i cannot think of a title for this that doesn't sound like clickbait

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#1

i’ll edit a proper title in later if i can think of it

Anyway, hi, I’m here to talk about pronouns. I have noticed that it is fairly common on this site for people to default to they/them for everyone, which while I can understand why, I don’t think that’s acceptable as a site standard.

I don’t want to speak for anyone else, but I personally do not like it when people use they/them for me, I consider it dismissive of my identity, but it’s very hard to correct people in the moment since it’s agreed upon as a “safe” option if you don’t know.

However, I want to ask, what’s the point of putting pronouns next to usernames if people aren’t going to use them?

not sure if this needed to be a feedback thread but wanted to open it up as a discussion

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#2

good post.
i was thinking “well what sort of discussion were you trying to open up” and it led me to think
0. People (including myself i started paying more attention to this some time ago and then stopped and don’t know where i am on it since… i stopped) should pay more attention to this sort of thing especially when pronouns are visible

  1. i think it is acceptable to correct people in the moment even if it is understandably difficult and also should not be the complete solution.
  2. Third parties could intervene? Not sure if everyone would appreciate that but it is definitely a thing I have seen happen to good ends however you do run into
  3. People maybe should be more apparent about their preferences regarding they/them pronouns? I think this might just be wrong and you should only use they/them when they are statedly preferred/you don’t know a preference but due to the existence of other use cases they/them pronouns are most prone to people going “yeah sure I don’t really care” or similar reactions which… I don’t know where I was going with this frankly.

idk i have complicated thoughts on (my) pronouns myself and at the same time haven’t thought about it so i’m not really able to speak about the matter from that perspective.

(also hi mistyx i’ll read more homestuck soon i promise (i’m lying))

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#3

I’ve accurately updated kyubey pronouns to support this.

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#4

It didn’t load. I failed somehow.

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#5

did a double take for a second and then realized what this was actually saying :skull:

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#6

i agree but i do not think its reasonable to put that on the person in the moment

i think this is good but thats not something thats enforceable in general it’s just kind of something to personally do

yeah this one is just. kind of weird because like. people are complex! it’s really hard to know things like this for sure

which is why i think it is generally better to go with what the people have explicitly said instead of what they haven’t

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#7

yeah this is why i had to leave the title what it was

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#8

I think that’s the most you can reasonably expect to get out of this?

#9

that’s fair yeah i guess it’s just like

there’s not much more to be discussed on that point then bc of it

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#10

Binary trans people dont like to be they/themmed (unless explicitly communicated, like she + they pronouns in bio). This is a safe rule of thumb ime. Well if ur meeting strangers and u dont know too much about their preference or gender it can lead to mishap but yeah if you know a person is binary trans, and u know they dont have “X/they” written in their bio, its better to not

Similarly its good to be careful around saying “bro”, even if u dont mean it in the gendered way, usually not appreciated by trans women

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#11

yeah.

#12

is it not reasonable to put “(not they/them)” in your pronouns field in this case

because as a third person participle they is going to be used at some point naturally to describe you unless you specifically denote not wanting that to occur, and given this is something you’d prefer people not use for you I’d say putting that in the field whose entire purpose is to tell people how you’d prefer they refer to you seems like a pretty straightforward path to me?

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#13

like yeah sure i get its kinda subversive to put not a pronoun in the pronoun field but it very much is in line with the spirit of the field and I find it incredibly hard to believe site moderation would take issue with that

#14

opening settings, bringing up the pronoun menu and filling it out with all of ones pronoun preferences to completion is certainly more difficult than using the pronoun that is beside someone’s name in every single post.

Also – maybe it’s just me – I’d rather walk into traffic than put every single pronoun preference i have into my pronoun field.

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#15

i think specifically wanting people not to use the pronoun that specifically does not imply any specific gender is a pretty reasonable single thing to put in your field

i dont think its reasonable to assume that would imply you need to specifically call out every single other possible pronoun you dislike

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#16

okay i tried doing what you said but the pronoun field doesnt allow enough characters for it all to fit. Can you increase it to 300 chars? I think that’s a reasonable amount.

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#17

@Chloe

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#18

to be fair what I said is “fundamentally if [specific singular thing people often do by default and are going to do without thinking about it] makes you feel bad, but for obvious reasons it’s literally impossible to expect everybody to know that automatically, taking a second to put “please don’t do [specific singular thing people often do by default and are going to do without thinking about it] with me” in your pronouns field seems to me to be far and away the quickest and most efficient way to achieve your desired outcome of having people not do [specific singular thing people often do by default and are going to do without thinking about it] to you”

but that being said so long as we have moderation of the pronoun field i dont see any reason it couldn’t be longer if you want to get mega specific - not like we’re letting people put nonsense there anyways

ty arete for tagging chloe before i could lol

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#19

I think its reasonable to expect to not be misgendered on Fortress of Lies, site known to be jam packed with queers

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#20

i think its reasonable to understand that people are going to be using the word “they” in contexts not meant to directly imply any sort of gender at all

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