Hey all.

I know everybody’s looking to put the pronoun struggle session behind us and I don’t want to reignite it or anything, but now that everything’s calmed down a bit I thought it would be a good chance to reexamine it and talk it over a bit.

I was hesitant about the issue from the start because I didn’t/don’t think that trans people are singled out in listing pronouns on this site specifically, because we don’t have profile pics or anything so cis people also have to list pronouns or risk being misgendered. I definitely wouldn’t assume anyone on here was trans because they listed pronouns or cis because they didn’t, and I don’t see why anyone else would think that either, so I didn’t understand what the problem was. Imo, since this site’s inception, it has never been reasonable to assume that someone is trans just because they have “He/him” listed.

However, a point that multiple posters made in response to that was to talk about the “default assumption” that anyone you encounter on the internet is male, and that women can feel singled out if they’re the only ones that have to list pronouns, and I can understand that argument a bit better. I guess because pronouns are typically associated with trans issues, and because it is more like that on other platforms with profile pictures, the struggle session was framed more as a trans issue. But as I said in a couple conversations, I feel like it’s more of a women’s issue. Trans men are not harmed by the default assumption of masculinity, while it affects women regardless of whether they’re trans or cis. Maybe we should’ve been calling everyone sexist rather than transphobic 🙃

Like I said, I know everyone’s eager to put this behind us and wrap it up with a bow, but personally I don’t think the site default being “any” rather than blank actually fixes anything in regards to that default assumption. But I don’t know what the best way to deal with that issue is. My only thing would be to try to avoid gendered language if you don’t know the person’s pronouns, if they’re listed as any, default to “they” rather than “he.” As for setting your pronouns, I don’t think anyone should feel pressured, but if you’re male and the only reason you don’t want to is because people assume you’re male anyway, then it’d be cool to set them as “he/him” as a sign that that’s something that needs to be said and shouldn’t just be assumed (though I’m guessing at this point you probably have anyway).

But more generally, I thought this would be a good time to examine our community in general and ask whether there’s anything to be done to make women feel more comfortable here. I think a lot of people here are either male or AMAB, and I think for both groups there’s more of an expectation growing up that you’re allowed to have strong opinions and political views. The “dirtbag left” aesthetic is probably more appealing to men than to women. So I think to an extent it’s acceptable that our demographics skew the way they do, because some of it is due to big societal issues and some of it is part of our identity as a community - if we gave up our Sonic/Luigi Mpreg shitposts, would we still be Chapo?

At the same time, I feel like there’s room for improvement on this front. This post is already quite long and I don’t want to dominate the conversation - instead, I’d like to open up a space to voice any concerns and to brainstorm if there’s anything we can do better as a community to address any latent sexism, make the space more welcoming to women, or otherwise fight the patriarchy.

Thanks for reading, and I hope I haven’t stepped on any toes. I love all y’all, and I hope we can work together to make the community the best it can be ❤️