southsamurai
- 2 Posts
- 63 Comments
And?
You act like my approval or disapproval of their hobbies, lifestyle, or whatever is supposed to change basic decency. It doesn’t.
There are limits to what I’ll call someone for sure. I’m not calling anyone master. Beyond that, it’s just good manners to try and call people what they prefer, within the limits of our own capabilities. DR knows my brain is fucked and it would make it a nightmare to have a conversation if I tried to use the person-independent neopronoun reliably, so they don’t give me shit about screwing up.
That’s basic decency.
If I’m talking to a preacher and they prefer to be called reverend, I’ll call them that, and that’s someone who talks to their imaginary sky friend on a daily basis. Wanting to fuck a dragon isn’t any weirder than that. It’s just basic decency.
Out here irl, people sometimes use my middle name instead of my first. Usually because they know a family member that talked about me. But I don’t let anyone but family use my middle name. The people that refuse to honor that are assholes, and I have nothing else to do with them. Because it’s just basic decency.
If DR was wanting to be called furher, or messiah, I can see refusing to use their preferred terms. But they aren’t.
And it doesn’t even matter if they were trolling because someone else’s bad actions aren’t an automatic excuse to be an asshole too.
What kind of person do you want to be? The sort that errs on the side of kindness and manners, or the sort that’s an asshole? That’s what it comes down to.
But drag isn’t their name. While I have clue what their real name is, their user name is Dragon Rider, not drag. If you look at their display name, the drag part is in parentheses the same way gender tags usually are, like (he/him).
If drag said something like Dragon Riderself, that would be speaking in the third person.
And, yeah, I know that choosing a shortened version of one’s user name as a person-independent pronoun is going to be confusing as hell. It looks like it’s a dimunutive.
Even in your comment here, there’s another telling difference. Noelself. You capitalized it even in the middle of a sentence. Dragon Rider doesn’t capitalize drag (not usually, anyway, and I’ve interacted with them a good bit) except at the front of a sentence.
Again, it is confusing, at least at first. I’ve gotten used to it mostly, and it scans as a pronoun for me now.
Which is part of the point of PI pronoun usage, in my opinion. Ignoring whether or not it improves a person’s ability to function without internal distress, which is an important factor in respecting pronoun overall, the fact of them serves to have us reexamine exactly why and how we think about labels, specifically pronouns and gender labels.
But, I’ll also repeat, “unnecessarily” cluttering up a sentence is a value judgement, and while everyone has that right, it does indicate a degree of bias in thinking. It assumes that you have the authority to decide what is and isn’t useful about another person’s gender and pronoun/label preferences.
It could also be argued that a single word being used as a pronoun instead of the dozen or so in common usage is de-cluttering. If there’s only one word to keep track of, that’s a lot simpler than shifting between they/them/their. We’re just not used to it, so it takes extra effort to parse. That’s not the same thing as clutter though.
Well, the valid argument is that we don’t get to decide when and what pronouns to respect. There doesn’t need to be any other rationale. It is definitely more difficult to parse than “I”, but that’s a matter of practicality, not validity.
You either respect the person’s pronouns, explain that you have enough difficulty using them that it would be prohibitive (like I have elsewhere in other conversations) and be nice about it, or you choose to disrespect the pronoun choices. It is every individuals choice whether or not to respect pronoun choices, but the hard truth is that when the choice is based on lack of respect, it just makes the person choosing a jerk.
The use of person-independent neopronouns is a very difficult thing to adapt to. If you scan over my comments in this thread, you’ll likely notice that I don’t really use drag much because I have multiple barriers to communicating effectively while trying to use it. Which, I’ve discussed with them, and reached an understanding that it isn’t about rejecting their pronoun and isn’t meant as disrespect.
I do usually manage to not use pronouns at all in most cases when discussing DR’s pronoun with them, and sometimes when discussing it with others like this. It’s harder than just writing with the built up language patterns I already have, but easier than trying to substitute a different word entirely.
But those person-independent pronouns do have a point. The role they play in shifting how we think of gender, pronoun usage, and language in general is certainly absolutely a linguistically applicable idea. PI pronouns don’t always conform to standard grammar, at least not in English, but they don’t have to, to be valid as a personal expression or for the study of language.
A PI pronoun serves a similar role to other neopronouns. We do already have the singular “they/them” that are gender neutral, so neopronouns aren’t absolutely necessary in the sense that other options already exist. But, if you look at it from the perspective of questioning gendered language as a whole, or from the perspective of wanting a shift entirely away from gendered language in English entirely, neopronouns start becoming much more interesting as a phenomenon.
It reminds me of the early days when I became aware of, and got involved in, the struggle for gay rights.
The whole “don’t shove it down my throat” malarkey. When someone just living their life, and not even talking to you is “shoving it down my throat”, it isn’t the responsibility of that other person to shift their life to preserve your limited world view.
Yeah, the choice of drag specifically when the user name involves dragon isn’t easy to parse. But unless drag is/are (I still suck at the grammar of this) initiating the conversation, it’s a total douche move to pretend that it’s drag’s problem.
So, fuck 'em. At some point, people just need to realize they can just scroll the fuck past and mind their own.
I get it. It’s never a pleasant thing to have a misunderstanding come to the worse end of possible outcomes. Given enough time, I hope that it can turn back around and resolve into a mutually acceptable and friendly outcome.
Hey, it took me months to wrap my head around things and figure out my own internal quirks, and we didn’t have any kind of event to make either of us question trust. It might take longer, even much longer, but I still don’t think there was any ill intent on either side, so it should work out eventually. Give it time, stay optimistic.
It’s called a neopronoun.
The choice of the specific one makes it look like it’s third person, but that’s not the way it’s used. While strange in implementation, it is a variation of the general concept of genderless speech that has been around for a few decades at this point.
If you change the specific one, drag, to something random like dey, it’s easier to parse. That it’s similar to the user name makes it more confusing than other options might.
It’s a lot to wrap one’s head around. I still can’t manage to think that way, and suspect I may never be able to. I can’t even manage to use that type of pronoun reliably in short bursts. It is, however, a very interesting concept that makes examining our language structure an informative process.
As an example, take a look at your own comment. It starts off aggressive, and making assumptions. Why? While the atypical pronoun usage can be confusing, it obviously isn’t a personal attack against you. So why does that confusion trigger aggressive word choices and structure? It’s at least partially because of dissonance stemming from unfamiliar language use.
But, why does that dissonance result in a desire to go after someone that was talking to someone else? Why does an unfamiliar form of communication shift a brain from just scrolling into aggression? It’s a fascinating thing once you step outside of the knee jerk reaction. Once you start looking at what’s happening inside yourself, and pick apart the chain of reactions, you see some inlaid patterns between language, expectations, and behaviors that’s enlightening.
See, we have this proclivity as people to reject the strange. Often on a very personal level, even when the originating stimulus isn’t personal at all. Again, the comment wasn’t directed at you. It’s obvious from the structure of it that it was directed at me in specific. It is also obvious that it was part of a conversation between two people familiar with each other.
It’s the equivalent of walking down the street, hearing two people talking, and getting upset at how they’re talking. It’s unlikely you would roll up to two people babbling in pig latin and say “what the fuck are you talking about” to one of them. I mean, I assume you’re not that big of a dick, nor stupid rich enough to ignore the risks of speaking like that to someone you don’t know. Maybe you would do exactly that. But most people wouldn’t.
So, why would this be any different? See? What a fascinating opportunity for increasing one’s understanding of themselves
It made me so damn happy to see it.
Plus, my respect for everyone involved went higher than before.
Both the feddit admins for working things out this quickly, and Ada for showing that she’s the kind of admin that will fight tooth and nail for her instance and the people on it, but not hold grudges.
It can go either way tbh.
.world has some serious federation issues because of how big it is. Some communities do better after a move away because of that. Some do worse, particularly when the move isn’t handled right, or the move is to a new community that’s purpose made for moving to, and isn’t promoted well.
In this case, I think that there’s room for multiple communities with the same name. No need to actually move anything because the topic is popular enough, and this instance is stable enough to make it more reliable.
I’m coming to this specific post late.
But I do wanna say that I’ve had interactions with the .uk admins over the last year or so. Their user histories exist.
I think it important to note that the individual admins have been public in their support of trans issues. While the slow response is definitely an issue, try not to villainize them without something concrete to back that up. Any of us that disagree with the delay in particular (and please note the inclusive plural), remember that someone can make a bad choice and still be an ally.
Yeah, the optimum response would have been immediate action via comment removals, with debate to follow and reinstatement if merited after debate; combined with prompt communication (within a realistic range of prompt for someone not glued to their instance 24/7). But optimum isn’t always going to happen. My grumpy, cantankerous old ass is not often optimum, so I sure can’t hold delays and iffy reasoning against anyone else, as long as they get there eventually.
Willing to have a casual explanation of it? An in depth one isn’t on topic for this community. And yes, this is the condensed version, I could write a small pamphlet on this.
If so, read on. If not, throw me a DM and I’ll try and give a more detailed version of my take after having changed my mind on the subject as a whole.
Neopronouns are not truly necessary. There’s other ways to achieve the same goal
However, respecting them is, and it’s important to recognize that the concept behind them is an important one.
The kind of neopronoun drag used aren’t the only kind of neopronoun. I can’t recall the name for that type, but it is an individualized version that has a different kind of merit.
The core of neopronouns is redefining gender and language. It’s reframing how we think about and deal with agender, gender fluid, non binary, and other labels that represent people for whom the traditional masc/fem/neutral pronouns don’t really fit. Now, yes, the singular neutral they/them does partially achieve that. But it isn’t necessarily perfect because it’s the same as just saying “other”.
Standard neopronouns like xe/xem/xyr attempt to rectify that, in part, by providing a general use new (neo means new) words that are inherently without gender, and are also internally consistent (hence why xyr replaces the plural they/them rather than leaving that in place).
What dragon rider’s pronouns do (and here I’ll switch to just calling the person drag because arthritis) is a furtherance of that basic idea. The concept of individual, single word pronouns takes the concept of reframing gender in language to its logical extreme.
Now, here we have to address the elephant in the room. Otherkin. Otherkin are the folks you think about when you see a lot of individual pronouns. They also want their pronouns to be different from the norm, though they don’t all want individual ones. They do tend to want pronouns that reflect their belief that they are different by being kin to their other. That’s a simplification, but that’s a tangent on a tangent already
Drag, afaik, isn’t otherkin.
The connection to drag is that the individualized pronouns look similar, and it’s where most people draw the line. Now, I have my opinion about that side of things, but for this purpose let’s set the assumption that their belief is valid.
That’s where we get back to drag. Drag, in choosing their user name, set up a fight from the beginning. I don’t know if it was intentional or not, but choosing dragon (rider), and dragon fucker as user names, it was inevitable.
But drag is not actually their user name, nor what you would call a name at all. It isn’t directly linked to them wanting to fuck dragons, which aren’t real. It’s a knock on effect.
Pretend, instead, that their user name is southsamurai, and they wanted the individual pronoun “sam”. Still some confusion, obviously, but it isn’t a fight from the beginning.
So, if my pronouns are sam/sam, I’m requesting an individual pronoun. I’m saying, up front, that by requesting that, that I have a sense of myself that doesn’t work with standard gendered pronouns, nor with the commonly used neopronouns. I’m saying, please interact with me as an individual, not as a generic person.
That’s why it matters. Now, I’m not saying anyone has to agree to use them. I’ve had many a discussion about that, and not just with drag. It’s a big ask. It’s asking everyone you meet to upend their brain and restructure their language pathways entirely, so that they can fluidly switch between known individual pronouns, and generic ones, without making errors.
But, even if you aren’t willing or able to do that, I have come to agree that the point of individualized pronouns is important, and that standard neopronouns need to be adapted to, because language does matter. Our thinking is shaped by those language pathways. Language is how we exchange ideas, and (except for people that don’t think in words at all) it’s how we process our thoughts.
There are languages with no gendered pronouns, and some with long lists of them because there’s more than two recognized genders, or because the pronoun used is grammar based regarding when and where it’s used.
So, in English, our entire mind is influenced by having only three standard options: masculine, feminine, and neutral. It’s inflexible because of that. And, you can see evidence of that via the rejection of the singular they/them, despite it having been a part of the language for much longer than trans issues have been in the public awareness.
Again, you might disagree about that. That’s fine, I’m not trying to convince you, just trying to explain why I changed my mind from “that’s silly” regarding all neopronouns, to having the opinion that they matter.
I now think that they matter because it’s an effective way to shake up the way we think about gender and language. I think that’s important because we all suffer limitations based on the limited English pronoun structures. In order to improve that, a shakeup is needed.
Drag is the reason I changed my opinion, and that’s despite still having objections to individual pronouns as being more trouble than they’re worth at this point in time. That’s also despite my impression and opinion on the otherkin side of things being a hindrance to everyone else.
I’m sorry you’re running into such a degree of outright opposition. I never have understood that part, why someone that loves you would be persistent and nigh aggressive about something that’s essentially not their business.
Somebody wants to make a change, move towards something they feel is better, you support that, even if you need to draw your own boundaries about it.
That would be exhausting to deal with for anyone, the opposition.
I kinda get where the mod is at, the way you describe the fatigue. I think it’s better to step aside once your at that point, refresh yourself, maybe make a decision about that being a permanent break from trying to herd cats online or not. I’ve had to do the a few times over the years.
Tofu is freaking bomb for satiation. Can’t say it outperforms meat overall, but as a single food, it equals it, gram for gram. Like, if I’m eating tofu by itself, it gets me just as satisfied as meat by itself.
I think it ends up not lasting as long sometimes because of the lower fat levels. You have to bring fats to the party for long term satiation for most people. That’s easy to achieve though.
But yeah, I definitely feel you. And now I want some teriyaki tofu dammit.
I mean, it was kinda inevitable lol.
It’s one of those things where once you go full jerk, it gets attention. Unavoidable really, unless instance admins want to totally ban “drama” communities, which would just end up as posts on instances that don’t ban drama communities :)
Preemptive banning is a perfect example of prime drama.
Fwiw, anyone giving you grief irl is a jerk, unless you’re trying to convert them.
Away from the internet, I know a good handful of vegans that I gladly cook for. Not regions everyone hates y’all for living your beliefs.
And, just for full disclosure, I troll vegans online. That’s where most of the jerks that are vegan do their thing, not irl.
Me and you, if life threw us together, I’d make you my vegan chili, and we’d chill. But I’d still troll you online if you did the usual online stuff that gets vegans painted as crazy.
Which is my best effort at saying that that’s probably what you’re missing. Even people like me that have no problems with the precepts of veganism per se, we can get tired of the vegans that take things too far, and then the entire belief system gets colored by that brush. It creates a general fatigue, then a general stereotype, and that turns into assholes going to vegan spaces and being assholes (as opposed to only doing it in other spaces). That in turn makes militant vegans go on the warpath, and you get stuff like this drama lol
It’s a cycle of annoyance and limited perception. That cycle attracts the worst elements of humanity
The clunky interface, the relative differences from reddit, the confusing organization, the less than ideal splitting between blog/thread/magazine that makes navigating it have an extra learning curve, the lack of any apps that aren’t just a pwa that has the same flaws as the site, the fact that there’s really only one server for kbin that’s used, the list goes on.
And I like kbin, I hope it thrives and becomes popular enough that nobody ever has to consider a corporate run site again because there’s multiple federated options.
But, just being real, lemmy is simpler and easier to use, and it’s closer to the way reddit worked. Kbin is trying to be more than a link aggregator and forum. That’s great! If that’s what you’re looking for, it’s even better. But most of the r/efugees were and are looking for something familiar and comfortable. With kbin not having an API, app developers weren’t jumping into it (other than hariette, and she’s kick ass) so the r/efugees that were at least partially leaving reddit because of the attack on apps had no devs busting their ass to get out good ones.
There’s no apps for kbin that are open use. PWAs are meh to begin with, but at least the lemmy UI via PWA matches reddit close enough that the learning curve is trivial. The kbin ui has to be navigated with the split functions in mind, and that’s not fun when what you’re really wanting is to keep doing what you were doing before spez fucked things up.
And that’s what it comes down to. The surge of new users to the fediverse aren’t here because of the virtues of the services. They’re/we’re here because reddit isn’t acceptable now. Lemmy is just closer to what we had
Waaahhhhhh! I wan my cocoa!
Joke aside, I prefer to go with the cocoa rather than chocolate because it’s less brand sensitive. Well, to my experience anyway. The typical baker’s chocolate ends up being kinda weak unless you add a lot more, where something that’s (relatively) better made takes less. But even generic cocoa compared to fancy imported stuff works with the same amount.
Could just be me, I dunno.
That’s pretty much where I am. If I was trying to make money as a primary goal, I might be a bit miffed, but then I’d have to deal with deadlines and editors and bullshit, when the truth is that I just want to make stories like I enjoy reading, and hope that letters enjoy it. Hard for that to happen if there’s a wall between readers and the stories
Beans are the greatest symbol of the spirit of lemmings.
They say, “you came here, fleeing horrors. We will uplift you and support you. And, yes, give you gas.”