Dragon Rider banned from a bunch of communities
Dragon Rider banned from a bunch of communities
Edit: Image description for Brits:
Dragon Rider (drag) being banned from the following communities for sharing DMs:
208 comments
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How can one accept or reject a thing without understanding what it is they are accepting? Is not immediately changing the way one speaks without a reason or even an explicit request equivalent to denying someone’s identity? I don’t think my discomfort with neopronouns is because I reject anyone’s identity. I don’t even understand what such a person’s identity is. Unlike established pronouns, neopronouns do not have any meaning at all to me because I’ve never heard them before and no one has defined them. What do they signify? I assume something different for each one, so what is it? I’ve always been careful with my language, so using words without a clear understanding of their meaning makes me uncomfortable.
Language is a very meaningful topic for people. Both for the speaker and the spoken to. We have all been acculturated to speak in a certain way, and to understand the meanings of such speech in a certain way. I don’t think asking people to change the way they speak is as trivial as you seem to imply. Nor is declining to change the way one speaks the same as saying “I reject your identity”, unless such a meaning is intended.
And of course I understand that someone may not want to have this (or any) conversation. But I also feel that you can’t expect people to change without them understanding why they need to change. Most people hate change, it’s just human nature. So if you choose not to educate people, you’ll have to accept that they remain ignorant until such time as someone takes on that burden.
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I'm trans. Cis people literally can never truly understand my experience or why the things that are important to me are important. Acceptance can't be contingent on understanding they can never have.
Neopronouns are the same. You can work on your own understanding to reduce your discomfort but your discomfort should be your problem, not something you get to force on to others
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If people cannot understand your experience, it's not because you are trans and they are cis. There is no universal trans experience and you still need to work to make yourself understood to other trans people, who have entirely different experiences from your own. People have the capacity to understand things outside their direct experience. Some people go 40 years thinking of themselves as cis, and then change their mind!
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If people cannot understand your experience, it's not because you are trans and they are cis
Well, it's not just that. As you say, even trans folk can't understand other trans folks experience. But that still speaks to my point. Acceptance shouldn't be gatekept behind understanding
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And yet you're fine when transphobes are harassing trans people and telling them to kill themselves, not to mention using right-wing memes made to attack trans people.
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I think the broader issue is, you say you're uncomfortable saying something. And at the same time other people say the want to be addressed like that. And, now what? I mean those might all be valid concerns/feelings/whatever. But we can't have it both ways. So what do we do to solve this? You need to find some agreement on how to address someone, or silence is the other option.
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I actually think silence might be the worst option since that’s a very exclusionary solution that isn’t helping build bridges between people. So it may be someone is going to have to just get over it. Maybe that should be me, I don’t know. But I think it would help me to do that to hear from somehow how it makes them feel and why it’s important to them.
Let’s be real—the vast majority of us were raised in a very cisnormative culture. And there was a lot of conscious and unconscious bigotry that most of us absorbed from that. So for me it has been a bit of a process over the years to peel back the layers and try to get it all out of me. I think I still have to do more work at this. While it doesn’t seem to me today that my discomfort is coming from a place of prejudice, I’m also not sure my own perspective on that is always correct.
I kind of went through a similar thing with trans folks back in the day. I struggled to understand the concept of gender dysphoria and hearing the emotional experiences of trans people was very helpful in understanding why inclusive language matters. While I can’t really wrap my head around why it matters so much, it is a raw and emotional issue that I can help with, so it’s just kind of an issue of basic politeness at that point.
If neopronouns are the same then I guess I will try to go along with them even though they seem like a quite confusing and difficult way for people to communicate. But again, it would be nice to hear from someone that yes, this really matters to them. I know that may be asking a lot but it would help me.
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Let’s be real—the vast majority of us were raised in a very cisnormative culture. And there was a lot of conscious and unconscious bigotry that most of us absorbed from that
Hi, another trans person here.
I was also one of those vast majority of people raised in cisnormative culture. Just like you. After a lot of thought and introspection I realized the person I am in my mind, did not match the corporeal form I was given. So I am taking steps to make that vision of my self a reality. That often means using language that is not used in “cisnormative culture”. As with any language you don’t speak, you have two options. Learn to speak it yourself and come back to converse with those people OR choose not to learn it and move on with your life, leaving them be. Some people think there is this funny little third option called “colonization”, but it’s generally frowned upon. /lh
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What do you mean by colonization exactly?
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Within the silly metaphor I made with languages, the “colonizer” approach would be to make the people use a non-native language for potentially complex cultural concepts best described with their words.
If not knowing how to communicate with people makes someone feel left out or something, they shouldn’t blame the people speaking their native language for that divide, they should put in the effort to find common communication tools and willingly accept knowledge from the native speakers without pushing back on how to use language that is unknown to them.
To tie this back to pronouns and queer theory and what have you. When people say “I don’t understand neopronouns” then they are just saying they don’t know a language. That language is a subset of a language they might consider themselves a speaker of, but it is a portion of that language they do not yet know. It is also language they can choose to adopt so as to communicate with the people that use it, or choose to not learn, and reasonably expect to not be communicated with.
If someone decides they are willing to start learning that language they need to be prepared to self teach. It’s not every queer person’s responsibility to educate people. Some folks have the emotional capacity to help teach, but there’s also tons of resources on queer theory and inclusive language that can be easily found with a google search without ever having to expose a queer person to inaccurate or harmful language.
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Got it, thank you.
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I'm not sure if it's helpful to add my perspective as someone who isn't part of the queer community... But I frequently find myself able to relate and accept those things. It also took me the better part of my teenage years and quite some time after that to find out who I am, and who I want to be. That wasn't super straightforward and I suppose almost everyone does this. And people come up with their own and individual takes on life all the time. So it came to little surprise to me that some people came up with different answers than me. I'm not sure what the official teachings say, I'm probably wrong here. But I think I'm basically the same thing as a queer individual. We all have needs and wants and feelings, and we all have to find a way to live our lives and maybe a happy one. The one big monumental difference is, you're bound to experience the backlash once you don't take the well-trodden path, act out in some form, or fail to blend in due to either refusal or just being unable to do so. That makes me think I have zero issues accepting and understanding the basic need for dealing with being a human. Of course it's yet another story how to deal with it, and to learn about the intricate details about someone else, their specific situation, and then actually get it right. And even changing something fundamental isn't a foreign concept to me. I also develop and change constantly.
And language is kind of an agreement, and a tool. It changes all the time and we can shape it. Communication isn't easy. But I think language is fun. I like to experiment with it, use it for silly puns, apply it in an unconventional way or make it shine. I don't think that's the main point. It serves as a tool to convey something. And whether you accept your counterpart in a conversation is always in there, there is no way around that. So it kind of boils down to that. Whether you want to use language to express acceptance, or dismissal. It's down to what words you choose and how you apply them. And communication is about transferring something from one brain into another. So the words in itself aren't the main thing. It's what you invoke in the mind of someone else. And that's why I think it has a lot to do with the speaker and less so with the receiver of the words. You're bound to invoke something in someone else with your words, and you got to choose the ones that match what you want to do. And you have to look at the receiver of your words to find out what will manifest in their mind. That's not easy, but I'd argue it's included in the job of speaking to someone.
(Maybe someone wants to lecture me on my take on the relationship of people within the queer community and me. And whether that's "basically the same thing". Because I think I have a good point, but that's certainly been discussed already. And it feels a bit dismissive to say it this way. But then, no-one knows what it took me to become who I am, or how I fit into society. I'm certainly not exactly the same or a part of the group. But I think there's a lot of things which are basically one and the same concept. And one could transfer some details into a different situation. But then maybe I fail to realize what a person without individuality is like and what amount of experience they have with leaving the standard way of living a life.)
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208 comments