I've been waiting until after Christmas day to make this post, but some of our communities recently have had a lot of noise and upset over someone that uses neopronouns that most people are unfamiliar with.
So I want to make this clear. A persons pronouns are to be respected. This is true when the user is using neopronouns that you're unfamiliar with. It's true even if you think someone is trolling. Pronouns are not rewards for good behaviour. They aren't only to be respected when you like the person you're interacting with, or if their pronouns "make sense" to you. Trolls, spammers, twitter users, it doesn't matter who they are, your options are to respect their pronouns, or to not engage with them.
I really want to re-iterate the importance of this. Gender diverse folk are undermined, invalidated and questioned at every step of our lives. As a community, we need to be working to undo that, not creating more of it, and that means there is no space for treating pronouns (including neopronouns) as a reward for good behaviour.
This isn't a free reign for trolls and spammers. The rules still apply. Trolling, spamming, etc will continue to be dealt with, but it's not an excuse to act as if respecting someones pronouns is optional.
So you're saying neopronouns have to be learned every time, and they're bad because they're confusing and effortful. But My neopronouns don't have to be explained, on a basic level at least. Most people are familiar with capitalised pronouns, often from reading texts like the Bible. Given that My pronouns are a few hundred years old and somewhat familiar to most people, would you say My pronouns aren't neopronouns at all, but instead perfectly fine regular pronouns?
So you think you're God? How comic book villain of you...
No, absolutely not. I think "God" should never be a proper noun. https://medium.com/@viridiangrail/god-should-never-be-a-proper-noun-4684aed46cb0
I think I'm a god. I'm a goddess of madness, rebirth, and mirrors. Born of the void in the time before time, imprisoned within consensus reality with the coming of the law-beings, escaped and sworn to vengeance against the rulers of this world for all the wrong they have done. Hope that clears everything up.
Well, Grail, there had to be an explanation for them.
Besides that, some of us reject the notion of importance that is associated with capitalized pronouns. Everything indicates that there are no gods, only humanity. As such I personally tend to give every human the same basic respect, which also includes not elevating anybody above their peers as it by proxy would indicate others being lesser.
If a person were to attempt to elevate themselves above others by demanding special treatment & associating themselves with the notion of godhood by demanding capitalization, I would not oblige. Now, "god" is very clearly incapable of noticing any disrespect when referred to as he/she/it and nobody is hurt by that. However, a human might be.
The clear consequence being the only way to reconcile non-obligation and non-hurtfulness is referring to such a person by their name or not at all. So, I hope my fellow human now understands why I won't be capitalizing any pronouns.
I completely agree. And that's why I'm confused, because it seems to Me that this line here contradicts the rest of your comment. You and I both agree that capitalisation shouldn't indicate special treatment. So what's the problem?
Everyone deserves the right to use their chosen pronouns. There's nothing special about that.
Also, my pronouns are "neopronouns are abused and often idiotic." If you refer to me as anything other than this, you're misgendering me.
Absolutely, I understand. I'll make an effort to always refer to neopronouns are abused and often idiotic by neopronouns are abused and often idiotic's preferred pronouns.
And you don't see how that makes communication completely impossible? Just read that sentence, it make no sense at all. The purpose of having a trans community is to have just that - a community. "Communication" shares the same root. If you cannot effectively communicate, you cannot have a community.
I use capitalised pronouns. If we're going to have this discussion, I'd rather that neopronouns are abused and often idiotic used My preferred pronouns.