I’ve been waiting until after Christmas day to make this post, but some of our communities recently have had a lot of noise and upset over someone that uses neopronouns that most people are unfamiliar with.

So I want to make this clear. A persons pronouns are to be respected. This is true when the user is using neopronouns that you’re unfamiliar with. It’s true even if you think someone is trolling. Pronouns are not rewards for good behaviour. They aren’t only to be respected when you like the person you’re interacting with, or if their pronouns “make sense” to you. Trolls, spammers, twitter users, it doesn’t matter who they are, your options are to respect their pronouns, or to not engage with them.

I really want to re-iterate the importance of this. Gender diverse folk are undermined, invalidated and questioned at every step of our lives. As a community, we need to be working to undo that, not creating more of it, and that means there is no space for treating pronouns (including neopronouns) as a reward for good behaviour.

This isn’t a free reign for trolls and spammers. The rules still apply. Trolling, spamming, etc will continue to be dealt with, but it’s not an excuse to act as if respecting someones pronouns is optional.

  • Stern
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    1572 days ago

    Unless someones pronouns are in their username they’re getting a “they” from me. Nothing against xe/xim/xir but i ain’t checking every profile of every person I debate about whether Sonic would be tempted or double tempted by the One Ring.

    • @ThunderWhiskers@lemmy.world
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      -116 hours ago

      This is the only reasonable way to handle this situation. I’m all about making sure people are comfortable, but making-up words and then getting offended when people don’t use them properly is bonkers. I truly don’t mean to offend anyone, but this is getting out of hand.

    • katy ✨
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      652 days ago

      i always just use they/them as a default until i know the correct pronouns because it’s the most universally genetic anyway :3

      • Gormadt
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        82 days ago

        Personally I use they/them until I get corrected on it. It’s my default.

        It being my default of course means that a lot of the time I’ll keep using it even after being corrected. That’s not from a position of intolerance though, it’s from a position of habit.

        And also given the amount of people I engage with online I’m not going to remember every person I interact with, especially given how sparsely I actually respond to people and my response time to people.

        Basically y’all are a field of ever changing faces I’ll likely never see again let alone IRL, I’m going to stick to they/them for 99% of our interactions.

    • Hold on, I’m she/they.

      Now can we discuss this FASCINATING topic??? Do we think the one ring would hold multiple ring value? Would Sonic turn invisible or just absorb it? How does the ring affect sonic if it is absorbed? What happens if he collects 100 One Rings? I have so many questions.

      • JackbyDev
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        21 day ago

        Is the One Ring even categorically different from power rings?

      • Stern
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        2 days ago

        What about would happen if the rings forged for man, dwarves, and elves (19 in all) were collected by Sonic along with the One Ring? Sonic could be like… a super ring wraith.

        Then we put the Chaos Emeralds in the mix, and things get extra spicy.

        • @Xtallll@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          42 days ago

          It really depends on which sonic we are talking about, SEGA Genius Sonic, Sonic Adventures Sonic, one of the western animation Sonics, Anime Sonic, Live Action Sonic? If it’s Archie Comics Sonic then the power scale goes right out the window.

    • @MBM
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      112 days ago

      blahaj.zone is better about it, but much of Lemmy even just defaults to “he”

    • @germanatlas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      2 days ago

      That’s a fair problem, Lemmy and the mobile apps need a feature where you can see peoples pronouns beside their names. Voyager doesn’t even let me see anything besides someones username and instance, even on the profile page so I can’t even look for their pronouns even if I wanted