Hello, drag is seeking feedback on this meme from a more... politically aware community, before posting it anywhere big.
Is the narrative here clear? The fact that Gru is a transphobic Lemmy user and mistakenly thinks drag is their ally? Is the moral at the end, that drag's existence outs transphobes and makes Lemmy safer from transphobia, obvious?
Drag got he/him-ed earlier today and just now, suddenly had this realisation that calling drag a troll and misgendering drag is exactly what a conservative troll would do. They WANT all the cisgender liberals to think unconventional identities are all fake. If a troll pretends to be trans and gets outed, that's the conservative win condition! Look at the helicopter pasta, they didn't try to hide that. They made it obvious satire.
If everyone accepts drag and comes to accept neopronouns and xenogenders, the conservatives lose. But if everyone thinks drag is a troll, they win. If there are closeted conservatives on Lemmy, they think drag is an ally and want to "help" drag by "outing the troll". They think we're doing kayfabe and are just pretending to fight. They think misgendering drag, and being applauded by the liberals for it, is a nice thing to do, to help drag spread transphobia.
Of course, this plan doesn't work if the community stands up to misgendering and the mods ban the people responsible. Which is what drag always says the mods should do when drag gets he/him-ed. Drag is "betraying" all those trolls who think we're on the same side.
So, is this massive conspiratorial revelation clear in the meme? Drag is too close to the issue to be objective about the meme's clarity or quality.
If drag is a troll or not has no bearing on whether or not we should try to respect drag's pronouns.
You know, that's one of the things dragon convinced me of.
Mind you, I don't have the stamina to rewrite any references to them in a useful way, so I default back to they/them/you. But that's my lack of ability, not their fault.
If drag are a troll, drag have the same net effect of making people think about the subjects of neopronouns, individualized neopronouns, and how those do or don't relate to trans specific issues. Yeah, most people are going to think "I don't like it", and stop, but even that is important. It's likely more than they thought about the matter before.
As a note as to what I mean about not having stamina for using drag as a universal pronoun, a section from above:
If drag are a troll, drag have the same net effect of making people think about the subjects of neopronouns - see, that's grammatically correct. The two "drags" replace they. Trying to write it out like that means having to either abandon the grammar of standard english (which ain't an easy thing once you learn a language), or carefully think each instance of a pronoun out. See, the way standard rules make you think, both of those drags are followed by the wrong word. My brain says "drag is", and "drag *has" because drag registers as a name. It just does. Again, that's my problem, not drags.
But, it means that to apply those pronouns in a clear way, I also have to abandon fluency. I can't think as fast, which reduces the ability to effectively communicate. Now, at this point in things, it should be easy enough to just write normally, then edit for the pronoun drag. But that's when another me problem kicks in.
I tend to long comments. But I'm dyslexic and arthritic. Writing physically hurts. Having to go back and edit once to reduce typos takes time, and hurts. Having to also patch in pronouns makes the process longer.
Again, that's a me problem. But just this comment (that I'm writing now so that I can use it in the future to save pain) has my fingers throbbing and burning.
That's where I become hegemony unwilling to make the switch. As much as drag have convinced me that the matter is important, I just can't make myself take on the extra pain when typing. I have to pick my battles when arthritis, and I pick the ability to say what I need and want to say as my main battle. When my hands aren't fucking with me, I'll do my best. When they are, my best is going to look like I'm not doing it at all.
Again, this is here because I want to be able to write it once and this was as good an opportunity as any.
Actually, your brain is right. See, conjugation doesn't depend on grammatical person or subject/object in English. That's a Latin rule which people assumed holds in English because there aren't many counterexamples. But take a look at this: "They are tall", "You are tall". Look, it's the same conjugation! In English, multiple pronouns with completely different usage can have the same conjugation. And two pronouns with the same person and inflection can have different conjugation. So trust your brain, it knows the rules better than you do.
Also it's fine if you don't feel able to use drag's preferred pronouns.