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Discussion on: An Organizer's Guide to Pronoun Buttons

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Sloan, the sloth mascot
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veraticus profile image
Josh Symonds • Edited

I don't believe gender is a social construct

You're just wrong here; a huge component of gender is social. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_role

which means as a man I refer to women with "she" not because she identifies as a woman but because from my point of view she is a potential mate

English may not be your first language but this construction is really gross. Pronouns are indications of a person's gender, not their mating potential. If someone tells you what their gender is, then afterwards you might have a good guess as to what their pronouns are. Or if you're feeling confused about it, you should ask them.

Which means if I don't use the pronoun you chose you'd like to be refered by I'm not disrespectful towards you

It's not really your opinion that matters here, right? The people you're talking to find it disrespectful to use the wrong pronouns, so you can't claim that it's not actually disrespectful. It is. You can say you don't intend disrespect, but the people you're referring to will still feel disrespected. The only way to cure that is to listen to them and not be disrespectful.

You either bend the knee or you're an enemy to the cause (which think about it for a second, would be considered very rude on any other subject)

Like using the names people ask you to call them by? Or respecting their religion which you may not agree with? Or by not being racist towards them if they're of a different race to you?

You should be tolerant of the differences of those around you. You're not the one being oppressed by someone asking you to respect those differences.

I don't believe that the movement currently showing and pushing for the use of these pronouns is actually anyhow representative of the actual trangender community

There are literal transgender people represented right here telling you to use their pronouns properly. On your side, there are no transgender people. So your belief is (once again) incorrect.

To put it more clearly: if you misgender someone, you are being a jerk and should apologize to that person and use the correct pronouns from then on. This should happen independently of whatever you imagine their genitals or gender identity to be -- because frankly you don't know! All you have is their word for it, and you should believe them.

My reply is probably spitting in the wind because your comment is almost certain to be moderated out of existence, but I hope that you can take the time to reflect on why your opinions are offensive to trans people and maybe begin a journey that gets you out of the place you're at.

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Sloan, the sloth mascot
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Josh Symonds • Edited

My mative[sic] language is french

If this is true, how can you possibly have any objection to arbitrary genders for nouns? Unless you truly believe the moon is female, then you use pronouns that agree with the noun without thinking of "mating" in your own native tongue. Same deal with pronouns for people, what's so difficult about that?

The topic is vastly discussed and wikipedia helps nothing but hurting your credibility.

The idea of gender as socially informed is accepted by pretty much every sociologist, psychologist, and gender theorist in existence (as that Wikipedia page you didn't bother reading summarizes extremely well). You say the topic is "vastly discussed" but you seem uninformed about the expert consensus -- also your objections don't track with anything anyone knowledgeable in this field says, so my guess is you actually don't know anything about this and you're just asserting your position. I'd be happy for citations to prove me wrong.

I was not referring to pronouns in broad usage but pronouns used to refer to other people in a social context, which is the actual topic here.

There is no difference. The pronoun assigned to a noun is arbitrary and can be irregular; so too people. The pronoun you use on a noun could be incorrect because you've misidentified its gender in grammatically gendered languages; so too people. If you treat the two categories as exactly equivalent (which they are) you'll see why your position is absurd.

and it should be fine for you as long as you know I am not disrespectful but only have different beliefs.

This is pretty laughable. You can, of course, say whatever you want, but you can't control other people's reactions to what you say. If you say something offensive and then explain it, no one is beholden to forgive you or not feel offended. And if they don't forgive you, you're still the one at fault. You should strive not to be disrespectful, instead of blaming the people you've hurt for being hurt by you.

Nothing about being a jerk or whatever, simply two adults agreeing to disagree.

No. In this case, a person is telling you the correct form of address for them and you're telling them you don't care. That's rude, and would make you a jerk.

You should not compare names with pronouns, name have uniqueness, which means that name does not represent anything except identity.

This is also absurd. Names are not unique to individuals, clearly; they're not even inherently gendered. (For example, "Pat" could be "Patrick" or "Patricia" so says nothing about the gender of the person the name describes. You would need a pronoun for that.) In your mother tongue, pronouns are required to refer to a noun properly -- and in both French and English, nouns can be entirely replaced by pronouns but still refer to the same "identity."

So no, names and pronouns are not unique. Both are necessary. They do not necessarily have anything to do with the gender of the thing to which they're referring, and have no standard for doing so. Pronouns aren't special, they're just attachments and replacements for nouns.

me not believing that activists are representants of the invisible mass is actually quite decent for an hypothesis.

Your hypothesis, again, is wrong. Transgender people, as this article and the many comments on it demonstrates, want people to use the proper pronouns for them. If you think otherwise, feel free to find some trans people and ask them how they would react if you refer to them by the incorrect pronoun. The results will clearly surprise you!

that I have more opportunities or that I oppress you.

The rest of your comment is honestly just trying to cry about how you're the real victim here. Let me reframe the conversation for you:

Person whose gender you don't know: "Please use these pronouns when addressing me."
You: "No, I'll call you whatever I like."

Do you not see how that makes you a jerk?

you're overly spitting propaganda without any concern of moderation

What propaganda? Also, my comments have been substantially in line with the Code of Conduct for this site. Can you say the same?

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Sloan the DEV Moderator

We’re removing these comments because they are in violation of the Code of Conduct. If you have questions, please email yo@dev.to.