is this is the western left. This is what we are. If we continue this way we will be rounded up and fucking shot and the immense suffering in the world will chug along until the last sucker gasps their last breath of air. This is an exercise in privilege that would make any self-respecting global south Communist execute every one of us on sight, myself included.
Calling Chapotistas the "western left" is perhaps too high a praise. What percentage of people here actually organize or act on their ideology?
No one using this website will be rounded up and shot because no one on this website is of political or economic importance. The most obvious leftward party in the United States is... the DSA. What does that tell you?
I mean it's not far off. There is a reason that regular people from marginalized communities roll their eyes at us. I can't fathom the reaction that any of the poor black folks or immigrants I work with on the regular seeing this shit. If people want to talk about alienating potential comrades, I think that's the direction I'd take the conversation.
Why do neopronouns come before Imperialism and Capitalism? Is Imperialism not the primary contradiction in the world rn? I'm sorry but I'm a Marxist, my understanding of the world and the struggles we face is informed by dialectics. The order of priorities has been accepted for decades by Marxists that actually fight for liberation. If we have to wait for everyone to be comfortable using deer pronouns before we achieve liberation for the exploited masses we might as well kill ourselves now because it's never going to happen.
Gatekeeping the left over shit like neopronouns is the biggest gift to reactionaries we could give them.
The vast majority of people are not ever going to be comfortable with deer pronouns and that's just a fact. What you're saying is that we must box these people out until they're sufficiently compliant with radical social values held by a fraction of a fraction of a percent of people in the world.
Like I don't care. I will call you a deer if it makes you happy. But I'm not everyone, and the struggles for Liberation needs mass support. Not just locally or domestically but globally. People are saying "if you don't use neopronouns you're not a leftist" and all I can think is "would a devout muslim refugee whose family was slaughtered by US-funded wahhabists be comfortable using neopronouns, and would we box them out of the struggle of they weren't"
You're a very religious young man, fighting age. You have followed the Quran and the hadiths to the best of your ability. You safeguarded your sister's chastity from leering goatherders all her life. And then: your family has been killed by western interventionism. You have no support system.
You find yourself in a refugee camp, and a few white people gathered are talking about socialism and defying the west. You listen closely.
You realize that they are referring to each other as deer. At first you assume this is some kind of code, but then you notice that they insist everyone call them deer.
Baffled and disappointed, you lie down on your cot. You listen for the buzz of a drone overhead, and fall asleep because you don't care anymore.
Your version is accurate, yes, but it doesn't address the point: are highly religious people from unindustrialized areas of the Middle East going to readily accept people that want to be referred to--not, from their perspective, as a man or woman, but as a cervid?
The answer is no. So the next question is: you have people who can be radicalized leftward or rightward due to the precariousness of their position. Do you turn them away because they do not follow our norms?
Look, if during the American Civil War we got rid of every single Union soldier who wasn't on the cutting edge of progressive abolitionist and feminist thought, the north would've lost. The fact of the matter is that you're going to have to include a lot of people who are at different stages of moving towards that intersectional egalitarian thinking.
They probably won't become a fascist but they might get discouraged and alienated by a bunch of online Westerners dogpiling them for something that seems trivial to them.
I mean, maybe they would, but I'm not sure you've spent a lot of time with people from the global south if you think that's even the more likely scenario let alone the probable one. Most immigrants I've known, and I've known a lot working on construction sites and in retail in high-diversity areas, are pretty socially conservative and religious. Religious values aren't any less important to them than they are to our domestic fundamentalists.
Idk what kind of bubble your girlfriend lives in but the Communist movement in Africa as a whole is objectively socially conservative compared to the West. Most Communist parties still hold the line that lgbt identity is degeneracy born out of capitalist alienation. I think they're wrong because scientific understanding of these issues points to that theory being a false assumption. I'm not going to tell them to go fuck themselves because of that though. Their struggle is still deserving of my support and collaboration.
STFU. Are you stupid on purpose? TALKING ABOUT PRONOUNS is not what is stopping "liberation". You are creating the problem by not using people's pronouns- you literally admit to not seeing yourself using people's pronouns. JUST USE PEOPLES PRONOUNS. you don't need to understand neo-pronouns to respect them. and FYI not being misgendered isnt about "personal validation" it is a serious and harmful action to misgender someone.
I don't misgender people, but you're wrong, it is about personal validation. Like you're literally validating someone's personal gender identity by calling them correct pronouns. Misgendering someone is about as serious and harmful as calling someone a fat fuck, it's mean and can probably do real emotional damage, but it's not the same as cops executing black men for reaching in their pocket or the military drone striking a hospital.
Please just log off and reflect or something. Something does not need to kill you to be important. Not having your correct pronoun used may not bomb or shoot you but it does serious mental harm- being invalidated isolates you and harms you. Affirmation at no cost to you is harmless. Why would it be harmful for you to just use pronouns as people indicate they want you to. Even if you don't get it.
First of all, I literally started that comment with "I don't misgender people" so idk why people keep saying "just use the pronouns". I do.
Second, my problem is that western leftists care way more about the "serious mental harm" of people in the global north over the absolute physical slaughter of people in the global south, or even people in marginalized communities in the global north. The social gatekeeping is an exercise in extreme privilege that is severely fucking grim.
You can't compare two distinct issues like this by doing a well what about this also serious issue. No one here disagrees western leftists should help the global south. Why can you also not work on your own biases? You really seem to be disregarding the identities of people as unserious and a waste of time.
I don't need to work on personal biases lol. I'm not a transphobe. I don't think they're invalid, I don't believe in biological essentialism, I respect people's pronouns and I stand up for trans people when they're disrespected. I have been for a while, starting with 10 years ago when I made a scene at a diner after they kicked out a trans woman for using the women's room. People keep trying to read transphobia out of a genuine concern for the navel-gazing of the western left.
And I'm sorry, but people's identities being validated is objectively less important than people's physical bodies being protected. That doesn't mean you can't care about both, I'm not saying that. I'm saying that there is a social gatekeeping where you create teams where "if you abide by all these social rules you can be on our side, otherwise fuck you". We will spend endless days talking about pronouns but people get bored talking about things that are 100% essential for any liberators movement to address.
It isn't navel-gazing to have a discourse on gender, or neo-pronouns, or mandatory vs recommended vs available pronoun use. It's actually important work that helps us build an inclusive community. If you are free from bias then just step aside if you don't want to get involved in it. Why come on to de-rail the discussion by making the point that there are in your opinion more important things to talk about. Go work on protecting people's physical bodies instead of complaining that people are interested in validation of people's identities- which btw is also a preventative measure of allyship. Any liberation movement must have space for social rules to at least protect people from being done harm. This is essential- so don't smear it by complaining about "deer pronouns" which if you are capable of respecting you should just do and stop there.
It's both of them lmao. Scroll up they are competing for most stupid in the world. Lad commented- I responded- Bread responded to my comment with more whining.
I mean, not really. Literally earlier today I failed to manage the same. I got pissed off and made a post on main about this pronoun stuff and the title was not respectful.
we all can't manage sometimes. What matters is that we pay attention to ourselves and our actions, and be open to failure and fucking up, and learning the lessons you need to grow.
Because if you don't self-crit (or at least listen to your comrades criticisms) you end up saying transphobic shit on chapo.chat, I guess
Mhmm- I'm mostly talking about people (and you can find quite a few examples) who are 10 comments into defending their choice to actively disrespect people. No one is perfect- some people are going out of their way rn to be stupid tho.
Deer pronouns are doe/deer, and doe has used them for a long time.
It's pretty simple in this case for the most part, doe/deer can be largely used as she/her would. If you'd otherwise say she say doe, if you'd say her use deer.
I genuinely dont mean this in any offensive way, but I had no idea what your first sentence was even supposed to mean until I realized you were talking about a person after 3 or 4 re-reads and I was literally the person to ask you for an example.
It kind of defeats the purpose of a pronoun if nobody realizes it is even referring to a person when it is used. I am arguing from a point of practicality whereas your opinion is very clearly emotionally charged considering this is your friends preferred pronouns which is understandable.
I feel that this specific discussion has only minor relevance to transgenderism overall, and is a bit more complex than that.
I genuinely dont mean this in any offensive way, but I had no idea what your first sentence was even supposed to mean
You're new to this concept and having some trouble getting your head around it, that's how it goes. It's kind of hard to conceptualize at first, it was for me. But that's no excuse for refusing to try
How does it defeat the purpose when deer pronouns are going to be on deer posts? It will make it easier, obviously there's gonna be some confusion but what's wrong with that? It's just an adjustment period.
Not to mention how valuable that getting normalized could be for people.
imagine if you were a comrade lurking here who goes by a neopronoun sees how much trouble it caused with the majority cishet population, how it might not be worth it to be able to be comfortable and expressive of themself in an online space for expressing oneself among comrades lest they have to see garbage posts like your complaining about a part of who they are.
Cause guess what that's not hypothetical, that's what you've done here
Do you see how your attitude is the one that's defeating the purpose here?
No one's asking you to get a neopronoun, no ones asking you to think they're cool, just respect it when a human being shares how they prefer being reffered to
Why is it somehow your job to decide the line here?
You say minor, I say small % of the population, but the thing is that does not reduce the significance of showing the bare minimum solidarity wtf.
While its a small subset of the community, who's to say how many more would be more comfortable with a neopronoun if it were a widespread concept.
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Absolutely, situations like yours are getting lost in the overall discussion here. There are legitimate reasons for some users to not want to identify with any pronoun. Much love to you :heart-sickle:
Why is "none" insufficient then?
A comrade who is questioning or unsure of their identity doesn't have to do anything for you or I or anyone else. Your comments toward Senora sound much more like bullying than solidarity, the latter of which is the entire point of pronoun tags in the first place.
I was just asking.
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Yeah I find it weird to be so adamant about making everyone define their pronouns and gender. I know several trans/NB people who enjoy the anonymity of forums like this that allow them to forget about gender, pronouns and everything else that surrounds it. I thought part of the purpose of this forum was not to be like twitter or facebook where your account does not stay with you and doesn't have any bearing on who you are outside of political views.
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I'm a cis guy who set my pronouns day one. It's a good sign of solidarity and this site is cool for doing it. But the way this has been handled is a complete and utter shitshow. Ironically, "not setting your pronouns is transphobic" is a really binary way of looking at the situation. By setting up such a hardline stance, the users became hardline as well. I've seen a lot of really cruel posting from people who I would consider to be my comrades. I think we all need to chill out a little, including myself. This feels uncharacteristic for this site and these hard lines in the sand do not help our cause.
None is an option.
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Your username would imply your pronouns. For everyone that isn't the case.
None is an option
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I don’t think none was an option before the original post that set this off, so people were being shamed and called transphobic for not choosing when there were inadequate options.
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Did you reply to the wrong person? I haven’t called anyone transphobic.
-_____________-
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Wasn't comrade originally popularized and intended to be a class and gender neutral form of address? How is it a "joke" smh
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Regardless it should be an option
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but doe/deer are options for some reason
christ man
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if you say so.
It seems weird to me that when asking for a means of referring to a person comrade is considered bad faith in that regard...
dunno about the comrade thing but doe/deer is the neopronouns used by one of our comrades on here, and should be treated with respect o7
edit: why downvote this comment, one which conveys only information and solidarity for a comrade? Wtf y'all
call me transphobic or a boomer or whatever but I dont really see myself referring to anyone as a deer regardless of their want. I imagine I would more likely just not refer to them at all.
that is...transphobic to misgender someone because you don't see their neo-pronoun as valid. they/them is a neopronoun in the scope of things. at one point in english she/her was a neopronoun. you cant just be the arbiter of pronouns.
I'm going to jump off a bridge. We are never going to achieve liberation, the imperial core will forever be self-obsessed people that care about personal validation over people's liberation and we will be talking about fucking deer pronouns until the last drop of potable water evaporates or the last two "leftists" burn to death from climate disaster.
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My problem is this is the western left. This is what we are. If we continue this way we will be rounded up and fucking shot and the immense suffering in the world will chug along until the last sucker gasps their last breath of air. This is an exercise in privilege that would make any self-respecting global south Communist execute every one of us on sight, myself included.
Calling Chapotistas the "western left" is perhaps too high a praise. What percentage of people here actually organize or act on their ideology?
No one using this website will be rounded up and shot because no one on this website is of political or economic importance. The most obvious leftward party in the United States is... the DSA. What does that tell you?
My point stands, bridges are looking pretty tempting
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I mean it's not far off. There is a reason that regular people from marginalized communities roll their eyes at us. I can't fathom the reaction that any of the poor black folks or immigrants I work with on the regular seeing this shit. If people want to talk about alienating potential comrades, I think that's the direction I'd take the conversation.
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There is no need for you to intentionally misrepresent his position like that.
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Why do neopronouns come before Imperialism and Capitalism? Is Imperialism not the primary contradiction in the world rn? I'm sorry but I'm a Marxist, my understanding of the world and the struggles we face is informed by dialectics. The order of priorities has been accepted for decades by Marxists that actually fight for liberation. If we have to wait for everyone to be comfortable using deer pronouns before we achieve liberation for the exploited masses we might as well kill ourselves now because it's never going to happen.
Gatekeeping the left over shit like neopronouns is the biggest gift to reactionaries we could give them.
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The vast majority of people are not ever going to be comfortable with deer pronouns and that's just a fact. What you're saying is that we must box these people out until they're sufficiently compliant with radical social values held by a fraction of a fraction of a percent of people in the world.
Like I don't care. I will call you a deer if it makes you happy. But I'm not everyone, and the struggles for Liberation needs mass support. Not just locally or domestically but globally. People are saying "if you don't use neopronouns you're not a leftist" and all I can think is "would a devout muslim refugee whose family was slaughtered by US-funded wahhabists be comfortable using neopronouns, and would we box them out of the struggle of they weren't"
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Okay, I appreciate you giving them the benefit of the doubt, but come on.
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Let me reframe this for you.
You're a very religious young man, fighting age. You have followed the Quran and the hadiths to the best of your ability. You safeguarded your sister's chastity from leering goatherders all her life. And then: your family has been killed by western interventionism. You have no support system.
You find yourself in a refugee camp, and a few white people gathered are talking about socialism and defying the west. You listen closely.
You realize that they are referring to each other as deer. At first you assume this is some kind of code, but then you notice that they insist everyone call them deer.
Baffled and disappointed, you lie down on your cot. You listen for the buzz of a drone overhead, and fall asleep because you don't care anymore.
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Your version is accurate, yes, but it doesn't address the point: are highly religious people from unindustrialized areas of the Middle East going to readily accept people that want to be referred to--not, from their perspective, as a man or woman, but as a cervid?
The answer is no. So the next question is: you have people who can be radicalized leftward or rightward due to the precariousness of their position. Do you turn them away because they do not follow our norms?
Look, if during the American Civil War we got rid of every single Union soldier who wasn't on the cutting edge of progressive abolitionist and feminist thought, the north would've lost. The fact of the matter is that you're going to have to include a lot of people who are at different stages of moving towards that intersectional egalitarian thinking.
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They probably won't become a fascist but they might get discouraged and alienated by a bunch of online Westerners dogpiling them for something that seems trivial to them.
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I mean, maybe they would, but I'm not sure you've spent a lot of time with people from the global south if you think that's even the more likely scenario let alone the probable one. Most immigrants I've known, and I've known a lot working on construction sites and in retail in high-diversity areas, are pretty socially conservative and religious. Religious values aren't any less important to them than they are to our domestic fundamentalists.
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Idk what kind of bubble your girlfriend lives in but the Communist movement in Africa as a whole is objectively socially conservative compared to the West. Most Communist parties still hold the line that lgbt identity is degeneracy born out of capitalist alienation. I think they're wrong because scientific understanding of these issues points to that theory being a false assumption. I'm not going to tell them to go fuck themselves because of that though. Their struggle is still deserving of my support and collaboration.
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Writing off someone immediately like this is an obstacle to mass movements. Some people just need a little push. Some, a bigger push.
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STFU. Are you stupid on purpose? TALKING ABOUT PRONOUNS is not what is stopping "liberation". You are creating the problem by not using people's pronouns- you literally admit to not seeing yourself using people's pronouns. JUST USE PEOPLES PRONOUNS. you don't need to understand neo-pronouns to respect them. and FYI not being misgendered isnt about "personal validation" it is a serious and harmful action to misgender someone.
I don't misgender people, but you're wrong, it is about personal validation. Like you're literally validating someone's personal gender identity by calling them correct pronouns. Misgendering someone is about as serious and harmful as calling someone a fat fuck, it's mean and can probably do real emotional damage, but it's not the same as cops executing black men for reaching in their pocket or the military drone striking a hospital.
Please just log off and reflect or something. Something does not need to kill you to be important. Not having your correct pronoun used may not bomb or shoot you but it does serious mental harm- being invalidated isolates you and harms you. Affirmation at no cost to you is harmless. Why would it be harmful for you to just use pronouns as people indicate they want you to. Even if you don't get it.
First of all, I literally started that comment with "I don't misgender people" so idk why people keep saying "just use the pronouns". I do.
Second, my problem is that western leftists care way more about the "serious mental harm" of people in the global north over the absolute physical slaughter of people in the global south, or even people in marginalized communities in the global north. The social gatekeeping is an exercise in extreme privilege that is severely fucking grim.
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You can't compare two distinct issues like this by doing a well what about this also serious issue. No one here disagrees western leftists should help the global south. Why can you also not work on your own biases? You really seem to be disregarding the identities of people as unserious and a waste of time.
I don't need to work on personal biases lol. I'm not a transphobe. I don't think they're invalid, I don't believe in biological essentialism, I respect people's pronouns and I stand up for trans people when they're disrespected. I have been for a while, starting with 10 years ago when I made a scene at a diner after they kicked out a trans woman for using the women's room. People keep trying to read transphobia out of a genuine concern for the navel-gazing of the western left.
And I'm sorry, but people's identities being validated is objectively less important than people's physical bodies being protected. That doesn't mean you can't care about both, I'm not saying that. I'm saying that there is a social gatekeeping where you create teams where "if you abide by all these social rules you can be on our side, otherwise fuck you". We will spend endless days talking about pronouns but people get bored talking about things that are 100% essential for any liberators movement to address.
It isn't navel-gazing to have a discourse on gender, or neo-pronouns, or mandatory vs recommended vs available pronoun use. It's actually important work that helps us build an inclusive community. If you are free from bias then just step aside if you don't want to get involved in it. Why come on to de-rail the discussion by making the point that there are in your opinion more important things to talk about. Go work on protecting people's physical bodies instead of complaining that people are interested in validation of people's identities- which btw is also a preventative measure of allyship. Any liberation movement must have space for social rules to at least protect people from being done harm. This is essential- so don't smear it by complaining about "deer pronouns" which if you are capable of respecting you should just do and stop there.
I think you responded to the wrong person, this isn't the person who said they don't see themselves using people's pronouns
Sorry!! My bad I meant to @Bread_In_Baltimore who had that shit take. Literally typed too fast.
You did, its just that Bread and Lad are two different posters and I think you merged their shit takes into one super shit take
unless my boy whom I love @Bread_In_Baltimore also said he cant see himself using people's pronouns.
say it ain't so
It's both of them lmao. Scroll up they are competing for most stupid in the world. Lad commented- I responded- Bread responded to my comment with more whining.
damn, you're right :deeper-sadness:
I see you being a decent person tho. Keep on keeping on!
I just want my friends and comrades treated with respect
Insane how many people cannot manage the same.
I mean, not really. Literally earlier today I failed to manage the same. I got pissed off and made a post on main about this pronoun stuff and the title was not respectful.
we all can't manage sometimes. What matters is that we pay attention to ourselves and our actions, and be open to failure and fucking up, and learning the lessons you need to grow.
Because if you don't self-crit (or at least listen to your comrades criticisms) you end up saying transphobic shit on chapo.chat, I guess
Mhmm- I'm mostly talking about people (and you can find quite a few examples) who are 10 comments into defending their choice to actively disrespect people. No one is perfect- some people are going out of their way rn to be stupid tho.
No I getcha, and those are people who do not practice self-crit
I'm sorry, I'm fighting for my friend here and she for her comrade. Pardon me if I don't appreciate shitheads like this lad who invalidate deer.
OK, sure. Let's say I give you this one. Can you give me an example how I would use doe/deer as a pronoun to refer to a person.
Deer pronouns are doe/deer, and doe has used them for a long time.
It's pretty simple in this case for the most part, doe/deer can be largely used as she/her would. If you'd otherwise say she say doe, if you'd say her use deer.
I genuinely dont mean this in any offensive way, but I had no idea what your first sentence was even supposed to mean until I realized you were talking about a person after 3 or 4 re-reads and I was literally the person to ask you for an example.
It kind of defeats the purpose of a pronoun if nobody realizes it is even referring to a person when it is used. I am arguing from a point of practicality whereas your opinion is very clearly emotionally charged considering this is your friends preferred pronouns which is understandable.
I feel that this specific discussion has only minor relevance to transgenderism overall, and is a bit more complex than that.
You're new to this concept and having some trouble getting your head around it, that's how it goes. It's kind of hard to conceptualize at first, it was for me. But that's no excuse for refusing to try
How does it defeat the purpose when deer pronouns are going to be on deer posts? It will make it easier, obviously there's gonna be some confusion but what's wrong with that? It's just an adjustment period.
Not to mention how valuable that getting normalized could be for people.
imagine if you were a comrade lurking here who goes by a neopronoun sees how much trouble it caused with the majority cishet population, how it might not be worth it to be able to be comfortable and expressive of themself in an online space for expressing oneself among comrades lest they have to see garbage posts like your complaining about a part of who they are.
Cause guess what that's not hypothetical, that's what you've done here
Do you see how your attitude is the one that's defeating the purpose here?
No one's asking you to get a neopronoun, no ones asking you to think they're cool, just respect it when a human being shares how they prefer being reffered to
Why is it somehow your job to decide the line here?
You say minor, I say small % of the population, but the thing is that does not reduce the significance of showing the bare minimum solidarity wtf.
While its a small subset of the community, who's to say how many more would be more comfortable with a neopronoun if it were a widespread concept.
Yeah fuck off with that :)
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The same problem would occur there, because they could just type it in themselves after seeing it same as go select it from a dropdown
how about we just bully people who do shitty things like use our comrades' pronouns as jokes?
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That's a good point I hadn't considered, and I agree
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