This was no joke the verbatim name of a comic I made in elementary school

It’s really funny going back and forth between lemmy and HN to compare the reactions

Can it be classified as a security feature if there is no identified security benefit?

Ironic considering these people literally want to murder us

You’re applying this way too personally. I am not talking about whether I personally would use someone’s neopronouns. I’m talking about whether it makes sense to expect them to be used. Plenty of things in society don’t make sense to do but unfortunately must be followed to signal various things, such as gender acceptance.

Anyways many of these issues have several “simple” solutions. I try to determine what is the right thing to do, not what is the easiest. It’s usually easy to accommodate someone-- using neopronouns or accepting gender-agnostic ones isn’t very hard, and both of these solutions happen daily for various people precisely because they are relatively easy-- the question is which one makes the most sense to push for societally. Since I don’t believe gender is relevant to most interactions, I would push for universal applicability of gender-agnostic terms.

TL;DR: There are multiple solutions that could “just” be implemented, why do you think the one you have chosen is the best?

Oh, I see.

“an mnemonic”

language processing brain center implodes

Right, but afaik neopronouns don’t have a specific gender they refer to, so using neopronouns instead of they/them isn’t any different regarding accommodating your gender identity, it’s only different in terms of accommodating your preferences for the language used to describe that gender. It is a signal of potential gender identity denial, but it’s such a low-power signal that any other signal should easily overpower it. It should be clear from someone’s other behaviors what they believe.

I’ve never actually met someone irl who uses neopronouns, so I haven’t been able to test how I would actually respond. I tend to use they/them pretty often, including as a replacement for he/she, so I would probably use that unless there was a very strong preference not to. If I did refuse to use a neopronoun for some reason, I’m still not sure that that would qualify as treating them more differently than I would be if I used the neopronouns-- either I would be breaking their preferences or my understanding/usage of the language, there would be no way to behave entirely the same as the situation itself is different. It would certainly be kinder of me to use the neopronouns and for that reason I probably would, but I would not actually believe that to be more correct than using “they”, so I’m not really sure.

Do neopronouns typically convey a specific gender identity? It would make more sense to use them if they did, but afaik there is no consistent mapping of neopronoun to gender identity, which makes the argument for using neopronouns instead of “they” kind of moot-- if they do not signify gender then you would not be affirming someone’s gender by using them, only their language preferences.

Personally I don’t believe language preference is something that must be accommodated in the same way that identity is-- for example I have met cis people who acknowledge that they are cis mechanically but for ideological reasons refuse to be called cis. This makes no sense to me; if the definition of a term is valid then the term itself is. Same goes for pronouns, if they/them is valid (which it always is, since it’s gender and plurality agnostic) then I don’t think it makes sense to deny its use or mandate the use of another term. It’s nice to accommodate someone’s pronoun preferences, but I would not consider it bigoted to use non-preferred terms which validate someone’s identity.

Right, but as I understand it you made a claim that using they/them as a singular gender neutral pronoun was bending the language, which isn’t correct. Unless you meant something else?

Oh sweet that would’ve been useful to know

All modern wireless infrastructure

HE KNOWS

This must be the most significant meta reference since what, the explainxkcd namedrop in the title text that one time?

Splendid, simply sublime-- OH GOOD HEAVENS I SPILLED THE COMPRESSION

It’s always fun to get a glimpse into how other people pronounce things with their usage of A vs AN. My favorite example is people who say “an historic”.

The year is 2839939. The last GIF vs JIF joke is made. The sun explodes, killing everyone, and ridding the universe of the joke forever.

Waiter! More pixels please!

Addendum: Of course, you could easily say that the purpose of a pronoun is also to denote gender, and that refusing to do so by being more vague is an insult; but I don’t think it’s a good direction to take the language to make gender more embedded in our language. Specifying gender should be optional for when it is necessary, not an obligation to be made whenever you refer to someone. They are more than just their gender identity, and needing to refer to it whenever you refer to them (other than by name) is counterproductive to maintaining that separation, and is also semantically simpler.

I would argue that using they/them is gendering someone correctly. They are gender-agnostic pronouns and can refer to any gender, combination of genders, or lack thereof. They are only potentially insulting in that they are less specific-- which is the entire point of a pronoun. I think if it’s clear from other interactions that you accept someone’s gender identity, it’s pretty dumb to be criticized for not being as specific as someone would want you to be when using a term that’s supposed to be general.

You are not bending the whole of the most widely-spoken language on Earth by yourself

Are you of the belief that singular “they” is not historically common?