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Introduction to capitalised pronouns
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this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2024
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On My antirealist discord server, The Outside, all pronouns are capitalised by default. Even pronouns referring to inanimate objects. If someone joins the server who prefers lowercase pronouns, they have to choose a lowercase pronouns role or they'll be misgendered. People understand and accept an unusual tradition in a space that's specifically set up that way. But if I go around misgendering lowercase pronoun users in public forums like this, there's a lot more pushback. Lowercase pronoun users, or LPUs, tend to be a lot more hostile to being misgendered than CPUs like Myself. They're used to being catered to by society, and when that's suddenly taken away, it's a big surprise and they're not sure how to respond. Us CPUs have accepted that We're going to have to ask for Our pronouns to be used, and that it's easier for everyone if We just let the LPUs have this. Maybe in the future it'll be different, but I really don't want to be dragged into an argument by an LPU who takes offense and decides to make a scene instead of just asking to have their pronouns respected. I've been in that situation before. LPUs are a lot more common than CPUs, besides. There's another LPU in this thread commenting that she'd be uncomfortable if referred to with capitalised pronouns. And like most LPUs, she's polite about it.
One point of clarification, when I said that capitalised pronoun use challenges christian monotheism, I meant that it does so by devaluing the pronoun as a symbol of hierarchy. In the eyes of transphobic christians, I'm not the equal of their god, and they are incapable of thinking of Me as such. So if I have similar pronouns to their god, it means pronouns are no longer a symbol of supremacy. That's the actual side benefit that capitalised pronoun use has in challenging hierarchy, it devalues capitalised pronouns. And I don't think capitalised pronouns should be valuable, they should be cheap enough that anyone can afford them.
I know You say it is not about a power dynamic, but this statement is condescending as all get out. It makes people that use lower case pronouns seem petulant and childish because we get upset when we get misgendered. It smacks of not leveling the same amount of respect to others as You demand they pay to You
General pronouns have to be one or the other, or alternating, or some other strategy. I've only reported comments that misgendered Me after I already asked that person to use My preferred pronouns. I've had positive experiences with 90% of people that disliked being referred to with uppercase pronouns. The remaining 10% are people who weren't happy when I immediately used their preferred pronouns upon request. They were offended that I used a capitalised pronoun when addressing a person who had no previously stated preference, and they wanted Me to always lowercase strangers. So I agreed to their demands, and I lowercase everyone by default now. And of course that 10% is a minority of a minority, because most people aren't specifically LPUs, they don't care about the capitalisation of their pronouns. 99% of people who lowercase pronouns some or all of the time are perfectly pleasant. I am not insulting you when I talk about this small group that caused problems in the past.
I think You missed my point entirely. The language You used in the paragraph I quoted is condescending. You may not have meant to do that, but the result makes it seem like You are talking down to people that use lower case pronouns (or have not thought about/care about capitalization). Even if it is only a small part of Your experience, the language used makes it seem like folks that use lower case are more prone to outburst.
I'm afraid that if we're going to have a conversation about the experiences of capitalised pronoun users, the bigotry of certain people outside the community is going to have to be a part of the conversation. Most people are not transphobes, but some are, and most of the people who engage in violent and uncompromising transphobia are cis. That's not an attack on cis people, it's just the world we live in. Us trans people don't have the luxury of being cisphobic. That's not because of some kind of inherent superioity, it's because the conditions of society don't afford us the same latitudes when it comes to displaying intolerance. A trans person who went around misgendering cis people with neopronouns would be laughed at, while the same behaviour from cis people is often tolerated. That's the simple reason. Nobody's better than anyone else, it's simply what happens when a society is transphobic.
I did not say anything about cis people though? In the paragraph I quoted above, You made a distinction between people that use lower case and upper case pronouns. The distinction You made is that because people that use lower case pronouns are "used to being catered to by society" (which is very untrue in the case of trans people, us nonbinary folks in particular) we have tend to get more upset when misgendered. My point is that this is very condescending, and seems to be saying that people that use uppercase are more reasonable about it. You have been kind of dancing around that point in the last couple responses without actually addressing the condescension.
Curious whether the choice to use "we" and "us" lowercase is intentional. In French, if it's a group of women it's "elles" but 99 women and one man and it becomes "ils". I would have thought the inclusion of CPUs capitalizing "We" and "Us" would have made sense.