Five days ago, drag was banned from !politicalmemes@lemmy.world for using neopronouns. A comment explaining drag’s pronouns, and a comment saying “drag” isn’t a nickname, were removed with the reason “trolling”. Drag understands why someone would think that using different pronouns than most people is trolling - transphobia. However, drag is confused how on earth not liking a nickname is a violation of any rules anywhere.
Context of the removed comments:
Drag would like to pre-empt any further accusations of trolling by asking a question: If drag were a right wing troll, and you chose to freely accept drag’s pronouns, wouldn’t that completely neuter the trolling attempt? Trolling is about trying to make others upset. You don’t have to get upset when someone uses unusual pronouns. If you aren’t transphobic, then it’s impossible to troll you that way. And drag promises: drag wants you to not be transphobic. Drag is not trying to upset anyone. If you do what drag wants you to do, then you get what you want too. This is a non-issue, there’s only a problem if you want there to be.
EDIT: DRAG DID NOT TELL ANYBODY TO USE DRAG’S PREFERRED PRONOUNS.
I don’t disagree with what you’re saying at all, the experience of being misgendered is incredibly hurtful, and even though I don’t have a pronoun preference I do know trans people who have pronoun and gender preferences and they’ve shared their experiences being misgendered, and it sucks.
I have also had experiences myself that could be akin to misgendering, on account of the circumstances and intent surrounding them (extremely forceful and abusive, Example). They were extremely unpleasant and I would never want to go through that or put someone through anything like that. Which is why I work very hard to make sure I use correct pronouns and I feel very bad if I make a mistake. I am not a “cis person” as some very pejoratively and angrily call me, when I talk about these things I’m very well informed about this stuff.
Which is why there might be some disagreement with this next part. There are people who actively and in bad faith try to use this compassion or fear of offending/hurting others against them so they can get their way or just to be an asshole. There was a user called DroneRights who did this a lot, would lash out at people and even made a community where they would harass people who went against them, including mods who banned them for their abusive and trollish behavior. There was also a user who I don’t remember their name but I remember they would go by Me/My/Myself pronouns, and would scream transphobia if people didn’t use those pronouns which almost no one did because no one really could even figure out how to do it practically, and they wouldn’t explain and just called people who asked how to do that “Cissies” and talked about how cis people don’t understand (might have been someone on Reddit too).
Again, I’m not disagreeing with you and I do think that respect of pronouns is extremely important. However I do recognize that there are indeed people who take advantage of this and try to raise the bar so high people can’t realistically meet it then scream transphobia (possibly even racism) when people fail to meet it. A lot of people see what dragonrider is doing as exactly that, as an attempt to raise the bar so high it is unreasonable, and you can’t really blame them for thinking that. Yes people who use noun/nounself pronouns exist, however first person neopronouns are basically non-existent because they render communication a mess, and even noun pronoun users (i.e. demon/demonself) typically also use other pronouns like they/them or ze/zir because there are cases where noun pronouns just aren’t practical or are worse than just not using pronouns at all.
I think that it is important to recognize the types of people in this category to avoid being used or abused by their tactics, while still trying your best to respect their wishes. But if they show the signs that they are just trying to troll you with pronouns, that’s the point to admit defeat to yourself and acknowledge they didn’t want respect, they wanted to be hurt so they can scream transphobia at you. Honestly the best thing to do which is what I do mostly is to ignore these people, since they often make me feel bad about myself and my actions only to find out later in retrospect or from my trans friends that I didn’t do anything wrong and this situation is just impossible to win in.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
CC: @RonnieB@lemmy.world
That particular type of toxicity in egg culture is no different than suggesting to a lesbian that she just hasn’t taken the right dick yet. I will never understand what makes the people who partake in that behavior feel justified in their abuse. I’m sorry you had to go through that.
This also baffles me. Though I don’t see them as more than a vocal and offensive subgroup of the greater community, those who use “cis” and “cissy” in an abusive manner are reinforcing the acceptability of using slurs.
All that said, on to the most directly pertinent parts:
This is where we get to my own hard line. I respect people’s right to individual expression, but I do not feel compelled by that respect to play along with fantasies. I respect the right to choose one’s own gender identity on the gender spectrum, but I reject outright the idea that said spectrum includes anything and everything that one’s imagination may conjure.
In line with this, I firmly assert that first person “I/me”, “we/us”, second person “you”, and third person “they/ them” are implicitly genderless pronouns. As such, they are fair game to be used with impunity as one cannot be misgendered if no gender is implied by the pronouns used to reference them. Repudiation of good faith attempts to avoid gendering someone altogether suggests that one has no interest in finding any neutral ground, and may even seek to either weaponize compassion or undermine the identity of others.
In dragonfucker’s case, I’m not sure I’ve seen them outright reject gender agnostic second or third person pronouns. I believe there was a comment suggesting that they didn’t accept “they/them”, but that might have been another user accusing them of that. I also have not seen them reject “you”, so I am of the assumption that they’re acting in at least semi good faith.
That said, there is almost certainly some degree of dragonfucker purposefully acting disruptive and then crying foul when the disruptive behavior is addressed. I won’t guess at the motive, or outright condemn disruption as a valid way of making certain points. But I equally won’t defend throwing rocks and hiding one’s hands. If you aim to disrupt, expect to experience consequences. Otherwise, what is the point of disruption?
Edit: Before anyone brings it up, I am aware of the school of thought that regards “we” as belonging to “personal gender”. In my opinion, animacy/inanimacy are not germane to the discussion in this thread; if one can be conversed with, one is not inanimate.
I think it might’ve actually been worse than that, what they were saying to me, and the fact that they told me HRT + surgery is required could be considered a form of transmedicalist abuse. It really sucks that there are people like this, I wish people could just be nice and accept others for how they are. Just because I like certain dresses in a game or even that I enjoy wearing skirts and thigh highs in real life doesn’t make me a trans girl.
Yeah they’re a vocal minority, and generally I don’t listen to them but I’ve noticed them being active lately. And yeah they are just reinforcing the acceptability of using slurs and insults without consequence. Also I would argue they are devaluing the merit of calling out transphobia, because they say people are “transphobic cissies” for not agreeing or disagreeing on something they said, even if the person they said it to was literally a trans woman herself. So yeah a lot of them are super vocal trolls.
I agree with this, I mean I will try very hard to make people feel respected and recognized but there is a point where it becomes too much and they’re pushing it too far.
I agree with this, it is very important to have a set of pronouns that are considered default and messing with these messes up language very badly. Especially when trying to replace established first-person and second person pronouns like what dragonfucker is doing.
They have indeed rejected gender neutral pronouns:
Maybe it wasn’t extreme rejection or outright hostile but they have claimed they don’t accept them to a certain degree.
I’m almost certain this is absolutely the motive, it was certainly the motive for DroneRights and it’s very likely dragonfucker’s motive. Though they seem to be trying to be more quiet and respectful about it. Probably hoping they wouldn’t get banned if they weren’t outwardly aggressive yet that clearly hasn’t worked out because mods who see their behavior for what it is aren’t tolerating it and honestly I don’t blame them, I’d do the same thing if I saw a situation like that developing in one of my communities, it’s just not worth it.
I would agree, we generally refers to all members of the group, it doesn’t feel like it has or would have any deep gendered connotations. It’s just a way of saying all the people (or creatures) in this group (“this group” being ambiguous).
My issue with the person in this thread (who will probably even object to me calling them a person) is that they expect people to also not use nongendered pronouns with them.
They threw a massive fit because I used (and will continue to use) not only they/them as a pronoun that applies to everyone, but also “you.”
And even if I agree with someone that I will only use a pronoun like “zir” with them instead of they or he or she or whatever… I draw the line at “you.” I can call a leaky faucet “you” as I’m trying to fix it. It doesn’t give the faucet a gender.
Yeah once you start messing with first person and second person pronouns it just starts to break language. It can make sentences awkward and confusing and can even cause confusion of whether or not they are talking about different people with their own pronoun. I’ve seen dragonfucker refer to other people as “drag” even though they might deny it in this thread, makes it really confusing.
As an example of where it really doesn’t work I was once asked by someone (not dragonfucker) to refer to them with me/my pronouns. I couldn’t do it because I didn’t even know how that would work and they flipped out at me and said I was a transphobe and a cissy. However me/my doesn’t work as a pronoun.
“Ze went to the store and bought Zirself some juice.” ✅
“Me went to the store and bought myself some juice.” ❌
As you can see, it doesn’t really work, and I think that was the point of the person who insisted I use Me/My pronouns with them. They wanted to make me feel bad, and/or possibly scared of consequences. Thankfully though I can recognize this as a type of trolling, and so can most people. Which is why dragonfucker is getting banned on a growing number of communites.
By the way obligatory link to arbitrary Lemmy community ban tutorial allows you to ban anyone you want from any community you want. Can help with bad faith people who haven’t posted in your community yet or are avoiding doing so directly to avoid the ban. This takes care of it.
Well considering the motherfucker got banned from World News for intentionally misgendering my daughter as part of the harassment and tripled down on it in this thread, I’m thinking it’s more about being a massive fucking hypocrite troll.
Oh yeah I wholeheartedly agree, this person seems like DroneRights 2.0, maybe a less loud and aggressive version but ultimately still DroneRights 2.0.