Five days ago, drag was banned from !politicalmemes@lemmy.world for using neopronouns. A comment explaining drag’s pronouns, and a comment saying “drag” isn’t a nickname, were removed with the reason “trolling”. Drag understands why someone would think that using different pronouns than most people is trolling - transphobia. However, drag is confused how on earth not liking a nickname is a violation of any rules anywhere.
Context of the removed comments:
Drag would like to pre-empt any further accusations of trolling by asking a question: If drag were a right wing troll, and you chose to freely accept drag’s pronouns, wouldn’t that completely neuter the trolling attempt? Trolling is about trying to make others upset. You don’t have to get upset when someone uses unusual pronouns. If you aren’t transphobic, then it’s impossible to troll you that way. And drag promises: drag wants you to not be transphobic. Drag is not trying to upset anyone. If you do what drag wants you to do, then you get what you want too. This is a non-issue, there’s only a problem if you want there to be.
EDIT: DRAG DID NOT TELL ANYBODY TO USE DRAG’S PREFERRED PRONOUNS.
Pronouns are generic by nature. A custom pronoun that applies to one person and only one person isn’t a pronoun, it’s a noun.
I agree with this, it’s why I find the concept of nounself and noun pronouns a bit confusing and unintuitive. Neopronouns, as in, the new gender neutral pronouns Ze/Zir, Xe/Xem/Xyr, Ve/Vis, etc. while they might be new to people aren’t unintuitive, they function the same as any other pronoun, and can be used as drop in replacements for he/him and she/her.
Personalized pronouns like drag, apple, doll, demon, etc. don’t work as well, because they aren’t a generic replacement for using a person’s name, they are more akin to a nickname and thus do not flow well in language as a replacement for pronouns.
That’s not in the dictionary.
Yeah, someone with the name “dragonfucker” using “drag” as a first person pronoun definitely doesn’t have the benefit of the doubt in my book.
And if you list your pronouns, you are in fact asking others to use them. I don’t give a solitary shit what you call me, hence there not being any pronouns next to my name.
And that’s a privilege not everyone has.
And tbh most cis people wouldn’t enjoy being misgendered either.
Part of what might make people think you’re trolling is that you seem to use “drag” as a first person neopronoun but conjugate your verbs as if it were third person.
To someone who hasn’t seen this before, interpreting it as if you use a nickname to talk about yourself in third person would be the only thing that makes grammatical sense.
Edit: this reminds me a bit of https://www.xkcd.com/169/ - you don’t come across as smug, but you’re definitely not communicating well
No, people are very used to conjugating pronouns in a way that doesn’t match their grammatical preconceptions. Take the pronoun “they”. A lot of people complain about they/them because they say it can’t be used in the singular. What they mean is, they find it difficult to conjugate properly.
“I need to talk to Sam before they go to the store”
“I need to talk to Sam before they goes to the store”
The second sentence here is conjugated the same way as he or she, but it sounds wrong to us. In order to use they/them pronouns on the regular, we all had to learn that conjugation doesn’t depend on the grammatical form of the reference, but instead on the specific pronoun. “They” is conjugated differently not because it’s a plural, but because it’s “they”.
People who have a problem with the conjugation of drag’s pronouns simply failed to think carefully about this fact. They’re having the singular they debate all over again, because they didn’t change their understanding of pronouns after they had this debate the first time. Well drag doesn’t want to have that debate all over again. Drag doesn’t think drag’s existence should lead to any sort of debate. Drag thinks people should just accept new ideas without having to be argued into accepting them. But for some reason, a lot of people see drag, and they want to be argued with.
First/second person neopronouns are not like singular they because they haven’t been used for centuries already. Always using plural forms with “they” is something that English speakers learn before formally learning what a plural is (that’s why “I need to talk to Sam before they goes to the store” sounds wrong even to someone in primary school), but idiosyncratic redefinitions of grammar will always sound wrong to people who aren’t used to them.
If your goal is to communicate effectively, you should avoid insisting on what can be easily (mis)interpreted as performative. If it isn’t, then complaining about being misunderstood is trolling.
Drag has neither insisted anyone use drag’s pronouns, nor complained about being misunderstood. It seems like the scenario you’re describing as a problem hasn’t happened. Is this intended to be a warning for the future?
“Drag is not using third person” may not be intended to be a complaint, but wouldn’t you say that someone who parses the sentence as you using third person misunderstands it?
They’re going to learn better eventually. It’s just a matter of how many chances they get to be respectful before they decide to stop being stubborn and mean. Drag believes that anyone will improve if they’re given enough chances. Drag is telling them the truth without judgement, and waiting to see what they choose to do with it. A lot of people have already chosen to accept the truth and stop being angry over nothing. As time goes on, the share of people who are choosing not to pick pointless fights will rise. And then the people who are still mad will get downvoted and reported and moderated, and they’ll have to give up on being stubborn. Drag is choosing patience because drag can see that future down the road. Drag doesn’t need to complain in order for that future to happen.
The problem with that approach is that is is the truth from your perspective only, and nobody is going to learn better if your “explanations” just amount to “you’re wrong”. From most people’s perspective, this is indistinguishable from trolling and I don’t think comments like this or this are going to convince them otherwise - someone who deliberately uses language in a very uncommon way should probably not justify it with a dictionary.
Drag believes very strongly in language. That’s why drag changes language; drag cares about it and wants to improve it. It’s like the hot rodders who love their cars and are always improving them. Or the programmers who contribute to the open source projects they love. Drag thinks drag knows a lot about language, and drag sure likes spending long hours thinking about how language works. You might say linguistics is a hobby to drag. And drag isn’t the kind of hobbyist who only studies and never tinkers.
Trolling is about trying to make others upset.
This is wrong. Trolling is about attention. Making others upset is an easy way to get attention but it’s not the only one. Gimmick accounts are another, for example.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/troll
to antagonize (others) online by deliberately posting inflammatory, irrelevant, or offensive comments or other disruptive content
Drag isn’t hip to the newest versions of the slang
PTB but seriously this is not a transphobic reaction.
YDI, you came to a community and weren’t contributing to the discussion and immediately decided to pivot the discussion to yourself. In addition your persistent and off-topic discussion about neopronouns could be viewed as trolling by others. It’s very similar to what another user DroneRights was doing a while back, though though their posts and comments were much more hostile and aggressive towards others. Yours are less aggressive but still give off the same vibes.
Maybe it was a bit extreme for them to permaban you for that but after dealing with DroneRights I can’t say I blame them.
Drag didn’t change the topic to dragself. Someone else decided to interrogate drag about drag’s pronouns. Would you have preferred drag ignore them? Denigrate the question and tell them to go away, because drag doesn’t want to discuss that topic? That’s how drag felt, but drag chose to be polite, and now you’re mad at drag for that.
Drag didn’t change the topic to dragself. Someone else decided to interrogate drag about drag’s pronouns. Would you have preferred drag ignore them? Denigrate the question and tell them to go away, because drag doesn’t want to discuss that topic? That’s how drag felt, but drag chose to be polite, and now you’re mad at drag for that.
It’s really confusing because you seem to be using “drag” both for yourself and other people as well, so I’m having a hard time reading what you are saying. Even AI doesn’t know what exactly to make of this word salad so if I got it wrong I apologize. However this is also likely the reason why people thought you were a troll, many trolls or spammers post incomprehensible word salad as part of their whole thing.
They actually weren’t interrogating you, they pointed out that referring to oneself in the third person is cringe, which it is. They were also pointing out that your use of “drag” would typically be seen as a nickname in the contexts you’re using it. That’s how language works, other people have to be on the same page about language otherwise communication doesn’t happen. And personalized first person pronouns aren’t a thing in English because they just don’t work well and make sentences hard to understand.
Then there is your history which is the fact that you’ve been having these fights with other people (i.e. @FlyingSquid@lemmy.world claimed in the thread that you’ve been harassing him about this stuff) which does factor in to the judgement that this is trolling. Add to that the fact that your username “dragonfucker” doesn’t help your credibility, in this perception of you, and even though you changed the display name and can’t change your username it still doesn’t help your cause.
As an example, if a person named Joe posts a discussion thread about the implications of trans women in sports as a neutral discussion it’ll probably be fine. If a person named trump4prezi2025 posts it they’ll probably get a lot more negative responses than they otherwise would because their username affects how people see them. In your case your provocative and profane username combined with your past behavior leads many people to think you are a troll, and therefore to ban you from communities, and in one case (dubvee.org) an entire Lemmy instance.
Seems like an overraction tbh.
A comment explaining drag’s pronouns
It should be drags surely, we don’t use an apostrophe for possessive pronouns.
We’ve already established that actual language and grammar isn’t a factor here
YDI. You weren’t contributing to the community discussion. You turned the discussion into one about you. That’s not helpful. the moderators were correct for removing you. For no other reason than you were off topic
They shouldn’t have asked if they didn’t want an explanation.
A ban is too much. They can just ignore others, if their made up words confuse them. People make up words all the time. It’s how language evolves. If someone ends up unable to communicate because of that, the situation will fix itself.
Drag is quite confused why your comment is being downvoted (+2/-2 at time of comment). Apparently users on the anarchist instance think people inventing new words is too politically radical, and we need grammar police to control people’s use of language instead.
I hope this doesn’t come across as offensive (I appreciate that pronouns are something personal to the individual), but if I’m understanding correctly, drag is shorthand for dragon right? What about using the full word ‘dragon’ instead?
Drag wants a one syllable pronoun. Two syllable pronouns take too long to say. And that also goes for subvocalisation while reading.
Also, drag’s pronouns don’t mean dragon. Drag’s identity is dragon rider, not dragon. Drag wants a pronoun that’s associated with dragons, but not exactly dragons. Just like drag.
Okay hang on
Your gender identity
Is dragon rider
Nah, this is patent bullshit just like DroneRights
