Exactly. I will use they, regardless of what they prefer. But no, it’s not a problem.
I can give you half a dozen reasons why not using neopronouns is perfectly acceptable.
Not even close. And that’s where I stopped reading your post.
Here are the reasons:
There are hundreds of the damned things, and more are being cranked out all the time. Can you keep track of them? I can’t. I won’t even try.
Do you know how the new pronouns decline? Or is that something else you’d have to look up every time you want to use one?
Can you remember which person gets which new pronoun? I can’t even remember who gets he and she, so pretty much everybody gets they. That is how things will continue.
The singular they is perfectly generic. It goes with anybody.
Otherkin. Otterself. 'Nuff said.
Neopronouns go against the entire point of having pronouns. Pronouns are generic words meant to take the place of proper nouns so that the speaker can make their point quickly and cleanly. If the pronouns are specific toward a particular person, then you might as well just use the proper noun.
Neopronouns are never going to catch on. C’mon. They’re just not.
Upthread, there was a suggestion of adding a custom field to the profile. Could it be added to “Preferences” so it appears at the foot of each post much like the Custom Title is at the top?
So, you want the posters and mods to determine what is acceptable on how to refer to oneself? How about it’s none of your business how someone identifies?
If nobody experiments with it, won’t that guarantee that it’s always “too soon” to do it?
People who don’t want to state a pronoun would effectively putting themselves into the category of “any”, in any case, wouldn’t they? Isn’t that just where we are now – most people don’t give pronouns, so people who are going to use a pronoun guess; and, if they get it wrong, the misgendered person either corrects them – which can only be done by giving a pronoun – or lets it slide on by, in effect accepting any pronoun.
So if it can be done as things are now, how does allowing people to state pronouns change that?
I’m on another site that allows stating pronouns in a highly visible fashion. Some people do, some people don’t. I’ve never seen anybody complain about it either way.
There’s no list; you just write in what you want to use. That also allows a bit of explanation: “female, but gender-neutral’s OK” fits in the space.
– you can currently put your pronouns in your profile here; but that requires anybody wondering which to use to go look at your profile, and since most people don’t seem to do that they might not even think to look there.
I think the idea is that, if the field’s filled in, it would be visible at the top of each post.
(Somewhat hijacky: I’d really like to see a location there. A really vague location if you want, but at least which continent people are on – in a number of threads it’s relevant, and most people don’t bother to explain. You can fill in a location field in discourse, but it doesn’t show unless you click on the poster, and most people haven’t done it.)
OK. I don’t think that’s going to work, any more than the location field works. We just couldn’t get enough people to do it, and almost nobody appears to know to look there: despite multiple threads in various forums trying to publicize it.
– for what it’s worth, I’ve got my location in the popup and my pronouns in my profile.
ETA: and you know what? My pronouns are now showing up in the popup. I didn’t do anything further about that; I just had them in the “about” field in my profile.
It doesn’t change things. All in all I would be more for a pronoun field than against it, even though I don’t take advantage of it on the one forum I am in where it is used. I was just saying that it isn’t a ludicrous idea that the field would be abused by trolls.
Dunno about using on the Dope. As for codifying a rule with someone that deliberately mis-genders a poster, I think that’s probably covered under the “don’t be a jerk” rule
In real life, however, it is inclusive to use preferred pronouns because people prefer it. Or as my trans son educated me a couple of years ago. He thought the preferred pronouns on an email signature line was a little unnatural, but on the other hand being the only person in his high school asking for he/him usage was a giant blinking neon light making him effectively announcing to the “world” that he was trans on every email. As opposed to simply blending in with everyone with what is becoming standard in the corporate world and with anyone under 30 years old.
IMHO it isn’t a lot different from asking folks to use “Bob” instead of “Robert” or I go by my middle name of “John” instead of my first name.
There aren’t that many trolls on the board, and the ones that last are of the “not touching, can’t get mad” type. If someone wants to try and use the pronoun field to troll, it would probably just lead to them getting banned faster.
That already is a rule. It also covers doing the same for offboard people. It’s not an instaban, but it is against the rules.
While I see no need to set up something special for people to list their preferred gender, I’m not against it for those that want to use it. I don’t really see where gender would come into play in most of the threads I read. Then again, I recently discovered a 20 year poster was a he, not a she as I thought. That was a bit embarrassing.
My work intranet has the option to add pronouns to one’s personal profile and email signature block (it also has a “My name is pronounced like” field). I can’t even remember if I’ve filled mine in, but there’s certainly been no pressure to do so.
But here? It’s a nice idea that would likely be abused by not-nice people. But I will defer to 1) those who genuinely want to flag their personal pronouns, and 2) the mods who will likely end up with more work as a result, neither of which group I belong to.
I don’t much care one way or the other. But it would occasionally be kind of nice to know whether to say “I agree with That_Other_Dope when he said…” or “I agree with That_Other_Doper when she said…”
Even before trans rights and pronoun declaration became a (contentious) thing, accidental misgendering has been a long-standing issue on pseudonymous message boards. If you want to refer to unknown Poster XYZ in the third person, you either have to do the dance of “I was talking to um… him/her, not sure what’s right”, or just blindly guess with a 60/50 chance of getting it wrong.
This would be trivially avoided by having a blank where someone could just state their pronouns. It would become just another part of their handle.
If we have no problem with people specifying their own user handle, then we should have no problems letting them specify their own pronouns.
The only thing I could see genuinely being a problem is how to deal with obvious trolls using parody pronouns as attention-seeking performance art. “I have listed my pronouns as ‘beep/boop/bleep’. You can’t prove they’re not my pronouns, and I demand everyone use them, and I am definitely not making a performative point.” The correct, obvious adjudication of that would be “this is bullshit, knock it off, and quit asking unless you want to catch a ban.” But based on past observation, I think the mod team would really struggle to cut through the bullshit.
Some of the trolling problems could be avoided if the board establishes a rule that “they” could always be used as someone’s pronouns. That way someone can have beep/boop/bleep, but people could just use “they” if they didn’t want to use those pronouns or didn’t want to take the time to look them up. So basically, use either the person’s preferred pronouns or use “they”.
An open question would be whether, realistically, there’s anyone who would sincerely object to being a “they” if they care very much about being “he” or “she”. I’m not well-steeped enough in gender issues to say, but it seems safe to assume that this wouldn’t really be an issue. Most sincere people would forgive you saying “they” in an ambiguous situation. Even more so on a pseudonymous message board, where we can take as a given that subtle trolls will purposefully inject ambiguity for their own entertainment.
Even if a rule is confusing or new to you, the first warning ought to clear it up just fine. If you rapidly catch more warnings after that, then you’re purposely offending, or purposely riding the line to make a point, or you’re just not bright enough to follow community rules. Whatever the case, you earned it.
