@citrussy_capybara@hexbear.net asked for clarification about the level of importance I place on the semantic distinction between nongendering and misgendering. So I’d like to oblige.

But first I’d like to say that hir comment was very difficult for me to read because it contained me saying something I never said. Reading an account of myself saying something I never said or meant is just psychologically very draining for me. So I had to analyse the comment bit by bit and I may have missed some of the wider nuances that would come from patiently reading the comment as a whole. If I missed anything, I welcome hir to correct me and re-explain, and I’d ask that the re-explanation not contain scenarios of me saying things I don’t mean unless they’re explicitly hypothetical. It’s just a psychological quirk I have and I assume it’s somewhat common.

I’d also like to correct Capybara’s misunderstanding of what I said.

Capybara in their comment:

dronerights: actually, they/them is right anyways

Me in the comment that got me banned:

“If you use they/them…you’ll never gender someone correctly.”

Don’t these seem like direct and polar opposite contradictions? There’s no way someone who believes what I said could say what ze thinks I would say. So there’s no way I could say that a TERF nongendering a binary would be “correct”. I said the exact opposite.

Okay, onto the question.

I do not think the semantic distinction between nongendering and misgendering is important when we are talking about binary people.

However I do think it’s important when we are talking about xenogender people like myself. When you call me they/them or it/its, you are not misgendering me. I do not consider it to be transphobia. However, it still hurts. I want to be recognised for my swarm gender in my pronouns. And it/its gets kinda close, but still misses the mark. Some days I prefer they/them just to not have to hear people attempt to gender me and get it a little bit wrong. I have neopronouns I use in private, but not in public. It’s a complicated issue, but the short version is I just don’t feel safe sharing them on the internet where anyone can see them and use them against me. I’d like to have a set of public neopronouns I could share, but I haven’t found any that feel like me, and also feel safe to share. So for now, I want everyone to nongender me. But I would absolutely hate it if you called me he/him and misgendered me. Understand? There’s a big difference, to my personal experience. The difference is a lot smaller for binary people.

But Hexbear users have ignored my comments about how I see pronouns, and they’ve patted themselves on the back for “correcting” each other about which nongendering pronouns to use for me. And I think the lack of empathy coupled with the self-righteousness in those instances is disgusting. True righteousness can only exist alongside empathy, and there is no empathy in those moments where my pronouns are “corrected”. And I hate that.

If it said it was being a pedantic jerk and clarified, that would go a long way to earning this generous interpretation of its position that you want to give it.

Am I being a pedantic jerk to inject my own nonbinary experiences into a discussing of pronoun usage for other trans people? I dunno, maybe? I just want to be understood. And that hasn’t happened. My gender experiences have just been erased. And I think that’s what’s important. I wouldn’t mind being told my gender experiences are irrelevant to the original context in which I said them. But I think the erasure is a big deal in these discussions about who I am as a person and whether Hexbear treated me with acceptance or transphobia. So I don’t think I was a pedantic jerk after I said that original comment.