Hee. Nash just retweeted me explaining ex cathedra.

@BESW Link us!

My replies that he re-tweeted are in those conversations.

On the subject of pronouns and gender: it's just the nature of the discussion. Some topics just have this innate ability to a) bring out people's claws and b) hurt people (including myself). And, as much as I hate to say it, RP communities are not famed for their tolerance in general. It seems pretty friendly around here, but I'm new and, no matter where you are, this stuff likes to blow up.

(He's no less confused than many Catholics I know; I'm only familiar with it myself because I had Jesuit-trained theology teachers in high school.)

@Pixie Fair enough. We try to keep chat as nice and tolerant as possible--we know the RPG community isn't known for that, and so we make an extra effort. It doesn't always work, but that's usually more out of ignorance than malice.

I do know that we have people in chat from a wider variety of religious, cultural, and gender-based backgrounds than is considered standard. (Many online communities have people with a variety of contexts, but have an attitude of enforced apperance of sameness.)

(I'm pretty sure this side chat alone is currently hosting at least two people with some kind of non-normative gender/sex/orientation thing going on, out of the five here.)

@BESW Yeah, I get the sense at least that there is a good attempt here. But I don't know how receptive this community is to pointing out these kinds of issues when a specific person is involved, and with the amount of bias and oversimplification I could identify, I get the sense that trying wouldn't have done me any good anyway.

To be clear, I really didn't have a problem with what you were saying and agree that modifying pronoun usage alone is never going to be enough.

It's definitely not a topic that can be constructively concluded in this forum (using the generic non-Internet sense of the word), even if I think it could probably be conducted civilly.

I suspect it'd just sort of--happen, and then stop happening.

But for the record, if we do ever get into topics that are distressing, this side chat is explicitly designed for them: you should always feel free to ask people to move here from main chat.

Not everybody picks up on the distress of others in chat, so we try to be a place where speaking up about it is accepted gracefully.

Most likely. I just have a fair bit of experience with this kind of discussion (in RP communities, even), and it tends to be really exhausting and not that productive unless people you're talking to are fully invested in it and want to learn and think about perspectives that aren't their own. From my end of things, I have to discuss personally-affecting and emotionally-draining topics while having the entire argument reduced to and dismissed as something "made up."

Ew. I feel that.

But it's hard to just not say anything. I couldn't quite accomplish that. :P

I am interested in your perspective, but I have no interest in giving you any stress or making an ordeal.

@BESW Hmm, let's see. The idea of misandry is a really contentious thing, and I don't think it's relevant when the topic should be not linguistically erasing women and nonbinary genders. Alternative pronoun schemes far predate tumblr (the mention of tumblr itself being a dismissal technique) and are an entirely valid way to solve a real problem.

Although I do agree that pronoun issues are symptomatic and not causal, erasure has a very profound effect, and (from person to person) misgendering somebody can cause a lot of distress that people really underestimate.

Agreed on all points.

(I have some personal experience with misgendering, and though I didn't find it particularly upsetting it easily could have been.)

I'm glad! Like I said, it wasn't you that I had an issue with. I just didn't want to appear to be jumping on Dorian in addressing those points. At the same time, it was hard to just not say anything.

And yeah, Guam has a lot of baggage with marginalisation and people who don't fit neatly into pre-made boxes.

@BESW If I may ask, how should I refer to you, so I can avoid misgendering? And yeah, I can imagine. On that subject, if I ever say anything insensitive or ignorant, please tell me, flat out. I'm white and American, and I know I'm going to mess up once in a while. I'd rather know when I do.

Oh, I'm just a white guy.

And yeah, I'm in a rather odd position myself in all this, as a white male in a minority context where I'm culturally marginalised but expected to not notice I'm marginalised and to act according to that delusion.

Oh yeah, sorry, I wasn't assuming anything about your ethnicity! Just that my own white Americanness is relevant in a lot of situations regarding other countries and cultures.

Aye.

I was born and raised on Guam; my mother lived on Guam nearly all her life too; my father's been here since his early twenties; I grew up in parts of the island that people don't think white people know exist. But it's generally assumed that I'm new to the island, have no ties to it, know nothing about the culture, and don't plan to stay for more than a couple years at most.

I try not to make any assumptions about anybody's identity if I can avoid it (it's a pretty ingrained behavior, but I work against it). Not my place. I avoid questioning beyond what information I'm given, as well. I figure it's not my business until they make it so.

We always make assumptions; it's crucial to getting through the day without analysis paralysis. But we can make an effort to identify them and recognise when they're not useful.

Right, that's a better way to express that. That's what I mean by "work against."

(I've tentatively used the feminine pronoun in reference to you once or twice in main chat, and not been corrected yet, but I wasn't sure if you were just being polite to save me face.)

You were correct, no worries.

It seemed most likely.

I'm pretty outwardly feminine. Which in a perfect world would not mean too much, but in terms of those assumptions everyone makes, it does. :P People still assume I'm a guy online sometimes, but that doesn't really bother me.

I have been mistaken for a woman, and for a man three times my age.

(The latter was on voice chat, which amuses me to no end.)

(Whereas I've been mistaken for a woman online and in punchspace. Which I also found mostly amusing, thankfully.)

I am, however, about as straight as a circle. The fact that I mention my boyfriend every other sentence sometimes causes confusion there. >w>;; And oh, wow. Online people have been thinking I was older than I was since I was 13. In real life, they still frequently think I'm a 16 year old girl. I'm 24.

Seeing the shock on people's faces is kind of amusing.

Happened just Sunday, actually, when I was assisting a chatty customer at the toy store. "Are you still in school?" "[distractedly looking something up] Oh, I've graduated college..." He thought I was just out of high school.

@Pixie I'm similar, actually.

I do a lot of work for the local university, where people regularly think I'm a student.

If I get a job teaching there next semester, this could be... interesting.

Yeah, no one would realize I was a teacher if I worked at a university, ever. xD

I'm going silver at the temples and it hasn't helped yet.

I figure some time in my 30s I'll go from looking 23 to looking 65.

I'm looking forward to rocking the Old Geezer look.

Haha. I can probably expect this to last for a while. It seems to be a common trait on my mother's side. On trips, people are surprised my grandmother isn't my mother, and once when my mother came to pick me up from high school, my friend thought she was my sister.

I'll be happy when I have white hair because then I can dye it purple.

Tea does nothing for silver hair, by the way. If hair colour is fading, tea helps.

So tea makes my light brown hair richer and darker, and my silver hair just stands out all the more.

Ahh. I don't do anything to my hair. I'm afraid to mess it up. I like it too much as is, and I'd have to just about destroy it to get it to do anything I'd like better. xD

Yeah. I dyed it blue-black once for a cosplay, but I used semipermanent dye. It turned sea green for a month or two and then washed out.

Beyond that, I've just done some experimenting with length and style. Grew it long in college, which permanently changed the lie of my hairline.

Mine is very dark brown, with a gold and copper shine and so much natural curl that people regularly think I've hot rolled it. Sounds like a Mary Sue's hair, haha. But I like it, and I'd cry if I tried something drastic and it didn't go back to the way it was.

I once used a very gentle purple dye, also for a cosplay. It got a plum sheen you could only see if you were really looking for it.

The downside of the curls is short hair is a bad, bad idea, so I stick with long. My hairdresser aunt convinced me to try short hair before middle school. It was... bad.

Heh.

I like my hair long, but it's way too much work, and too hot for Guam, and not professional enough for this stage in my career.

The amount of work I devote to mine is "brush, wash, brush again when waking up, maybe straighten bangs (yeah right)." I've learned to respect its whims. Also I'm extremely bad at doing hair.

Heh.

With the humidity here, and my hair being extremely fine, it needs love or it goes all to frizz.

Ahh, yeah, the humidity would probably destroy mine. It's super thick and dense, but with the amount of curl, frizz is the enemy.

Bangs would probably turn into water buffalo horns faster, too. They are the real enemy.

A visual aid for buffalo horns I made in high school, it has served me well over the years:

Heheheh.

I've been wearing my bangs the same way forever: blunt bangs that just cover my eyebrows. It works for a while. If I go too long without a trim, they attempt to take flight.

I kept my hair in a very short generic-business cut until I grew it out and wore a ponytail for most of four years. Ever since, my hairline goes back instead of forward and so bangs look ridiculous.

Trying to get bangs out of a backwards-growing widow's peak winds up with, at best, a Superman curl.

Oh, no. D: I don't think I look right without bangs, but I can deal with it temporarily. When mine get too long, I have to clip them back or force them to obey a headband. If not, I'm either a buffalo or Cousin It.

@Pixie you are too used to seeing yourself with bangs

it's like a person with glasses when they take off their glasses

@doppelgreener That is also me.

I had a friend I knew well before I started wearing glasses regularly. Then I started wearing glasses regularly. Now when I take them off, she comments I look weird and that I should put them back on. :P

I can't, I can't handle no glasses. They are an extension of myself. I have absorbed them. xD Also I can't see anything without them.

Heh. I'm moderately nearsighted, so generally I wear glasses when I'm in public or outside, and not when I'm indoors in private. It confuzzles people.

I don't have this reaction to other people, but I don't look like myself to me without my glasses. (I do, however, have an unabashed thing for glasses. So while everyone else but me looks perfectly fine without them, they should still keep wearing them. :v)

I'm really nearsighted. My face is less than a foot from my screen. If I take my glasses off, I can't read anything on it. Not even the chatroom title.

In a normal home-like space, I can get by with a little squinting for the across-the-room stuff.

Probably at ~6 inches I can read, but painfully.

(there are entire objects I can't even make out across the room)

@Pixie You made buffalo horns look cute.

@Zachiel Haha, thank you. I have been told this before, but they mortify me.

@BESW Now that is a cute buffalo.

It's a carabao, a kind of swamp water buffalo.

Her name is Lucy, and her owner John trained several generations of dogs to ride her.

John passed away last month, but he and Lucy and their dogs were a Guam fixture for decades.