Comment by sazz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sazz | Hacker News Reader

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I think this is a fundamentally misunderstanding which I never understood. Your existance and your selfconciousness as a human being is not in any way affected to some words somebody is using to describe their views. Every being is unique and their sexuality is something of their private business.

There are basically two poles - male and female. And there is anything inbetween. Not a digital 0 or 1. More like geography.

And just because I'm living right now in some country more towards the north than the south pole I don't have to define my identity by creating new words enforcing everyone to use them. Why should I bother anyone where I'm coming from and where I'm heading? Except people maybe I see the interest to open up myself?

The most important question to me is always what's the reason behind all the need to fight?

> Your existance and your selfconciousness as a human being is not in any way affected to some words somebody is using to describe their views.

IDK, if every time you encountered someone they referred to you by the wrong name, after being corrected every time they do so, that wouldn't affect you? I think that if someone consistently feminized my name and used feminine pronouns for me over the course of multiple interaction I would get pretty pissy, downright hostile.

As a child, I had a very high voice. On the way to my fiftieth birthday, as a man with a full beard, I still sometimes have this high voice. I feel like a trillion times people have called me "Miss" on the phone. I usually wait a few seconds and politely correct them.

In most cases, people have apologized directly and the conversation moved on. In very few cases they moved on without apologizing. In virtually no cases did they ignore my hint.

Yes, there are rude and ignorant people out there. And they will always be.

From my experience, it is manners that lead to better interaction, not syntactical changes in language. Because you can't create empathy with neologisms.

And the best way to deal with rude people - stay away from them ;-)

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