Multiple people have been tripped up by my claims in a recent post that “demanding that people call you by incorrect pronouns counts as bullying and harassment.” This is in answer to that.
I think your pain is real. But I don't see how this is any different than your brain saying "Person X is bullying me into calling them David, which I know is False!" I don't even know what it would mean for that to be False, outside of your brain saying it. Or at least, things I can think of that False could mean seem equally socially constructed to things that True could mean. (I'm thinking of a woman owning property in Osirion not being considered a woman anymore, as a fictional example.)
There exist people who disagree with you or want their pronouns respected who also care about your pain. I've certainly talked to people about the cognitive load of ideopronouns and the kinds of people that makes life harder for. But you seem to have an axiomatic idea of what these words are allowed to be used for , and then get mad at other people for breaking your rules, and reframe this rules disjunction as them being lying bullies.
People ask me why saying "they/them" can be painful, and those "rules" are the reason for it. I'm trying to explain the genesis of the discomfort/pain, rather than saying they are the rules they must use themselves.
I get mad at people not for "breaking" my rules, but rather when they attack me and attempt to cause social and emotional pain because I don't use the words they want me to use. Like I said, I have no issues with people who aren't trying to control my life and destroy/damage me. That's what makes them bullies. Not whether or not they agree with me about linguistic rules. This whole conversation began when someone objected to my being aghast that middle schoolers were threatened with serious institutional harm (expulsion, possible reputation as sexual harrassers) because they wouldn't use They/Them pronouns when someone demanded them.
I felt hurt reading this article and I think it's worth it to try to explain why.
Most of your points I agree with and actually sum up pretty well why I stopped using they/them pronouns. I especially appreciate you pointing out the loss of conversational spontaneity it can cause.
This is the hurtful passage.
"If you aren’t ambiguous, then you are asking me to affirm every time I refer to you that there exists a neuter sex in the human species, and that you are one of these neuters. This is a lie, and I decline to lie."
It's pretty simple what's happening actually. I, a non-binary person, know I am real, but you confidently declare I am not. I do not ask that you lie and say you are any less sure than you are. For now, I will just acknowledge that this state of affairs will make peacebuilding difficult.
I think this may be a difference in interpretation? I don't deny you exist. I know quite a few NB people. One of the most important persons in my life is non-binary. She doesn't ask me to use they/them pronouns, and she's obviously female. It's a cause of many problems in her life. Obviously people who feel nonbinary exist, and I have no problems with any such feelings or with their existence. But equally obviously, our species doesn't have a neuter sex. Or at least, I've never seen anyone present evidence for one, and I think it would be big news if someone had.
I admit some confusion with your usage of the term "neuter sex". Basically every non-binary person I know, myself included, would say that it is their gender which they are asking you to affirm, not their sex. Is this a distinction you acknowledge?
Yes, it's a very big distinction. As I detailed in https://deathisbad.substack.com/p/there-are-infinite-genders-there I don't use pronouns to refer to gender, because I think this is an impossible task. Also, I'm not a therapist, it's not my job to affirm someone's gender. If they can't have a gender without everyone they interact with constantly affirming their gender, they probably aren't actually mature enough to have a gender yet. Making one's sense of self reliant upon steady praise from others is a horrible trap that we should help people escape from. :(
(I don't know what the social norms on substack are wrt commenting on old posts, sorry if this violates them) Is it "lying" to not say "peace be upon him" before referring to an Islamic prophet? I'm guessing you don't think so. You know fully well the person you're talking about is considered a prophet in the Islamic religion, you just don't think one is obligated to say "peace be upon him" before the names of Muslim prophets. Similarly, which set of chromosomes/gametes/genitalia one has may be an objective fact, but what isn't is the idea that this information is so important it must be explicitly acknowledged literally every time one refers to them in the third person. Gendered pronouns are, frankly, a Byzantine relic that a better coordinated society would've abandoned long ago. If we need a way to differentiate which person pronouns are referring to, we might as well find a better one anyway, given how this is still an unsolved problem anytime one needs to talk about two people of the same sex interacting. I *would* just use they/them for everyone, but this would piss off even more people than using whichever pronouns meet my intuitive observation of their sex.
This post zeroes in well on the core of the issue. Lying. Let me preface everything else I'm about to say with that I believe the pain you feel is real, non-trivial and not to be glossed over. To a degree, I feel it to, when I speak something I know to be untruthful (desire for truth is one reason people end up here, after all), though I think the effect is stronger in you.
But why would a pronoun be a lie? From this post, I get the impression that in the end, it all comes down to "when I was young, this part of my brain was hooked up to that part of my brain and it took". Everything else develops from there.
I find it peculiar to leave this as the ultimate justification for something, especially in a rationalist context. We know human brains are flawed and easily impressionable, we make a hobby or even an identity out of learning about that and questioning what our brains tell us and why.
Just accepting that as an axiom and reasoning from there seems... strange. And ultimately counter what I think we're trying to do here.
Of course I can't show you any maths or microscopy as evidence that pronouns work this way instead of that way. But neither can you. Because ultimately, all of language is only what we make of it. Linguistics can tell you how language is used and talk about patterns therein, but there is no amount of maths or science we can do to find out what the "correct" use of language is, because there is no such thing.
In the absence of a scientific result, I go with what seems to me as the kindest approach, just going with what people say they'd like me to say. The same thing I (and I suspect, both of us) already do for names. If someone says to me that their name is 'Stefan' but they go by 'Steve', I don't consider calling them Steve a lie. I don't think you would either, please correct me if I am wrong on this.
For me, I don't see any difference between that and using the pronouns someone has asked for. I appreciate that your brain is telling you that using they/them for someone you still clearly categorise as male of female would objectively be a lie, but.... why is that different from other outputs of your brain that you would normally be able to reason about?
"My brain intuitively tells me that this is incorrect and even knowing there is no objectively correct answer, I don't want to change my mind because a) I've always believed that! or b) then the wokes would win!" seems so very very strange and unlike you.
To be clear, I'm not telling you "shut up and use the pronouns", I'm not here for that and I can also tell it wouldn't work. I'm asking why this is case is apparently (?!) axiomatic.
And I want you to know (again, for your own sake of truth and understanding, not as a reason to force a certain behaviour), be aware that from the other end of this conversation, what you do is not understood as a principled stance on truth. On the contrary, actually. It appears that you're going out of your way to hurt people who showed some vulnerability.
You can tell it hurts people even just by reading other entries in this comment section. I'm not saying your pain is worth more or less than theirs. I'm also not saying that you don't care about their pain.
But I am saying that their pain is as real as yours, they're not trolls and maybe their pain is reason enough to honestly re-evaluate why you consider your own intuition on this unquestionably factual and theirs only "pretend-time".
> I appreciate that your brain is telling you that using they/them for someone you still clearly categorise as male of female would objectively be a lie, but.... why is that different from other outputs of your brain that you would normally be able to reason about?
> "My brain intuitively tells me that this is incorrect and even knowing there is no objectively correct answer, I don't want to change my mind because a) I've always believed that! or b) then the wokes would win!" seems so very very strange and unlike you.
This isn't quite on the mark. I agree that pronouns could have been hooked up to my brain in many different ways. We could have pronouns that hook up to skin color instead of sex. Or pronouns that hook up to social status. That part is arbitrary, and it's annoying that this is how my brain was wired.
But sex is not arbitrary. As you're already aware, I dislike males, and I dislike being male. I associate males with violence, illogic, and physical ugliness. I do not want to be associated with that. If I tell someone "I don't use he/him pronouns, call me they/them" are they suddenly unable to see that I am male? If they have the same prejudices I do, will those prejudices disappear?
No matter what pronouns I demand someone use, it will not change my sex. It will not change that people can easily guess my sex. It seems I'm asking people to hide the fact that they know I am male when they are speaking to others about me. Screw that. No one should have to go around hiding the fact that I'm male from people they trust. I want others to know it up front, so if they're going to reject me for my sex, they can do so as early as possible. Imagine someone knowing that their friend had intentionally hidden my sex from them. And that they did so because I *wanted* that hidden from them. Ugh. Let's just accept that this is one of my flaws, and we both will cope with it as best we can, without elaborate fictions.
> from the other end of this conversation, what you do is not understood as a principled stance on truth. On the contrary, actually. It appears that you're going out of your way to hurt people who showed some vulnerability.
> But I am saying that their pain is as real as yours, they're not trolls and maybe their pain is reason enough to honestly re-evaluate why you consider your own intuition on this unquestionably factual and theirs only "pretend-time".
I believe they're in pain, but I also believe they're making things worse. :( Anyone who thinks I'm *going out of my way to hurt people* doesn't care about understanding other people or cultures, they just wanna dunk. Maybe the pain they cause is reason enough for them to honestly re-evaluate what convinced them that this moral framework is worth so much harm.
> "I believe they're in pain, but I also believe they're making things worse. :("
Good, this is already a step up from calling them uncaring trolls. The deaths of Narcissa and Lily can both be sad at the same time. For the second half of the sentence, see below, but irrespectively, I am glad we made this step at least.
> "I want others to know it up front, so if they're going to reject me for my sex, they can do so as early as possible."
Well and good. What you have written here is a perfectly solid set of reasons why you want to keep using he/him pronouns. And good on you, you can keep using them!
But whatever your reasoning is, other people can have different feelings and opinions on the topic, right?
But more importantly:
You say people who ask you for non-ambiguous they/them pronouns "demand I bend the knee and proclaim that there exists a neuter sex, and They are of it" (therefore demanding you lie and inflict pain on yourself).
But I can assure you - on my rationalist's honour, if that is worth something to you -, that is (generally) not what is happening. They are not asking you to lie, they are just asking you to call them by a certain set of pronouns (again, as a matter of politeness, just like someone might ask or even insist to be called 'Steve' instead of 'Stefan' or 'Bill' instead of 'William').
The connection that this neutral pronoun must mean neutral sex is something (dare I call it a bias?) that is happening on your end. It is not written in independent reality. I absolutely believe you that it strongly feels like the two are the same; it's been ingrained in your head like that for decades. But you can rationally see that there is no linguistics microscope that we can put a pronoun under to see what the scientific answer is, right? There simply is no one empirically correct answer here. There is just what the words mean to people. That can change, in fact it does so all the time. And we are currently at a place in history where such a change is happening around us.
I completely believe you that you are indeed experiencing the pain you talk about. And I don't want to diminish it or say it doesn't matter or to suck it up or any of that. I also don't want to say that what the word means to you doesn't count or is somehow less valid.
I only want to point out that a request for a set of pronouns is - socially - a request for a verbal courtesy, an ask to be treated like someone who counts. It is not a demand to acknowledge an untruth.
For your sake, for their sake, and maybe most importantly simply because I think it to be true and we both care deeply about the truth.
The situation isn't hopeless, either. The incontrovertible pronoun-sex connection might be a bias, but we know how to deal with biases. We have done it before and we can do it again. That's what we're here for, after all.
No Dude. I have a whole bag of Nope here, and it's got your name on it.
You have offended me, and I'll be as civil as possible when explaining why, but I am agitated here.
1 - I don't respect people who are performatively hurt on behalf of an ideal victim they fetishize.
2 - There are bad actors in your midst, and the more you cover for them, the more they are drawn to your movement and pollute your ranks. You think it's an accident the Catholic church ended up with that many pedophile priests?
3 - I don't care what people call themselves. That's their business. I care about what happens to me if I don't submit to your demands. You can play the poor put-upon waif who just wants the mean people to stop beating him up for funsies, uwu, please help me senpai. I'm not blind to the dagger being held in your other hand.
Like a complete idiot I believed, for a few weeks, that someone actually cared about why someone like myself suffers a burden by these requests, and why I'm unwilling to shoulder that burden for people who don't actually need special accommodation. Foolishly I explained why I am hurt , and why I resent those who take advantage. Like an utter moron I was surprised that this is the moralizing I'm subjected to instead.
Tell me, what are the consequences for me if I choose to stick with he/him for Todd The Burley Lumberjack, rather than the they/them that Todd requested? Do you shake your head in disapproval at Todd for making such a request of me? Or do you shake you head in disapproval at me for not honoring that request? After everything I've put forth if it's the latter then you are a bigot and I'm glad to be rid of you. If you try to paint me as an unreasonable monster then you never cared for my experience at all, and were only collecting ammo.
> "you can rationally see that there is no linguistics microscope that we can put a pronoun under to see what the scientific answer is, right?"
are you kidding me? Did we not have way too many hours wasted on Twitter back-and-forth, and two extra-long blog posts, detailing how pronouns work? Pronouns refer to sex, specifically because it is binary and easy to observe, and not to gender, which is infinite. If you disagree with that, then disagree with it. But don't pretend you don't know that this is my position, you gas-lighting malingerer.
Let me start with the fact that I never intended to hurt you with what I said. Not then and not before.
But don't think that you're the only person with sensibilities in this conversation that can be offended. Through all of this, I have heard you call dear friends and family of mine a cult, bullies, trolls, authoritarians who care about nobody but themselves and worse. And I've been standing here and taking it, for the sake of continued conversation. Ideologically charged discussions from two ends of a spectrum are difficult, after all.
I must say I'm a bit disillusioned by you apparently not being willing to make the same concession.
Along the same line of thinking, the idea that I would need to be collecting ammo seems pretty ridiculous to me. Ammo for what? If what I wanted was just any reason to call you a bad person to my 63 twitter followers, I could have done that months ago, without having this difficult truth-finding conversation with you first. I haven't done it because I don't think it's true. So I'm not exactly sure what you think I'm going to do with the dagger you are so certain I am hiding.
I am also unsure exactly what my offence is supposed to be here, that it draws this level of flak from you after all the rapport we built up over the past months.
All that I have done is calling you out on something you believe that I believe to be false and imply that your brain is biased in this regard. This should not be forbidden, especially in this space.
> "Did we not have way too many hours wasted on Twitter back-and-forth, and two extra-long blog posts, detailing how pronouns work?"
We did have a lot of discussion in those places, yes, I even went back for this and checked every interaction we had since June 1st. We talked about a variety of topics: semantics of the category "gender" and transitioning chief amongst them, and also pronouns, but the content to "how pronouns work in general" (as opposed to how we, in particular, prefer to use them) was fairly limited.
I understand your position that you think personal pronouns in English always refer to apparent sex and only that. I just don't think that's factually true.
And now, in this comment section, you say that if I turn up my nose at you for he/him-ing Todd the burly Lumberjack I'm a bigot and you're glad to be rid of me. After witnessing at least two months of me not doing that despite ample opportunity. I don't know why.
If you have evidence that personal pronouns do and must not only generally but always work the way that you described, if you actually have a metaphorical linguistics microscope and it does show what you say, then I'm happy to reevaluate my position. But if you don't (as I suspect, because that is generally not how I understand language works) then you must be open to the possibility that the way you feel about it is not as universal as it feels to you.
Hi. Sorry for the inflamed response. It was a bad week for me, and then the perceived attack in your comments triggered a defensive reaction. I'm not going to continue this much longer, but I figured you're due some explanation, so you aren't left bewildered.
From the comment that made me flip out a bit--
> Good, this is already a step up from calling them uncaring trolls.
This statement asserts that I used to say that vulnerable defenseless people are uncaring trolls, and that you raised me up from that benighted position. I explicitly said of the trolls that "There are people who don’t care the least bit about the pain they cause others. They either think that those of us feeling such pain deserve it, or that science says I don’t actually feel it" with a link to someone doing exactly that. Moreover, I have met in my personal life people who demand They/Them pronouns under threat of social attack who simply don't have dysphoric pain (or who, if they've discovered such pain, have induced it in themselves, to which I don't have sympathy).
So the statement is a malicious lie meant to paint me as a monster that needs to be destroyed. This may not be how you meant it, but statements like this are used for this purpose all the time, and it's how I perceived it, due to past experience.
> you can keep using them! But whatever your reasoning is, other people can have different feelings and opinions on the topic, right?
This statement implies I have some sort of power to deny people the ability to refer to themselves with whatever pronouns they want. This is ridiculous on several levels - it assumes I care what someone calls themselves, it assumes I would suppress those who don't agree with me what they should be called, and it assumes I have the ability to do this. If these things were true, they would be a reasonable rallying cry to convince people I should be destroyed. Not only are the not true, they are the opposite of the truth. It is others that care that my opinions don't match their opinions, they want to force me to conform to their opinions, and they literally try to compel me by using the power at their disposal. It's straight up DARVO and thus I perceive it as naked aggression.
> But I can assure you [...] They are not asking you to lie, they are just asking you to call them by a certain set of pronouns
I spent a ridiculous amount of time explaining how asking me to use those pronouns is literally asking me to lie. Your assurance here is just demonstration that you don't care about anything I've said. This is what leads me to suspect you are here for some other reason,. Based on the previous two items, I concluded this reason is a hostile one.
> The connection that this neutral pronoun must mean neutral sex is something (dare I call it a bias?) that is happening on your end. It is not written in independent reality.
I already explained why it is obvious to me that English pronouns correspond to sex. And how this has implications regarding neutral pronouns and the sex of the subject(s). You either don't care about the things I said, or are feigning ignorance. Why? See previous.
> But you can rationally see that there is no linguistics microscope that we can put a pronoun under to see what the scientific answer is, right?
This is infuriating, because I said exactly this. I said there are languages were pronouns refer to social status rather than sex. And one where they refer to owners of objects rather than sex! You bringing up that language is a construct as if I didn't literally say exactly this and give examples implies that either you don't remember I did this and you assume I'm an idiot, or you want to give the impression that this is the case. Neither one thrills me.
> I only want to point out that a request for a set of pronouns is - socially - a request for a verbal courtesy, an ask to be treated like someone who counts. It is not a demand to acknowledge an untruth.
You end with a repetition of the idea that I didn't explain why this is precisely a demand to repeat a lie, for me. And by again reasserting that I am a monster that denies the most basic courtesy to the innocent victims of my violence. That I am one who won't even acknowledge that *other people matter.*
Seriously, GTFO with that. *I* don't show respect? You're the one doing everything you can to portray me as an inhuman demon.
This was my reaction at the time. I stand by my claims that these are the implications of what you said. They may not be what you intended, you may have simply not realized that this is what your words were saying. If so, I saw malice where there was none. However the teeth are still there, and I still saw them. Forgive me if I recoiled too quickly, I've been bitten before.
> Through all of this, I have heard you call dear friends and family of mine a cult, bullies, trolls, authoritarians who care about nobody but themselves and worse.
Honestly, people are often caught up in movements with only the best intentions. Everyone believes that what they are doing is for the greater good. I don't believe I've directly attacked anyone you know. If I've said that *a movement they belong to* is cultish, often bullies/trolls those that it views as undesirables, and tends towards callous authoritarianism, that is a call to examine the movement they support.
No one is required to do any such examination, of course. Certainly not on my request. Who's got that kinda time? But I suspect even people who have doubts about the movement will avoid any such examination, because they fear the consequences of any dissent. Even when the voiced dissent is to improve the movement where they think it has erred in factual matters or deployed unsavory tactics. I think such a fear is important evidence in itself.
> Along the same line of thinking, the idea that I would need to be collecting ammo seems pretty ridiculous to me. Ammo for what? If what I wanted was just any reason to call you a bad person to my 63 twitter followers, I could have done that months ago, without having this difficult truth-finding conversation with you first. I haven't done it because I don't think it's true. So I'm not exactly sure what you think I'm going to do with the dagger you are so certain I am hiding.
I begrudgingly admit this is a fair point. I'm gun-shy due to some pretty painful past experiences with people I trusted a lot. Sorry.
> the content to "how pronouns work in general" (as opposed to how we, in particular, prefer to use them) was fairly limited.
In general pronouns just take the place of proper nouns in order to be lower-resolution & lower-cognitive-load simplifications. I thought that was obvious?
I didn't find it worth responding to, for two reasons. First, you quote something that isn't in the link. You say it's from a relevant link, but don't provide this link. But secondly, and far more importantly, my link to wikipedia was not any sort of argument that pronouns refer to sex! It was a link to English third-person singular pronouns for humans. The link is there because "third person singular pronouns for humans" is a little bit technical, and I was giving a reference as to what those are so we're all on the same page as I give my argument. It was in the very first line, and was a basic definition of terms. "This is what pronouns are." The argument that pronouns refer to sex comes after that, in my words, in the following paragraphs. To assume that I would try to use wikipedia(!) to demonstrate why I think pronouns refer to sex is kinda nuts.
That being said, why do people concerned with gender stuff care about what pronouns they are referred to if pronouns don't reference perceived sex? This is literally why they care.
> you must be open to the possibility that the way you feel about it is not as universal as it feels to you.
I don't really care if it's universal. I care about if I'm being forced to conform to a regime that wants to alter the language for their purposes. If I'm not threatened for not adopting the newspeak, I don't particularly care what people do with their ingroups.
I think your pain is real. But I don't see how this is any different than your brain saying "Person X is bullying me into calling them David, which I know is False!" I don't even know what it would mean for that to be False, outside of your brain saying it. Or at least, things I can think of that False could mean seem equally socially constructed to things that True could mean. (I'm thinking of a woman owning property in Osirion not being considered a woman anymore, as a fictional example.)
There exist people who disagree with you or want their pronouns respected who also care about your pain. I've certainly talked to people about the cognitive load of ideopronouns and the kinds of people that makes life harder for. But you seem to have an axiomatic idea of what these words are allowed to be used for , and then get mad at other people for breaking your rules, and reframe this rules disjunction as them being lying bullies.
People ask me why saying "they/them" can be painful, and those "rules" are the reason for it. I'm trying to explain the genesis of the discomfort/pain, rather than saying they are the rules they must use themselves.
I get mad at people not for "breaking" my rules, but rather when they attack me and attempt to cause social and emotional pain because I don't use the words they want me to use. Like I said, I have no issues with people who aren't trying to control my life and destroy/damage me. That's what makes them bullies. Not whether or not they agree with me about linguistic rules. This whole conversation began when someone objected to my being aghast that middle schoolers were threatened with serious institutional harm (expulsion, possible reputation as sexual harrassers) because they wouldn't use They/Them pronouns when someone demanded them.
I felt hurt reading this article and I think it's worth it to try to explain why.
Most of your points I agree with and actually sum up pretty well why I stopped using they/them pronouns. I especially appreciate you pointing out the loss of conversational spontaneity it can cause.
This is the hurtful passage.
"If you aren’t ambiguous, then you are asking me to affirm every time I refer to you that there exists a neuter sex in the human species, and that you are one of these neuters. This is a lie, and I decline to lie."
It's pretty simple what's happening actually. I, a non-binary person, know I am real, but you confidently declare I am not. I do not ask that you lie and say you are any less sure than you are. For now, I will just acknowledge that this state of affairs will make peacebuilding difficult.
Hello, and thanks for the comment!
I think this may be a difference in interpretation? I don't deny you exist. I know quite a few NB people. One of the most important persons in my life is non-binary. She doesn't ask me to use they/them pronouns, and she's obviously female. It's a cause of many problems in her life. Obviously people who feel nonbinary exist, and I have no problems with any such feelings or with their existence. But equally obviously, our species doesn't have a neuter sex. Or at least, I've never seen anyone present evidence for one, and I think it would be big news if someone had.
Hello again. Happy Friday.
I admit some confusion with your usage of the term "neuter sex". Basically every non-binary person I know, myself included, would say that it is their gender which they are asking you to affirm, not their sex. Is this a distinction you acknowledge?
Yes, it's a very big distinction. As I detailed in https://deathisbad.substack.com/p/there-are-infinite-genders-there I don't use pronouns to refer to gender, because I think this is an impossible task. Also, I'm not a therapist, it's not my job to affirm someone's gender. If they can't have a gender without everyone they interact with constantly affirming their gender, they probably aren't actually mature enough to have a gender yet. Making one's sense of self reliant upon steady praise from others is a horrible trap that we should help people escape from. :(
Oof. You lost me, too much disrespect in there. Maybe another day.
(I don't know what the social norms on substack are wrt commenting on old posts, sorry if this violates them) Is it "lying" to not say "peace be upon him" before referring to an Islamic prophet? I'm guessing you don't think so. You know fully well the person you're talking about is considered a prophet in the Islamic religion, you just don't think one is obligated to say "peace be upon him" before the names of Muslim prophets. Similarly, which set of chromosomes/gametes/genitalia one has may be an objective fact, but what isn't is the idea that this information is so important it must be explicitly acknowledged literally every time one refers to them in the third person. Gendered pronouns are, frankly, a Byzantine relic that a better coordinated society would've abandoned long ago. If we need a way to differentiate which person pronouns are referring to, we might as well find a better one anyway, given how this is still an unsolved problem anytime one needs to talk about two people of the same sex interacting. I *would* just use they/them for everyone, but this would piss off even more people than using whichever pronouns meet my intuitive observation of their sex.
This post zeroes in well on the core of the issue. Lying. Let me preface everything else I'm about to say with that I believe the pain you feel is real, non-trivial and not to be glossed over. To a degree, I feel it to, when I speak something I know to be untruthful (desire for truth is one reason people end up here, after all), though I think the effect is stronger in you.
But why would a pronoun be a lie? From this post, I get the impression that in the end, it all comes down to "when I was young, this part of my brain was hooked up to that part of my brain and it took". Everything else develops from there.
I find it peculiar to leave this as the ultimate justification for something, especially in a rationalist context. We know human brains are flawed and easily impressionable, we make a hobby or even an identity out of learning about that and questioning what our brains tell us and why.
Just accepting that as an axiom and reasoning from there seems... strange. And ultimately counter what I think we're trying to do here.
Of course I can't show you any maths or microscopy as evidence that pronouns work this way instead of that way. But neither can you. Because ultimately, all of language is only what we make of it. Linguistics can tell you how language is used and talk about patterns therein, but there is no amount of maths or science we can do to find out what the "correct" use of language is, because there is no such thing.
In the absence of a scientific result, I go with what seems to me as the kindest approach, just going with what people say they'd like me to say. The same thing I (and I suspect, both of us) already do for names. If someone says to me that their name is 'Stefan' but they go by 'Steve', I don't consider calling them Steve a lie. I don't think you would either, please correct me if I am wrong on this.
For me, I don't see any difference between that and using the pronouns someone has asked for. I appreciate that your brain is telling you that using they/them for someone you still clearly categorise as male of female would objectively be a lie, but.... why is that different from other outputs of your brain that you would normally be able to reason about?
"My brain intuitively tells me that this is incorrect and even knowing there is no objectively correct answer, I don't want to change my mind because a) I've always believed that! or b) then the wokes would win!" seems so very very strange and unlike you.
To be clear, I'm not telling you "shut up and use the pronouns", I'm not here for that and I can also tell it wouldn't work. I'm asking why this is case is apparently (?!) axiomatic.
And I want you to know (again, for your own sake of truth and understanding, not as a reason to force a certain behaviour), be aware that from the other end of this conversation, what you do is not understood as a principled stance on truth. On the contrary, actually. It appears that you're going out of your way to hurt people who showed some vulnerability.
You can tell it hurts people even just by reading other entries in this comment section. I'm not saying your pain is worth more or less than theirs. I'm also not saying that you don't care about their pain.
But I am saying that their pain is as real as yours, they're not trolls and maybe their pain is reason enough to honestly re-evaluate why you consider your own intuition on this unquestionably factual and theirs only "pretend-time".
> I appreciate that your brain is telling you that using they/them for someone you still clearly categorise as male of female would objectively be a lie, but.... why is that different from other outputs of your brain that you would normally be able to reason about?
> "My brain intuitively tells me that this is incorrect and even knowing there is no objectively correct answer, I don't want to change my mind because a) I've always believed that! or b) then the wokes would win!" seems so very very strange and unlike you.
This isn't quite on the mark. I agree that pronouns could have been hooked up to my brain in many different ways. We could have pronouns that hook up to skin color instead of sex. Or pronouns that hook up to social status. That part is arbitrary, and it's annoying that this is how my brain was wired.
But sex is not arbitrary. As you're already aware, I dislike males, and I dislike being male. I associate males with violence, illogic, and physical ugliness. I do not want to be associated with that. If I tell someone "I don't use he/him pronouns, call me they/them" are they suddenly unable to see that I am male? If they have the same prejudices I do, will those prejudices disappear?
No matter what pronouns I demand someone use, it will not change my sex. It will not change that people can easily guess my sex. It seems I'm asking people to hide the fact that they know I am male when they are speaking to others about me. Screw that. No one should have to go around hiding the fact that I'm male from people they trust. I want others to know it up front, so if they're going to reject me for my sex, they can do so as early as possible. Imagine someone knowing that their friend had intentionally hidden my sex from them. And that they did so because I *wanted* that hidden from them. Ugh. Let's just accept that this is one of my flaws, and we both will cope with it as best we can, without elaborate fictions.
> from the other end of this conversation, what you do is not understood as a principled stance on truth. On the contrary, actually. It appears that you're going out of your way to hurt people who showed some vulnerability.
> But I am saying that their pain is as real as yours, they're not trolls and maybe their pain is reason enough to honestly re-evaluate why you consider your own intuition on this unquestionably factual and theirs only "pretend-time".
I believe they're in pain, but I also believe they're making things worse. :( Anyone who thinks I'm *going out of my way to hurt people* doesn't care about understanding other people or cultures, they just wanna dunk. Maybe the pain they cause is reason enough for them to honestly re-evaluate what convinced them that this moral framework is worth so much harm.
> "I believe they're in pain, but I also believe they're making things worse. :("
Good, this is already a step up from calling them uncaring trolls. The deaths of Narcissa and Lily can both be sad at the same time. For the second half of the sentence, see below, but irrespectively, I am glad we made this step at least.
> "I want others to know it up front, so if they're going to reject me for my sex, they can do so as early as possible."
Well and good. What you have written here is a perfectly solid set of reasons why you want to keep using he/him pronouns. And good on you, you can keep using them!
But whatever your reasoning is, other people can have different feelings and opinions on the topic, right?
But more importantly:
You say people who ask you for non-ambiguous they/them pronouns "demand I bend the knee and proclaim that there exists a neuter sex, and They are of it" (therefore demanding you lie and inflict pain on yourself).
But I can assure you - on my rationalist's honour, if that is worth something to you -, that is (generally) not what is happening. They are not asking you to lie, they are just asking you to call them by a certain set of pronouns (again, as a matter of politeness, just like someone might ask or even insist to be called 'Steve' instead of 'Stefan' or 'Bill' instead of 'William').
The connection that this neutral pronoun must mean neutral sex is something (dare I call it a bias?) that is happening on your end. It is not written in independent reality. I absolutely believe you that it strongly feels like the two are the same; it's been ingrained in your head like that for decades. But you can rationally see that there is no linguistics microscope that we can put a pronoun under to see what the scientific answer is, right? There simply is no one empirically correct answer here. There is just what the words mean to people. That can change, in fact it does so all the time. And we are currently at a place in history where such a change is happening around us.
I completely believe you that you are indeed experiencing the pain you talk about. And I don't want to diminish it or say it doesn't matter or to suck it up or any of that. I also don't want to say that what the word means to you doesn't count or is somehow less valid.
I only want to point out that a request for a set of pronouns is - socially - a request for a verbal courtesy, an ask to be treated like someone who counts. It is not a demand to acknowledge an untruth.
For your sake, for their sake, and maybe most importantly simply because I think it to be true and we both care deeply about the truth.
The situation isn't hopeless, either. The incontrovertible pronoun-sex connection might be a bias, but we know how to deal with biases. We have done it before and we can do it again. That's what we're here for, after all.
No Dude. I have a whole bag of Nope here, and it's got your name on it.
You have offended me, and I'll be as civil as possible when explaining why, but I am agitated here.
1 - I don't respect people who are performatively hurt on behalf of an ideal victim they fetishize.
2 - There are bad actors in your midst, and the more you cover for them, the more they are drawn to your movement and pollute your ranks. You think it's an accident the Catholic church ended up with that many pedophile priests?
3 - I don't care what people call themselves. That's their business. I care about what happens to me if I don't submit to your demands. You can play the poor put-upon waif who just wants the mean people to stop beating him up for funsies, uwu, please help me senpai. I'm not blind to the dagger being held in your other hand.
Like a complete idiot I believed, for a few weeks, that someone actually cared about why someone like myself suffers a burden by these requests, and why I'm unwilling to shoulder that burden for people who don't actually need special accommodation. Foolishly I explained why I am hurt , and why I resent those who take advantage. Like an utter moron I was surprised that this is the moralizing I'm subjected to instead.
Tell me, what are the consequences for me if I choose to stick with he/him for Todd The Burley Lumberjack, rather than the they/them that Todd requested? Do you shake your head in disapproval at Todd for making such a request of me? Or do you shake you head in disapproval at me for not honoring that request? After everything I've put forth if it's the latter then you are a bigot and I'm glad to be rid of you. If you try to paint me as an unreasonable monster then you never cared for my experience at all, and were only collecting ammo.
> "you can rationally see that there is no linguistics microscope that we can put a pronoun under to see what the scientific answer is, right?"
are you kidding me? Did we not have way too many hours wasted on Twitter back-and-forth, and two extra-long blog posts, detailing how pronouns work? Pronouns refer to sex, specifically because it is binary and easy to observe, and not to gender, which is infinite. If you disagree with that, then disagree with it. But don't pretend you don't know that this is my position, you gas-lighting malingerer.
Okay, so, multiple things.
Let me start with the fact that I never intended to hurt you with what I said. Not then and not before.
But don't think that you're the only person with sensibilities in this conversation that can be offended. Through all of this, I have heard you call dear friends and family of mine a cult, bullies, trolls, authoritarians who care about nobody but themselves and worse. And I've been standing here and taking it, for the sake of continued conversation. Ideologically charged discussions from two ends of a spectrum are difficult, after all.
I must say I'm a bit disillusioned by you apparently not being willing to make the same concession.
Along the same line of thinking, the idea that I would need to be collecting ammo seems pretty ridiculous to me. Ammo for what? If what I wanted was just any reason to call you a bad person to my 63 twitter followers, I could have done that months ago, without having this difficult truth-finding conversation with you first. I haven't done it because I don't think it's true. So I'm not exactly sure what you think I'm going to do with the dagger you are so certain I am hiding.
I am also unsure exactly what my offence is supposed to be here, that it draws this level of flak from you after all the rapport we built up over the past months.
All that I have done is calling you out on something you believe that I believe to be false and imply that your brain is biased in this regard. This should not be forbidden, especially in this space.
> "Did we not have way too many hours wasted on Twitter back-and-forth, and two extra-long blog posts, detailing how pronouns work?"
We did have a lot of discussion in those places, yes, I even went back for this and checked every interaction we had since June 1st. We talked about a variety of topics: semantics of the category "gender" and transitioning chief amongst them, and also pronouns, but the content to "how pronouns work in general" (as opposed to how we, in particular, prefer to use them) was fairly limited.
I understand your position that you think personal pronouns in English always refer to apparent sex and only that. I just don't think that's factually true.
You've stated it (https://deathisbad.substack.com/i/58043900/3-pronous-refer-to-sex-not-gender-by-necessity) citing a source that says nothing of the sort, which I pointed out (https://twitter.com/fromaitozombie/status/1533821677628444679?s=20&t=QC4-9wGyGNgjKnFEuZuzPw). You did not respond to that, you only re-stated your opinion in this blog-post, saying that this happens to be how your brain is set up and that's that. Which is a poor explanation for a universal claim, as I am certain you rationally understand.
And now, in this comment section, you say that if I turn up my nose at you for he/him-ing Todd the burly Lumberjack I'm a bigot and you're glad to be rid of me. After witnessing at least two months of me not doing that despite ample opportunity. I don't know why.
If you have evidence that personal pronouns do and must not only generally but always work the way that you described, if you actually have a metaphorical linguistics microscope and it does show what you say, then I'm happy to reevaluate my position. But if you don't (as I suspect, because that is generally not how I understand language works) then you must be open to the possibility that the way you feel about it is not as universal as it feels to you.
Hi. Sorry for the inflamed response. It was a bad week for me, and then the perceived attack in your comments triggered a defensive reaction. I'm not going to continue this much longer, but I figured you're due some explanation, so you aren't left bewildered.
From the comment that made me flip out a bit--
> Good, this is already a step up from calling them uncaring trolls.
This statement asserts that I used to say that vulnerable defenseless people are uncaring trolls, and that you raised me up from that benighted position. I explicitly said of the trolls that "There are people who don’t care the least bit about the pain they cause others. They either think that those of us feeling such pain deserve it, or that science says I don’t actually feel it" with a link to someone doing exactly that. Moreover, I have met in my personal life people who demand They/Them pronouns under threat of social attack who simply don't have dysphoric pain (or who, if they've discovered such pain, have induced it in themselves, to which I don't have sympathy).
So the statement is a malicious lie meant to paint me as a monster that needs to be destroyed. This may not be how you meant it, but statements like this are used for this purpose all the time, and it's how I perceived it, due to past experience.
> you can keep using them! But whatever your reasoning is, other people can have different feelings and opinions on the topic, right?
This statement implies I have some sort of power to deny people the ability to refer to themselves with whatever pronouns they want. This is ridiculous on several levels - it assumes I care what someone calls themselves, it assumes I would suppress those who don't agree with me what they should be called, and it assumes I have the ability to do this. If these things were true, they would be a reasonable rallying cry to convince people I should be destroyed. Not only are the not true, they are the opposite of the truth. It is others that care that my opinions don't match their opinions, they want to force me to conform to their opinions, and they literally try to compel me by using the power at their disposal. It's straight up DARVO and thus I perceive it as naked aggression.
> But I can assure you [...] They are not asking you to lie, they are just asking you to call them by a certain set of pronouns
I spent a ridiculous amount of time explaining how asking me to use those pronouns is literally asking me to lie. Your assurance here is just demonstration that you don't care about anything I've said. This is what leads me to suspect you are here for some other reason,. Based on the previous two items, I concluded this reason is a hostile one.
> The connection that this neutral pronoun must mean neutral sex is something (dare I call it a bias?) that is happening on your end. It is not written in independent reality.
I already explained why it is obvious to me that English pronouns correspond to sex. And how this has implications regarding neutral pronouns and the sex of the subject(s). You either don't care about the things I said, or are feigning ignorance. Why? See previous.
> But you can rationally see that there is no linguistics microscope that we can put a pronoun under to see what the scientific answer is, right?
This is infuriating, because I said exactly this. I said there are languages were pronouns refer to social status rather than sex. And one where they refer to owners of objects rather than sex! You bringing up that language is a construct as if I didn't literally say exactly this and give examples implies that either you don't remember I did this and you assume I'm an idiot, or you want to give the impression that this is the case. Neither one thrills me.
> I only want to point out that a request for a set of pronouns is - socially - a request for a verbal courtesy, an ask to be treated like someone who counts. It is not a demand to acknowledge an untruth.
You end with a repetition of the idea that I didn't explain why this is precisely a demand to repeat a lie, for me. And by again reasserting that I am a monster that denies the most basic courtesy to the innocent victims of my violence. That I am one who won't even acknowledge that *other people matter.*
Seriously, GTFO with that. *I* don't show respect? You're the one doing everything you can to portray me as an inhuman demon.
This was my reaction at the time. I stand by my claims that these are the implications of what you said. They may not be what you intended, you may have simply not realized that this is what your words were saying. If so, I saw malice where there was none. However the teeth are still there, and I still saw them. Forgive me if I recoiled too quickly, I've been bitten before.
> Through all of this, I have heard you call dear friends and family of mine a cult, bullies, trolls, authoritarians who care about nobody but themselves and worse.
Honestly, people are often caught up in movements with only the best intentions. Everyone believes that what they are doing is for the greater good. I don't believe I've directly attacked anyone you know. If I've said that *a movement they belong to* is cultish, often bullies/trolls those that it views as undesirables, and tends towards callous authoritarianism, that is a call to examine the movement they support.
No one is required to do any such examination, of course. Certainly not on my request. Who's got that kinda time? But I suspect even people who have doubts about the movement will avoid any such examination, because they fear the consequences of any dissent. Even when the voiced dissent is to improve the movement where they think it has erred in factual matters or deployed unsavory tactics. I think such a fear is important evidence in itself.
> Along the same line of thinking, the idea that I would need to be collecting ammo seems pretty ridiculous to me. Ammo for what? If what I wanted was just any reason to call you a bad person to my 63 twitter followers, I could have done that months ago, without having this difficult truth-finding conversation with you first. I haven't done it because I don't think it's true. So I'm not exactly sure what you think I'm going to do with the dagger you are so certain I am hiding.
I begrudgingly admit this is a fair point. I'm gun-shy due to some pretty painful past experiences with people I trusted a lot. Sorry.
> the content to "how pronouns work in general" (as opposed to how we, in particular, prefer to use them) was fairly limited.
In general pronouns just take the place of proper nouns in order to be lower-resolution & lower-cognitive-load simplifications. I thought that was obvious?
> (https://twitter.com/fromaitozombie/status/1533821677628444679?s=20&t=QC4-9wGyGNgjKnFEuZuzPw). You did not respond to that
I didn't find it worth responding to, for two reasons. First, you quote something that isn't in the link. You say it's from a relevant link, but don't provide this link. But secondly, and far more importantly, my link to wikipedia was not any sort of argument that pronouns refer to sex! It was a link to English third-person singular pronouns for humans. The link is there because "third person singular pronouns for humans" is a little bit technical, and I was giving a reference as to what those are so we're all on the same page as I give my argument. It was in the very first line, and was a basic definition of terms. "This is what pronouns are." The argument that pronouns refer to sex comes after that, in my words, in the following paragraphs. To assume that I would try to use wikipedia(!) to demonstrate why I think pronouns refer to sex is kinda nuts.
That being said, why do people concerned with gender stuff care about what pronouns they are referred to if pronouns don't reference perceived sex? This is literally why they care.
> you must be open to the possibility that the way you feel about it is not as universal as it feels to you.
I don't really care if it's universal. I care about if I'm being forced to conform to a regime that wants to alter the language for their purposes. If I'm not threatened for not adopting the newspeak, I don't particularly care what people do with their ingroups.