Since this is the pit, and hijacks are allowed, I’m just going to say that i don’t, on an emotional level, understand why people care so much about pronouns. I suppose i understand why people who don’t look obviously like their gender care, because they want confirmation that people know their gender. But why does anyone else care?
There are countries without gendered pronouns that are really sexist. It’s not as if “fixing pronouns” will remove sexism. And what’s wrong with being called “they”, or “e”, if you are moderately secure in your own gender? And yet, i observe that people care a lot. Afab women get pissed at being addressed with the wrong pronouns. Others get pissed at having to use those pronouns. Yet others get pissed at being asked to read or hear other people using the singular they.
I try to use the right pronouns for people, because i observe that a lot of people care a lot. And i don’t want to be an asshole. But I just don’t get it.
I honestly wasn’t sure if the demand was the freedom to use that genderless pronoun construction over other posters’ requests to be referred to as a specific pronoun, or that everyone do so. Either way it is just different degrees of jerkdom.
Post don’t post. I couldn’t give a shit. Demanding rule changes to meet your idiosyncratic jerkiness is delusional self importance.
One poster called her a bigot, so I don’t think that conclusion is justified.
No snark or insult intended here, just honest curiosity: what lesson did you learn?
When I was a young teen living on Guam, I sometimes had long hair. Once I went to the Naval Exchange and had to show my military ID (my dad was in the Navy which is why I lived there) to an old guy to get in. He said, “Thank you ma’am.”
I was extremely embarrassed and said nothing. That prompted me to make sure I got a haircut shortly after. Now, at that age I was easily embarrassed anyway. These days I wouldn’t give a crap, I’d even probably laugh. I know I do when I get mistaken for a woman online.
Thank you @thorny_locust for the update. I hadn’t been in the thread much (read the first 1-2 dozen posts, didn’t see any harm in the use and left) so when the poster was reported here, I did a search for their specific posts in-thread - which were fully worthy of the warning and consideration they got.
But that means I didn’t see the original mod note. So yeah, the warning happened, the consideration is happening, and well earned.
I don’t see a post where anyone called her a bigot. I see a post where @EinsteinsHund pointed out that her attitude towards the term “cis” echoes the way that bigots who lose privilege act like they are being persecuted.
I had long hair from ages 18 to 21 ( and then I had dreadlocks, much to my mother’s dismay). I got groped by random men who thought I was female walking through crowds at concerts. As I was young and confident I did not care. I would have been quite a pretty girl, something my friends and I joked about.
I now have a full beard, and while my legs are still “stocking model” level, my belly and face do not really encourage incorrect sexism.
I had long, curly hair from ages 20-28 and went to several concerts of all sizes every month, but I never had that happen to me. Maybe it was my usual three-days stubble that prevented it. Now, I have a buzz cut and a full beard, and nobody will confuse me for a woman.
Sorry. When you say what you are saying “is what every bigot says when their privilege is challenged.” you are calling the person a bigot. If you said that to me I would understand it as such in any case. Not just passive aggressively observing that I am walking and quacking as a duck does.
FWIW I think calling someone a bigot is very rarely productive as even the worst bigots don’t see their beliefs as bigotry. They are, to them, just reality as they perceived it.
And most bigotry is not explicit anyway.
To me there is very little question that @Beckdawrek honestly does not consider her statements as showing any bigotry at all and that they very clearly emerge from a bigoted mindset. Not a hateful mindset like the soon to be banned ones, but still a bigoted one.
I fully concur with this paragraph, and that’s why I pointed it out in my post. I honestly believe that Beck doesn’t want to be bigoted, but that’s what I took from her statements in that thread.
I grew up with certain bigoted views just because of when and where I was raised – and not in a culture of overt bigotry, just that’s the way things were. It’s taken me the ensuing decades of my adult life to learn the bigotry of the views inculcated in me, resolve to change them, and develop far more understanding and tolerance than I started out with – and to recognize when those old stereotypes whisper still in the back of my mind, and to consciously shut them up.
I don’t think Beckdawrek is a conscious bigot; she’s just learning a new reality and trying to adjust her thinking from the ingrained mental habits of her life to this point. It’s not easy, but it can be (and should be) done, and my impression is she’s trying.
There are some people like that guy who’s about to get banned who are beyond hope of understanding. I don’t perceive Beck that way. Some people have never had to think about it, and yes, having never had to think about it is a privilege, but it doesn’t mean they can’t learn to think about it differently, in which case I think the label “bigot” can be unproductive.
Agreed, and I also was brought up in a culture that was at least mildly bigoted, sometimes even blatantly (and still is), so I know the process of overcoming that. (I hope I have overcome most of it, but ever so often hard-wired prejudice and stereotypes come unconsciously back).
The thing is, Beck, you are willing to open your mind and see where you’re going wrong, and try to learn from the experience. Having had to do that multiple times in my own life, I give you props for that – it ain’t easy.
