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Comment by djur | Hacker News Reader

What Graham means by "prig" is, say, an HR person who informs you that you need to use your coworker's preferred pronouns.

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If you're calling a coworker something that they are uncomfortable with enough to get HR involved, HR may be the prigs but you're being an asshole.

Yes on a pragmatic basis, if the coworker is male and gets upset at being referred to by "he", but it goes against your own personal beliefs to refer to him as "she", it's best just to refer to him by name and practise wording your sentences to be pronounless. And, where possible and not disadvantageous, to avoid situations where he's involved in your own work.

With this approach, he's less likely to make a complaint to HR about you (though he might notice the careful lack of "she", but that's much more difficult to make a substantiated complaint about), and you still get to stick to your own beliefs.

It's still somewhat vexing to have to do this, but at least it prevents you from getting in the crosshairs of HR.

If it goes against your personal beliefs to call someone what they prefer to be called at no expense to yourself, then you need some new personal beliefs.

What about neopronouns? Can someone just make up a new set of words like zi / zim / zis and expect you to remember them whenever talking to or about that person?

You already remember what standard pronouns to use to refer to each person in your life. They're words you learned right from the start of learning the language. The same isn't true of "neopronouns".

You seem to be in agreement with my sentiment.

There is also additional work in remembering which pronoun to use with which NB person. With most people, you just automatically say the right thing.

What have you done so far in cases where a coworker has asked you to refer to them only using a neopronoun?

As others have suggested I just avoid pronouns. This seems to be a common approach.

Seems like a practical solution. So what’s the problem?

Probably that gender ideology played a sizable role in getting Trump re-elected. It was the topic of his most popular ad, and IIRC the plurality of swing state voters said it was the most important issue for them.

So getting people to use preferred pronouns was a bit of a Pyrrhic victory in my book.

>IIRC the plurality of swing state voters said [gender ideology] was the most important issue for them.

I don't think that you RC. Citation very much needed here.

The issue of neopronouns is largely theoretical, since almost all users of neopronouns also accept the gender neutral 'they'. The Trump ads weren't about neopronouns, and I doubt that most Trump voters (or indeed most Democratic voters) could tell you what a neopronoun is.

Using people's preferred pronouns out of he/she/they is just common courtesy. It's essentially what everyone, social conservatives included, already does whenever they take someone's word regarding their gender rather than looking down their pants before talking about them in the third person.

Eh, ok. [1] I guess there must be another reason Trump's campaign spent hundreds of millions of dollars broadcasting that ad. It was way more than they spent on any other ad.

You're moving the goalpost here and pretending that neopronouns is not that big an issue. But it's obviously just part of the gender ideology issue, which was clearly part of the reason Trump won.

I can see that there are still people out there with their heads in the sand. I wonder who you'll help elect next time around?

1: https://www.megynkelly.com/2024/11/11/survey-finds-trans-iss...

You said ‘swing state voters’. The survey you indirectly link to is talking about ‘swing voters’:

>Our definition of swing voters includes those who are undecided in the presidential race, have changed their voting preference since 2020 (voting Democrat in one election and Republican in the other), or are independents who either indicate they split their votes between Democrats and Republicans, or who hold either favorable or unfavorable views of both Trump and Harris.

The sample of voters is weighted towards swing states, but judging by the numbers for 'All voters', gender wasn't the predominant issue for swing state voters in general.

I don't think that neopronouns are a big issue outside of hypothetical arguments on the internet. You can certainly link neopronouns to a broader issue that people care about. But this thread was just about neopronouns (starting from your question "What about neopronouns?") before you brought Trump into it!

Ok, well you're doing a great job of splitting hairs but have not brought any evidence. Good luck in 4 years, to us all!

I already have to remember people’s names, what’s the difference?

Or you could just call people what they want to be called when it does not inconvenience you in the slightest.

Personally, agree with calling people what they want to be called. That said, here's a thought experiment: What if someone is inconvenienced? What if someone feels uncomfortable using pronouns that don't match the sex of the person? What about uncommon "neopronouns" like "zhe", "xe", or "fae"?

Whose comfort gets priority in this situation?

We expect people to say things that make them uncomfortable all the time. I don't feel comfortable telling my boss that I'm the one who wrote the buggy code that caused the incident, but I have a responsibility to do it regardless. I might be expected to thank everyone involved in a project, even if I don't feel personally grateful to them. And so on.

Obviously there's no easy way to reason these cases from first principles. As it is, I'm aware that being affirmed in their gender identity is recognized as therapeutically important for trans people. On the flip side, I'm not aware of any condition that causes people to suffer significant distress due to using a particular pronoun. So in this case, I feel like it's a pretty easy decision.

EDIT: The "neopronoun" question was added after I replied, or I missed it. I have never met a person who expected me to use them, nor have I ever encountered a workplace environment where policies required their use, so I haven't formed an opinion.

I've never met anybody who used neopronouns either, I've only heard about it online.

I wonder if there are any long term effects of forcing someone to say something that they consider to be untrue? Taken to its most hyperbolic extreme, it could be used as a form of psychological torture, like something out of 1984, where Winston is tortured for not accepting that four fingers being held up is five, or "Four Lights" from Star Trek.

To get one to renounce what they know to be true and accept whatever you say without question is probably the ultimate form of control and subjugation.

For emphasis: "taken to its most hyperbolic extreme".

edit: more realistically, you could say that transgender or gay people might feel like they are compelled to lie about who they are in order to fit in, or in certain circumstances. Surely, if we recognize this as psychologically damaging, then we should recognize all other types of forced lying to be similarly damaging.

I don't think so. If someone shows you their baby you say "how adorable, how beautiful" no matter how ugly the baby is. If you haven't learned to accept that by the time you're an adult you're going to live a miserable life.

That is just basic human decency, not being prig.

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