• ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    14
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    It appears they use putting your preferred pronouns as a litmus test for users on their instance; recent years have well demonstrated this is a bridge to far for sizeable portions of the internet and meatspace alike.

    So my guess is there’s something to that.

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      On the Internet, pronouns should be irrelevant, just use they/them or “the OP” if needed. The only time pronouns are needed imo is for actual, personal discussions. If you need to refer to a poster that’s not the thread poster, you’re probably using lemmy incorrectly.

      If someone posts them and I bother to look, I’ll probably try to use the correct ones. Otherwise I’ll just avoid pronouns and use they/them if I really need to.

      So requiring it just makes it easier for me to tell someone is from hexbear and is more likely to post stupid emoji than actually post something interesting (that’s been the case so far), so I don’t think much of value would be lost if we defederated. I’m against defederation though, especially since it’s so easy to detect.

      I’m 100% in support of the lgbtq+ community, I just don’t think we need pronouns on the Internet. Just make a community rule to avoid pronouns instead, especially since there’s already a stupid culture of assuming everyone is male on the Internet. Moderate that and people will adapt to gender neutral language on the Internet.

      • Honestly striving for gender neutral language is great but we found that people would use gender neutral pronouns to avoid people’s preferred pronouns which is - at minimum - sus as fuck if not outright bigoted behaviour which we don’t tolerate. We see ourselves as a community, and as such are made of people who have various preferences. Since we see each other as people we all want to respect each other properly when addressing each other, thats why we all have our pronouns in our names.

      • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        Probably not necessary, no. Though they allow for the pronoun to be anything so it could be username/username and that would be fine as far as I know.

        Disallowing pronouns via a community rule probably has as much of a counterproductive aspect as requiring them. Make it a rule and you get users reporting users for failing to use gender neutral language. It’s the same effect but inverted I think.

        It’s always been a sort of opt in type thing at best. If you want to declare them go ahead. It just means some people will insist on honoring it and others will insist on dishonoring it, because rarely are pronouns actually relevant to a typical conversation: they’re just a metric of how polite or respectful people are willing to be with each other because, well internet. Hopefully most people recognize it as it should: no big deal.

        People don’t have the same reaction if they affix a Mr. or Mrs.to their username, interestingly enough.

        • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          I don’t think there should be a rule either way, but instead a community guideline to avoid pronouns in general if they’re not known, or to use they/them if absolutely necessary.

          The only rule related to this, imo, should be civility. If you’re intentionally misusing pronouns, that should be against the rules, not because of pronouns, but because you’re intentionally being a jerk. The same goes for slurs, personal attacks, etc.

          It turns out that I’ve seen a lot of stupid comments from users from hexbear, but that’s potentially because those users are really easy to spot due to the unique username format. Regardless, I think it’s a stupid instance rule, and I reflexively skip past those posts because I haven’t seen any good posts (subjective obviously) from a user from that instance.