8mo ago

Pronouns

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Using pronouns isn't a "problem" though, it's that people genuinely don't care.
I don't care very much if I'm honest. I've never interacted with someone who informed me that their pronouns were not the usual ones.
- It also never happened to me but I imagine the conversation would be something like:
  Hello X
  Please don't call me X I don't like it, call me Y instead
  Ok
  ~ _{The end} ~
  
  Okay imagine that... but with an internal crushing anxiety knowing that under best case there will be probably around five somewhat invasive follow up long answer questions either about your personal history or about trans people's existence in general. Then an optional depressing thing people think is them being magnanimous where they say "I don't get it but okay." OR they look at you like you grew another head and walk swiftly away to watch/glare you with furtive long stares or try and speed run whatever brief social interaction you are participating in like you have the plague.
  Aaaaand mental picture complete!
  
  "OK comrade!"
  
  You'd hope that.
  But in my experience it's a 50/50 chance they will go off on you.
  
  My experience has been that transgendered people will correct you politely when accidentally misgendered. They get it. They don't like it, but they get it.
  It's the cisgendered people who get offended when they are accidentally misgendered (i.e. calling a cis-female who has masculine features "he/him").
  No different than assuming a fat woman is pregnant or a man with a high voice is gay. And the embarrassment is felt all the same, for both parties.
- People genuinely do care considering Jordan Peterson's entire career is based on the whole "you can't force me to use your pronouns" bullshit that no one was trying to force him to do in the first place.
  
  So you're saying that the loonys care.
  Loony for. Loony against. Twins, basically.
  
  No, I'm saying bigots and assholes care. You can be sane and be a bigot and/or an asshole. And there a huge number of such people.
  And if you mean that people who know what their gender is are loony and would prefer it if people didn't get it wrong, you are probably loony yourself.
  
  They're both loony.
  
  You're loony yourself if you think someone consistently calling you by the wrong gender every time they talk to or about you wouldn't be very rude.
  
  I will start by saying I am very open minded and really don’t agree with a lot of what Peterson says. I’m also pro LGBT and leaving people be who they are and love the life that makes them happy… But he’s right that we shouldn’t be forced to use someone’s pronouns. At the time there was discussion about making this a law. If someone wants to be a prick let them. Better to know who they are.
  
  No one is being forced.
  For fuck's sake.
  Peterson just lied about the bill.
  https://www.vice.com/en/article/qbnamx/no-the-trans-rights-bill-doesnt-criminalize-free-speech
  No one is stopping him or anyone else from being a bigoted asshole. Asking people to stop doing it and telling them why is not forcing them.
  
  Ok. Thanks for the clarification.
  
  Sorry I got mad, I'm just so angry that people believe that lie because it's turned into so much hate against trans people.
  
  Thanks for the apology. I really hate the LGBT hate. I don’t understand what’s wrong with letting people live their own lives the way they want, if they aren’t physically affecting others. Shame my original post got downvoted so much. I didn’t think it was offensive.
  Edit: also thank you for correcting my misconception over the law! I’ll make sure to correct people going forward.
  
  Wow this sounds really reasonable, wtf kinda drugs is Peterson on if he thinks it restricts free speech...
  TLDR: bill C-16 adds gender identity and expression to the list of discrimination protections, a list which already includes gender, ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation. So yeah right now you can't fire someone for being black, under C-16 this will also apply to trans people. Ontario already has this in their provincial laws, so Peterson is already living under such a "regime".
  
  Wow this sounds really reasonable, wtf kinda drugs is Peterson on if he thinks it restricts free speech…
  If I recall, Peterson's entire idea on that was that it would result in misgendering being considered hate speech, though it's been a while so I might be misremembering.
  
  No one is being forced
  I think you misunderstood his hyperbole as a literal thing
  Of course people aren't putting a gun to your head. But there are often consequences for not doing it.
  
  Such as what? Can you demonstrate someone suffering any legitimate consequences?
  
  I have personally seen many instances of people getting banned or suspended from communities for either misgendering people (intentionally or not), or refusing to use their preferred pronouns.
  But due to a real concern of retaliation or getting banned here myself, I will not be providing specific examples.
  
  Sorry... that's what you're talking about? People being banned on internet forums? Big fucking deal.
  
  There are also real world instances of violence over the same things if you do a quick web search.
  
  Sorry, it's not my job to prove your claims. If there are real world instances of violence, I'm sure you can provide them and show they were definitely unprovoked.
  
  You sound pretty ignorant. Intentionally misgendering someone at work would get you canned pretty fast at most corporate jobs.
  There's no reason to reason not to just refer to people their gender identity but you are either lying or very unaware of corporate culture.
  
  You mean harassing someone at work will get you fired. That's true no matter what type of harassment it is. That has nothing to do with pronouns. You could get fired for repeatedly calling someone at work a panda.
  
  lots of people are being harassed and intimidated into it though. lots of people take an absolutist stance on pronouns, and if you misgender someone or don't ask them what their pronoun is, you are considered a 'bad person'.
  labeling and harassing people into social conformity is being forced to do something.
  
  What people? I have never seen anyone get angry about being accidentally misgendered.
  No one is being "harassed" or "intimidated" into calling people what they want to be called. You're just an asshole if you don't do it because you're not giving them a very basic amount of respect: the acknowledgement of the right to be who they are.
  
  On the contrary in fact, I've seen people be very forgiving if you accidentally screw up but genuinely mean well. I accidentally misgendered a friend of mine once, and when I realized it I immediately started profusely apologizing. They appreciated it but said it was all good.
  At the end of the day, everything can be distilled down to one maxim -- be genuinely kind to people, and 99% of people will respond in kind and forgive mistakes.
  
  Sure, anyone can make a mistake. Trans people know that just as well as cis people. If you just say sorry and correct yourself, most trans people would probably be fine with it. It's the people who do it on purpose that are the problem.
  
  Absolutely.
  
  I have, many times. Don't know where you live... oftentimes it's not ever the trans person getting mad... it's a straight cis person with a hero complex goes around as a self appointed pronoun police officer and calls you names if you even ask them wtf the deal is.
  
  If someone was a jerk to you, then that person is a jerk.
  If everyone is a jerk to you, then you're probably the jerk.
  
  and some subsets of the population are disproportionately filled with jerks.
  
  Well let's consider the evidence we have here:
  On the one hand we have people who have said "trans people are usually very polite about correcting you if you misgender them." (Which has also been my experience as well)
  On the other hand we have you saying "trans people are always rude jerks!"
  The only difference between the two scenarios is... You. Pair that with how you have been talking about trans people in all of your posts and I have to conclude that you are the problem here, and there must be something you are doing that is making trans people and trans allies aggressive towards you.
  I can only wonder at what that could possibly be...
  
  It was made a law, it's also a law in many parts of the US. It's not about preventing random people from being pricks, it's about discouraging harassment from employers, school administrations, and government officials. They're prohibited from persistently misgendering you in the same way they're prohibited from calling you slurs. I struggle to imagine a scenario where life would be improved by removing those sensible guard rails on civil society.
  
  Nobody is "forced to use pronouns" at present but this stance misses the point. It looks at the harms of misgendering as a situation that doesn't cause other inequities and harms.
  For the average social interaction where you are on equal terms but can walk away being misgendered is something a lot of us hate but live with like any small annoyance. It is like stubbing your toe. Not fun but whatever it's fine that's just "someone being a prick". But if deliberate misgendering is allowed to happen over a long period in a workplace setting it is not something we get to walk away from. If we have to regularly interact with that person or lose our ability to feed and house ourselves then we are forced to have mental health problems because someone essentially doesn't like being told what to do. Having to deal with panic attacks at work because you had to be locked in a room with someone hitting every trauma trigger you have exposed to the world or else you have to find a new and maybe worse job is a barrier to participation in society.
  If it's in a medical setting where we have to balance our health outcomes knowing that if we don't comply with the misgendering our care is impacted because a doctor holds our lives or the relief from pain in their hands. A lot of trans people become shy and don't seek help early and often because they equate doctors visits with a sense of powerlessness and shame knowing that they can't stand up for themselves. In that instance it's not just "someone being a dick" you are placing someone's complete physical wellbeing before someone's egotistical need to be "right" about you.
  If a trans person in a social club and misgendering isn't checked by a majority it can mean that they might not have a choice on whether or not to go. The world becomes a smaller place when you have gender related trauma.
  Deliberate misgendering in a professional setting isn't just "someone showing you they are a prick" the burden always falls upon trans people disproportionately because our participation in society often forces us to compromise directly on our health and there are real traumas and weaknesses that underlie our transness. If someone was openly making rape jokes around someone you knew had sexual assault trauma you'd step in right? Why not the same for someone with gender related traumas?
  What Peterson is railing against is protections for participation in regular society through professional setting misgendering cases.
- Gender-concerned people telling me how to speak is like fundamentalists telling me to wear a dress. I tell them both to piss up a rope.

478 comments