I suggest you try being forced to wear a burka all day every day before saying things like that.
I’m certain most women in Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan would happily let you call them she, he, they, it or whatever else you want provided you let them take off their burkas in public.
Repurposing existing pronouns is the problem. Other languages have nice, gender neutral pronouns. We just need a nice new, singular gender neutral pronoun.
Example…
He/she/fai Him/her/hai
Then make it standard to use the neutral version where gender doesn’t matter. Telling a story about your teacher? Is it pertinent we need to know the gender? No? Then standardize on the neutral version.
English has always been one of the most fluid languages. Why stop now? Just fix it.
Who the fuck demands people present pronouns? You either do it, or you accept either sometimes being misgendered or getting an indeterminate “they”.
Or are you just trying to start the new year bitching about people insisting on common courtesy after helpfully specifying their own preferred pronouns?
Speak this word or I’ll be upset
Wear this thing or I’ll be upset
You gotta admit it’s a pretty good parallel
So if I just refer to you by the wrong pronouns all the time you won’t get upset? Or if I change your name out for fatty, or fat fuck?
Knock yourself out.
But I find that convenience is the primary dictator of speech. Anything else gets awkward and exhausting.
Conservatives are the softest people I’ve ever met. Oppressed by having to consider anyone else’s feelings. God forgive you have to think for a split second before speaking to someone. I guess that last part is what makes it so painful.
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“Fat Fucko” it is.
“respect who I am or I’ll be upset”
“This is who you need to be or I’ll be upset”
Nope, not seeing it.
Both are making a demand, that you conduct yourself in a certain way.
So would you say the same thing about an usher at a movie theater telling you to shut up or get kicked out? How about a boss telling their employee to take out the trash? A parent telling their kid not to hit their sibling? That’s all the same, right, because they’re all making a demand that someone conducts themself in a certain way?
Oh make the statement that you want to make already. Dancing around it allusively just muddles things.
Or you can tell me why my examples are different than yours, or that they really are all the same.
Your mode of conversation is bassackwards and duplicitous. I’ll pass. Lol.
Not really, no.
Nope. Literally opposites.
You are imposing YOUR will on another when you purposely use the wrong pronoun.
YOU ARE THE OPPRESSOR, NOT THE OPPRESSED.
Your self-centeredness is absurd. We have better things to do than oppress you. Trust me in this.
We speak in whatever way seems best. And that is a personal matter. Respect that or not.
I’m self centered because I consider other people’s feelings before addressing them?
I’m sorry that I didn’t consider how annoying it must be for you to respect other humans in your vicinity.
I’m an effort to be more like you, I will disregard your username and call you Fucko. In the future, I’ll expect you to respond to the name Fucko, as not to oppress my freedom of speech. Sound good, Fucko?
YOU ARE THE OPPRESSOR, NOT THE OPPRESSED.
Y’all got some loose definition of oppression
Gaza residents are oppressed
Working class is oppressed
Some dick in the wild not using the language you prefer is not oppression
It’s not a competition. There’s always someone who has it worse, and that does not invalidate anyone else’s struggles.
Some struggles are so objectively small that invalidating them is only sane.
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I don’t understand the whole controversy of pronouns. If a person says, “Hey, call me this instead of this,” that’s fine. I don’t have to go out of my way to do what you request. If it bothers people to go against the “ebb and flow” on something so simple, then that’s their personal problem.
However, comparing it to a burka, then it almost seems like the opposite side having an issue with people who don’t adhere to your standard. the whole argument is completely asinine because I don’t understand why it’s should matter and why people who prefer something besides their default pronoun get so upset about what other people think.
We, as individual people, have too much shit on our plate as it is. Why are you going to get mad because someone that you could easily remove from your life (because you don’t like them for a possible myriad of reasons) has spited you? Live your own life and stop getting mad about how others live theirs.
Now with that being said, I’ve never had a family member that I love come out requesting a different pronoun beside default (also i personally think saying “default” is the best way to approach it), so i can’t say exactly how I would react.
People never seem to have problems with changing pronouns when it’s for someone’s pet
“Cute dog what’s his name”
“Oh she’s Luna”
“I love her!”
You say that, but I have had a pet snake since I was a child and because I was a boy child I assumed they were male. But once I got older it occured to me that I have no idea if they’re actually male or female (because sexing a snake isn’t as easy as with mammals) and it seems more likely that they’re actually female. But I’m not certain either way and I genuinely don’t care. So I’ve since started refering to them as they/them. My dad still points it out every time I do it. “Oh, you have multiple snakes?” It’s kinda weird considering he’s so progressive in every other way.
It’s really easy, say your name is Tom, and I start calling you Stacy all the time, you’re going to get bothered by it eventually at best Or downright fuming at worst. It literally takes you nothing to use the right nouns/pronouns.
But if it’s a requested change, how put out are you by it? It’s still the same human that you respect and appreciate. And if you respect and appreciate them, you’d adhere to their request. That’s what loyalty is
Not put out at all. Even if I don’t respect and appreciate them. I will use the name they want. Loyalty has nothing to do with this.
Ok. Then respect
That’s a large assumption, and a presumptuous demand.
Do not assume. Do not demand. Mind your manners. Everybody around you will appreciate it.
It’s not, and it’s not. Correct, false, Correct, Correct.
To address the first one. You assume that everybody uses language the same way that you do. That conforming to your demands in this is as preferable for them as it is for you.
That’s a pretty gigantic assumption.
It’s funny, english people are given names at birth, and we use those names. And when they want to go by something else, we’re ok with it (nick names), that’s how the English language is used by the overwhelming vast majority so yes, the only gigantic assumption here is that the majority of English speakers don’t speak that way.
And when they want to go by something else, we’re ok with it (nick names)
You know who’s not fine with it? People who care more about themselves than they care about others.
I had a friend named John who, later in life, asked to be called his given name, Jonathan. For the friend group and most of his family, it was a bit hard to remember at first, but we did it because we cared about him. For some of his family, it was another matter - they fought against it with excuses, questioning, and “forgetfulness”. Only after being assertive, defending himself again and again, did they respect his wishes. And this was a cis male asking to be called his give name because he felt he was at a new stage of his life. The difference was that one part of his family cared more about themselves than they did about Jonathan.
Some of us have an abundance of care to fellow humans, and we give it freely. Some are too inconvenienced by things that they don’t like, or doesn’t fit their conventions that they say, “You can’t make me respect you!” or “Respecting you is making me less free!” And they do so because they care less about the people they interact with than themselves.
I’m guessing OP is a troll btw. Anyone serious on this topic would have written a manifesto. Thanks for getting me writing though! 😋
edit: a comma.
“Can you call me this instead?”
“NO. I WILL CALL YOU WHAT I DEEM CORRECT!”
Mind manners indeed. I wonder if you can even conceptualize being in their shoes and being treated like that.
Dumb.
Nice b8 m8
I mean I was nerdy enough that I met many a boy who intentionally misgendered me and of course we see it in scrubs and in movies on military training. Guy as girl as insult. That said if I just call you asshole then you know. You should not demand different. That being said pronouns ae a society thing and the ruleset goes back in history and if its changes some folks are going to be hard kept to keep up and if the rules change for every individual. oh man.
Such a fragile little creature.
Whatever you just said is like demanding a burka. It’s performative stupid.
What do you think a pronoun is?
It’s like a noun, but for pros!
Are you implying that a pronoun is an item of clothing?
No, I’m asking you what you think a pronoun is.
You can tell by the fact that it’s what I said.
A pronoun is a word. I say that with 94% confidence.
Not at all.
Demanding a pronoun is like demanding that someone call you by your name.
Demanding a burka is like demanding someone else respond to whatever pronoun YOU want to call them.
One is demanding that people refer to you the way you want to be referred. The other is forcing something into someone else.
That does assume that the person wearing the burka is doing so because they are forced to.
This is not universally true and thus the comparison you make is also not true.
Source: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-24/why-do-muslim-women-wear-a-burka-niqab-or-hijab/5761510
The term “demanding” led me to that assumption.
If someone wants to wear one, that’s fine, and irrelevant to this conversation. I was referring to people who are forced to wear one despite their wishes.
I think OP meant you using the wrong pronoun when talking to someone who would rather you didn’t is akin to imprisoning that someone in a burka.
Which clearly is something someone in the first world without too many problems in life would say.
Nope, OP said that making someone use a pronoun is akin to demanding a burka
Well, either way, it’s not really worth thinking about for more than 10 seconds, because quite frankly the parallel is pretty fucking dumb.
Oh, maybe I misunderstood. If that’s the case, I guess that’s at least a more accurate comparison than what I thought they meant.
I thought they meant that someone asking them to use a preferred pronoun was like forcing them to wear a burka.
5/7 ragebait
That’s fair.
Look, your comments show what you’re saying better than your post. So keeping that in mind, you’ve made an error.
See, while language is a consensus based thing, or isn’t the only determinant of how it’s used. The consensus doesn’t inherently forbid individual usages.
So, the idea that me insisting on my pronouns be used is not the same as a burka or similar garb.
Now, I get part of your argument, that there’s a point at which highly individualized pronouns become enough of a hassle that expecting anyone to remember them is an exercise in futility. You aren’t going to shift the way a language functions like that, it just isn’t going to happen that everyone gets to pick their own pronoun/s when they aren’t also a part of the current language structure.
That’s not a matter of right or wrong, it’s a purely practical thing. To create that kind of shift in language requires broad acceptance of the idea, and it being part of early language acquisition. In other words, if you aren’t learning the structure of completely individual pronouns as part of your learning your language as a very small child, then that’s going to always be unfamiliar and awkward. It will take conscious effort to use the proposed change.
And that’s where the barrier is. It’s easy enough to get folks on board with he/she/they because it’s already there in the unwritten rules we pick up passively. Once you start trying to invent words, you have to convince other people they’re useful at all. Then you have to teach them what those words mean, when to use them or not use them, and how they’re supposed to be applied when a niche situation arises.
As an example, xe and xey replacing not only the gendered he/she, but the agender they in consistent way. It kinda makes sense, though English isn’t a great language to use x as the first letter of a word. There’s other languages that only have a single pronoun for individuals and one for multiplies, so the concept is easy to swallow.
But, you still have to convince people that there’s a good reason to switch. There’s people that already fight hard for the right to have their gendered pronouns recognized, and won’t give that up because it matters to them. You’ve got people that will (accurately) point out that we already have the singular “they”, so adding another word in is not useful. You’ve got people that will object because the you’ll still have to teach the previous forms so that people can read the centuries of writing already out there.
That’s a huge barrier to overcome, and that’s just for one change.
And there isn’t a single consensus about what alternate pronouns to add/replace. There’s multiple competing ones, so there’s no critical mass of people to shift the majority.
To be clear though, none of that is the equivalent of forcing you to wear a burka. None of it.
That’s where you screwed up. You conflated two things that are absolutely not the same, crammed them into a ragebait title, and didn’t think it through before posting.
Mind you, that last part assumes you don’t actually believe the tripe and are just playing around with ideas. I prefer not to assume malice, until it is so certain it can’t be alienated avoided.
Only if you mean when someone is demanding another person to go by a specific pronoun and not someone demanding others respect their own pronouns.
IE if you’re demanding a trans woman to be called a man, that is like demanding a woman to wear a burka.
Someone demanding you call them by their own pronouns is like a woman demanding freedom from a burka.
The form of language is dictated by the preferences of all those involved in the conversation, the conventions of their shared culture, and other context. For a person to insist that everybody involved bend to his sole preference is unrealistic.
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So would you be fine if I referred to you as a bitch, or would you insist I refer to you by a specific name or pronoun?
The form of language is dictated by the preferences of all those involved in the conversation
No, it really isn’t.
Could you elaborate, please? to discard any misinterpretation.
Demanding that a person speak a certain way is like demanding that a person dress a certain way.
To use your own stupid argument, we already do demand that you dress to at least a certain minimum when around others. Demanding a certain minimum of respect isn’t much different. It’s called “being civil”.
Is it civil if I demand that you wear a burka?
So, if someone “demands” to be referred to using a specific type of pronouns, it is like forcing others to wear a Burka?
Am I getting it right?
Who?
