15
votes
Is it time to include pronouns?
I realize this has become something like a political statement to do this for whatever reason. But a 100% wordcel medium where your only avatar is a text string of your username means if I want to talk about someone I have no idea what to call them. I have to use awkward constructions like “that user” or “OP.” This doesn’t sound nice. This disrupts the delicately crafted meter and flow of my sentences.
Mayhap we could introduce a teeny-tiny configurable logogram next to the username to disambiguate preferred pronouns. Or maybe even a subscript. It’d be small enough and faded so as not to impact the clean visual but visible enough to free me from having to guess.
I fully support pronouns in general, but I find that referring to a user by @-ing them is the most polite way to talk about someone (on tildes). It:
Barring that, if you prefer to use a pronoun regardless, on an online forum like tildes where we are all faceless, digital entities, the centuries-old polite they / them suffices.
As for adding pronouns in general, users can already do that if they so choose in their profile bio, which can be quickly opened when in doubt.
There's always the username's "Bio" profile information, though many people seem unaware that this feature exists.
It might make things more confusing ("Who is he? There's 3 he/hims in this comment chain."). The forum-native pronouns of OP (original poster) and GP (grand parent, the parent comment to the one you are replying to) can do a lot of work. And there's always just naming people with @<username>.
For some reason I never thought of the parent to the parent comment as grand parent, nor have I seen anyone mention it before this comment, but it's so logical I can't believe I hadn't seen it used before. Maybe I'm just the oddity here in that experience.
People use GP on Hacker News a lot. I don’t see it much on other sites but it’s a good tool to add to our collective consciousness.
I agree, but I'll never not read it as "General Practitioner" or "Gold PIeces"
As a native speaker of a language with no gendered pronouns for humans or objects: meh.
I just use “they” when the gender might be relevant some way and I can’t figure out another why of referring to someone.
Keeping track of people’s pronouns when communicating doesn’t come naturally to me at all. It’s like trying to understand a tonal language, my brain just isn’t wired for it and it all sounds the same 😀
Can I ask which language? I'm super curious!
I'm indifferent, but will point out that "they" is acceptable in every case.
No it isn't. I do not accept "they" as a pronoun for me and when anyone calls me "they" or anything but "she" I automatically assume whoever does it is being a dick. No exceptions.
Even if they have no way of knowing your gender? Had I not read this post, I would not have known what to refer to you as and would have naturally used a neutral pronoun, or said (s)he, which is something I also sometimes do when unsure (less now that more and more people prefer non-gendered pronouns).
Why such a strong reaction?
Yes.
I'd rather be misgendered as "he" rather than be they/themmed.
Too many reasons, I guess there's not much of a point to write an essay about it at this point, all things considered
Seriously?
I intentionally use "they" when I have no way to know the gender of someone as a way to make it clear that I am not assuming it.
I'd prefer if people assumed my pronouns, even if they were wrong, rather than explicitly trying to avoid them. I mean, almost everybody was always she/her-ing me, even irl, even back before I accepted I was trans. I'd rather be misgendered as he/him rather than they/them.
I mean, the noun part of your username is "Pickles" there is literally nothing to go from to base a gender assumption on. I guess except assuming that anyone that references Taylor Swift is she/her?
It isn't even in your profile page if someone were to look it up before acknowledging you.
I never said you should look it up. Just pick a binary pronoun and roll with it.
Most people would find that more offensive than the alternative but I guess you do you.
They're free to, I guess, but in my part of the world you don't even have another option. There is no animate neutral pronoun here unless you use it as a "neopronoun" or speak english, and many people around here do not.
I'm sorry, I just don't think this is a reasonable expectation you can have of your fellow humans. If you forgot your wallet in your restaurant and someone sees you leave, they will might tell the staff "they forgot their wallet". They're not being a dick, they just don't know.
There is always going to be an element of living in society where I don't think you can expect people to care that much about you on an individual level. I think it's a reasonable expectation you expect someone to not intentionally misgender you, because that's just someone denying someone else's identity and trying to hurt them. But I don't think it's a reasonable expectation to expect people are going to open your profile, double-check your pronouns, and then keep them in mind when referring to you, and then expect they're going to do that for everyone. Most strangers are just not going to care about you personally that much, and are going to fall back on the pronoun that catches everyone.
No, that will never happen because that is not a thing at all in my language. They will just default to whatever my legal name in my debit or ID card makes them think.
I never said that, and I also do not have pronouns in my bio.
When engaging with people on the internet, you engage with people of all cultures and in English the gender neutral is they/them. I'm also of the opinion that it shouldn't elicit a strong reaction, especially when they made an attempt to not misgender someone in good faith.
This is my first time hearing someone be upset about being misgendered when being referred to with they/them but I guess I'm not super in the loop with that kinda stuff. I had always thought that was the safe and polite way of referring to someone without asking or being able to ask them, for whatever reason.
Thank you all for coming to my drunken ted talk of exactly how neither assumptions nor "hiding pronouns in your profile that nobody will ever bother to check" will cut it
I don't feel like I would use a pronoun feature (I mean, my username is gendered enough already, no?) and clearly a lot of people in this thread feel the same, but I think there are people here who would and for that reason I agree it would be a good feature to implement. Having the option there if they want it would cost other users nothing. It's also faintly annoying that on so much of the internet, Tildes included, the default assumption is that everyone is a man, and such a feature might help with that.
I like how on forums I don't have an image of what a person is. Eventually I pick up on someone's gender over time but for the most part, I have no idea what someone is. Like you, @NaraVara, and I don't care because your gender to me doesn't change how I consider your ideas. I wouldn't use the feature, but I wouldn't oppose it either.
I think people tend to post them in their bios if they have a preference? So it might be nice to have that as a hover text. But if they don't list anything, presumably they don't mind being potentially misgendered.
IME I just check their bio for a preferred pronoun, and use they/them or @'ing otherwise.
Yes. 100% yes.
If you mean adding the option to include my pronouns alongside my username in a comment, I'm for it.
I'm not gonna be a whiny human thumb like Az from HeelVsBabyface and cry about it. The tendency to disclose and acknowledge one's pronouns doesn't take away from my identity as a cis he/him.