Make it easy or I will use neutrals, you prick.
this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2025
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Eh, I just use neutrals on everyone. I have a hard enough time remembering names and nobody should be offended by they/them.
You are in no way obligated to come out for anyone else if you don't want to, and if someone else has a problem with that it's their problem not your problem.
unironically i don't see a reason why anyone should care about my gender unless they are close to me or have hopes of unlocking my underwear DLC
LMAO, Underwear DLC. I'm trolling my partner with that tomorrow...
"What's in your pants?"
"Why? Are you interested?"
Usually stops people in their tracks
- "why, are you interested?"
"yes 👁👄👁"
- "👁👄👁"
Bad reason: need to know what strict societal rules you are supposed to be following
Good reason: pronouns are humanizing and need to know which ones to use
if people care what pronouns you use they'll generally make it obvious, otherwise just default to they/them and things work fine
You know I didn't think about this comparison until reading your comment, but like:
Back in the medieval period, it was vitally important (socially) that people understood your background and standing in society, because there were pretty strict rules about how one class of people is supposed to treat another. Like whether you were a social "superior" or "inferior" type shit. That's how we got things like "your majesty" and how you might not be allowed to turn your back to someone while leaving them if they were a "superior". In a lot of places in the world, wearing a kind of hat was legally required because that signalled "who you were" and how people needed to act.
A lot of those rules were done away with post French Revolution/modernity because the idea that people were supposed to be equal caught on. So nowadays the idea that you might have to kneel at the sight of someone because of who they are or not refer to them directly in speech because they're "above you" is considered unthinkable.
I dunno, I guess now I see parallels between that old way of social thought and coming out today. It's not as strict as the medieval thing (I don't think we're at the point where you legally have to come out or else you have committed a crime) but it seems like something cishet people socially expect queer people to do to "know who they are dealing with and how."
how you might not be allowed to turn your back to someone while leaving them if they were a "superior".
So you just walk backwards until they're out of sight?
Yep! This would be something you'd be expected to do in a royal court (or even in a regular noble's presence) if you held lower station.
YOU THERE.
I SEEK THE GLORY OF BATTLE. WITH WHAT WILL YOU FACE ME?
(provided you agree, ofc)
woah woah woah, is that a greatsword in your pants or are you j- oh oh it is a greatsword, uhhhhhhhhhh
sorry i think i heard my Lord calling me back to the castle, gotta go, sorry!
Fair, but in that case if I get it wrong just let me know. It's not malicious, just a mistake.
I think the whole leading with your pronouns or having them clearly visible online thing is just a shortcut so it doesn't take as much time to figure out if the person getting it wrong is making a mistake, or if they're an asshole.
But I'm also a white cis male, so take it with a big grain of salt. Last time I was misgendered was over the phone pre-puberty.
My experience as a regular here, a trans person myself, and as friends with many trans people is that this is how most people handle this. No reasonable person gets mad at you for using the wrong pronouns even if it hurts their feelings, unless you are doing it on purpose of course. Even people who you've told your pronouns to might make an honest mistake at some point. It happens.
Yes, having our pronouns visible is so we don't have to explicitly tell them to people, and some cis people also use them as a show of solidarity and/or to make it so that phobes can't assume someone is trans by the presence of pronouns.
I've never had angry get angry for making a mistake with their pronouns. I'm shit with names, and it crosses over, so I usually say something like "speaking of my shitty memory, could you also repeat your name?"
Tbh, when i don't understand someone's gender i just default to genderless pronouns, the fact is that in my main language genderless pronouns are used in formal settings, so it has the side effect of the fallback sounding more polite than usual.
Which language is this?
Italian, but i feel like other neolatin languages should have something along those lines Ex. Lei è molto gentile.= You are very kind. It's more complicated than in English, because in italian stuff like adjectives are also gendered.
I love language stuff so I would also like to know more!
Interesting, although I don't quite understand as a non Italian speaker, isn't that just replacing 'tu'?
Italian has gendered nouns and adjectives too, how do you deal with that? I've heard of people using '-e' instead of '-o / -a' in Spanish.
In this case of my first comment yes, it's just that i have way too few hours of sleep in me right now to come up with a more encompassing example.
The only one that comes to mind right now is "they are too old":
Masculine form: lui è troppo vecchio.
Femminine form: lei è troppo vecchia.
In this case in italian the higher register/more polite way of saying it corresponds to the femminine form.(i know talking about age isn't that polite, but just bear with me). in that case it is correct regardless of the gender of the one you are speaking to. If it is someone you don't know it is also less strange to default to a higher register of speech. So it is more "hidden"
southern italian Loro lurks in the background with a steel chair
It always has been this way: we always were figuring out the gender of a person we spoke to.