I just got banned from linux@lemmy.ml, which seems to be the biggest Linux community out there.
For context, it was about the recent Vaxerski incident, where I shared my personal opinion about the whole gender stuff. I wasn’t even trying to be hurtful against anyone, just shared my 2 cents in an already ongoing conversation.
Sure, ine might not agree with my opinion, and I don’t agree with others, and this is totally normal. But at least we should be able to have sane and respectful conversations where no one is insulting each other, or anyone else… without having a mod intervening into the conversation
So to all the mods out there: Your personal opinion does not give you the right to delete comments and block users, just because their opinions don’t align with yours!
There’s already a huge difference between what happened and your example here. Your example is “people saying you must do X” . What happens when it comes to gender is people asking, “please do not do X”.
They’re not saying you must refer to them as, for instance, she/her, but rather asking that you do not refer to them as he/him/they/them/whatever. You’re free to just not use pronouns to refer to them at all if that suits you better - you can refer to them by name instead. You’re left with plenty of options and only a handful of restrictions.
Your example, on the other hand, is completely restrictive; you must take this single course of action, and there are no alternatives.
For what it’s worth, I do think we’re in a fairly transitional stage (ha) of how we as society deal with transgenderism. I think people being made to change their pronouns in order to feel comfortable is silly. Not because those people are silly - they’re just doing what they can to feel comfortable with the restrictions society has placed on them - but because society and language are silly.
Why do we refer to people by gender at times when it’s completely irrelevant? Someone having a penis, or male hormones, or whatever other “masculine qualities”, is irrelevant 99% of the time when I refer to them as he/him. If I say, “Donald Trump? Yeah, he’s a corrupt idiot,” then why does him having a penis have any bearing on the language I use there?
And why do we have such gendered roles in society? Why can’t men just wear dresses and make-up and link the colour pink and still identify as men? Why can’t women cut their hair short and wear baggy clothes and like engineering projects and lifting weights at the gym and still identify as women? I guarantee that if we could remove all those kinds of gender associations, you’d see a lot less trans people.
People transition because who they are and what they like, and what society says they have to be (based on their gender) are at odds with each other, and it’s literally easier for them to change gender in order to be allowed to be themselves than to change society. Being trans isn’t some kind of personal failing; it’s a failure of society to accommodate people who deviate even slightly from its rigid roles and expectations.
The ideal future, such as I see it, is for there to be no trans people because no-one feels a need to transition - they can just feel comfortable and accepted as they are. But until then, you need to recognise that there’s a societal issue and stop being a part of it. It takes such a small amount of effort on your part to use the pronouns someone requests, or to avoid using pronouns at all, and it makes such a huge difference to them to be gendered properly. So just be a decent, respectful person and accommodate their wishes and stop making their life worse.