Gendered pronouns are dumb, and by extention so are neopronounts. Language is about mutual intelligibility so making a new nondescriptive word for every possible form of gender identity is an exercise in futility. I'm so glad I live somewhere where gendered pronouns aren't a thing. English should just switch to they/them for everyone and be done with it.
While gender-neutral languages are awesome, the fact that we are speaking a gendered language means we are often communicating gender. Having to communicate gender is the cost of speaking English.
If you refuse to use a trans person's neopronouns, you will be intelligible as denying their gender. If you internally respect them, but externally misgender them or complain about their pronouns, then your internal intentions are unintelligible. Language is a two-way street. You have a responsibility to make yourself understood, by using the pronouns that match your intentions.
Also, consider that a neopronoun may be perfectly intelligible to everyone as-is. You certainly understand the meaning of Legend's hex code, #LEG3ND, right? It's intelligible. When it comes to neopronouns like Legend's, I think you may be mistaken.; this might not be about intelligibility. In Legend's case, at least, you understand neopronouns perfectly well. You simply disagree.
I understand this is an allegory for pronouns/gender but I'm also dumb, is green supposed to be nonbinary? or are they being encouraged to use neopronouns they don't actually want? Pls dumb down for me
Green is binary trans and is being told to use they/she instead of she/her because the cis people don't actually accept her as a woman. Legend is nonbinary and uses neopronouns.
Gurann Lagan reboot is looking hella tight
Do people outside the U.S. really do pronoun circles? I’m trying to understand what the point of them is.
When you are talking to people the pronouns are always you/yours. When talking about people…. Well don’t talk about people if you don’t know them.
I'm in the US and I've never encountered this. Some people put them in their email signatures which is fine and has actually been useful a couple times with names that were unclear to me. Mostly we're just trying to get the meeting over as fast as possible so we can get back to doing actual work. If someone did do this I'd never show up to their meeting on time again, same as I do for people I know are doing icebreakers.
Common in my circles any time you are also sharing names in a circle
in the little place in europe i live in, it is very common for political and queer groups as part of name rounds. the reason for it is the same as for the name round: so you know how to refer to the people in the round.
it's not just done the first time but at the start of every meeting, so people got a nice chance to update everyone smoothly about name or pronoun changes without having to like do some big comming out. it's really nice
it's not common outside those spaces but mainly cause it's a more new thing and society is really cis binary normative so most people just expect to be able to guess everyones pronouns correctly (they are not)
I’ve never encountered such a thing in the US. Closest might be name tags with space for pronouns on them.
They did them in my LGBT+ youth group in the UK
Actually, My second person pronouns are You/Yours, with a capital letter.
You’re the second person to have said that.
Yes, officer! That’s Yours, over there! You’s the one that did! You was all by Yourself in that corner!
That's... Not how second person works, grammatically speaking. "Officer" would be the addressee, so you should be using third person pronouns to refer to "the one that did"
no, me do pronoun grammer gooder
My third person pronouns are She/They/It, with a capital letter.
You's on first
Also, to answer your question, people do use pronoun circles. Every adult should be experienced enough to change their perception of other people's gender at will, so pronoun circles are a chance to make sure you're perceiving other people correctly.
Isn’t it an incredibly hostile experience, a bunch of strangers looking at you, expecting you to perform your pronoun dance for them?
It doesn’t seem… welcoming.
Maybe I’m way off base here, but every version I can imagine seems like true nightmare fuel, at least to my introverted ass.
This comic is deliberately emphasising the bad parts of pronouns circles as an example of what not to do. You're not supposed to interrogate people or debate with them about their pronouns. Decent people don't act that way.
But there are problems with them that trans people have pointed out. Like, if you're closeted, then you have to choose between outing or misgendering yourself. That's what's happening to Blue, who's not ready to come out yet.
We don't necessarily have a great solution for that one. The best we can do is make it optional to give your pronouns. But then closeted people who don't give their pronouns can be perceived as transphobic chuds.
usually its a social situation where a bunch of strangers are interacting for the first time so most people dont know each other yet. you give your name, you give your pronouns, maybe you say another thing about yourself prompted by whoever organized the event. its a way to introduce everyone quickly and it happens in a lot of different situations. but yeah its kind of uncomfortable if youre introverted or have social anxiety.
Giving your pronouns along with your name (and any other additional information) as part of a normal introduction isn't what's depicted in the comic's pronoun-circle though. We see everyone just sit down to shout out (and start to argue about) just their hex-codes/pronouns.
Also, I have a hard time interpreting the arguments of #LEG3ND. #LEG3ND points to the visually green appearance of the other figure in defense of their self-identification of a less-matching green hex-code, and opposing the suggestion of the closer-matching hex-code. I would normally understand that interpreting someone's external appearance instead of just trusting their stated pronouns or gender would be a bad thing, but here #LEG3ND's (seemingly inaccurate?) interpretation of appearance is given as the more favorable supporting point? The comic seems to use non-primary colors as an analogy for untraditional/neo pronouns or non-binary genders/identities. But then #LEG3ND unapologetically gives a "hex-code" that is not only outside the range of primary colors (or something like standard named html colors), but actually incompatible with the format of hex codes entirely, and refuses to clarify at all, which seems equivalent to something like responding with a set of pronouns that is not usable in standard English (eg a list of 5). So then is the comic then, through its protagonist, deriding the answering with intelligible pronouns at all? Given context, that doesn't seem the intended effect, but understanding what the author actually intended to convey about real-world pronouns or genders without substantially assuming their analogies seems impossible unless there's some cultural references I'm missing.
Green identifies as green, and looks green, and gave everyone a green hex code. The correct thing to do would have been to accept that Green is green. Instead, one of the greyscales suggested that Green use a less saturated hexcode, and tried to frame it as inclusivity.
This is the equivalent of hearing a trans woman say she uses she/her and telling her to use they/she. They're saying "You don't have to be binary, we're accepting" to a person who is binary, and wants to be accepted as binary.
Legend saw all this go down, and concluded that the greyscales in this group are assholes. Legend doesn't believe in letting the laws of computer science decide their identity for them. And when the greyscales start telling them to let the laws of computer science decide their identity for them, they decide not to take the bait. They're not going to argue about the validity of their identity, because these assholes aren't worth that effort. They're never going to accept Legend, so it's pointless to try and explain.
The rules of grammar, like the rules of computer science, were made up by people. They can be changed by people. My pronouns break the rules of English grammar, and I don't care. I'm like Legend.
so the grayscale assholes in this comic are nonbinary they/them people who in some nonbinary normativity insist that everyone wants to use they/them pronouns, no binary pronouns, no neo-pronouns?
im not gonna say that this couldnt happen but this seems like a very unusual scenario to me, even if it were a specifically nonbinar group meeting. it seems so far removed from any experience i had
In this world, gender isn't about body shape and pronouns. It's about colours and hex codes. The dipshits are cischromatic greyscales. Green, Blue, and Legend are transchromatic. Green is an out primary colour. Blue is a closeted primary colour. Legend is an out teriary neohex-using colour.
Think of greyscales as cis, primaries as binary trans, secondaries as nonbinary androgynous, tertiaries as nonbinary xenogender, hex codes as pronouns, and impossible hexes as neopronouns, especially neogrammatical pronouns.
Also, it's not relevant to this particular comic, but Unwanted Purple Syndrome is an intersex condition.
ooh i see. thanky
Thank you, that explanation helps me a lot. I certainly agree with that core point.
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