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this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2023
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Probably not necessary, no. Though they allow for the pronoun to be anything so it could be username/username and that would be fine as far as I know.
Disallowing pronouns via a community rule probably has as much of a counterproductive aspect as requiring them. Make it a rule and you get users reporting users for failing to use gender neutral language. It's the same effect but inverted I think.
It's always been a sort of opt in type thing at best. If you want to declare them go ahead. It just means some people will insist on honoring it and others will insist on dishonoring it, because rarely are pronouns actually relevant to a typical conversation: they're just a metric of how polite or respectful people are willing to be with each other because, well internet. Hopefully most people recognize it as it should: no big deal.
People don't have the same reaction if they affix a Mr. or Mrs.to their username, interestingly enough.
I don't think there should be a rule either way, but instead a community guideline to avoid pronouns in general if they're not known, or to use they/them if absolutely necessary.
The only rule related to this, imo, should be civility. If you're intentionally misusing pronouns, that should be against the rules, not because of pronouns, but because you're intentionally being a jerk. The same goes for slurs, personal attacks, etc.
It turns out that I've seen a lot of stupid comments from users from hexbear, but that's potentially because those users are really easy to spot due to the unique username format. Regardless, I think it's a stupid instance rule, and I reflexively skip past those posts because I haven't seen any good posts (subjective obviously) from a user from that instance.