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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   29538 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 2023

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The reason for the choice of pronoun is obvious: That's the pronoun Sarah would want us to use. If you have a point to make, speak it plainly rather than asking stupid rhetorical questions.

Should you use the pronoun Sarah wants you to use or the pronoun for the gender you think Sarah is? If Sarah isn't in the conversation, does Sarah's preference even matter? Is there a "correct" language? Or is a word's correctness judged only on whether it facilitates a common understanding between speaker and listener? You obviously understood who all those "she"s and "her"s referred to, but would "he" and "his" have been a marginally easier read for you and other Motte readers?

I honestly don't know anymore.

I’d like to suggest that for historical explanations we use their pronouns at the time, then change after the transition comes in the story.

I'm not sure we've ever actually had to enforce this, but the official policy with Motte pronouns is:

  • You are always allowed to use the person in question's preferred pronoun.
  • You are always allowed to use "they", regardless of whether the person accepts that or not.
  • You are always allowed to twist yourself in knots to avoid pronouns even if it looks really silly.
  • If you're doing something historical, you can also use the person in question's officially preferred pronouns at that time in the story, but don't cleverly split hairs on this one; if you write a story about the Wachowskis, and start out by referring to them as "he", but then switch to "they" when they transition, the Eye of Sauron may look down upon thee.

The good news about these policies is that everyone finds them slightly uncomfortable, which is probably about as good as we can get.

If you're doing something historical, you can also use the person in question's officially preferred pronouns at that time in the story, but don't cleverly split hairs on this one; if you write a story about the Wachowskis, and start out by referring to them as "he", but then switch to "they" when they transition, the Eye of Sauron may look down upon thee.

This is confusing to me. Is the issue that the Wachowski sisters do not use the pronoun "they", but they did use "he" at one point?

It's to prevent people from maliciously using "he" by slipping in a historical sentence. You can write a post about the pre-transition history of the Wachowski's and only use "he", you can write a post about their entire history and use "he" for the pre- section and "she" for the post- section, or "they" for the entire history, but you cannot write a post where you use "he" for the pre-transition part, and "they" for the post-transition part.

How can this be malicous? If one talks about what the directors of Matrix are up to today, mod-approved options "her" or "they" if one didn't use "he" to refer to them when they identified as men. The latter exception seems absurd.

It can be malicious if I think to myself "haha, using 'he' will trigger the trannies, so I will slip in a historical sentences to have an excuse to use 'he', and use 'they' otherwise to stay one the good side of the rules".

The rule also hits legitimate uses, but it's a compromise, that's inevitable.

A post which interlaces events when a person was a different gender that they are today, would seem disjointed.

It is in no way a compromise, self-identification as the only criterion which determines which pronouns are OK in the opinion of mods is the the trans activist position, not a neutral one. Only the most radical trans activist would object to the rules Zorba posted, a person who demands their favourite pronouns are used, not merely that disfavoured ones are avoided.

self-identification as the only criterion which determines which pronouns are OK in the opinion of mods is the the trans activist position, not a neutral one

This is not the only criterion which determines which pronouns are OK. I recommend going and reading it over again.

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