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.
Lemmy seems to be getting worse unfortunately :\
thanks for being around, ada. the work you do is greatly appreciated, even if it’s not readily apparent all the time.
imo @MossyFeathers said it best in an edit they made to this comment, quoted for visibility:
Damn, it's really weird to see myself getting quoted in a completely different thread, lol. Tbh, I'm not sure I handled myself all that well; however, in my defense, I was really pissed off because it's no where near the first time I've seen people claim an identity was false, nor was it the first time I've seen someone treat pronouns like a reward for good behavior. I don't agree that using "gender" in the way drag was using it is the correct way of using it, it seems like using a hammer on a screw; however, that's not really for me to decide.
Drama subs are kind of a guilty pleasure for me, which was why I was there in the first place (also I browse all). At this point though, I've blocked pugjesus and I hope to never see their ass again. Probably gonna go back and block a bunch of the transphobes effectively saying that having your identity/pronouns respected are a privilege and not a right as well. What a bunch of gross, toxic individuals. It also makes me sad and disappointed. Lemmy used to be fun. It's not really fun anymore.
I definitely didn't handle myself well in response to this either, so please give yourself some grace. The amount of cis people who were trying to assert that disrespecting drag's identity was the right thing to do was huge and wildly disappointing. It's hard to call any of them allies. I've been blocking a bunch as well.