Moderated Using wrong pronouns= violence??

[Thermal]

You don’t look like a Harry to me, I’m going to call you Burt.

Actual proper nouns might work a bit differently..

"You identify as a hottie. I think you're ugly".

Does the recipient have the right to demand that they be described as sexually irresistible?

 

[Steve]

You are claiming you are being oppressed and abused because they simply ask to be referred to as he or she and you think they are the snowflake, Sheesh .

I will gender someone but if they tell me they prefer me to use the other term I will do my best to remember just as when Dave says please call me David or Susan wants to be called Susie. It is not about what I think, it is about bring polite and making others feel good about themselves. Being kind shouldn't make you feel bad.

The use of proper nouns is rather different that the use of pronouns, which are the subject of the thread.

ETA - Thermal said it first.

How often does a person gender pronoun another person in a conversation between the two? I am having difficulty visualizing such a conversation.

 

[Lothian]

So every time some seeming dude in the grocery store makes an offhand comment about the condition of the apples, or a female appearing person at the dog park comments on the weather, or the parking lot attendant cracks a joke, I should ask them their name and gender identity because if I mention this interaction to someone else and use the wrong pronouns it may get back to them and they will be offended? Frankly my friend, random people just aint that important to me.
.

Do you regularly walk up to random people and ask them questions about themselves? Seems a strange thing to do.

If you are talking to or about someone just use the pronoun you think fit. If they correct you smile, apologise and try to remember if you meet them again.

 

[theprestige]

You are claiming you are being oppressed and abused because they simply ask to be referred to as he or she and you think they are the snowflake, Sheesh .

They ask to be referred to contra to their biological sex coding. That's a concept that lives in my head, not in theirs. Why should I pretend to perceive the world differently than how I perceive it, just to align with their own perception? That's Orwellian.

 

[theprestige]

Do you regularly walk up to random people and ask them questions about themselves? Seems a strange thing to do.

If you are talking to or about someone just use the pronoun you think fit. If they correct you smile, apologise and try to remember if you meet them again.

Yes, exactly.
What if I remember that they are male, and refer to them accordingly? Is that oppression?

 

[Blank]

Fortunately it usually is quite academic.. Keyboard warriors that stick to their guns at the pronouns usually won't be in a situation where they actually have to be in social interactions with a transperson.

They won't have them as friends and HR at work will make sure that the walking harassment/discrimination lawsuits waiting to happen will never get to a position to eff the company up.

Internet warriors are always tough guys.

So every time some seeming dude in the grocery store makes an offhand comment about the condition of the apples, or a female appearing person at the dog park comments on the weather, or the parking lot attendant cracks a joke, I should ask them their name and gender identity because if I mention this interaction to someone else and use the wrong pronouns it may get back to them and they will be offended? Frankly my friend, random people just aint that important to me.

I don't do small talk so this type of chit chat sounds weird.. But if someone says something like:

"What a crappy weather" - I can't think of a answer that would naturally invoke any pronoun into it. Normal response would prolly be something like "yea, it sucks"

 

[Steve]

Do you regularly walk up to random people and ask them questions about themselves? Seems a strange thing to do.

If you are talking to or about someone just use the pronoun you think fit. If they correct you smile, apologise and try to remember if you meet them again.

If I'm talking directly to a random person using pronouns (other than "you") to refer to them would be just weird. If I am talking about a random person that person would almost certainly not be around to comment.

Seems gender ID of a person, or the choice of pronouns used to refer to that person, is totally irrelevant for most encounters.

 

[Blank]

Seems gender ID of a person, or the choice of pronouns used to refer to that person, is totally irrelevant for most encounters.

Yes - which just makes the people that go out of their way to intentionally use the unwanted/wrong one even sadder pieces of anti-social refuse.

 

[Steve]

Fortunately it usually is quite academic.. Keyboard warriors that stick to their guns at the pronouns usually won't be in a situation where they actually have to be in social interactions with a transperson.

They won't have them as friends and HR at work will make sure that the walking harassment/discrimination lawsuits waiting to happen will never get to a position to eff the company up.

Internet warriors are always tough guys.



I don't do small talk so this type of chit chat sounds weird.. But if someone says something like:

"What a crappy weather" - I can't think of a answer that would naturally invoke any pronoun into it. Normal response would prolly be something like "yea, it sucks"

I would be quite content to have a trans-gendered person as a friend or family member. Gender identity matters to me just about as much as hair color or shoe size. As far as I know I may currently have ongoing encounters with one or more trans gendered persons in the course of my daily affairs. I would not know how to tell. If I was to find out that I was it would not matter one iota. I do find this thread conversation interesting, particularly some of the hyperbole presented. What I am somewhat curious about is the boundary that others see between when gender ID and pronouns matter, and when they do not. I gather from your comment that your personal opinion is that gender ID is irrelevant in random casual encounters. I tend to agree.

 

[Steve]

Yes - which just makes the people that go out of their way to intentionally use the unwanted/wrong one even sadder pieces of anti-social refuse.

I agree completely. Whether such use rises to the level of violence, as per the thread title, I am not so sure about.

 

[mumblethrax]

So every time some seeming dude in the grocery store makes an offhand comment about the condition of the apples, or a female appearing person at the dog park comments on the weather, or the parking lot attendant cracks a joke, I should ask them their name and gender identity because if I mention this interaction to someone else and use the wrong pronouns it may get back to them and they will be offended? Frankly my friend, random people just aint that important to me.

No, my solution would be to take a guess and use epicene, declarative or indefinite pronouns if I'm unsure. "So I was talking to someone in the park the other day, and they told me..."

But it seems to be important to some people not to do that.

I'm not saying what you ought to do in any case, just pointing out that it isn't really true that there are no opportunities to get offended if you're talking about people who aren't there. We can contrive situations where that's very unlikely to happen, and others where it's not.

The idea that this stuff requires effort...well, maybe for old farts. But that's a problem that will eventually take care of itself. I suspect that younger generations already have different grammatical intuitions around some of these pronouns than I do.

 

[Steve]

No, my solution would be to take a guess and use epicene, declarative or indefinite pronouns if I'm unsure. "So I was talking to someone in the park the other day, and they told me..."

But it seems to be important to some people not to do that.

I'm not saying what you ought to do in any case, just pointing out that it isn't really true that there are no opportunities to get offended if you're talking about people who aren't there. We can contrive situations where that's very unlikely to happen, and others where it's not.

The idea that this stuff requires effort...well, maybe for old farts. But that's a problem that will eventually take care of itself. I suspect that younger generations already have different grammatical intuitions around some of these pronouns than I do.

Well as an old fart myself.....

Old habits die hard I guess. A lifetime of casual appearance based binary gender recognition is hard to break. That first sentence of yours makes perfect sense. Still, when I come home from our daily trip to the dog park I am likely to tell my wife "today I met this gorgeous golden retriever and his dad (or mom) told me...."

 

[mumblethrax]

Well as an old fart myself.....

Old habits die hard I guess. A lifetime of casual appearance based binary gender recognition is hard to break. That first sentence of yours makes perfect sense. Still, when I come home from our daily trip to the dog park I am likely to tell my wife "today I met this gorgeous golden retriever and his dad (or mom) told me...."

Definitely, especially grammatical habits around pronouns. They're a closed-class in English, meaning they very rarely change. Even minor things, like lifting some restrictions on how we use they in the singular, can feel crashingly wrong. "This is Chris, they are the new hire for the IT department" just sounds bad to me, because there's a restriction on using singular they with specific antecedents in my idiolect (and probably yours, too).

I wouldn't say this stuff requires much effort, but it does cause frustration. I was talking about Bella Ramsey with a co-worker the other day, referred to her as "she", and was gently corrected--"I think they're non-binary?" A little flash of "why do I have to do this? It sounds worse to me", and then I get over it. Like when people tell me I have to say "You and I" instead of "you and me". Except I'll never get over that. **** you! It's you and me!

Anyway, I definitely call dogs "good boys" without knowing their sex sometimes. I refuse to talk about dog parents, though. That's a slippery slope that leads to saying things like "furbabies."

 

[gnome]

Trans people are a protected class, protected from discriminatory practices in employment, housing, etc. Just like all the other protected classes. It would take a hell of a lot more than using the wrong pronouns to establish a pattern of discrimination. Which is why this has never happened.

I take issue with describing "protected class" as a legality. For example, there are laws against racial discrimination. That doesn't make racial minority a "protected class", it makes race a proscribed reason for discrimination. A white person can argue that they were discriminated against because of their race, even if that's rare.

 

[Lukraak_Sisser]

They ask to be referred to contra to their biological sex coding. That's a concept that lives in my head, not in theirs. Why should I pretend to perceive the world differently than how I perceive it, just to align with their own perception? That's Orwellian.

Ah. I would call that politeness. I guess we have very differing definitions.

 

[junkshop]

Wheaton's law.

 

[Samson]

Preferred pronouns are the real snowflakery.

With very rare exceptions, people code as male or female to others. We have pronouns for that.

When I refer to a male as "he", I'm not referring to how he envisions himself inside his own head. I'm referring to how I envision him in my head. And how you envision him in your head. Even if you acquiesce to his preferred contra-sex-coded pronouns, you're still aware of how he actually codes. Otherwise, you wouldn't have to think about preferred versus actual pronouns. You'd just use the one that's already in your head, alongside your own sense of him as male.

Demanding that you dismiss your own sense of the world, and replace it with theirs, is an act of oppression. At this stage in the preferred pronoun debate, it's de facto gaslighting, an act of abuse. Trans rights activists have gotten the whole business of pronouns ass over teakettle. They're trying to colonize your mind with perceived realities that you know aren't true. And you're helping them do it.

Absolutely correct.
The pied piper is leading the dumb villagers right to the river.
The children are going too, and in a dramatic reversal of fortune the rats are laughing all the way to the bank, no pun intended.
Big pharma, surgeons, gender therapists and endocrinologists.

 

[dirtywick]

being just as worried about snowflake behavior as the snowflakes is the most snowflake thing you could do.

you guys don't understand, you can just not do that. use whatever pronouns you want. these are activists making mild suggestions, you don't have to listen to them. you want to deliberately misgender people because it makes you feel comfortable about the world, which is fine. and then you want to have them like you for it and it bothers you that they don't, that's where you've lost.

 

[d4m10n]

you want to deliberately misgender people because it makes you feel comfortable about the world, which is fine.

You are assuming that pronouns must to refer to gender rather than sex, and that the moral offense of misgendering happens whenever someone fails to respect someone else's internal sense of self. Their argument is that pronouns referred to sex for quite a few generations prior to our fairly recent reconceptualization around gender identity, and that they haven't yet been persuaded to convert to the new usage. You can try to persuade them if you want, but calling them out on the sin of misgendering is just assuming what you need to prove.

 

[mumblethrax]

I take issue with describing "protected class" as a legality. For example, there are laws against racial discrimination. That doesn't make racial minority a "protected class", it makes race a proscribed reason for discrimination. A white person can argue that they were discriminated against because of their race, even if that's rare.

You’re absolutely correct—I should have said that gender identity is a protected class in New York. Apologies.