4 ms·

No, sorry, not gonna fly with me "casual transphobia". The whole declaring your pronouns everywhere is a societal compliance test. It's a way for progressives t

No, sorry, not gonna fly with me "casual transphobia". The whole declaring your pronouns everywhere is a societal compliance test. It's a way for progressives to assert control over you and force you to adhere to whatever bs of the day they came up with. I spent my entire life without having pronouns next to my name because its obvious I am a man and I'm not to start declaring them now because a bunch of blue checkmark twitterazis say I have to.

teg4n_ 5y ago
Or it’s a way for people to indicate how they would like to be referred to as :\
- simonw 5y ago
  I do it to help make it less uncomfortable for people who have a reason to declare their pronouns.
- Auracle 5y ago
  If their pronouns aren’t what a person would naturally assume, great. For the rest of us it’s just pure virtue signaling.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Fomite 5y ago
    For the rest of us, it's trying to make people feel like they're not singling themselves out for expressing their preferences. Me putting "He/Him" on my name tag is an extremely low cost/low effort thing.
    - datavirtue 5y ago
      Agreed. Super cheap.
    - ALittleLight 5y ago
      I'm not sure about this. For one thing, it's odd to try and pretend that aspects unique to a small group of people are common to everyone. For example, some people with crone's disease might put that in their bio - are you going to start including health information in your bio to make them feel more at home? Either trans people pass, in which case they, by definition, aren't singled out, or they don't pass in which case regardless of what's in your Twitter bio they will still be singled out. I heard about a situation where five or six women stood up to speak and said their pronouns and then a trans person stood up and shared theirs. The trans person said it felt awkward - like every person began by calling attention to the fact that some pronouns are obvious and others aren't. To me it seems much more like signalling. In 99+% of instances I can guess the appropriate pronouns. When I can't then it makes sense to state them.
    - gonehome 5y ago
      I don’t do it because I think most of the time it’s more about signaling political affiliation than actually solving a problem. It also tends to then extend to things like pretending there are no sex differences and that everything is socially constructed (which I think is nonsense). I used to think this was a strawman, but the Lia Thomas story shows it isn’t imo: https://overcast.fm/+vpWbPtN0o https://overcast.fm/+vpWbPtN0o This is obviously a third rail internet topic and people can do what they like, but I won’t put pronouns in my bio and I won’t submit to pressure to do so in order to pass some sort of political morality test.
      - jmcgough 5y ago
        > It also tends to then extend to things like pretending there are no sex differences and that everything is socially constructed (which I think is nonsense) Only a small minority of people believe that. > I won’t put pronouns in my bio and I won’t submit to pressure to do so in order to pass some sort of political morality test. Literally no one is trying to force you to do that.
        zo1 5y ago
        > Literally no one is trying to force you to do that. Not OP, but I had to do a conference talk on some or other live-stream platform and pronouns were 100% required for all speakers. This is societal level, passive or "mild" bullying that the feminists have been complaining as a symptom of patriarchy for many years, yet here we are, reverse perpetuating things that we will most likely be judged on in coming generations.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        gonehome 5y ago
        That small minority seem to have disproportionate power (at least in the case of Lia Thomas). I’m not sure how small it is and I don’t want to enable it. There are people forcing/pressuring participation in the public display of pronouns/say your pronouns thing (you may just live somewhere insulated from it). I’ve had it happen in Silicon Valley interviews and I know some groups at Stanford require it.
  - rhizome 5y ago
    If "welcoming" is a virtue, sure. I don't see what's wrong with that, but I do see a problem with using "virtue signaling" in a way that implies there's no such thing as virtue, or that it is always apparent.
  - teg4n_ 5y ago
    Most of the time people do not know your real identity on the internet so I don’t think natural assumptions have that much to do with it. Even if someone is well known and their gender is well known it doesn’t harm anyone or anything to have their pronouns in their bio. The fact it annoys so many people for “virtue signaling” is baffling to me. Who cares about virtue signaling and why is it seemingly only conservatives that think it’s derogatory when complaining about virtue signaling is far more of a virtue signal than pronouns lol.
  - acjohnson55 5y ago
    Complaining about virtue signaling is perhaps the most tiresome version of virtue signaling.
    - UncleMeat 5y ago
      Yup. I think this idea has done a tremendous amount of harm. It is possible to be actually virtuous but this is apparently now lost as doing any kind thing for anybody is criticized as virtue signaling.
    - pyronik19 4y ago
      Complaining about people complaining about virtue signaling is even more tiresome. It's a way to protect the root toxic behavior by projection of that behavior on those trying to put a stop to it.
- HideousKojima 5y ago
  Which doesn't make much sense, since pronouns are what you use when talking about someone in the third person, not to someone in the second person.
  - hluska 5y ago
    I display my pronouns to signal that if your pronouns are important to you, tell me and I’ll respect them. If they’re not important to you, don’t tell me. That’s it.
flyingcircus3 5y ago
How much Conservative American Vernacular English can you cram into a single paragraph?
- pyronik19 5y ago
  We are daily inundated with woke vernacular all day everyday and I bet you never leave a comment there complaining about terms like "casual transphobia", "harm", "hate", "problematic", all the "-isms", "-ists", "-phobes"... but you drew the line at this one HN comment. Good for you.
jph00 5y ago
How is it obvious you're a man, other than that you just explicitly said so in your comment? It's not mentioned in your HN bio, and it's not obvious from your username. It seems like you view this as a political partisan issue and it's an important part of your identity. Which is fine, but it's not the logically-obvious thing you are claiming.
- pyronik19 5y ago
  >How is it obvious you're a man, other than that you just explicitly said so in your comment? It's not mentioned in your HN bio, and it's not obvious from your username. I've gone my entire life without be confused for a woman. So I would say that constitutes a good deal of empirical evidence. >It seems like you view this as a political partisan issue and it's an important part of your identity. Being a man is part of my identity, but I went my entire life without "being a man" being a political partisan issue. I didn't make this a partisan issue, a fringe group of leftist have. And if any part of this is "part of my identity" is that I have no desire to bend to some fringe activist groups demanding compliance for their latest "current thing". >but it's not the logically-obvious thing you are claiming. It's logically obvious to everyone who isn't on the fringe left. Is water wet?
zo1 5y ago
I honestly would feel 100% uncomfortable around any sort of non male/female person. Luckily I don't have to interact with anyone of that sort in person.

teg4n_ 5y ago

Or it’s a way for people to indicate how they would like to be referred to as :\

simonw 5y ago
I do it to help make it less uncomfortable for people who have a reason to declare their pronouns.
Auracle 5y ago
If their pronouns aren’t what a person would naturally assume, great. For the rest of us it’s just pure virtue signaling.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Fomite 5y ago
  For the rest of us, it's trying to make people feel like they're not singling themselves out for expressing their preferences. Me putting "He/Him" on my name tag is an extremely low cost/low effort thing.
  - datavirtue 5y ago
    Agreed. Super cheap.
  - ALittleLight 5y ago
    I'm not sure about this. For one thing, it's odd to try and pretend that aspects unique to a small group of people are common to everyone. For example, some people with crone's disease might put that in their bio - are you going to start including health information in your bio to make them feel more at home? Either trans people pass, in which case they, by definition, aren't singled out, or they don't pass in which case regardless of what's in your Twitter bio they will still be singled out. I heard about a situation where five or six women stood up to speak and said their pronouns and then a trans person stood up and shared theirs. The trans person said it felt awkward - like every person began by calling attention to the fact that some pronouns are obvious and others aren't. To me it seems much more like signalling. In 99+% of instances I can guess the appropriate pronouns. When I can't then it makes sense to state them.
  - gonehome 5y ago
    I don’t do it because I think most of the time it’s more about signaling political affiliation than actually solving a problem. It also tends to then extend to things like pretending there are no sex differences and that everything is socially constructed (which I think is nonsense). I used to think this was a strawman, but the Lia Thomas story shows it isn’t imo: https://overcast.fm/+vpWbPtN0o https://overcast.fm/+vpWbPtN0o This is obviously a third rail internet topic and people can do what they like, but I won’t put pronouns in my bio and I won’t submit to pressure to do so in order to pass some sort of political morality test.
    - jmcgough 5y ago
      > It also tends to then extend to things like pretending there are no sex differences and that everything is socially constructed (which I think is nonsense) Only a small minority of people believe that. > I won’t put pronouns in my bio and I won’t submit to pressure to do so in order to pass some sort of political morality test. Literally no one is trying to force you to do that.
      - zo1 5y ago
        > Literally no one is trying to force you to do that. Not OP, but I had to do a conference talk on some or other live-stream platform and pronouns were 100% required for all speakers. This is societal level, passive or "mild" bullying that the feminists have been complaining as a symptom of patriarchy for many years, yet here we are, reverse perpetuating things that we will most likely be judged on in coming generations.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - gonehome 5y ago
        That small minority seem to have disproportionate power (at least in the case of Lia Thomas). I’m not sure how small it is and I don’t want to enable it. There are people forcing/pressuring participation in the public display of pronouns/say your pronouns thing (you may just live somewhere insulated from it). I’ve had it happen in Silicon Valley interviews and I know some groups at Stanford require it.
- rhizome 5y ago
  If "welcoming" is a virtue, sure. I don't see what's wrong with that, but I do see a problem with using "virtue signaling" in a way that implies there's no such thing as virtue, or that it is always apparent.
- teg4n_ 5y ago
  Most of the time people do not know your real identity on the internet so I don’t think natural assumptions have that much to do with it. Even if someone is well known and their gender is well known it doesn’t harm anyone or anything to have their pronouns in their bio. The fact it annoys so many people for “virtue signaling” is baffling to me. Who cares about virtue signaling and why is it seemingly only conservatives that think it’s derogatory when complaining about virtue signaling is far more of a virtue signal than pronouns lol.
- acjohnson55 5y ago
  Complaining about virtue signaling is perhaps the most tiresome version of virtue signaling.
  - UncleMeat 5y ago
    Yup. I think this idea has done a tremendous amount of harm. It is possible to be actually virtuous but this is apparently now lost as doing any kind thing for anybody is criticized as virtue signaling.
  - pyronik19 4y ago
    Complaining about people complaining about virtue signaling is even more tiresome. It's a way to protect the root toxic behavior by projection of that behavior on those trying to put a stop to it.
HideousKojima 5y ago
Which doesn't make much sense, since pronouns are what you use when talking about someone in the third person, not to someone in the second person.
- hluska 5y ago
  I display my pronouns to signal that if your pronouns are important to you, tell me and I’ll respect them. If they’re not important to you, don’t tell me. That’s it.

flyingcircus3 5y ago

How much Conservative American Vernacular English can you cram into a single paragraph?

pyronik19 5y ago
We are daily inundated with woke vernacular all day everyday and I bet you never leave a comment there complaining about terms like "casual transphobia", "harm", "hate", "problematic", all the "-isms", "-ists", "-phobes"... but you drew the line at this one HN comment. Good for you.

jph00 5y ago

How is it obvious you're a man, other than that you just explicitly said so in your comment? It's not mentioned in your HN bio, and it's not obvious from your username. It seems like you view this as a political partisan issue and it's an important part of your identity. Which is fine, but it's not the logically-obvious thing you are claiming.

pyronik19 5y ago
>How is it obvious you're a man, other than that you just explicitly said so in your comment? It's not mentioned in your HN bio, and it's not obvious from your username. I've gone my entire life without be confused for a woman. So I would say that constitutes a good deal of empirical evidence. >It seems like you view this as a political partisan issue and it's an important part of your identity. Being a man is part of my identity, but I went my entire life without "being a man" being a political partisan issue. I didn't make this a partisan issue, a fringe group of leftist have. And if any part of this is "part of my identity" is that I have no desire to bend to some fringe activist groups demanding compliance for their latest "current thing". >but it's not the logically-obvious thing you are claiming. It's logically obvious to everyone who isn't on the fringe left. Is water wet?

zo1 5y ago

I honestly would feel 100% uncomfortable around any sort of non male/female person. Luckily I don't have to interact with anyone of that sort in person.