Most people aren't offended when someone accidently uses the wrong pronoun. 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.
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.
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
I don't believe you. What if I called you Pedo?
That would be accusing me of crime, and accusing me of victimization of others. These are actions that one would have to take.
That is a far different statement than simply calling someone the wrong name, pronoun, etc.
One could be arrested, jailed, fired, etc for being a "pedo", Referring to a "they" as "she" or "he" would not result in that person being arrested, jailed or fired. if anything today the person using the incorrect pronoun would have higher legal jeopardy than the person being "mis-gendered"
Calling someone Ma'am if they wanted Sir or vice versa is not going to result in the person the incorrect salutation was directed at being fired or jailed
Your "gotcha" is both insane and idiotic, raising to the level is disbelief anyone would even make that as a analog comparison
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.
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.
Just naive. 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 ?
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.
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.
People will play on social cues to gain benefit, it doesn't matter which social cue.
The idea that every person with non-standard pronouns is a good person is misguided, even if it was an overwhelming majority.
The capacity for self-centeredness and/or bullying behaviour exists in all demographics.
All people have morals; the ones to be fearful of are the ones that allow their morality to bend depending on the recipient.
I think the self interest heuristic is generally overused.
The way I see it we are fundamentally the same species which committed all of the atrocities of the 20th century, 19th century, heck all of the extremely violent and callous behavior in recorded history. To believe that human nature has changed much from that in only the span of a few decades is foolhardy.
so i need to assume that most people are not just out for themselves and engage others hoping that they are not, but maybe just be cautious until i know them better.
If you assume most people are out for themselves, the rational solution is usually to violently suppress or exterminate your opposition whenever possible. Kill them before they have a chance to kill you.