4 ms·

These aren't great examples. Names, nicknames, surnames, and professional titles are all things that typically make sense given the context. If your professor

These aren't great examples. Names, nicknames, surnames, and professional titles are all things that typically make sense given the context. If your professor wants to be called "prof" or "Dr.", it's probably because they're a professor or a doctor. But a personalized pronoun is like someone informing you that they identify as a doctor, even though they have no degree, and you must therefore address them as Dr. This makes no more sense than when someone says they identify as a non-binary pan-sexual gender-fabulist (yes, I know such people), and you're now required to memorize their customized pronouns. Now, to your point, I used to work with a trans woman who was very obviously a biological male, but also very obviously identifying as a female in gender. She wore dresses and feminine hair styles. Her demand for female pronouns made perfect sense, and her overt appearance and behavior made it easy for everyone to remember her self identification. I have no problem with that. But I'm probably not going to put much effort into remembering anything beyond the traditional binary pronouns. Pick one of those and I'll stick to it, but if you expect me to call you xe/xim, you'll likely be disappointed.

danShumway 5y ago
> make sense I don't personally run requests like this through an internal filter to figure out whether or not I agree with them or whether they make sense to me. To your point of titles: > But a personalized pronoun is like someone informing you that they identify as a doctor, even though they have no degree, and you must therefore address them as Dr. I don't think I've ever looked up someone's PHD after they asked me to call them doctor. I just do it, it's no skin off of my back. If I find out that they're not a doctor later, I might think that's kind of weird, but I'm probably not going to fight them over it. Same if someone says they got married, or if they're getting married and keeping their last name, or if someone gives me a pronunciation of their name that doesn't match phonetically with how it's spelled. I don't really know that I have a validation criteria for any of those things, I don't think I've ever needed one. I guess I can theoretically think of examples where it would be an issue, but I've never personally encountered them, and I don't think xe/xim rises to that level. Memorizing xe/xim isn't any harder to me than memorizing how a name is pronounced.

danShumway 5y ago

> make sense I don't personally run requests like this through an internal filter to figure out whether or not I agree with them or whether they make sense to me. To your point of titles: > But a personalized pronoun is like someone informing you that they identify as a doctor, even though they have no degree, and you must therefore address them as Dr. I don't think I've ever looked up someone's PHD after they asked me to call them doctor. I just do it, it's no skin off of my back. If I find out that they're not a doctor later, I might think that's kind of weird, but I'm probably not going to fight them over it. Same if someone says they got married, or if they're getting married and keeping their last name, or if someone gives me a pronunciation of their name that doesn't match phonetically with how it's spelled. I don't really know that I have a validation criteria for any of those things, I don't think I've ever needed one. I guess I can theoretically think of examples where it would be an issue, but I've never personally encountered them, and I don't think xe/xim rises to that level. Memorizing xe/xim isn't any harder to me than memorizing how a name is pronounced.