70 lines
4.4 KiB
Markdown
70 lines
4.4 KiB
Markdown
# Those scary pronouns
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<small>2021-08-22 | [@andrea](/@andrea)</small>
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So I stumbled upon an article on Medium called [“Demanding Pronouns”](https://medium.com/the-venting-machine/demanding-pronouns-b819ab23f5df).
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And while I normally wouldn't even bother to dignify such blatantly enbyphobic bullshit with a reply,
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this one is just so over the top asinine that I just have to pick my “favourite” parts and share them with a comment, even a brief one.
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And the first awful fragment is literally the first paragraph:
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> It seems everywhere I turn; I’m being asked about my pronouns. My answer?
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> Just refer to me in any way that makes you feel comfortable,
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> but don’t make me go through the torture of giving you my ‘she, her, hers’ during every interaction.
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> I’m a girl; I look like a girl — I’m a biological female. What else do you want from me?
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I could rant on and on about how important for trans people it is to normalise sharing pronouns,
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how it's just basic empathy to listen to their needs, how not everyone who “looks like a girl”
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is necessarily “a biological female”, or how pronouns are grammar, not biology,
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so her genitals are none of my business when I'm simply wondering how to refer to her.
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But that would just take the attention away from the most important word of this paragraph:
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> torture
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Yup, she calls it “torture” when someone… asks her a question. And not a deeply personal one, nor a complicated one.
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She's not being asked what her genitals are. She's not being asked her gender identity.
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Someone's literally just trying to establish the basis for the conversation by knowing how to talk to / about her.
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And the answer is literally two syllables!
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Yes, that question _might_ be tricky sometimes,
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but she's not a closeted trans person who could feel anxious trying to decide if the situation is safe enough
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to give someone their real pronouns. No. She's just a brat. A snowflake.
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And she's not even trying to keep her bigotry mild. She's starting her article off
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with probably the strongest possible word one could use to describe the situation: “torture”.
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You know, that thing that's forbidden by multiple international conventions and deemed a human rights abuse.
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And as for my other “favourite” part, it's this one:
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> Now that I’ve had my rant, I want to talk about the bigger picture here. I’m not just angry.
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> I’m writing this to fight for simplicity. This world is complicated enough.
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> Why are you trying to introduce even more confusion? One person wants to be
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> they/his, another they/them, another he/they, another xir/them— should I go on?
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>
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> There is no way in hell I’m going to remember all that for every single person I meet.
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> You can forget it. Call me old school, tell me that I’m stuck in my ways. I don’t care!
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> Just stop demanding something that I don’t want to do, or otherwise face your wrath.
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> Fine, be angry with me, but just leave me be!
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Oh no! That image of the world sounds horrible indeed! How are we supposed to survive any social interaction,
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if we're being forced to remember tiny bits of information about the people we talk to?!
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Well, other than names, of course. Asking someone their name (and trying not to forget it) is just basic politeness.
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And it's very handy, it lets you know how to call a person.
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But names are very different from pronouns!
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For example, you need to know someone's _name_ to form a sentence like “_Sylvia_ wrote a transphobic rant…”,
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but you need to know someone's _pronouns_ to form a sentence like “…and I absolutely hated _her_ transphobic rant”.
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See? Completely different.
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Can you imagine such a horrible world, a world where you meet people, and they _torture_ you with questions like
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“What's your name?”, and they even tell you theirs, and they even expect you to remember it?
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I know! Totally unbearable!
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Well, Sylvia is living in a world like that. One where people have the _audacity_ to ask her what she wants to be called.
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And when I see her _terrible struggle_, I can only say one thing:
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<iframe src="https://giphy.com/embed/J8FZIm9VoBU6Q" width="480" height="332" frameBorder="0" class="giphy-embed" allowFullScreen style="max-width: 100%"></iframe>
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<p><a href="https://giphy.com/gifs/reaction-community-good-J8FZIm9VoBU6Q">via GIPHY</a></p>
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