I have a few questions on how to best behave to be as welcoming and inclusive as possible without sounding bad. I hope you guys don’t hate me.
I’m just a straight male. Are my pronouns he/him? Is that how I should tell people? Do you actually tell them as you meet them ? Do I have to wait for a certain social cue ?
How about online. Should I tell people or have it on my personal profile somewhere?
And about respecting other people’s pronouns. How do i figure them out ? Is it a big faux pas if I don’t before I know them ? Is it a faux pas if I refer to someone I just met and I assumed to be male as he/him?
I’ve never seen anyone referring to anyone irl by non conventional pronouns. Is it an actual thing or is it currently being pushed to make the world a more inclusive place?
I’d love some help with all of this.
Cis allies usually put pronouns in their bios to show support and normalize the act itself of specifying then online. IRL since you are cis and I asume you look masculine there is no need to specify your pronouns.
Just whenever you meet someone and they tell you to talk to them in a specific way, just do it and respect their pronouns. Its easy. Most people dont care if you get it wrong the first times as long as you acknowledge your mistake and correct yourself, your brain will get used to it and you will not make the mistake later. That’s the different between someone who is learning and an idiot purposefully misgendering someone.
BTW if you arent sure about someone elses pronouns, just ask them. Easy.
One thing I try to do as clueless old man is when I am writing a policy doc or instructions at work, I just stick with they/them.
Instructions on how to merge a branch in Git do not need gender specific pronouns.
Yeah. That is just better.
I think this is the most basic change to make that simplifies everything. Particularly online, until you described yourself as an ‘old man’ I had no idea of your gender. Traditional language would mean even without this information I’d still refer to you with he/him pronouns, or broader terms like ‘this guy’ etc, but to be more welcoming to everyone, we should be starting out using generic they/them for everyone.
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What do you mean by ‘never neutral’?
Cool thanks. I just put mine up in my bio. Hopefully in the right spot.
IRL since you are cis and I asume you look masculine there is no need to specify your pronouns.
I disagree with this. It’s better not to assume or encourage people to assume pronouns. It’s better to use they/them when you’re not sure. Most of the time you can learn people’s pronouns contextually, by hearing how other people refer to them.
Otherwise, it’s better to use they/them unless you have evidence otherwise. Looks isn’t evidence. It’s not the worst thing to assume once and be wrong, but if you’re aiming for inclusivity it’s better to not assume
Yeah. Good point. But I think OP shouldn’t worry about specifying his pronouns IRL, but what you say is a good general approach.
Your first sentence is a really good point. Many cis-gendered people thing it’s pointless to add their pronouns in their email/bio, but it helps to not out those who are trans. If everyone/most people state their pronouns then it makes it harder to unnecessarily identify those who are trans.
I don’t tell people my pronouns. I’m male. I look male. I act male.
I appreciate when people are questionable or want to use different pronouns tell.
I equally appreciate when people don’t ask mine.
Can you explain what it means to look and act male? And why you don’t like having people ask yours?
In 6’2, 225 pounds with about 10% body fat. I look like a man. I act like a man. Nobody has confused me for anything but a man.
It’s rude as it implies I don’t look or act like a man.
It’s why women are drawn to me. As my gf says, I wanted you because you’re all man. My last gf said the same thing.
How you look doesn’t make you a man. You could literally have all those physical traits and be a woman or non-binary.
Why is it rude to confirm how you self identify? Is it that horrible being trans or non-binary that people shouldn’t even confirm that you’re cis? How do you think trans people feel when someone assumes their gender based on how they look?
shitposting
Wow we got the manliest man man over here! Women love him and he gets all the pussy!
I explained why troll and don’t use the term cis. It’s offensive. I don’t identify as cis.
Shouldn’t you have asked if I identify as cis or did you just assume I used the term cis?
See how quickly you just violated your own rules you tried to chastise me for?
So go troll somewhere else with your fake concern.
I explained why
saying you’re offended by people not assuming you are a man implies it’s bad to be a different gender, or trans/nb. Idk why you are so scared of people confirming your gender. You are the biggest ❄ on the planet and i cannot wait until you melt.
Ofc the whinging about cis comes out. You’re cis by the literal definition of the word. Get over it loser.
Thank you for validating that you are just a concern troll.
Either people get to self-describe, or they do not. You really don’t believe any of this, you just want to seem ‘concerned’.
I’m not concerned. I’m just calling you out for being a moron and a transphobe. Your time will come lib.
I’m 6’3, 250lbs, 6% bf and non-binary. Also my xad could beat up your dad
I’m sorry. You may be getting it all wrong because right now you just sound like and are acting like a big ol pussy.
Thanks. You appear to have yourself confused with someone who matters.
Gonna have to call out the misogyny of calling someone a “pussy”.
I can’t imagine asking someone, that feels so rude. I just use they/them for most people. I would worry that asking would set any transphobes off while also being a tiny kernel of “I don’t pass” to trans people.
I hate guessing. Normally it’s obvious.
If it’s questionable. Most will offer unless they’re looking for drama.
I have a client who goes by they. I see I don’t do they. They asked me to use whatever I want they matches how they’re expressing. Perfect. They volunteered it when we met.
I try to accommodate everyone. It’s just manners. I just can do they. I screw it up.
Yes, basically yours are he/him since you don’t identify as a different gender.
You only tell people if asked. No one will ask, because there isn’t any ambiguity about your gender identity. If you’d like, I’ve seen many straight cisgendered men put he/him in their profiles as support for the community.
Use your best judgement, most people will go by the gender you assume. If someone corrects you, apologize and use the correct pronouns from then on.
I have one friend that transitioned. She’s just a she now. Simple as that.
I have another friend that changed their name. The group I was with was confused on their pronouns, so I just asked them and they told me. Asking what they are shows that you respect them and their decisions.
If you respect people and use the pronouns they request, you shouldn’t go wrong.
Yes, your pronouns are he/him :)
Generally, people are pretty chill about it. If you are unsure how to refer to someone, you can always just call them by their first name or something else (the barista at the front counter, the person in the yellow sweater, etc!)
I wouldn’t overthink it, most people are totally cool if you get it wrong, especially if you show a willingness to get it right from then on. Queer people just wanna be treated like everyone else :)
-queer guy living in the gay district
you can always just call them by their first name or something else
Well I didn’t know you were called Dennis.
I’ve been to conferences where the name tag has a place for pronouns but most people don’t fill them out. 99% of the time it’s safe to assume the pronouns you believe are correct, are correct. If you get told otherwise use the preferred pronouns in the future. If someone freaks out over it after one mistake that’s their problem.
You can also get around pronouns by just using names. I find i rarely need to use pronouns.
Just one thing to add, people freaking out is extremely uncommon. I haven’t even heard about a case IRL, even for trans people it isn’t something that tends to happen.
Don’t be afraid to just guess when you are unsure, you can always ask though and at least for younger generations it isn’t seen as weird or unpolite to do so
The only place it happens is in conservatives’ minds and when people make the “mistake” on purpose.
A.K.A “the Jordan Peterson experience”
And as a bonus linguistic fun fact:
Everyone is they/them until you find out otherwise
Or at least that’s how I was taught English
“I went to see a doctor about my headaches today.”
“Oh good, what did X say?”
Anyone that doesn’t use ‘they’ here either has more information than I provided or is a bit sexist.
Pronouns are largely used to refer to people in the third person. As such I will never declare my pronouns because they aren’t for me to use, they’re for other people to use to refer to me. As such they should use whatever pronouns deliver maximal clarity for the listener.
I will respect others’ pronoun preferences because I’m not an asshole, but when people start trying to tell me that I’m being bigoted by not stating my own pronouns, they can fuck off.
Just for another use case, pronouns can help clarify if you prefer to be called sir or ma’am.
I wouldn’t call you a bigot for not having preferred pronouns though, that seems really silly.
You kind of don’t have to think about it this much. Someone who cares will tell you their preferred pronouns, in which case you’d say he/him then move on with your day
in which case you’d say he/him
If that’s their preferred pronoun
I’m just a straight male. Are my pronouns he/him?
If you want them to be.
Is that how I should tell people? Do you actually tell them as you meet them ? Do I have to wait for a certain social cue ?
A decent social cue to use would be if someone has mistakenly used one of the ‘default’ pronouns (he/him or she/her). Just be polite and understanding about it.
And about respecting other people’s pronouns. How do i figure them out ? Is it a big faux pas if I don’t before I know them ? Is it a faux pas if I refer to someone I just met and I assumed to be male as he/him?
You don’t know what you don’t know. The only people who would give you shit before you could have reasonably known would be, frankly, someone looking for drama/a fight. Treat those people accordingly.
I’ve never seen anyone referring to anyone irl by non conventional pronouns. Is it an actual thing or is it currently being pushed to make the world a more inclusive place?
It is worth keeping in mind that we are talking about a relatively small crowd of people that identify as non-binary or use non-standard pronouns. It is pushed mainly because it prevents exclusion for these people and honestly it costs nothing anyway.
It’s also handy for the trans crowd, as although they may use standard pronouns, they might not be the ones they currently appear as.
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This is a wonderfully put together comprehensive and informative reply. Thank you :)
If your friends refer to you as he/him, and you are happy with that, then those are your pronouns. E.g., “this is my friend so-and-so, he went to x college, but you being a y fan won’t bug him” would be someone using he/him pronouns for you.
Mine are he/him. I don’t bother telling people this on profiles, but I am cis and male-presenting, so people meeting me irl always guess my pronouns right.
On introductions: one totally cool option is to suggest introductions, start with introducing yourself and add your pronouns. This will alert others that you are gender-conscious, which will be welcome by queer and queer-friendly people.
Don’t fret over it, in the same way you wouldn’t fret about whether someone is a vegetarian or not. “Would you like some nuggets?” “Oh I’m vegetarian but thanks” “oh ok cool, I’ll remember in the future.”
Likewise, “hey did you like his idea?” “Oh actually I’m a they/them” “oh ok, I’ll remember in the future.”
Your pronouns are the ones you want to be referred to as, its that simple. So yeah, he/him if thats what you want people to use.
As for gender neutral pronouns, I just use them by default for everyone, especially on the internet when you have no idea who you are talking to as it is all anonymous (unless they have specified their pronouns in their bio/profile of course)
But overall you just get in the habit of using “they/them” unless explicitly you know their gender.
Once you get in the habit of it, it becomes more natural and you stop thinking about it.
Thats pretty much all there is to it, its quite simple and people who moan and complain about gender stuff are either:
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Lazy, and dont want to put in the 1% of effort it requires to not be shitty
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Really just bigoted but cant admit it out loud, so they complain about such things as a dog whistle to other bigots
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Are extremely misinformed about what is expected of them. They seriously think the real world is out to get them, and that if they misgender someone they’ll get attacked for it (in reality maybe 1 person coughs uncomfortably and they get informed as an aside awkwardly). Non zero chance these folks also think vaccines cause autism and 5G causes cancer.
Or… hear me out… this is insanity being given a voice and should be pushed back against, like so many other unhealthy things.
Yep, that does in fact sum it up
No idea wtf you are talking about, but you sound like someone in section 2 or 3.
But Ill just quote you, yourself, from something you wrote 6 days ago:
People are rather ignorant as a whole. Many of us here probably use our brains for genuine thought, but I find that to be the exception.
Look at the shit people focus on as important and how they mimic what they see and parrot what they hear and it becomes clear how they can’t even get simple sayings right.
While you were referring to people using common phrases entirely wrong, I think it applies to what you have written here.
There is nothing unhealthy about being grammatically correct. There is nothing new about this either. The pronouns They/Them are ancient as hell and have been a part of the English lexicon for centuries. It is not conceptually a remotely novel idea to use gender neutral pronouns in a gender neutral way.
Full stop, its that simple. There is nothing political, social, or whatever about using they/them.
It is purely grammatically correct, and always has been.
Consider this
Completely subtract the whole trans thing away, all recent kerfuffle, and just consider this very simple scenario that is not anything new, and is grammatically an occurrence that would have happened even hundreds of years ago.
Imagine you have discovered in a public place a personal belonging of someone, it is clearly valuable and has initials on it. You dont know the person’s name, and you don’t know who they are. You definitely do not know the person’s gender.
Now, answer me this simple question: Would or would not the following statement aloud, even hundreds of years ago, be grammatically correct English?
“Someone lost their belonging! We should get it back to them, they probably miss it!”
Note how in this case we are still using Gender Neutral Pronouns, because we do not know the person’s gender
Even hundreds of years ago, this would have been absolutely normal to say and grammatically correct. Gender Neutral Pronouns were in use in even extremely old books you can still find and read today.
Can we not dig up people’s comment history to win arguments? That’s kinda toxic.
If you dont like people using your own words against you, don’t post it on the internet where the entire world can see it.
What, exactly, is toxic about holding someone to their own word?
What is toxic, precisely, about pointing out how a persons own statement mere days ago directly contradicts their current stance now?
If highlighting a persons inconsistencies and self contradictions is toxic, then so I shall be. I have zero issue with calling people out on their bullshit though.
Don’t like it? Stop posting on the public of the internet on a forum where your words will be marked down for the rest of history (or at least, until Lemmy instances all suddenly stop being used, which likely won’t be anytime soon)
There’s a basic expectation, when you make an argument on a public forum, that it’ll be judged on the content of the argument, not on who posted it. If you want to look through their history to see if they’re a troll, and then just ignore them if they are, there’s nothing wrong with that.
What you did was say “you’re stupid and lazy,” but for no good reason, you used that guy’s own words to say it. That was entirely unnecessary. It didn’t prove any inconsistency, it just proved that, like many people on Lemmy, the guy thinks a lot of people are dumb.
What is non-toxic about using someone’s own words from past threads to insult them when you already have enough of a text wall to make your point?
What you did was say “you’re stupid and lazy,”
Extremely reductive and explains why you viewed it as toxic.
That is not what I said, at all. You have focused on the wrong parts of what I quoted, and ignored the context of my statements surrounding the quote.
If you read what I wrote, you should see that was not what I said at all.
So yeah, I guess if you quickly skim over what I wrote, not really reading it much, focus on the quote I called out, and assume there is some sort of insult buried in their to be dredged up and squint your eye’s hard enough, you can draw such a conclusion.
But I’d recommend go back and read what I wrote instead.
I already think you are off your rockers. Seeing that much text and the bits of glanced at confirmed it.
Write more essays to support clear unnecessary complexity in langauage. But know this: only people drinking the same Kool aid as you will read that much nonsense.
So, you’re entire response effectively boils down to:
“Rather than actually read what someone has written, I am going to choose ignorance and make assumptions about what the text contains so as to avoid the possibility I may have to question my own viewpoint”
Look mate, if you wanna ignore what people say and not even bother to read it, out of fear that you might possibly learn something new, that’s on you.
But later in life, as the world begins to advance past you and every day you feel more and more left behind, remember that these moments were all the sorts of points when people offered you a hand to help you catch back up and keep pace with everyone else, and you slapped that hand away.
I can’t possibly speak as to why. Willful ignorance? Fear of confronting a mistake you perhaps made? Pride? Bigotry? Hate?
Who knows.
But in the end, you probably won’t bother to read any of this either.
Nothing about what I wrote above was “nonsense” or “drinking the Kool aid”
It was a fairly basic grammar lesson, covering a topic you should have learnt about in gradeschool.
The fact something as basic as the topic of how gender neutral pronouns work, something that has existed for centuries in the English Lexicon, has produced such a response from you as to say I am “off my rocker”, is fascinating… and sad.
I don’t really know how to approach the concept of someone being informed that the words “They” “Them” and “Their” have been around for a long long time, caused them to respond with “you are off your rockers”
Mostly just makes me sad to see how deeply your school system has done you a disservice, and failed you. Shame really.
Chill dude, seriously.
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I too, am a straight male. It’s actually pretty easy.
It might be a bit of a faux pas when addressing someone as he/him when they prefer something else. Simply, if the mistake is made, they’ll correct your assumption (I’m sure they get it all the time, it’s not that big of a deal), and tell you their pronouns. Then it’s your task, socially, to respect their wish to be referred to by their pronouns. It might seem awkward to refer to someone directly as “they” or “them”, but it is grammatically correct, it just sounds awkward to our brains because it’s so rarely used as a singular direct pronoun… direct in the way that you’re talking to, or in the presence of that person… but it’s perfectly fine and preferred by your friend/colleague/acquaintance or whatever.
For yourself, if you’re commonly and most comfortably referred to as he/him, then you have two options: 1. ignore it, and people will assume, or 2. put “he/him” in things like your bio/email signature/about me pages and leave it at that. It doesn’t require qualification or context, like “my pronouns are” or something like that, just “he/him” alone in your bio is enough to let people know what you are comfortable with.
Personally, I don’t do anything, I let people assume, because I’m unbothered if someone refers to me as he/him/she/her/they/them. All pronouns for me are fine. I’m most commonly referred to as he/him because it’s the historically “correct” pronouns, but pronouns are more or less irrelevant to me.
And yes, people do, in fact, prefer they/them. I’ve met a few, and it feels awkward at first to say “they”/“them”, but you get used to it.
Pro tip: everyone is they/them until otherwise stated. It sounds counterintuitive until you look at the example of the unknown stranger. You see a jacket left on the back of the a chair, and wonder if the stranger will return. You ask a person nearby, “Do you know who this belongs to? When are they coming back?”
English has always used neutral pronouns for someone unknown to you. We constantly make assumptions about gender based on appearance, and cis people take for granted that our outward appearance matches their gender. My best take on being an ally and inclusive is to default to gender neutral pronouns until someone states it or corrects you.
Yep, they/them is the most simple and efficient solution.
From what I’ve seen so far pronouns are never in question irl although the circles I’m in there are not into that topic and online everyone who sees it as important has their own somewhere in their status or bio or whatever.
Don’t ask for other people to identify you, please.
