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[Kagus]

the western concept of a gender/sex binary sentence-initial capitalization was something that was forced by scalpel or erasure onto everyone else.

Down with the oppressive establishment!

indeed! no more capitalizing-... wait a minute, you're doing it too!

a spy! get the spy!

[Il Palazzo]

OH NO! MY COVER IS BLOWN! VIVE LA CAPSLOCUTION!

[wierd]

This is absurd, i for one simply consider the refusal to capitalize the first letter of every sentence just too extreme. Now, i will on the other hand, refuse to capitalize elitist pronouns, like i.

(snicker)

[Kagus]

I remember chatting with a fellow via Omegle who capitalized "You", but not "i", claiming that this was how it was done in Polish etiquette.

[SalmonGod]

1.  Discussion of whether gender identification has stronger roots in biology or socialization in a politics thread, where presumably the only relevance of the discussion is as relates to the legal status of being trans or non-binary
2.  Pointing out that it isn't politically relevant what the root cause of gender identification is, because no one has any justifiable cause to restrict anyone's self-identification/lifestyle regarding gender that is compatible with the foundations of our professed cultural values and guiding principles of our legal system.
3.  But some people want to force others to use weird pronouns, and there's a couple examples of them gaining legal traction.
4.  Yeah, that's kinda silly, but that has nothing to do with the original point.
5.  Yes, but we have to call out the left on their bullshit, too!  And the real problem is everyone thinking they're right all the time!

Seriously, wtf...

[George_Chickens]

i came back to check up on bay12 and just.
holy shit, wow. pronouns.

i know, i know. you shouldn't be going on the politics thread caroline, you're gonna give yourself a hernia.

so like, while the government is literally separating families and putting them in what is very little short of actual concentration camps, y'all are. worried about pronouns. there's massive voter suppression and huge purges of queer people and people of color happening in georgia and several other states and, pronouns. y'all think that somehow you'll be forced by law to use pronouns that aren't he/she/they. when a clear partisan judge with shitty credentials, sexual assault allegations, who throws temper tantrums has been barreled through to the supreme court for almost the explicit purpose of repealing Roe v. Wade and Obergefell v. Hodges y'all think that somehow, some-fucking-how, what we need to be talking is about the risk of trans people fucking legalizing the 'silencing of your speech' somehow. nevermind the fact that the western concept of a gender/sex binary was something that was forced by scalpel or erasure onto everyone else.

have any of y'all actually met a nonbinary person? every single one i've met would more often rather put up with actual slurs being hurled at them than have to actually correct someone about their own pronouns.

tl;dr i shouldn't post when i'm not in a good state of mind, what the fuck y'all (except the nice ones, you're still cool)
if you really want to know if you're nice not throwing a fucking hissy fit over pronouns is a good indicator

goodnight.

If we're going to go down the path of "You can't discuss this thing because BAD THING happen", then we won't be able to discuss anything at all. How can you discuss trans issues if entire states are drinking poisonous water? How can you discuss poisonous water if the USA's foreign policy can be tantamount to mass murder at worst? How can you discuss foreign policy if the USA's policies on internal production will lead to the abject devastation of all life on Earth via climate change? The point will lead us nowhere, as there are always "worse things happening".

Had you been paying attention to the thread, you would realize these topics have already been discussed (there are five pages of mentions of Kavanaugh) with most users coming to a total agreement. This topic gets more discussion now as it is divisive and actually provokes debate, unlike things which are pretty unilaterally agreed upon, like  "Kavanaugh is pretty shady", "Yes, I agree, he is shady. This is not a nice situation.".

If you disagree with it, how about raise a point against the points that people have already raised? It surely will bring more discussion than making ridiculous claims that people just believe transpeople are out to take their rights or that they're bad people for discussing a topic that you, personally do not want spoken of.

[Il Palazzo]

I remember chatting with a fellow via Omegle who capitalized "You", but not "i", claiming that this was how it was done in Polish etiquette.

Did he also insist on addressing you per 'Milord'?

[SalmonGod]

If we're going to go down the path of "You can't discuss this thing because BAD THING happen", then we won't be able to discuss anything at all. How can you discuss trans issues if entire states are drinking poisonous water? How can you discuss poisonous water if the USA's foreign policy can be tantamount to mass murder at worst? How can you discuss foreign policy if the USA's policies on internal production will lead to the abject devastation of all life on Earth via climate change? The point will lead us nowhere, as there are always "worse things happening".

Except the pronoun tangent was this same style of diversion technique, but in reverse.

"You can't discuss how these people aren't justified in doing this bad thing, because their victims also want this sort of annoying thing!"

[George_Chickens]

If we're going to go down the path of "You can't discuss this thing because BAD THING happen", then we won't be able to discuss anything at all. How can you discuss trans issues if entire states are drinking poisonous water? How can you discuss poisonous water if the USA's foreign policy can be tantamount to mass murder at worst? How can you discuss foreign policy if the USA's policies on internal production will lead to the abject devastation of all life on Earth via climate change? The point will lead us nowhere, as there are always "worse things happening".

Except the pronoun tangent was this same style of diversion technique, but in reverse.

I really, really fail to see how. What started as Reelya posting a link to survey results while there was vague discussion of political victimization derailed into discussion of ethnic insults, then into discussion of pronouns and people's opinions on the far ends of the spectrum of such a thing. Could you substantiate your claims and provide examples of how this was done?

It seems much more likely to me to be a typical Bay12 derail with people stating their opinion than any real diversion.

[Cheeetar]

The terrible people complaining about having to be respectful and use the appropriate pronouns have been around before and are nothing new. Honestly, I'm kinda surprised/glad to see this much pushback against the abject nastiness.

[McTraveller]

Any system that puts personal happiness/comfort above character is bound to be problematic*.

It's gotten so bad in society now that we have now had enough generations of children who have so little concept of character that it's plainly evident that character isn't even a major consideration for leadership.  And note this isn't just in the US either - many countries have leadership of suspect or clearly dubious character.

*Note that I don't just mean an individual putting their own happiness first. I also mean well-intentioned people putting the happiness of some other individual or group above that other's character. The canonical example is parents coddling their children such that they grow up not being able to function independently, always expect someone else to swoop in and resolve problems, etc.

[wierd]

I dunno.

If we open the door up wide (like is expected here) to what a person internally perceives, vs what physically is, you will end up with the "I identify as Neko Cat!" like Reelya lamplit.  You will get so many "I identify as $FOO!" as there are possible kinds of $FOO.


For that reason, (since I HATE spurious use of language, and worse-- abuse of language constructs) I would rather not see an infinite number of "I identify as" pronouns, with civil reprisals of "You heinous douche! How DARE you not accept their mythical cat fetish identity!" thrown in when people fail to call them their preferred pronoun.

This is not intended to imply that all gender identities are mythical hoodoo though, so DO NOT go there, I will fucking ignore that noise, so I am shooting that shit down RIGHT NOW.  Just that a more stringent requirement than "I identify as" is required.  Literally ANYTHING can fill that void.  For the sake of being able to communicate effectively, we need to be more demanding in what we consider as the cutoff for when a pronoun is needed.

That is, of course, unless you want to memorize more than the expanded Chinese character set, just to be able to correctly and properly address somebody, based on their exact self-identification, because failure is such a heinous crime that you can expect to lose your job, be stalked on line, and be fined over it. (because that is where this is headed.)

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Old man yells at cloud, much? It's asinine to complain about your personal fantasy of being looked down on for encountering Wacky Pronoun Roulette while in our real and material existence trans and nonbinary people suffer daily discrimination and violence. Just because you disclaim that you aren't being a gender essentialist doesn't make that any less ridiculous.

This idea also holds onto the idea that non-cis gender identities aren't real. It holds onto it at a distance, sure, much as "I don't mind gay people as long as I don't have to see them kissing" holds onto homophobia at a greater distance than "burn the sodomites", but the basic idea is still down there somewhere. If it wasn't, you wouldn't be so determined that people would put you through Wacky Pronoun Roulette if gender identity was up to the individual holding it. If you really believed trans and nonbinary people then even the possibility of Wacky Pronoun Roulette would just go in the same box as all the other minor inconveniences of life like running into a demanding customer at work.

But you clearly care about it much more than that, since you're now arguing that we will suffer gross linguistic failure of some kind if we do accept people's identities. Ergo...

[Dorsidwarf]

I dunno.

If we open the door up wide (like is expected here) to what a person internally perceives, vs what physically is, you will end up with the "I identify as Neko Cat!" like Reelya lamplit.  You will get so many "I identify as $FOO!" as there are possible kinds of $FOO.


For that reason, (since I HATE spurious use of language, and worse-- abuse of language constructs) I would rather not see an infinite number of "I identify as" pronouns, with civil reprisals of "You heinous douche! How DARE you not accept their mythical cat fetish identity!" thrown in when people fail to call them their preferred pronoun.

This is not intended to imply that all gender identities are mythical hoodoo though, so DO NOT go there, I will fucking ignore that noise, so I am shooting that shit down RIGHT NOW.  Just that a more stringent requirement than "I identify as" is required.  Literally ANYTHING can fill that void.  For the sake of being able to communicate effectively, we need to be more demanding in what we consider as the cutoff for when a pronoun is needed.

That is, of course, unless you want to memorize more than the expanded Chinese character set, just to be able to correctly and properly address somebody, based on their exact self-identification, because failure is such a heinous crime that you can expect to lose your job, be stalked on line, and be fined over it. (because that is where this is headed.)

[JoshuaFH]

This whole issue is something I'm very curious about, and I'd love to learn more... but the entire subject is extremely intimidating. I've been trying to work out a way to ask a question about it, but I can't even figure out a way to ask without sounding implicitly transphobic.