likely in response to my comments on the beehaw post, which i linked to (hopefully im doing this right?). apparently, calling people you dont know for the first time “they/them” before being told their pronouns is “misgendering”. absurd. this kind of attitude threatens the larger LGBTQ community and is partially why cishets hate us after we won so much progress back in the 00s and 10s.
im a queer person. im neurodivergent. this shit is so goddamn fucking annoying, especially as an older queer who got physically assaulted on a near daily basis for being queer in the 90s. the kids today get their panties in a twist over being supposedly “misgendered” by someone calling them gender neutral pronouns before being corrected. narcissistic victimhood bullshit.
anyways, now banned from one of my favorite instances. meanwhile in the US theyre planning on hunting us. but yeah, lets ban fellow queers over their view that people who get mad about being “misgendered” when they arent (cis people are also referred to as “they/them” before further context in a conversation with a stranger) are just attention seeking brats that threaten the larger movement. its so obvious to me that the brats who find reason to be offended over innocent pronoun use never faced real adversity, like getting repeatedly physically beaten.
edit - the best part of all of this is i faced no moderation from beehaw and all of my comments are +1 or higher. power tripping oversensitive neurodivergent hating bastard of a mod over at blahaj IMO.
edit 2 - did this wrong. heres a link to the post i think got me banned from blahaj and a screenshot about it https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/37659465
Edit 3 - apparently I did nothing wrong until I made my thoughts known about how the pronoun police fucked over the larger LGBTQ community as our rights are backsliding in America. Yall are gonna whine about being misgendered to the concentration camp guards at the rate we’re going. God forbid I be angry that while queers were busy fighting over pronouns our adversaries stuffed the courts, stuffed the school boards, couped the government, and are installing a fascist dictatorship. When I say that these fucking toddlers are going to learn what real oppression tastes like, that’s what I mean. It’s not that I want us to be hurt or oppressed (as the dog piling idiots have interpreted), it’s that the younger generation is weak as hell and lost the fucking plot in the fight for our rights. I grew up getting beaten in the streets for being queer only for these kids to claim their pronouns not being mind-read is oppression!
I’m gonna ignore all of this and talk to you directly as an autistic to an autistic. There are so many times I asked a friend of mine “Hey, I forgot mutual friend X’s gender, what were their pronouns again” but what they heard was “Oh no the trans-genders and the pronouns are so confusing, they should stick with what on their birth certificate” and then I wake up the next day with no friends because that friend told all their friends I was being a transphobe.
Now, let’s think about this from their perspective. If you saw a friend of yours being a bigot to another one of your friends, would you still hang out with them? I wouldn’t. If I heard one of my friends was homophobic or transphobic or racist or any other kind of bigot, I would instantly block and shun them. I do not want bigots of any kind around me or my friends. There is a reason that cults practice shunning, and that is because it fucking works.
Continuing this, lets say our hypothetical ex-friend had been accused of being transphobic to one of your trans friends. What would they need to do to be either forgiven or absolved of guilt? Even if they were in fact transphobic, they can admit they are wrong. And if the accusation was wrong, what proof would you need? What sort of behavior would you need to see from them to forgive them?
I am positive that you as an elder queer have had many, many, many experiences where someone you thought you could trust turned out to be a homophobe. It really hurts. After a while, you start only seeing the worst in people.
As an autistic, it was really rough learning what would come across as a microaggression. Can’t ask to be reminded of the pronouns, because it might be interpreted as passive-aggressive transphobic whinging about pronouns. When I do fuck up, I can’t give the big apology that I think misgendering someone deserves because my autistic RBF will make it come across as sarcastic. You just have to quickly correct yourself and move on without drawing attention to it. It feels like blowing a red light and hitting someone because I was just plopped behind the wheel of a car without being taught how to drive.
Your tantrum here was very cathartic for me, because it really is fucking terrible trying navigate a world full of traumatized people. I don’t like accidentally triggering people. I want people to feel safe around me! But if I had thought I’d seen a person doing a microaggression, and then I saw them throwing a tantrum about how them getting shunned was because everyone else is a pee pee piss piss boy and this is why the cishets hate us, I would be inclined to think they were at least regressive, if not one of the republican gays who think that we need to chop off everything past the B in LGBTQ+.
Just to be clear, I don’t think you’re transphobic. I have experienced the same sort of things as you. It’s rough restraining myself from flailing around in response to being accused of stuff. It is humiliating to prostrate myself and beg forgiveness of things I know I did not do. But we live in a fucking society full of bigots and people traumatized by those fucking bigots, and these are the rituals that keep our corner of society even a little bit sane.
Okay I have to ask: if you don’t know someone’s gender, but you can’t call them uh, they/them, then what in the fuck are you supposed to do exactly?
Like, I fully get doing it in person can be being a dick, but on the internet where you absolutely do not know unless someone tells you?
That’s the dumbest thing I’ve heard today, and I was on reddit earlier.
Okay I have to ask: if you don’t know someone’s gender, but you can’t call them uh, they/them, then what in the fuck are you supposed to do exactly?
I fully support inclusivity. Rejecting singular “they/them” as generic non-gendered pronouns isn’t inclusive. It’s a special brand of incivility and intolerance.
Whatever your policy is on intolerant individuals, feel free to exercise it.
Ask for the platform to have pronouns built in.
I’m sceptical about hexbear as much as the next person, but they pronouns mandatory policy was a good one
IDK, this would force closeted trans people either to out themselves or misgender themselves. Not everyone is in a position where it’s safe to be themselves, even online.
“It” or perhaps “Life form”, though that might be offensive to those that identify as dead inside.
well “it” is universally thought to be objectifying and a pronoun non gratis. except for the select few who choose to go by that for … reasons i guess. whatever floats their boat.
I know this flies in the face of what everyone else seems to be saying, but fuck it.
I don’t know of an acronym, but my reaction is that even if they overreacted, your insanely aggressive response makes me think it’s right to leave it in place. I get that you’re saying that you’re just angry because you like blahaj, but up and down this thread your bitching is so antagonistic… Like, calling it narcissistic, referring to people who care “too much” about their pronouns as having main character syndrome? This is not the behavior of a friend, or an ally, and it’s not one I’d love in a member of my community.
Being queer and neurodivergent is not an excuse to be an asshole. As someone who identifies as both queer and neurodivergent, let me say I wouldn’t unban you for this. Whether the initial ban was right or wrong!
I went through real shit in the 90s for being queer. I wasn’t even diagnosed as neurodivergent (despite a disgusting amount of evidence since I was a child, because “girls don’t get ADHD”) until my goddamned 30s. That doesn’t mean that just because other people are suffering differently, their suffering doesn’t matter, and screaming about it makes you look like an abusive fuck. People don’t have to suffer “enough” for your definition to deserve respect. Jesus.
I get that this could be stepping on your trauma, and nobody loves being excluded, but this reaction ain’t it.
This is stepping on my exclusion trauma. I also wasn’t diagnosed until an adult, and im angry as hell. I’m an asshole for good reason right now - the violence is about to return and what are queers doing? Fighting about FUCKING PRONOUNS. bunch of pathetic whiners.
Honestly fuck the younger queers. They took everything we fought hard for and then pissed it away on being pronoun police so they could pretend to feel oppression after we mostly eradicated it. They have zero respect for their elders yet demand respect from us.
NOTE THAT I NEVER MISGENDERED ANYONE. All I did was point out how utterly fucking RIDICULOUS it is to be OFFENDED by being called they/them by a stranger for the first time as being “misgendered”. These piss babies deserve the violence coming towards them that my generation sacrificed majorly to fight against since they wanna pretend to be oppressed let them taste real oppression.
Honestly fuck the younger queers.
These piss babies deserve the violence coming towards them that my generation sacrificed majorly to fight against since they wanna pretend to be oppressed let them taste real oppression.
I am a 40+ queer gal.
You were never wrong that using they/them pronouns for someone you don’t know (or don’t remember) isn’t misgendering someone. You were right about that.
I understand you are angry about the ban and that people didn’t seem to understand the point you were making about pronouns, but the way you are escalating your responses to any criticism has gotten out of hand. Look at what you just wrote: “fuck the younger queers” and they “deserve violence”?
This is not okay. This is abusive behavior toward an entire group of people.
The issue now isn’t about they/them pronouns. The issue now is you sound like a danger to young queer people in this moment. You are who they should be afraid of right now.
You misunderstood the entire post it looks like.
OP asks the question “what if I know or have been introduced to the person’s pronouns but forget?” This is visible in OP’s own admission: “I am terrible at remembering people’s pronouns.”
Someone responded with slight misunderstanding or perhaps inclarity essentially saying “if you misgender someone you might seem bigoted.”
Then instead of giving any good faith or asking for clarification, you responded with very high toxicity.
Now, I can see that you misunderstood and thought the conversation was about people you don’t know, but your response was very inappropriate and normalizing of hate, using phrases like “For fucks sake this is why the heteros hate us. Younger queers need faux outrage to feel important.” Even the beehaw mod gave you a reprimand.
That behavior and escalation of the conversation is terribly toxic and I do not blame blahaj for not giving you an in depth benefit-of-the-doubt investigation before deciding they didn’t want that behavior.
Verdict: YDI but I get how this misunderstanding happened. My suggestion:
- Reread the post and your comments.
- Acknowledge your misunderstanding and apologize to the person you were toxic to.
- Apologize and clarify the misunderstanding to blahaj.
- Work on your deescalation skills.
I’m not sucking up to the pronoun police.
It’s cool, I’m welcome nowhere.
You are welcome here buddy. I get where you are coming from and I used to think in a similar way to you about this topic. I also think dialogue is much more appropriate than sanctions and wild accusations in this sort of situation.
The gay liberation movement was in some ways a very socially conservative branch of queer activism that sought social acceptance for gay men and women, primarily. The approach we took (I’m 50 years old btw) was to adopt mainstream concepts like the gender binary and monogamous marriage and then advocate to extend those concepts to include gay relationships. The truly subversive queer activism of the late 60s and 70s turned into a quest for acceptance rather than a quest to disrupt the status quo. I don’t mean to minimize the achievements of the gay liberation movement, but in reality it did very little for trans folk and did little to challenge existing social structures. It did of course benefit gay men and women, and that should not be discounted. But it was never really about trans rights.
Younger trans folk are more ambitious. They tend to view the success of gay liberation as a capitulation to the mainstream. They could have gone the same route of minimal resistance to the status quo and just advocated for acceptance of trans men and trans women. But instead they are seeking to tear down the tyranny of the gender binary, which is very much so a social construct, albeit distantly rooted in biology. Anthropologists and sociologists have long studied the performativity of gender, and how it is mostly tied to social expectations and norms within a culture rather than any sort of biological essentialism.
So in a way, young trans folk are simply carrying on the tradition of queer radicalism that the gays abandoned in our quest for social acceptance. And I admire them for that. Do I think it will ever lead to a mainstreaming of trans identities? Not really, to be honest. But that isn’t necessarily the goal here. The goal is more to carve out a space for trans folk where they can play with the idea of identity and gender, in order to deconstruct it and challenge it, and to evolve our culture in a humanistic way, rather than clinging to social norms like they are somehow not systems of oppression and discipline ala Foucault.
The question fundamentally is whether it’s better to conform to social expectations to fit in at the expense of giving up on the more radical project of changing culture, or whether it’s best to reject the status quo and simply invent your own culture and spaces. While there is a pragmatism to the former that makes a certain sort of sense, there’s also a bravery and radicalism centred around the latter project that I find more exciting and meaningful.
I’d also point out that this isn’t an either/or scenario. We can enjoy the benefit of gay liberation while also supporting the younger generation to challenge the very social structures that oppress us all.
One key example would be that in the 60s and 70s queer folk and feminists were calling for the abolition of marriage, not for it to be extended to gay people. The marriage abolitionists were much more radical, socially. And many young queer folk (based on my understanding) feel that gender abolition would be a positive step to ending gender apartheid. I’ve gotta say that it took me a while to come around to it, but I’m on board with that objective, even to the point where I’m considering changing my pronouns to they/them.
I don’t really understand why we need a massive extension of gender pronouns to achieve this objective, since if everyone became they/them that would be a good outcome imo. But that’s just my personal opinion. I can see how you can also undermine gender apartheid by making the concept of gender so diverse that it undermines the primacy of the male and female categories. It’s just another way to skin the cat.
In this specific case, I’d say it’s PTB + YDI. I don’t like the militant way in which some trans folk label anyone with a slightly different take on these topics as “transphobic”. How are you ever gonna build support and understanding by insta-jumping to bad faith conclusions at the slightest sign of dissent with the group-think? But then again, trans folk are entitled to a safe space where they can freely explore their identity without constantly having to defend themselves.
That’s lot of words to say I hear you, I acknowledge your experience, and I share some of your concerns. But I also think blaming vulnerable populations for the political climate right now is completely unfair and uncalled for. Trans folks aren’t undermining gay liberation, they are just trying a different approach, and they don’t want to have to conform to social expectations in order to be accepted. They want to be accepted on their own terms, and I acknowledge their bravery in doing so, despite the push-back.
TL;DR:
BPRCSPR (charged situation-provoked reaction). OP was gatekeeping a wee bit but this was definitively not worth a permaban, at most a “chill your head!” 1d ban. OP being queer and the issue happening outside Blåhaj are also relevant.
Sorry in advance for the WORDS, WORDS, WORDS.
Also, I’m not queer. Or an instance owner. I’m open to hear about things that I got wrong. I’m judging things here because it’s how this comm works.
I don’t disagree with the core of what you’re saying, it’s sensible stuff:
- it is completely fine to use they/them as a default; it is not misgendering
- some people overreact to what, contextually, clearly conveys “I don’t know your gender”
- queers on the verge of being hunted is way, way more serious than pronouns
100% agree with the above. But even then, check your own comment:
This attitude drives me fucking nuts as a millennial who had to fight the real fights for LGBTQ acceptance only for the younger generation to get their panties in a twist for inadvertently being called by the “wrong” (gender neutral) pronoun.
Queers are on the verge of being hunted and exterminated in the US and y’all are pissy over being called a gender neutral pronoun by someone who doesn’t know you?
For fucks sake this is why the heteros hate us. Younger queers need faux outrage to feel important. Now the real threats are back on the horizon. Thanks to young out of touch activists caring more about pronouns than our physical safety and well-being.
You’re arbitrarily drawing a line and saying “up to this point, it is not an important matter. Past that point, it is”. Well… this is gatekeeping! Cat shit might not be as serious of a problem as elephant shit, but both are still shit, you know?
Then there’s the matter of this happening outside Blåhaj. I get why the admins there ban people for activity outside their own instance: the instance is home to extremely marginalised groups, that requires getting rid of bad faith actors (haters, chasers…) even before they set their feet there.
So for example. Let’s say that I (cis, hetero) said something that can be understood as bigotry. It would be only sensible if Blahaj banned me on the spot - better safe than sorry, right?
…however that clearly does not apply to you - even if not trans you’re gender-diverse. (I always check profiles before judging people.) Blahaj is supposed to be inviting to people like you. It shifts the issue from “some cis hetero got banned by mistake” to “someone who should feel safe in that instance got banned by mistake”. Plus what you’re saying isn’t even bigoted, it’s simply gatekeeping.
Based on all of that I think that some intervention from the Blahaj admins would be sensible, even if this happened outside their “turf”, but they went a bit too far. [/two cents]
It’s not gatekeeping, and this narcissistic faux outrage over being “misgendered” is harmful to the LGBTQ community.
You’re not queer and you don’t understand the level of anger right now that American queers have. As someone who faced outright physical abuse chronically for being queer as a kid seeing permanently online baby queers get pissy over pronouns while we’re about to be hunted again is absolutely fucking rage inducing for good reason. These fucking piss babies need to get their shit together.
You’re 100% right that I’m not feeling the anger you queer people are feeling. And, again, I agree with the core of what you’re saying. It boils down to “goddammit can’t those bloody kids get their priorities right???”, doesn’t it?
And even with your anger being justified, and even with the core of your complain being spot on, there’s still gatekeeping there. And it’s completely extraneous to what you’re likely trying to say. You could say the same stuff that you’re saying without it.
And the people who hate you queer people would still do it regardless of pronouns. It’s just an excuse from their part; the actual reason why they hate you is that you’re subversive (and that’s a good thing). Once they remember “hey, trans and gender non-conforming people exist”, all that “God, then man, then woman” hierarchy goes down the bloody drain. Without those kids talking about pronouns they’d pick on something else. Like they already do, their go out of their way to make shit up about you.
[Regardless of agreeing or disagreeing I genuinely wish that you stay safe. And the kids too - even if acc. to you their priorities might be out of place, they still deserve safety.]
You’re 100% right that I’m not feeling the anger you queers are feeling. And, again, I agree with the core of what you’re saying. It boils down to “goddammit can’t those bloody kids get their priorities right???”, doesn’t it?
I interpreted the original statement more as “Accidental misgendering with gender-neutral pronouns is not an unreasonable thing to happen; attacking people over it is unreasonable” more than a question of priorities, and the addition of “I was queer Back In The Day” was meant to establish that the poster isn’t some outsider who doesn’t know what queer persecution is like, but someone who is genuinely pointing out that accidental misgendering is not an attack or an offense that needs the call to arms to be raised against the individual who made the mistake.
I’m saying that it’s a matter of priorities because of this comment chain. Special emphasis on:
and likewise, as an older queer I’m doing my own educating here. I’m not going to sugarcoat the truth. Not now with the severity of the threat we collectively face while we’re having a fucking pissing match over pronouns and being offended by the innocent use of they/them purely to be outraged and feel important.
No, call people you don’t know they/them until otherwise corrected and if they get pissy about it that’s their fault and not yours. // There’s real serious problems out there, being upset over being accidentally “misgendered” by having no gender recognition at all is fucking ridiculous attention seeking me me me behavior.
See, I’d interpret those same quotes with different emphasis.
and likewise, as an older queer I’m doing my own educating here. I’m not going to sugarcoat the truth. Not now with the severity of the threat we collectively face while we’re having a fucking pissing match over pronouns and being offended by the innocent use of they/them purely to be outraged and feel important.
No, call people you don’t know they/them until otherwise corrected and if they get pissy about it that’s their fault and not yours. // There’s real serious problems out there, being upset over being accidentally “misgendered” by having no gender recognition at all is fucking ridiculous attention seeking me me me behavior.
ie, I interpret it not as “This is a real problem, but a minor one, and we have major ones to deal with”
But rather as “This is not an offense any more than someone stepping on your foot by accident is an offense”
Yeah, the second interpretation. This whole “misgendering” bullshit is just looking for something to be mad about.
Meanwhile the physical violence that I grew up fighting is about to return but sure let’s go be mad at our fellow queers for not reading our minds about what pronouns we want to be called because they/them is offensive to us despite being standard English for hundreds of years!
The uh scare quotes aren’t really helping your case. Being queer doesn’t mean you automatically understand the seriousness of other queer people’s concerns and it also doesn’t mean you’re free of bigotry.
Consider like lgbt erasure from official histories, many people scoffed at concerns like this and thought it was hysterical pearl clutching to make a big deal about whether or not someone’s sexuality was mentioned or whatever. Others will tell you it literally saved their lives knowing that people like them existed in the past.
I don’t think it’s that hard to just be kind, and if you can’t be kind be funny and then block them and move on :P
Being called they/them by a stranger for the first time IS NOT MISGENDERING.
