If you think adding your genders to your e-mail signature is a big deal, a bigger deal than singling out gender non-conforming people as being weird or other, there’s just no reaching you.
And, it’s not just about their name in an e-mail. People interact in person, too, and if someone is gender non-conforming, it’s helpful to know what their pronouns are when I meet them in real life.
The burden of adding pronouns to an email signature on someone who has a typical gender-conforming name and body type is miniscule. The burden on someone who is mis-gendered because they have non-obvious gender is much higher and vastly outweighs the burden placed on you to put “he, him” in your email signature.
Traditions and mores change over time. Women no longer have to put Mrs. or Miss in their names to show whether they are married, for example. Who gives a flying fuck if you have to edit your email signature? What’s the big fucking deal? Meanwhile, transgender and other gender non-conforming people can feel more comfortable at work, and not be othered for no reason.
It’s virtue-signalling pandering to a tiny, tiny minority who basically didn’t exist in popular consciousness five years ago, and yet another thing for progressive people to beat everyone else over the head about.
As a radically progressive person who is nevertheless mostly in agreement with you about board culture stuff, let me just chime in and say you’re mostly wrong about this, and it isn’t a virtue signaling thing. At least, not in the sense you mean it, which is that it is only used to identify yourself as deserving credit. I suppose it is a virtue signaling thing in the sense that you are self-identifying as being on board with a certain agenda. But there are good versions of that kind.
I think you’re failing to appreciate that there are people who occupy all points on a spectrum of hostility to gender identity. You may feel comfortable and correct at your position, which is that this isn’t a big deal and people shouldn’t make you make a big deal out of it because you’ll just deal with it respectfully if an issue ever arises, but you’re failing to see that someone who is trans needs your help dealing with people who are much more hostile to them than you are. In my experience, in an individual one-on-one sort of interaction, of course a trans person is going to be aware that you might misgender them, and is going to be aware that it could be an honest mistake, and is going to politely correct you or even give you a couple of mistakes on the house before doing so.
But that person’s one on one interaction with you isn’t the only time they’re going to have to navigate that situation. There are people who agree with you that pronouns for cis people are bullshit, but who do not agree with you that, for example, a person who appears slightly feminine but whose name is Dave should not be harassed and abused because of it.
As a person for whom it is not a big deal, if you list your own pronouns, you expand the space for that to be a thing people do, and are respected for doing. You shrink the space for people who think it’s OK to abuse people for “having pronouns.” That’s a thing you can do. Why would you not do that, whether it’s a big deal or not? We all agree you don’t have to, in a like human rights sense. Why is it not a slight upward tick in humanity’s march toward mutual understanding, peace, love, and so on?
He wants to be abusive because he thinks the # of people to whom he is abusive towards is an inconsequential number, all while purposely not understanding that one is too many.
And then he blames us for pointing this out. Classic abusive mindset.
I mean, read this shit:
He’s mad at them for imposing their existence onto his consciousness.
What a fuckin’ baby. No true man worth his weight acts this way.
(My apologies for the shitty link–I really can’t figure out how to just link an image like a normal person, and it makes me feel like an idiot, but not as much of a fool as a person who gets all self-righteous about not including their pronouns)
Just so you understand, we’re moving on without you. You’re going to be one of those sad lonely losers who bitches to anyone who has to listen to it. So you’re at the end of the bar with the other losers bitching to the bartender while she rolls her eyes and counts the hours until her shift ends. We’re moving on without you.
I said the same thing a couple weeks ago and learned you have to upload the image to an image hosting site like imgur, and then embed that link, and the image will be directly embedded. I guess it’s so the board servers aren’t hosting the image itself.
As for what you say about board culture–specifically, about how there aren’t the really good posters any more–I’m just not sure that’s true. There are some excellent posters who have left, but then we have great new posters that have come on. And a lot of the worst offenders of content-free sniping are gone, which is definitely a bonus.
I like to think of the Dope as a (mostly) pleasant dinner party. We chat and laugh and break up into little clusters where we discuss our specific interests.
Now, we’ve all been to a party with “that person.” The one who bops from cluster to cluster, stands at the periphery, and drops verbal turd-bombs until the cluster dissolves to awkward silence or just wanders away, leaving them to go find a new group and do the same. Some people, better people than I, might try to engage them more directly, to invite them past the periphery, to make them part of the group.
And sometimes it works. Sometimes these folks really just need to be included. But sometimes they’re misanthropic jackholes who build a life around alienating everyone around them.
And when they find themselves standing alone by the chafing dishes because they’ve ripped through the guest list like snot through a cheap tissue, it’s not because they’re being silenced. It’s not because of groupthink. It’s not because of a hive mind. It’s because they’re gigantic walking buckets of snot. And when they’re not invited to the next party, it isn’t because of fascism or violations of fundamental rights of expression. It’s because nobody wants to hang out with a sloshing jug of mucous.
The truest, darkest, most hidden secret of the SDMB (as far as its users are concerned) is that it’s nothing special. It’s a niche version of a dying format. It’s a group of folks with common interests who like to bullshit when they should really be working. And like every other social group in the history of human existence, it self regulates. It is welcoming to some people and unwelcoming to others.
In an alternate timeline, the Dope swung in the other direction. The liberals have mostly moved on and the remaining ones are bemoaning that the board ain’t what it used to be.
Trying to force any kind of balance is fighting the tide.
I appreciate you actually understanding where I’m coming from, and not just leaping into the name calling and thinking I’m some sort of horrible monster for - gasp - having a different opinion.
Here’s the thing: I genuinely believe that this “Let’s be tolerant of everyone and everything, no matter what” ideology is bad for our collective resilience broadly, and what particularly bothers me is the zealousness with which people campaign for it - there’s no room for discussion or disagreement, you’re either 100% on board with every aspect of it, or you’re an irredeemable villain.
That doesn’t mean we should be intolerant either, but there’s a line between “tolerance” and “You have to be actively on board with this new thing or else”, which is what the whole pronouns thing is from my perspective.
There’s a lot of “progressive” ideas I am on board with - including but not limited same-sex marriage, marijuana legalisation, universal healthcare, universal basic income - so it’s not like I’m some 2D arch-redneck boogeyman.
First, nobody says “no matter what”. Generally it’s “Let’s be tolerant of everyone and everything as long as it’s not hurting anyone,” which is a bedrock principle, not some hippie-dippy bullshit.
Second, it’s bad for our collective resilience? How so, and on what evidence?