Five days ago, drag was banned from !politicalmemes@lemmy.world for using neopronouns. A comment explaining drag’s pronouns, and a comment saying “drag” isn’t a nickname, were removed with the reason “trolling”. Drag understands why someone would think that using different pronouns than most people is trolling - transphobia. However, drag is confused how on earth not liking a nickname is a violation of any rules anywhere.
Context of the removed comments:
Drag would like to pre-empt any further accusations of trolling by asking a question: If drag were a right wing troll, and you chose to freely accept drag’s pronouns, wouldn’t that completely neuter the trolling attempt? Trolling is about trying to make others upset. You don’t have to get upset when someone uses unusual pronouns. If you aren’t transphobic, then it’s impossible to troll you that way. And drag promises: drag wants you to not be transphobic. Drag is not trying to upset anyone. If you do what drag wants you to do, then you get what you want too. This is a non-issue, there’s only a problem if you want there to be.
EDIT: DRAG DID NOT TELL ANYBODY TO USE DRAG’S PREFERRED PRONOUNS.
I think that that no where is that made anymore clear than the sentences they have written, many of which are borderline incomprehensible some even using “drag” to refer to other people in the situation. It reminds me of a situation with someone from a long time ago who went by me/my pronouns. I asked them how I do that, and they flipped out at me and called me a transphobe and cissie. I couldn’t use Me/my pronouns because I didn’t know how I’d do that because it doesn’t make much sense. I learned that this person was trolling and ultimately just trying to make me feel bad. Very similar to another user I met later DroneRights who was also trolling in similar methods. They ended up getting themselves banned on 196, blahaj.zone as a whole, and lemmy.world as a whole, probably many other places. Anyway I thought I’d mention that, while dragonfucker may not be exactly the same situations in that they aren’t flipping out or requesting impossible syntax, they are still requesting very difficult language syntax which is hard to understand and read, let alone type out. And given the history of this type of trolling it’s understandable why some people, including mods are skeptical at best.
Intent is extremely important here, after all they/them is indeed used for non-specific scenarios or when you don’t know a singular person’s gender, it ls also very commonly used as a non-binary pronoun for non-binary people. I will not accept the idea that they/them is dehumanizing as that is dismissive towards all the people who use or even prefer they/them for themselves. In cases where a person has shared their pronouns let’s say she/her and another person decides to use they/them to avoid it intentionally that is indeed wrong, not simply because they did it but also because they had malicious intent.
In this case and ones similar to it they/them would be used as a fallback for when language’s practical usage fails, let’s show how this fails here: “Drag went to the store and bought dragself some pudding, drag handed some pudding to drag and drag thanked drag and ate the pudding.” This is very similar to a sentence dragonfucker would’ve written and it is very hard to understand, if you read carefully you can see there are two people here but it’s often not even clear of that. It also seems like third person usage but this was very much intended as first person usage which is what kills the practicality of it.
Compare that to
Sentence with more typical first person pronouns
“I went to the store and bought myself some pudding, I handed zir some pudding and zir thanked me and ate the pudding.”
Of course it’s very possible I wrote the above sentence wrong and that dragonfucker would’ve written it differently. I can’t be sure, I can barely even read it (read and understand). But these are situations where it is less than practical so some people might revert to they/them to be safe, as in, to not make it worse by using pronouns they don’t know how to use or understand well wrong.
I think in my experience with DroneRights and the Me/My person that getting mad at someone for this intention is not really reasonable, as they do not have malicious intent. In the case of DroneRights and the Me/My person they were getting mad at people for this reason, and many believed that was the entire point. Also I should mention, I do have a friend who uses demon/demonself pronouns but they also use they/them and ze/zir, since noun pronouns aren’t always practical in language and can be clunky sometimes. They still prefer demon/demonself pronouns I’m not saying they don’t but they use others for practicality reasons.
Practicality reasons are why it is different, it doesn’t cause issues with understanding to use binary pronouns, it does cause structure and syntax issues when asking people to use the same word as 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person pronouns, or to use first person pronouns as third person pronouns. As well as disregarding the intent which is the most important factor.
I already anticipate being accused of being a transphobe and getting called a cissy, so I want to preface all of this by saying I am Agender, I am not cis, I have years of experience and knowledge in the trans community both that I’ve learned myself from participating and from others I’ve followed or am friends with. I admit there are things I don’t know, and indeed things I struggle with due to being Agender but with all due respect I know more about this stuff than most “cis people” do, doesn’t mean I know everything but I now a lot, and I do indeed know about how bad misgendering can be, even have a few first hand experiences myself, so I’m not speaking about this blind.
I would agree that using ‘drag’ to refer to other people is unacceptable on top of being confusing.
I also agree with the observation that some people have been instrumentalizing identity as a way to provoke others. The Me/My bit in particular sounds a bit megalomaniacal.
For me the pattern I often observe (as a nonbinary trans person who prefers binary pronouns) is that no matter how obvious they are, if I say something that someone disagrees with it’s open season to ‘that guy’ me and claim that ‘it’s just the gender neutral usage’ when challenged on it. They always seem to double down if I press.
I certainly wasn’t saying that they/them is dehumanizing or dismissive, but that it is degendering rather than gender affirming, and just because someone is nonbinary they can still have a binary preference for how they are referred to in respectful circles.
I already figured that out from your earlier posts, respect. 🤘