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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   33222 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022

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Sir/His Lordship is just douchey.

But there are far more triggering pronouns than those. It’s the identities Meloni claims. Christian, American, Father, son, husband.

You think on zoom that the wokes want to identify someone as Christian every time they speak.

The most triggering of all might be Mother.

Sir/His Lordship is just douchey.

As long as we're claiming the ability to give ourselves titles which confer some level of privilege, I'm going all the way.

If the cutoff is whatever is 'too douchey' I'd love to have that conversation at length!

I'm placing the cutoff at whatever is an actual honorific, or implies actual deeds (such as "mother"). You may think "he" or "she" confers privilege all you want.

Of course, there are ways to persuade me to call someone "Mommy" without them having birthed anyone.

Or 'Mister' and 'Mrs.'

I dunno, there's a workable framework for this sort of thing already in existence. I still place most of the burden of proving why we should upset this in favor of the new pronoun system on those proposing it.

Why is sir/lordship douchey? Plenty of people refer to prince William as his highness, and to whatever rank of nobility is signified by that(barons? I'm going with that) as sir/lordship. If a person with a penis can arbitrarily declare that he/him is now she/her with no possibility of being wrong, why can a commoner not claim to be a baron with no possibility of being wrong? It is, after all, far less reality defying.

I have never met an IRL British peer, although I did briefly meet the heir to the pretender to some European country or other who preferred his/your highness, which I abided by because it seemed reasonable. After all, the title might be meaningless, but no one seemed to dispute it was his. That doesn't mean that my idiot cousin calling himself king of the neighborhood gets to be called your highness. I would ask why the same principles don't apply to gender, something that we can probably all agree is far more fundamental to human nature, and less changeable, than being a king.

I would ask why the same principles don't apply to gender, something that we can probably all agree is far more fundamental to human nature, and less changeable, than being a king.

The concept of nobility has a baked-in assumption that they're better than you in some way. No such thing with the concept of being a different gender.

I'm fine calling people a different pronoun than what I would've assumed, because I do not believe they're asking for it to literally lord it over me.

Because we all know the people using the pronouns are doing it to mock the other people using pronouns and not because it’s a sincere identity.

They're still more likely to be a duke/baron/prince than a transwoman is to be a real woman.

What if it is sincere? For example: if we live in a world where no one gets to customize their pronouns, then I accept he/him as a matter of necessity, but if you concede that pronouns are customizable based on what feels validating to one's internal identity, then I would sincerely prefer and feel validated by your use of pronouns that imply that I am nobility.

You might argue that any given person doesn't actually believe the above sincerely, but if you assume a hypothetical where your interlocutor does, will you actually start calling him "sir" and "his lordship," not just to his lordship's face but also in conversations where his lordship isn't a participant?

So if someone sincerely wanted to be called "your lordship" you'd do it?

What do you think of otherkin? They sincerely want to be considered animals. Would you refer to someone as a cat if they sincerely wanted it?

Of course the irony in this statement is that many, myself included, consider that the people using xim/xer are ALSO doing it to mock other people ("squares", "my dad", the laws of God and nature) and not because it's a sincere identity. Because play-acting as a girl when you have a penis is the very definition of insincere.

But apparently because they got there first and have the left-memeplex stamp of approval, we're not allowed to call them out for it.

I am incapable of even understand the mental model of people using pronouns.

I do understand the mental models of people trying to mock them.

Basically I can’t call them out for being dishonesty because I can’t even understand them but I can call out “your highness” because I understand it’s mockery.

But you're not being clear on why mockery shouldn't be allowed.

The pronoun people haven't set up a ruleset that would exclude it. So they in fact imply that any pronoun you want to use SHOULD be allowed until proven insincere.

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