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Comment by reify | Hacker News Reader

I have probably been living under a rather large stone. I dont watch TV or have any social media and had no idea of pronouns.

This article inspired me to find out what pronouns were/are.

What are they/them, xe/xem, ze/zim, sie/hir, and other gender-neutral pronouns?

Its so confusing.

https://www.them.us/story/gender-neutral-pronouns-101-they-t...

Due to the narcissistic nature of pronouns, I have decided that I am going to take an idea out of Freud's first book and steal it.

(I/super I/It)

that's me that is.

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It's only confusing if one is ignorant about pronouns. It's not hard in practice.

Person 1: Where is emy?

Person 2: Oh she, is over there. Points

Person 3: hey person 1, emy doesn't refer to herself as she..

Person 2: oh I'm sorry. I had no idea about Emy and their pronouns...Hey person 1, Emy is right over there.

I find it easier if you refer to people by their names (preferred or otherwise) and just default to gender neutral terms like "they/them". Because it not a hard thing to do.

This is how you get people hating you. Expecting special treatment from others.

What special treatment? Why are you so hateful over a little word? Is there nothing more important going on in your life? Nothing else to be upset about?

Corecting others. I'm not hateful, I don't like nitpicking and searching for problems when there aren't any. Yes, I believe pronouns are invented problem, and thus will dismiss this as not important. If you think is is hate, you haven't experienced hate.

A lot of people think the same, even if they don't express that online. The only person who hates anything here is you.

You literally talked about hating people over their pronouns in your previous post.

My bad, I expressed myself badly. I don't hate anybody, just indifferent. I usually refer to unfamiliar people more officially anyway, so this doesn't even affect me.

But I remember widespread cancel culture over issues like this, and I can't help but feel that it helped stoke the fire of hate which other people are expressing.

Don't you think the example in the OP is a much more egregious example of cancel culture?

Here's my personal opinion fwiw: I don't really care about pronouns either way. That being said, I find it silly that people get so worked up about them and I feel like it doesn't hurt me to just go along with people's small requests out of politeness, like I would with any number of other things.

Why choose that pronouns are the problem and not your reaction to them? It costs nothing to refer to someone how they want to be.

The example given contains an example of interrupting and correcting another person. You need to keep track of it, it cannot be inferred. I does cost something, even if a little.

correcting is part of human communication. it happens all the time, nothing personal.

Wastes people's time with useless interruptions for made up conventions.

Wearing a hat at all times and using thy/thee to refer to the second person singular is not even weird in this context, because it does not externalize pronpun usage onto others.

Sure, but we do that all the time for all sorts of made up conventions. We say "please" and "thank you". We ask people how they're doing as a greeting, when we don't care and they know we don't care.

It's useless, but it's also just basic common courtesy and politeness.

Probably, but I'd rather use please, thank you and how are you than learn a bunch of made up pronouns which make no sense to me and match each to a different person.

I get that it might feel like the rules you learned about how to refer to people are changing and that you might get chided for something you didn't even know what a "rule". Everyone feels that way. Even outside of the world of pronouns we make social faux pas and don't always really get the rules everyone else seems to be using. I know I have, giving unsolicited advice was a big social rule I had to learn the hard way.

My point is, I'd like to think we can rise to the challenge. If the rules made sense to you, do you think you would feel more comfortable engaging with them?

My point is that all human social norms are 100% made up, but we follow them, out of respect and trying to be nice to our fellow humans. Why not this one? It doesn't really hurt you :)

Would you get annoyed if someone said the same thing about your given name? If your name is Peter and someone called you Mike because they don’t care enough or are oddly stubborn and just want to refer to you how they want… it’s pretty damn annoying. It’s identity nullifying - a deliberately sent signal that I’m not willing to make a minimal effort to acknowledge your identity.

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