Moderated Using wrong pronouns= violence??

[Upchurch]

I already did, but here you go:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/she

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/she

Don't think I can share OED links that work outside of the library portal.

Have you seen an argument that we ought to stop using "female" in these definitions, in favor of some other relevant quality?

(ETA: Referring to mammals here, not boats.)

Where does the Gen Z aspect play into it?

Even cisgendered people can be misgendered. Do you find it intimidating when that happens?

Oh, hell yeah, I did, in Jr. High, and probably younger. Thankfully, I grew more comfortable with my body and how it developed over time. Not everyone is so lucky.

I know this might come as a shock, but just because something doesn’t effect you in a particular way, doesn’t mean you get to decide how other people feel about it. You haven’t lived their lives and don’t necessarily understand what they’ve been through.

 

[pzkpfw]

*reads thread title and shakes head*

Anyway, if that is the case then choosing not to use certain words can be struck from the conversation, right?

Could be. Thread drift is inevitable. But saying that people are trying to deflect it to making it about pronouns - the actual title of the thread - is rather odd.

Yes, the word "pronoun" is in the title of the thread, but not in the context of what is the correct pronoun for a situation. It's predicated on the wrong one being used. The item linked in the OP makes it clear that "wrong one" here means "deliberately continuing to not use the one requested by the recipient"; "violence" itself is a bit more subtle, I think it's just used to indicate the extent of the offensiveness (and "offensive" is the word that appears in the item many times, not "violence").

So the extended debate on what's the absolute correct pronoun for someone is a deflection. It allows someone to ignore the hurt they cause someone by using a certain pronoun. They get to stand their ground based on their grandfathers' dictionary definitions.

"David" is born with the dangly bits that get him called "male", "he", and "him". At the age of twenty: after self discovery, working out of depression, ..., she becomes "Debbie" and would like to be called "she" and "her". Now Debbie is your coworker, and through clothing etc is trying to live their life as themselves.

Calling Debbie "him" will cause hurt. Why would someone do that? Because Debbie still has those dangly bits she was born with? ... and a person with narrow inflexible interpretations thinks that must mean "male"? This is why I asked the nickname question. If you'd stop calling a person "shorty" because it upsets them, why would you not stop using a pronoun that upsets them?

What is the correct pronoun is not and should not be the issue, the issue is that hurt.

Even the OP has not stuck to the "is it really violence" bit, so I don't buy the reiteration of that.

 

[Lukraak_Sisser]

Politeness and empathy are two way streets. Anyway, I think you're conceding the point. The dude isn't a lady, and nobody thinks he is a lady. We're just all supposed to feel sorry for him, and play along with the polite fiction of his womanface because politeness and empathy.

Empathy about what, exactly? What form of human suffering are we supposed to empathize with?

No, I in no way concede that point.
I teach and some of the teenagers I work with have or are transitioning. I see a fraction of what they are going trough and how their decision turns them into far happier individuals, even though bigots and bullies try to push them back into what they feel the kids 'should be'

The empathy and politeness should be that they have made known how they feel and that intentionally mislabeling them each time they see it feels like a 'you are WRONG! your feelings are WRONG!'
They get enough of that in daily life. And even if you do not understand why someone feels like that (and I don't), you can acknowledge that they feel like that and act like a decent human being.

 

[Lukraak_Sisser]

Would it not be equally polite of a trans person to just accept that most people they have casual encounters with will default to the outward appearance that they present to the world and that their internal identity is largely irrelevant to most people?

In casual encounters yes, and all the trans people I know are ok with that.
Its for non-casual encounters, like work where people know someone is trans, know how they would want to be addressed and intentionally and continually do it wrong, even after being asked not to.

 

[Lukraak_Sisser]

Politeness and empathy has entered the school system, and there is a cost that follows. This is not my thought experiment. It is leading to gay youth being told they are trans.
I hope this is wrong for the sake of society.
I will read any link to show I am wrong.

But do you have any links to show you are right?
Sure, I teach in the Netherlands, but that assertion is not true here at all.

 

[Mojo]

It doesn't. But that doesn't mean I will indulge in pointless fantasy.

If I told you I wanted to be called God or My Lord or Thermal the Well Hung, it's no skin off your nose either. Little weird tho, no?

Indeed, there's a difference between someone preferring to be referred to by a perfectly normal pronoun and someone being an asterisk.

 

[Steve]

In casual encounters yes, and all the trans people I know are ok with that.
Its for non-casual encounters, like work where people know someone is trans, know how they would want to be addressed and intentionally and continually do it wrong, even after being asked not to.

This is exactly the response I was looking and hoping for from someone who actually knows trans persons.

 

[Hercules56]

Yes, the word "pronoun" is in the title of the thread, but not in the context of what is the correct pronoun for a situation. It's predicated on the wrong one being used. The item linked in the OP makes it clear that "wrong one" here means "deliberately continuing to not use the one requested by the recipient"; "violence" itself is a bit more subtle, I think it's just used to indicate the extent of the offensiveness (and "offensive" is the word that appears in the item many times, not "violence").

So the extended debate on what's the absolute correct pronoun for someone is a deflection. It allows someone to ignore the hurt they cause someone by using a certain pronoun. They get to stand their ground based on their grandfathers' dictionary definitions.

"David" is born with the dangly bits that get him called "male", "he", and "him". At the age of twenty: after self discovery, working out of depression, ..., she becomes "Debbie" and would like to be called "she" and "her". Now Debbie is your coworker, and through clothing etc is trying to live their life as themselves.

Calling Debbie "him" will cause hurt. Why would someone do that? Because Debbie still has those dangly bits she was born with? ... and a person with narrow inflexible interpretations thinks that must mean "male"? This is why I asked the nickname question. If you'd stop calling a person "shorty" because it upsets them, why would you not stop using a pronoun that upsets them?

What is the correct pronoun is not and should not be the issue, the issue is that hurt.

Even the OP has not stuck to the "is it really violence" bit, so I don't buy the reiteration of that.

I fail to understand why biological facts should be outweighed by someone's possiblity temporary feelings. Personally I'd like to see such people treated before we give up, throw up our hands and say "ok John, you are now Jane".

 

[Darat]

I'd say there is an obvious informational cost to be paid every time you choose to obscure sex in favor of gender. The sentence "William should not swim against women, because of his inherent advantages" has significantly more intuitive impact than "Lia should not swim against women, because of her inherent advantages." The first sentence conveys key information, whereas the second one requires an additional explainer as to the nature and origin of the advantages.

"informational cost" - why not get even more abstract and claim it will decrease the Shannon entropy of our exchanges?

 

[Lplus]

I fail to understand why biological facts should be outweighed by someone's possiblity temporary feelings. Personally I'd like to see such people treated before we give up, throw up our hands and say "ok John, you are now Jane".

You can't say that!!! for heavens sake, whilst all around are calling for treatment for an ever expanding mental heath catastrophy from everything between depression and suicide and adhd, autism and every other mental ism under the sun, the last thing that can be interfered with is the belief that one should be a different sex.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

Even cisgendered people can be misgendered. Do you find it intimidating when that happens?

It is generally considered an embarrassing faux-pas when accidental, and an act of hostility when intentional.

 

[Ziggurat]

"informational cost" - why not get even more abstract and claim it will decrease the Shannon entropy of our exchanges?

Because Shannon entropy makes no distinction between information, but some information is more important than other information. Which, while we're getting super geeky, is the entire basis for lossy compression.

 

[Thermal]

Indeed, there's a difference between someone preferring to be referred to by a perfectly normal pronoun and someone being an asterisk.

That's not the argument being challenged though, is it? The argument being challenged was that "it means a lot to them and costs you next to nothing, so why not?"

So: it would mean a lot to me if you would call me God and it costs you next to nothing, so why not?" What's that you say? "That's different"? Why? You think that someone else dictating reality to you, and you complying, might maybe say something about you?

Again, my issue is not with a trans woman wanting to be called "she". My issue is with an ocelot-kin that corrects you to call them a "xe".

 

[JoeMorgue]

This thread alone has cost more "informational cost" then remembering the pronoun of every transgender person anyone in this thread is ever reasonably going to meet times a 100.

Please stop making absurdist arguments.

You're putting 1,000 kilojoules of "informational cost" into arguing about why you shouldn't make put .00000001 kilojoules into remember Ted is a she not a he at some hypothetical point that might happen in the future.

 

[TragicMonkey]

It is generally considered an embarrassing faux-pas when accidental, and an act of hostility when intentional.

Super-embarrassing to make that faux-pas, both for the person making it and the person receiving it. Heck, it's embarrassing to even witness it. I don't know why; intellectually I understand that masculinity-feminity is a range, there's nothing wrong with occupying any particular spot on that range, and honest mistakes are honest mistakes...but dear god it's instant and terrible cringe to make the mistake. The couple of times I've done it I was mortified, and once I was on the receiving end because I hadn't had a haircut in a while and was turned away facing the window when the stewardess came by and she called me "ma'am" and we both wanted the plane to crash right then.

 

[Darat]

Why not use the words you wish to use? Why do your wishes get demoted? Someone looks male to you, you use masculine pronouns. Unless they tell you your perception doesn't matter. Okay, so what gives them that privilege, to tell you that you don't see what you see?

What a strange way to put it. I'm generally a nice person so I don't generally like upsetting people, if it's important to them why on earth wouldn't I use the pronoun they requested?

If folk don't want to be nice then of course they can be nasty and hurt someone for no reason apart from their own ego.

 

[Darat]

Politeness and empathy are two way streets. Anyway, I think you're conceding the point. The dude isn't a lady, and nobody thinks he is a lady. We're just all supposed to feel sorry for him, and play along with the polite fiction of his womanface because politeness and empathy.

Empathy about what, exactly? What form of human suffering are we supposed to empathize with?

Where on earth did that come from? Being nice to someone isn't predicated on us feeling sorry for someone.

 

[JoeMorgue]

All kindness is "unnecessary" if you are one of the people who needs "why you should care about other people" explained to you.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

What a strange way to put it. I'm generally a nice person so I don't generally like upsetting people, if it's important to them why on earth wouldn't I use the pronoun they requested?

If folk don't want to be nice then of course they can be nasty and hurt someone for no reason apart from their own ego.

I have to admit I haven't read every post of this thread, but I see we've reached the point of people pretending not to understand basic courtesy instead of just admitting that intentionally misgendering people is an act of pettiness.

Life must be hard when you have the social skills of Data from TNG. "Good manners cost you nothing" is a lesson that most preschoolers can at least understand.

 

[d4m10n]

Where does the Gen Z aspect play into it?

Sometime in their lifetimes, English speakers shifted from using pronouns as shorthand for either females or males to using pronouns based on subjective personal preference.