3 ms·

> They do get offended when people purposefully use the wrong pronoun to intentionally offend. Pretending that those are the same thing is part of the problem.

> They do get offended when people purposefully use the wrong pronoun to intentionally offend. Pretending that those are the same thing is part of the problem. "the problem"... You don't get to choose what other people call you. Confident, hardworking people, don't don't care what others call them. "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" is a common phrase school children say. I've been called a plethora of names, that doesn't define me, why let others define you (so to speak)? This is exactly the coddling I was discussing. The purpose of pronouns are to help others understand who you're talking about. It's not to validate the individual being discussed. Confident people don't need validation.

dallashoxton 4y ago
rowanG077 4y ago
In some sense I agree. But on the other hand I also don't think we should be OK with rampant bullying. Many lives have been lost just because a group of people determined they want to bullying someone.
hoorible 4y ago
“You don’t get to choose what other people call you” What? That’s literally the definition of a legal name change, which happens all the time. If someone continued to, intentionally, refer to my wife’s maiden name after she went through the nightmare process of changing it, you can bet she’d be offended, and rightfully so. Being offended by behaviour being done specifically to offend isn’t being coddled or a sign of weakness, and it’s frankly kind of weird that you think it is. Sure, she can’t technically “choose” if someone continues to be a jerk and call her by the wrong name, but the social convention of respecting given names has existed forever, and extending that same logic to pronouns seems like a pretty fair expectation of basic human decency to me. You’re seriously saying that if everyone around you referred to you as “miss” or “ma’am”, forever, that wouldn’t start to get to you? (I’m assuming you’re male, I find it hard to believe a woman would have written this) I’ll believe it when I see it. I’ve met plenty of men who like to think they’re that confident, but yet to meet a man who actually is.
- kgwxd 4y ago
  > If someone continued to, intentionally, refer to my wife’s maiden name My wife didn’t take my last name, 2 of her aunts keep intentionally sending cards and such, addressed only to her, with my last name. It’s been 13 years.
- phpisthebest 4y ago
  >>What? That’s literally the definition of a legal name change, which happens all the time. No, that is choosing what the GOVERNMENT calls you, largely for the purpose of ensuring they can extract a large portion of the labor for redistribution. There is nothing requiring me or any other person from using your legal name, and in fact in some situations today using a persons legal name would be met with outrage and offense (i.e dead naming) >If someone continued to, intentionally, .... you can bet she’d be offended Seems like an odd thing to be offended over, maybe annoyed, or even feel disrespected. Offended nah... My first name has a commonly used short name that I dislike, people use it for me all the time but I am not offended by it it is just annoying >extending that same logic to pronouns seems like a pretty fair expectation of basic human decency to me. One big difference in language is pronouns are not directed at the target of their use, where names are. Normal use of pronouns is used when describing a person to a 3rd party. "Go find Jim, he has your report" He/She etc are outward expressions of secondary sex characteristic to aid people in their observation of the world. to use a another example "Go find Sam, she has your report", I would go looking for a human with outwardly female characteristic. where as "Go find Sam, he has your report" I would look for a human with male characteristic. "Go find Sam, they has your report" is not only grammatically incorrect, it gives no indication on the type of human I should be looking for so I would just go down the hallway yelling Sam at everyone >You’re seriously saying that if everyone around you referred to you as “miss” or “ma’am”, forever, that wouldn’t start to get to you? I have a problem if people refer to me as Sir but it has nothing to do with the gender. /s >but yet to meet a man who actually is. Nice to meet you. Call me Ma'am, I dont care. Call me asshole I dont care, call me anything you want except late for dinner
  - Eisenstein 4y ago
    > Nice to meet you. Call me Ma'am, I dont care. Call me asshole I dont care, call me anything you want except late for dinner I don't believe you. What if I called you Pedo?
brnt 4y ago
> "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" That does not make it true. It is also not great to put the onus on the victim of bullying. As someone who was bullied quite severely, I always preferred a fist fight over words. Still do; feels more honest, less manipulative getting-in-your-head but more visceral and present. To each their own perhaps, underlining the fact that words can and perhaps should hurt as much as sticks and stones; if you think words mean something, well, then they mean something. Confidence only gets you so far, there are no simple solutions. Any study on bullying will elucidate that fact.
- TexanFeller 4y ago
  I was severely bullied both verbally and physically. I would take verbally 10/10 times any day. Words hurt, but the fear of being severely physically hurt or accidentally killed is worse by miles.
  - brnt 4y ago
    Thanks for sharing. It's important to understand these experiences and coping mechanisms are highly personal. You can't bless one way of dealing with it over the others, because not everybody experiences it the same. Also, you only learn those things by experiencing them. I for instance appea to be fearless, but sensitive. I don't think me getting less sensitive is the answer, nor you sucking up your fear. The solution will be personal, but should involve us and bystanders to correct the bully, whether they throw punches or words.
AA-BA-94-2A-56 4y ago
carabiner 4y ago
> Confident, hardworking people, don't don't care what others call them. "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" Just naive. Like saying the bible or the koran is "just words" rather than the foundation of societies and the cause of wars.
- qorrect 4y ago
  > Like saying the bible or the koran is "just words" rather than the foundation of societies and the cause of wars. It _is_ just a collection of words though, it's people that take it very seriously and get offended that start the wars. Had they learned this credo when they were young, they might not have escalated it to war. Anyone can just shout words out, you going to get offended at everyone ?
mcphage 4y ago
> You don't get to choose what other people call you. Confident, hardworking people, don't don't care what others call them. What on Earth? Yes you do. Do you not tell people what your name is? When someone asks you for your name, what do you say? I don't understand how you have human conversations with other people and make this claim.
- verisimilitudes 4y ago
  - the_only_law 4y ago
    10/10 on the realism of the dialog. You seem like someone who talks to a lot of people.
    - verisimilitudes 4y ago
  - mcphage 4y ago
    > We understand what he meant. Cool for you. Maybe next time he shouldn't have said something stupidly false.
Tainnor 4y ago
There's such a thing as respecting other peoples' preferences or quirks, even if you don't agree with them. I have friends who smoke, and no matter how much I think that smoking is outrageously dumb, I just accept that this is what they do - and the same applies to a whole range of other behaviours, too, such as religious or dietary preferences etc. You don't have to have a particular stance on trans issues to have the common decency to use the correct pronoun. Mind you, I'm talking about reasonable things here: I am not necessarily sympathetic to wholly invented pronouns (because that doesn't come very naturally), although I think "they" is fine, and of course, it would be ridiculous if (hypothetically) a person switched pronouns every day, but in the cases I have experienced, someone communicates that they now identify as the other gender, and that's fine. Usually it's also accompanied by enough outwards changes that it's also not too hard to do; I've met trans men that I didn't know were not biological men at first. So, idk, to me "please refer to me as man/woman in the future" sounds like a simple, easily satisfied request and getting worked up over it to me signals that one prefers emphasising their political opinion over just being decent and accomodating.

dallashoxton 4y ago

rowanG077 4y ago

In some sense I agree. But on the other hand I also don't think we should be OK with rampant bullying. Many lives have been lost just because a group of people determined they want to bullying someone.

hoorible 4y ago

“You don’t get to choose what other people call you” What? That’s literally the definition of a legal name change, which happens all the time. If someone continued to, intentionally, refer to my wife’s maiden name after she went through the nightmare process of changing it, you can bet she’d be offended, and rightfully so. Being offended by behaviour being done specifically to offend isn’t being coddled or a sign of weakness, and it’s frankly kind of weird that you think it is. Sure, she can’t technically “choose” if someone continues to be a jerk and call her by the wrong name, but the social convention of respecting given names has existed forever, and extending that same logic to pronouns seems like a pretty fair expectation of basic human decency to me. You’re seriously saying that if everyone around you referred to you as “miss” or “ma’am”, forever, that wouldn’t start to get to you? (I’m assuming you’re male, I find it hard to believe a woman would have written this) I’ll believe it when I see it. I’ve met plenty of men who like to think they’re that confident, but yet to meet a man who actually is.

kgwxd 4y ago
> If someone continued to, intentionally, refer to my wife’s maiden name My wife didn’t take my last name, 2 of her aunts keep intentionally sending cards and such, addressed only to her, with my last name. It’s been 13 years.
phpisthebest 4y ago
>>What? That’s literally the definition of a legal name change, which happens all the time. No, that is choosing what the GOVERNMENT calls you, largely for the purpose of ensuring they can extract a large portion of the labor for redistribution. There is nothing requiring me or any other person from using your legal name, and in fact in some situations today using a persons legal name would be met with outrage and offense (i.e dead naming) >If someone continued to, intentionally, .... you can bet she’d be offended Seems like an odd thing to be offended over, maybe annoyed, or even feel disrespected. Offended nah... My first name has a commonly used short name that I dislike, people use it for me all the time but I am not offended by it it is just annoying >extending that same logic to pronouns seems like a pretty fair expectation of basic human decency to me. One big difference in language is pronouns are not directed at the target of their use, where names are. Normal use of pronouns is used when describing a person to a 3rd party. "Go find Jim, he has your report" He/She etc are outward expressions of secondary sex characteristic to aid people in their observation of the world. to use a another example "Go find Sam, she has your report", I would go looking for a human with outwardly female characteristic. where as "Go find Sam, he has your report" I would look for a human with male characteristic. "Go find Sam, they has your report" is not only grammatically incorrect, it gives no indication on the type of human I should be looking for so I would just go down the hallway yelling Sam at everyone >You’re seriously saying that if everyone around you referred to you as “miss” or “ma’am”, forever, that wouldn’t start to get to you? I have a problem if people refer to me as Sir but it has nothing to do with the gender. /s >but yet to meet a man who actually is. Nice to meet you. Call me Ma'am, I dont care. Call me asshole I dont care, call me anything you want except late for dinner
- Eisenstein 4y ago
  > Nice to meet you. Call me Ma'am, I dont care. Call me asshole I dont care, call me anything you want except late for dinner I don't believe you. What if I called you Pedo?

brnt 4y ago

> "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" That does not make it true. It is also not great to put the onus on the victim of bullying. As someone who was bullied quite severely, I always preferred a fist fight over words. Still do; feels more honest, less manipulative getting-in-your-head but more visceral and present. To each their own perhaps, underlining the fact that words can and perhaps should hurt as much as sticks and stones; if you think words mean something, well, then they mean something. Confidence only gets you so far, there are no simple solutions. Any study on bullying will elucidate that fact.

TexanFeller 4y ago
I was severely bullied both verbally and physically. I would take verbally 10/10 times any day. Words hurt, but the fear of being severely physically hurt or accidentally killed is worse by miles.
- brnt 4y ago
  Thanks for sharing. It's important to understand these experiences and coping mechanisms are highly personal. You can't bless one way of dealing with it over the others, because not everybody experiences it the same. Also, you only learn those things by experiencing them. I for instance appea to be fearless, but sensitive. I don't think me getting less sensitive is the answer, nor you sucking up your fear. The solution will be personal, but should involve us and bystanders to correct the bully, whether they throw punches or words.

AA-BA-94-2A-56 4y ago

carabiner 4y ago

> Confident, hardworking people, don't don't care what others call them. "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" Just naive. Like saying the bible or the koran is "just words" rather than the foundation of societies and the cause of wars.

qorrect 4y ago
> Like saying the bible or the koran is "just words" rather than the foundation of societies and the cause of wars. It _is_ just a collection of words though, it's people that take it very seriously and get offended that start the wars. Had they learned this credo when they were young, they might not have escalated it to war. Anyone can just shout words out, you going to get offended at everyone ?

mcphage 4y ago

> You don't get to choose what other people call you. Confident, hardworking people, don't don't care what others call them. What on Earth? Yes you do. Do you not tell people what your name is? When someone asks you for your name, what do you say? I don't understand how you have human conversations with other people and make this claim.

verisimilitudes 4y ago
- the_only_law 4y ago
  10/10 on the realism of the dialog. You seem like someone who talks to a lot of people.
  - verisimilitudes 4y ago
- mcphage 4y ago
  > We understand what he meant. Cool for you. Maybe next time he shouldn't have said something stupidly false.

Tainnor 4y ago

There's such a thing as respecting other peoples' preferences or quirks, even if you don't agree with them. I have friends who smoke, and no matter how much I think that smoking is outrageously dumb, I just accept that this is what they do - and the same applies to a whole range of other behaviours, too, such as religious or dietary preferences etc. You don't have to have a particular stance on trans issues to have the common decency to use the correct pronoun. Mind you, I'm talking about reasonable things here: I am not necessarily sympathetic to wholly invented pronouns (because that doesn't come very naturally), although I think "they" is fine, and of course, it would be ridiculous if (hypothetically) a person switched pronouns every day, but in the cases I have experienced, someone communicates that they now identify as the other gender, and that's fine. Usually it's also accompanied by enough outwards changes that it's also not too hard to do; I've met trans men that I didn't know were not biological men at first. So, idk, to me "please refer to me as man/woman in the future" sounds like a simple, easily satisfied request and getting worked up over it to me signals that one prefers emphasising their political opinion over just being decent and accomodating.