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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   9484 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026

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I think gender ideology in general is a "gotcha" question such that, no matter what you believe, you are forced to pick a side. Consider the choice of which pronouns to use to refer to a transgender individual, let's say a male-to-female.

  • She: You subscribe to gender ideology and believe this person is a woman.
  • He: You don't subscribe to gender ideology and believe this person is a man.
  • They: You are trying to sit on the fence and placate both sides, but this is unlikely to work. In particular, progressives will notice if you keep saying "they" when a transgender person's preferred pronouns are she/her (after all, in progressive spaces displaying your preferred pronouns is normalized), and will correctly recognize you as a coward trying to play both sides, if not a person who doesn't subscribe to gender ideology.
  • Some other pronoun: Same as above. If it's not the person's preferred pronouns, this is considered a transgression in the eyes of progressives.
  • No pronouns: This is awkward but possible. However, people aren't stupid, and progressives will notice you doing this too and treat it as a transgression.

There is no choice you could make that means you are neither for nor against gender ideology, especially when progressives treat neutrality the same as being against. The difference between pronouns and the "what is a woman?" question is that the latter is used by conservatives to explicitly call out and expose the beliefs of the answerer, while pronouns are a way for progressives to hijack an existing social norm and turn it into an implicit belief test.

I don't think it's quite as bad as that. I'll use "she" in person for someone who, in my judgement, is clearly committed to being transgender. (And I reserve the right for this to be my judgement call.) It doesn't mean I "believe they're a woman", just that it's low-cost for me to be polite. The Democrats may have gone way, way, way too far on gender ideology (especially the coercive parts), but if some people want to be treated as women, why not do so? In most real-life situations it's not actually a big deal. And you don't need to bring the culture war with you everywhere.

Calling everyone "they" just sets my teeth on edge. It's not a fence-sitting position - it's very much in line with leftist ideology, forcing us all to unlearn that men and women exist.

They: You are trying to sit on the fence and placate both sides, but this is unlikely to work. In particular, progressives will notice if you keep saying "they" when a transgender person's preferred pronouns are she/her (after all, in progressive spaces displaying your preferred pronouns is normalized), and will correctly recognize you as a coward trying to play both sides, if not a person who doesn't subscribe to gender ideology.

There's a weird shift in progress amongst certain sects, that are starting to insist that "they" be used for everyone, regardless of gender. It remains to be seen if it'll win out.

There's a weird shift in progress amongst certain sects, that are starting to insist that "they" be used for everyone, regardless of gender. It remains to be seen if it'll win out.

Wouldn't be surprised; singular 'they' isn't that much more of a stretch than singular 'you'.

It depends. Singular "they" is a motte-and-bailey among lefty groups that support custom pronouns, where the motte is "singular they has been around since the 14th century, you chud" and the bailey is "people should be able to identify themselves with 'they' as a nonbinary gendered pronoun".

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