I’ve been waiting until after Christmas day to make this post, but some of our communities recently have had a lot of noise and upset over someone that uses neopronouns that most people are unfamiliar with.
So I want to make this clear. A persons pronouns are to be respected. This is true when the user is using neopronouns that you’re unfamiliar with. It’s true even if you think someone is trolling. Pronouns are not rewards for good behaviour. They aren’t only to be respected when you like the person you’re interacting with, or if their pronouns “make sense” to you. Trolls, spammers, twitter users, it doesn’t matter who they are, your options are to respect their pronouns, or to not engage with them.
I really want to re-iterate the importance of this. Gender diverse folk are undermined, invalidated and questioned at every step of our lives. As a community, we need to be working to undo that, not creating more of it, and that means there is no space for treating pronouns (including neopronouns) as a reward for good behaviour.
This isn’t a free reign for trolls and spammers. The rules still apply. Trolling, spamming, etc will continue to be dealt with, but it’s not an excuse to act as if respecting someones pronouns is optional.
Misgendering is misgendering, fullstop, no distinction to be made. They aren’t “imaginary identities” they are just identities. It’s sad to see transphobia being spouted by an instance admin of what I formerly considered a safe instance to be apart of.
By considering invalidating neopronouns to not be “misgendering” you are essentially invalidating those identities, and certainly doing so by calling them “imaginary”.
Additionally, perpetuating transphobia at all is disgusting. There shouldn’t be a cw, it should be removed, and the user should be banned. The modlog has logs if seeing the context is needed.
I personally agree with you about the “misgendering is misgendering” point, and that’s Ada’s position for Blajah, but most folks on our instance don’t seem to share that perspective when it comes to certain types of neo-pronouns, so I feel some distinction is still useful. And even if someone generally supports trans rights and the right to be correctly gendered according to an individual’s preference, according to this thinking they are labelled “transphobic” if they don’t extend this acceptance to include identities like “dragon fucker”? To me, that seems unfair. Those folks are at least trying to be trans allies for all intents and purposes, just not to the degree that you would like. To lump them in with folks who genuinely hate trans people is imo wrongheaded at best, and it seems counterproductive. For those folks who are on a journey towards a broader acceptance of diverse identities, you are basically adopting a “scorched earth” approach towards them simply because they share 90% of your views and not 100%.
It doesn’t matter what a random person’s opinion is. What matters, is what they do about that opinion and the consequences of their actions.
In this case, even if someone is actively and deliberately using an identity they don’t hold to troll and cause trouble, it doesn’t become ok to misgender them or ignore their pronouns. The damage of misgendering and making pronouns something that only get rewarded for good behaviour isn’t to the troll, the damage is to all of the other gender diverse folk who get to see first hand that their acceptance is contingent on good behaviour, that their identity itself can be taken away by people as punishment. Their acceptance is no longer a right, but a privilege. And that shit does not fly. The harm of that is far worse than whatever harm an isolated troll can cause.
Don’t gatekeep peoples identities. That’s it. That’s the rule. And everyone turning it in to something about “dragonfucking” or whatever other bullshit they are bringing in to it is distracting from the issue and causing the very harm I’m talking about, because ultimately, the rule is just “pronouns aren’t a reward for good behaviour. End of story”. Which means even shitty people and trolls get their pronouns respected and acknowledged, whilst they get banned and booted from the community.
And honestly, your comments have made this worse, because now, you, an admin of a remote instance, have made the discussion about whether “dragonfucking” is valid or not, making the conversation about when it’s ok to gatekeep folk, instead of simply saying “don’t gatekeep” alongside “ban trolls”
tl;dr - Gatekeepintg hurts us. You have just empowered the gatekeepers by telling them that sometimes it’s ok to gatekeep. A move that hurts all gender diverse folk, not the trolls, and is ultimately the goal of some trolls.
The distinction is not useful, it’s transphobic. They aren’t “trying” to be “allies”, they are doing the absolute bare minimum (if that). And as soon as their views are challenged even a tiny bit, they show how much of an “ally” they are (or lack thereof). If they don’t extend their acceptance to include ALL identities they aren’t an “ally”, it’s quite simple. Being an ally means putting in actual effort to accept, support, and defend trans creatures. ALL trans creatures. You are proving why this post is needed right now, I suggest you read it. “not sharing that perspective” is transphobia, full stop, and to say otherwise is to invalidate those trans identities and hence be transphobic. You doubling down on this after multiple trans creatures have pointed this out is disheartening and disappointing. Enjoy your cis privilege while us trans creatures get pushed out of spaces because you don’t want to hurt transphobes feelings.
It’s incredibly disappointing to see you do the exact same thing as PugJesus, on the exact same post. Grow up. You bringing up being a cis gay man and how you’ve been attacked before, in response to having transphobic actions called out, is a stereotype that all trans people recognise, do you know that? Respectability politics is gross, take it back to your own instance.
Edit: I’ll be sad to lose the piracy community, but this makes me feel like I need to use what little voice I have here on Blahaj to call for defederation. Unless @db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com can definitively say this isn’t how your instance is run, but I’m not going to hold my breath considering their response to your comment locking that thread.
echoing other comments just to add support but this is a yucky response, ick