Reversed and Remanded

[dachte]

One of the ways you can tell you're arguing poorly about an issue is when people who have little opinion on the issue read your argument and hope things go against you just for spite. I confess to the latter with a recent post on Google+ by "Siderea B", a post which has been floating through my social circles. There are quite a lot of these posts

Comments

[_tove]

I read such statements as less like whining and more like "here is a way in which your service could be better (potentially making yours a more viable service than Facebook)."

I think the particular wording of Siderea B's post is unfortunate (especially the flounce), because there's some things at the foundation of her argument that I agree with. One of them is that being able to unthinkingly use one's legal name on the internet is a privileged position. I don't even mean that in the technical sense of "privilege," more just that, well, you've got a good thing going in life if you're in a position to use your legal name on the internet. There are a lot of reasons that various people might not want to do so, and some of them in particular (such as a history of stalkers) are certainly not situations I'd want to be in.

And while I certainly don't think a legal-name policy would ever be formed with the intent to diminish women, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the reasons why one might not want to use one's legal name online are

[dachte]

If she would've phrased it that way, I would not have objected. The way she said it made her plea worse than had she said nothing at all. I wouldn't classify it as whining so much as batshit-crazy-flaming

[_tove]

In your frame, you refer to "people who are paranoid about personal information [and] people who want the world to recognise their gender identity that involves learning new pronouns and/or grammar," and your phrasing sounds to me like you think these are irrational stances. So would you really have not objected? (This does count as a sidetrack, though, since your original post is about poor argumentation and spite, so I understand if it's too far off topic.)

I somewhat object (though I'm hardly challenging you to a duel or anything) to your use of "actual" and "true" in the second paragraph. I'm not sure I consider my legal name my "true" name anymore, at least to the extent that I often don't even remember to respond to it. Calpurnia Addams covers this with a bit more sarcasm in her most famous video.

...
As to the aside, I think I thought there were more people (or at least more upper-class people) using more names, but it's also not clear to me what the distinction between names and titles is in some cases. This has

[dachte]

I think sufficient paranoia is kind of kooky, yeah. I refuse to use non he/she pronouns to refer to people; people can choose which of the two they like and if I'm aware of their preferences I'll go with that. I'll get *very* grumbly if they insist I use other pronouns (I don't mind hearing these pronouns, but people don't get to insist they can write on my definitional framework

[bubblingbeebles]

I'll get *very* grumbly if they insist I use other pronouns

is singular-"they" also out of the question? (i'm only curious; i ask since i personally find every proposed agender pronoun ridiculous, with "they" as the sole exception.)

[dachte]

I use singular "they" as a marker for people where I don't know their he/she preference or have not made the sentence specific enough. I would not accept it as a sole pronoun for someone, because it'd still amount to special-casing for what would likely be one or a small set of people and I've had a very tough time remembering to do that. It was irritating-as-hell to deal with this for the short time I tried in college. Deciding not to do that was, I think, a really good decision.

I would not object to if we refined language so as to eliminate gendered pronouns entirely, but I may be too old to personally switch over into that.

[bubblingbeebles]

huh, i never knew that your called name was not your given name.

[_tove]

Arguably, it was still given, as it's my initials. :P (And my parents have stated that they did think about the possibility of me taking my initials as my name, albeit not particularly seriously.) Also it was given unto me by the almighty Andrew.