1623

Ah. You’re the reasons why I will never play any open-to-the-public online game. Being shit-talked by strangers just isn’t fun for me.

1624

Old school Xbox live was a wild place.

To be clear though, you wouldn’t have gotten trash talked by me, unless you were randomly bullying other people in the server.

1625

For a pretty good read about someone who was a balls-to-the-wall shit-stirrer back in the day that has matured and started to inventory his past, this is a good read. I love Alibini’s work and not a small part of that was for the reasons it’s now needing examination, back in my angry 20s, much as he was when creating it.

1626

Good read.

I enjoyed this perspective.

The fundamental truth is that what other people think of me is their business. I’m not trying to influence their opinions of me. I’m trying to maintain a notion of myself that isn’t cruel. And if I realize that I’ve been being cruel, I need to stop — not just for the other person’s benefit, but because I’m responsible for my own behavior. It’s not the case that I’m being deferential to other people’s opinions of me. It’s the case that I’m making a realization about myself. I’m making serial realizations about myself and the way that I’ve behaved that warrant me correcting course.

To many doing simple things to show respect for others is considered kowtowing to them. Like the pronoun backlash. Rather than viewing it as a simple thing to try to do to be kind to someone, even the suggestion that someone might ask such a thing is this horrible imposition being put upon one by others in an attempt to control them. Even a call to try and understand where another person might be coming from is often viewed as being forced to be deferential. There’s this adolescent streak in our society that views not just criticism but mere suggestion or a request for understanding as some great imposition.

1627

Some demands are reasonable, and others are not.
Asking me to use whatever standardized pronoun you like to refer to you, totally reasonable.

Asking that I treat you uniquely from all other people and not use pronouns at all, is not reasonable.

Perhaps you think it’s reasonable, and that’s fine for you. We all make such decisions for ourselves. For me, refusing to defer to someone’s arbitrary demands does not necessarily translate into cruelty.

1628

I’m on a different page, and I say that as someone who probably leans your way more than most on the board. I’m all for consistency, don’t get me wrong, fifteen pronouns I’m expected to manage at the pain of being ostracized or criticized is a road too far, but we’re not on that road. So far we have a single new one, “They” that I’ll fully admit I’m still a little bit opposed to because it’s a word that was doing plenty of service previously, but I’ve never come across a no-pronoun person nor another novel pronoun. Just mostly she/her switching to he/his or vice versa. Honestly I could really get down with losing pronouns and calling each other by names whenever possible, I think that’s the best of both worlds, much like the whole “K” thing in Gone Away World.

1629

And another perfect example of the difference in perspective I found refreshing in Albini’s comments.

1630

Sorry man, but that’s how it is. Some demands are arbitrary.

Your position can be different, but I’m not beholden to you. Like I said, refusing someone’s absurd demand that they be treated entirely differently from everyone else, is not at all cruel.

It’s intellectually dishonest to suggest that it is, or that it is the same as intentionally misgedering someone.

1631

Nobody is arguing with that. A lot of people do seem to point out that you seem to have appointed yourself sole and final judge of which demands are worthy of your consideration or not. Which is not a good look when approaching this topic.

1632

Look, all I know is Bill and Ted didn’t say “Be excellent to each other, unless you have arbitrarily decided their requests are arbitrary” or something, they said “Be excellent to each other”.

1633

Ultimately everyone does at the end of the day.

Depends on the specific context. If anything it’s just honest.

If Ben Shapiro wants me to call him manly and jacked, I’m not going to and I’m the final judge on his demands (and all demands by everyone in any context). Much the same as a trans person probably doesn’t accept Ben’s demands to misgender them. They judge his demands not worth consideration. They also probably judge him an asshole.

If someone wants me to use “xir” as a pronoun it’s not happening. I’ll try to avoid pronouns or default to they/them. Unless I don’t know them at all in which case I probably just wont talk to them at all if I can help it.

Edit: The thing is the truly weird pronouns don’t seem to actually exist. Even on Twitter I’ve never seen something like “xir”. It’s basically always he/she/they. The xirs and whatever seem to exist in some tiny subset of academia, if at all. So it’s a matter akin to saying I wont ride a unicorn.

1634

Aren’t I? Aren’t all of us the sole judges of how we determine such things?

1635

Nope, at the end of the day society as a whole gets to have the debate and come up with an answer on what the polite thing to do is. You can go along with or not, but somebody else decided the standard on whether your behavior will be judged as polite behavior or asshole behavior.

1636

I have some bad news about that.

Wait I thought that was society’s job. How come they get to judge but he doesn’t?

1637

I mean, it’s totally fine if someone else wants to judge me on my own judginess, I guess.

But I’m still going to call bullshit if someone tries to equate misgedering with refusing to abandon pronouns.

1638

And others might notice you are entirely missing the point and potentially creating strawmen in the search for arguement.

1640

Are we back to saying that it’s something that no one would ever do?

But yet, is also something that you can’t admit is totally unreasonable?

Cool, cool.

Like, you can just say, “Yeah, that request is absurd,” and then our positions would be seemingly in total agreement… But you can’t bring yourself to reject a request which is so entirely absurd that you don’t even believe anyone would make it.

1641

Actually I was talking about the Albini article and the notion of being kind is something you do for yourself rather than something that is purely differential to other people.

Though it may have been obscured by the giant wooshing sound.

1642

Yeah I was talking to Shuma.

1643

Ah, then the perhaps pronoun you were looking for was “you” not “we”.

Damn pronouns. Perhaps it would have just been better if you ditched the pronoun and said Shuma.