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.
As Cishet white-ish person, who is only tangentially connected to this community IRL, but wants to be supportive, is there a definitive list of pronouns? It seems to me and many other people that if you just keep adding more and more, people get confused and or feel alienated and then some people get angry when confused, because they get frustrated and don't want to do the wrong thing.
I usually default to "they" unless absolutely told, because It seems that once it gets so individualized, things go a bit nuts. We may as well just abolish all pronouns and only use proper nouns.
Side question, I'm neurodiverse (diagnosed ADHD, probably a bit on the spectrum), I feel very very weird before coming out to people, especially at work, as I think it will be used against me. There are still places in this world that would hurt/imprison/kill non-cis, non-hetero people. With such an interconnected world, especially with those places, how does one handle it while also trying to keep being proud of your identity? Wouldn't putting neo pronouns in a profile open you up for targeting?
Not really, there are lists of the more well known ones. But they absolutely are not definitive. Much like gender, prounons are a social construct. It's just a quickie handhold to communicate how that particular person sees themselves. They're essentially stereotypes of stereotypes that mold and change over time. Which is why what's considered women's work (cooking) and men's work (grilling) have shifted over time. Redneck, goth, jock & etc are all different forms of gender because it loosely describes how that person presents to the world. So a new gender/prounons is born, valid and inherently correct the moment someone says it. Gender is a social performance and there is no way to do it wrong.
When I was in the early days of my transition, I literally asked the same thing! Good question! You're right, to put your new name/prounons into your name is inherently sorta doxxing yourself. You're unfortunately entirely correct that it's a risk depending on where you live. However the answer is also unfortunate and that's its worth the risk to most people. All of our situations are different, but without question there are trans folk, out or closeted, that do not get to use their chosen name/prounons in real life. If they don't use it online, the they effectively don't get to be correctly identified in any part or their life. It's out of desperation to be validated in some way. It's a bummer, but I get it. I'm lucky and privileged enough to be out full time, so I don't use my name online. But I'm absolutely not gonna judge how another person gets through the day.
No. In the same way there’s no defintive list of genders, it would be virtually impossible to catelog every pronoun, or every single name. So it’s important to be careful because you could always come across a new pronoun that hasn’t been written down somewhere yet. But! That doesn’t mean people haven’t tried :) https://pronouns.page/ is a helpful resource that covers multiple languages.
This is a good strategy :)
This is really sadly only an issue online, where trolls and generally just unkind people do pose a real threat. Always respect people’s requested pronouns, but if you do suspect something shady, @SoleInvictus@lemmy.blahaj.zone wrote out a handy guide here https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/12169135
Yes, it often does. :( Being on Blahaj.Zone is a good start to finding respite from the constant harassment, but even here there are problems as the need for this post from Ada shows.
You sound like you've got the right idea and a good handle on things. Neopronouns are generally a very case-by-case thing and not at all common, people who use them generally will (politely and without fuss) let you know, and many neopronoun-users (not all but many) also accept they/them. It's not a thing that comes up a lot, and personally I think people tend to give the concept too much mental bandwidth. The important thing is to be respectful of each individual, if you're not actively being a dickhead you probably don't have too much to worry about on that front.