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.
As Cishet white-ish person, who is only tangentially connected to this community IRL, but wants to be supportive, is there a definitive list of pronouns? It seems to me and many other people that if you just keep adding more and more, people get confused and or feel alienated and then some people get angry when confused, because they get frustrated and don’t want to do the wrong thing.
I usually default to “they” unless absolutely told, because It seems that once it gets so individualized, things go a bit nuts. We may as well just abolish all pronouns and only use proper nouns.
Side question, I’m neurodiverse (diagnosed ADHD, probably a bit on the spectrum), I feel very very weird before coming out to people, especially at work, as I think it will be used against me. There are still places in this world that would hurt/imprison/kill non-cis, non-hetero people. With such an interconnected world, especially with those places, how does one handle it while also trying to keep being proud of your identity? Wouldn’t putting neo pronouns in a profile open you up for targeting?