If you have no preferred pronouns, just say (none) or something
This will help make people feel more comfortable in this comm and has a side effect of showing you support trans people when making comments in other communities. It will also make reactionaries seethe and make it easier for mods to purge them, and make trans people feel safer all over the fediverse.
Although I’m a cis woman, I have never felt especially pleased with being lumped into this category. I have never listed my pronouns before, ever, and I avoid listing my gender if possible, because I do not want the first thing people to know about me be my gender and then view me through that lens. I have always appreciated the trans community overlooks my femaleness and sees me instead. In real life daily, to my great displeasure I am lumped into one of two boxes; the internet is a welcome reprieve.
I am not nonbinary, I do not prefer they/them. I go by she/her, but I don’t want to advertise this. I have my own struggles with gender, even if I’m ultimately cis, and forcing me to report my gender in my username seems frankly gender essentialist.
I did not choose my pronouns.
What should I write? (none) is wrong, because I can be referred to with pronouns.
(ally) might be nice, except in LGBTIA+, “Ally” implies being straight, and I’m not straight.
How about an empty ()? to indicate I acknowledge the system but opt out personally. Or something cute like (friend), or comrade (but I don’t know all the implications of that)
an empty () is completely valid, imo. or even (friend) or (ally) or (any) or something. i definitely would recommend discussing with yor, she could probably help explain why this is a rule, but i get you.
on hex there’s both a comrade option and a use name option. the latter seems particularly relevant based on what you said
“use name,” I infer, is “jsomae was talking about jsomae’s day and mentioned jsomae saw a…” sort of thing. I would rather be assumed male than this. (Though if others prefer this for themselves, I approve in that case)
fair enough, also .ml isn’t my instance so I don’t wanna be too pushy on whether options like friend or comrade are preferred here. @[email protected] might be better to weigh in specifics like that
tho I do wanna go back to this real quick
pronouns, in this case, are really just used to know how to refer to you. if I were referring to you without seeing your above comments I’d probably avoid pronouns (none/use name). other people who are mindful of this would end up doing the same or maybe using they/them to be safe. in person, it sounds like you don’t have the issue of needing to provide pronouns (with many complicated feelings on that). in the same way that you say the trans community sees you as a person and not simply your assigned gender at birth, this isn’t a request to box you in or anything like that. this community isn’t binary focused or gender essentialist. it’s just how would you like us to talk about you? if that’s something you’re not sure on, maybe a label like (it’s complicated) or something acknowledging it’s a complex topic for you. it doesn’t have to mean you’re not cis to feel weird about the weight of the expected gender binary in society. that can hurt trans and cis people alike
One way or another, Lemmy has many communities. Even if you don’t have any preconceptions about women, others will. And even if it’s all in my head and nobody on lemmy has such prejudices – she/her isn’t my identity, but my username is. jsomae is how I choose to present to the world, and I don’t want femininity to be a part of how I present.
then to ask simply, how do you want people to refer to you when talking to you online? whether you include a pronoun tag or not, people are going to refer to you
Exactly the same way I expect people to know I’m Canadian. That is to say, I expect people to call me she/her if they recognise me or in the rare event my sex is relevant and surfaces (“my experience as a woman is…”).
Pragmatically, most people will he/him me if they are Neanderthalpilled and they/them me if they are based, as is the rule online. :P (and those he/himmers will assume I’m American as well.)
I understand your point of view more than most of the arguments I’ve seen against mandatory pronouns. So please take my comment as friendly, I’ll do my best not to be a rude asshole.
How would you feel about (any) for your pronoun choice? That’s functionally the same as not listing them, people can still choose which ones they want to use for you, but it still shows you’re supportive of people prominently displaying their pronouns. That or you could consider maybe a neopronoun. I personally really like e/em/eir. They’re nice and genderless, easy to use, and, bonus, a mathematician came up with them in like the '70s (I could have the year wrong and I refuse to look it up), not because he was trying to be trans inclusive, but because he hated that math books assumed their readers were all men and he wanted to include women in his writing. (Singular they was considered ungrammatical at that point.)
I would not have assumed you’re a rude asshole based on the rest of your comment – but either way, thank you for being friendly.
I don’t like (any) as that means I acquiesce to the years of being assumed male by default on the Internet. I feel spite about that not because I feel euphoric when she/her’d but rather at a more base level of feminism – that male-by-default is a patriarchal practice and so I object to it. If I were ok with (any) then I’d be OK with he/him. As a cis woman, he/him doesn’t cause me dysphoria, it just causes me to roll my eyes at the state of the world. Making my pronouns visible isn’t a fix for this, it’s just a band-aid as it doesn’t magically cause the world to be less sexist. Honestly, getting he/him’d by default is basically a useful litmus test for the state of sexism in a community I guess.
I’m not interested in changing my pronouns to a neopronoun or to any other pronoun really, but it’s a nice suggestion and the aside about the mathematician is really interesting. As a mathematician myself I approve of the etymology. :)
You can be a she/her NB btw. If you feel a disconnect with your gender or don’t feel connected to it, you’re free to consider yourself trans.
Anyways, I don’t see any problem with avoiding pronouns. Personally, I used to be in that camp - I wanted to be supportive of trans people, but I didn’t want to list he/him, but didn’t think I was trans enough to use other pronouns… So I just did not put them.
This could be interpreted as aro/ace erasure/exclusion btw by putting the word “Ally” so close to the acronym.
Aro/ace are valid and are LGBTIA+. What I mean is, “ally” implies straight, and I’m not.
Gender is a spectrum, and I consider myself cis, even if there are others more cis than me. Most of my troubles with gender come from me feeling society is at fault for treating me differently because of my sex. I think most educated women express such opinions, and that doesn’t make us enbies.
Fair. I think it’s quite reasonable women hide they’re women on the internet given how they are often treated. Just wanted to point out NBies are a wide spectrum and what pronouns you use doesn’t need to dictate your gender.
Guess it could it be comparable to being a 1 or 6 on the Kinsey scale and not considering yourself bi because the label doesn’t convey any useful information about your attraction? Imo, which label you choose at that point is up to you and I don’t think it seems biphobic or NBphobic to choose one of the binary labels.