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.
There are plenty of neopronouns that are used by lots of people. In scandinavia we’ve adopted a common non-binary neopronoun f.ex, and english has lots of different ones that are very commonly used
Edit: Also not relevant, this post is about moderating misgendering. You’ve conveyed your problem, but you’ve not actually responded to anything in the post or in my comment.
My post was a response to yours arguing to always respect neopronouns. My problem with it is that this rule untenable. Your f.ex example is fine, as it’s used by a large number of people, it’s something that can actually be learned and applied.
The problem is that you cannot simply always respect neopronouns, as whenever you establish a zero-tolerance, zero-though principle like “always respect neo-pronouns, full stop,” there will be bullies that take advantage of that. There will be bad-faith actors who purposefully concoct “pronouns” that they obviously do not use. Like, what do you do if someone says their pronouns are racial slurs? You going to start respecting those pronouns?
Neo-pronouns have utility when a group of people use them and there is clear understanding around them. Those created by a single deranged or bad-faith individual need not be respected.
Some parts of the internet would call what you are doing concern trolling. Let’s assume it isn’t. This hasn’t happened yet at blåhaj, and I haven’t seen it happen elsewhere. Ada makes it clear in the post that this wouldn’t be acceptable and that someone with a slur as their pronoun would simply be removed.
Also I would like to note this part in Adas post:
Why is it that none of you want to do this? Why do you all come here and lash out against neopronouns? You’ve already said it doesn’t make sense to you, but you are free to just leave and not participate, or to not engage with neopronoun users.