Comment by a-french-anon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by a-french-anon | Hacker News Reader

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> not just a common courtesy because we're not all sensitive snowflakes

It's not courtesy if it's non consensual, same way that wealth redistribution isn't charity. Statistically and rhetorically speaking, the pronouns enforcers' beneficiaries are the sensitive snowflakes who can't do with a few people not indulging in their delusions.

You completely misunderstand the point. The vastly different level of threat itself is of no importance to the comparison, since the goal isn't to enact said threat, it's to force people to publicly betray their convictions, to mentally castrate them. It's nothing more than Orwell's "2 + 2 = 5", if you prefer this analogy.

Maybe it's a special snowflake thing to want to live with your head held high, standing for what you think is true, what do I know...

> I wonder how you feel about the nearly 1.7% of people born intersex that you meet and definitely work with

There's nothing to feel, these people are neither male or female and would indeed deserve a specific pronoun, but pragmatism would make it as logical as making all cars fit for one-armed people. Also, your 1.7% is a bit biased, reading its source from Wikipedia's article.

> It's not courtesy if it's non consensual, same way that wealth redistribution isn't charity

I truly don't understand what you are talking about. When I was in primary school, and perhaps in no small part due to some prosopagnosia, I was unable to determine the gender of my peers reliably. This occasionally resulted in violence as I misgendered peers.

Do you live in a part of the world where you can use whatever pronouns you want on people?

If no, what exactly are we disagreeing about?

> standing for

Can you explain what, exactly, it is that you're standing for?

> There's nothing to feel, these people are neither male or female and would indeed deserve a specific pronoun, but pragmatism would make it as logical as making all cars fit for one-armed people

That's why they generally choose one or the other? Occasionally, someone will prefer a "non-standard" pronoun but I have never faced someone that didn't accept "they" (which, by the way, was my coping strategy in my childhood - when in doubt, use "they"! This was in pre-internet era of regional Queensland, Australia, where we barely had dictionaries, let alone knew what a pronoun even was)

You've obviously put a lot of energy and thought into this issue but I'm not exactly sure what the issue /is/

> It's not courtesy if it's non consensual

Good, so you agree that explicitly refusing to call someone what they want to be called is against common courtesy, since you are using a word to refer to a person that they have not consented to be called.

> but pragmatism would make it as logical as making all cars fit for one-armed people

If you could make all cars perfectly suitable for one-armed people for very low effort and without deteriorating the experience for two-armed people, you'd be an asshole not to do it. Just like a person tends to be an asshole if they refuse to call a person what they want to be called.

I generally go by my middle name. I have done so since before it was even my decision to do so, my parents made that decision for me and I have chosen to remain doing so. I have had multiple jobs where middle management and even co-workers would steadfastly refuse to use my middle name, instead trying to call for me by my first name that I have never listened for in my entire life. This continued even after speaking to them about it after them complaining that I didn't hear them call for me because they used the wrong name. That is the same level of assholery.

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