Vote how? You think the Federal government is going to care what Blue states vote to do? It’s gonna be forceful secession or nothing.

IG and TikTok videos often have captions to read so they can be watched without sound, so they’re not inherently a counter to my point. But yes, it’s just another “boob tube”. It’s not good, but it’s certainly not any worse than watching tv nonstop, which is where we were in the 90s and aughts. And kids are on Discord and in text chains constantly, whereas during the pre-internet 20th century, most people called people to communicate long-distance; letters were certainly not a daily thing.

We’re about 70 years too late to stop visual media supplanting text as the main form of entertainment media, but at least the internet has brought text back in lots of ways that just didn’t exist previously (especially forums and messaging).

I remember when Harry Potter and Twilight both made headlines for both getting adults “reading again” (because they already were mostly not), but then also a bunch of people jumping in and deriding them as trash, insisting that they need to read ‘real’ books, and there’s a bouquet of that in a lot of the discussion of social media.

If we take away IG and TikTok and smartphones, kids aren’t going to go read, they’re just going to watch TV.

Given that there are plenty of pro-consumerism schlocky books (if not the majority, being that most are just entertainment-targeted consumer goods), and plenty of highly educational non-book texts, this doesn’t really mean anything.

I’m always interested to see exactly what is included and excluded from their definition of reading. On average, most adults actually read more today that we did in the 90s, if you’re purely talking words of text consumed. Are graphic novels being included in these stats? Short stories? Social media threads? Most people even watch videos/tv/movies with subtitles they read now, which was not something that was an option before.

The actual article text never says the word “book” once, but I strongly suspect that is all that’s being counted.

Damn, that sounds so nice.

They’re transphobes, they barely qualify ^/s

Hell yeah

Get rekt

No one likes these policies outside of the bored suburbanites who have nothing to do but cook up drama, and this made them feel like they could be part of something national.

I think being intelligent, charismatic, and hard-working is more important for winning cases than being cut-throat.

First off, thank You for responding to my questions.

From the exclusionary christian’s point of view, no matter the identity of the CPU in question, we are capitalising the pronouns of a mortal and therefore challenging Deus’ supremacy by dismantling its symbols. Good. We should do that. And we should also respect whatever the CPU identifies as.

I have a few different converging thoughts, and I’ll try to lay them out separately to make sure my question’s premise is clear:

• You acknowledge the power dynamic which people perceive around capitalization of pronouns
• Pronoun capitalization is also used for royalty- not just divinity (e.g. ‘Her Majesty’), so this is not a power dynamic specific to religious people
• You have used un-capitalized pronouns for other people, so at least perceptually, You’re not treating all people as being of this same ‘elevated’ position
• Your neopronouns are not optional; You have insisted that people use them, which is not a universal standpoint on neopronouns; many neopronoun users are fine with people switching between their pronoun sets, or have a ‘fallback’/ auxiliary set
• Words have meaning, and You cannot pretend or decide that other people have to not care about them. That would even be directly hypocritical to insisting others accept the pronouns of Your choice.
• Just to reiterate one last time, there is unquestionably a power dynamic at play, because upending the exclusivity of that deference to figures of authority is one of Your stated reasons (or at least benefits) for using them:

we are capitalising the pronouns of a mortal and therefore challenging Deus’ supremacy by dismantling its symbols. Good. We should do that.

You are forcing them to extend You that same deference, or claiming that Status for Yourself, however You prefer to view it.

But I am struggling to see how Your insistence on this particular set of pronouns does not engender a requirement of people to extend You deference You are (at least by default, demonstrably), not extending to them? (and I am not referring to the exclusionary Religious here, but fellow Beehaw users)

There is a strong debate over using neopronouns like “master/masterself”, “daddy/daddyself”, etc (certainly without auxiliaries), that may create uncomfortable power dynamics for the persons needing to use them. I think this is striking some of us as similar to that, which is I think why You are seeing this much pushback.

Likewise, a trans person you meet on the street isn’t benefiting from the might of the Roman church. So you’re not supporting hierarchy by using a trans person’s preferred pronouns. By affirming trans men, generally you are dismantling patriarchy, and by affirming trans capitalised pronoun users, generally you are dismantling monotheistic oppression.

So, I want to start by pointing out that this article is directly making a link between capitalization of pronouns, and the specific practice of capitalization as a Christian show of religious reverence.

Worse, if you refused to use a trans man’s preferred pronouns because of this, you’d be guilty of pretty blatant transphobia. I believe refusing to use capitalised pronouns for a trans person who requests them is exactly the same bigotry.

Is the assertion here specifically that capitalization is tied to gender expression, or simply that it is another aspect of a personal identity that should be respected? Obviously neopronouns can be non gender-related, but the article isn’t really making clear if that is the case here or not. If anything, it is quite muddled on this point.

By affirming trans men, generally you are dismantling patriarchy, and by affirming trans capitalised pronoun users, generally you are dismantling monotheistic oppression.

Wooph… The first part of that is by no means a safe assumption. While I would certainly hope that trans men would not seek to enforce a male-dominant gender power dynamic, it is by no means beyond their ability to do so as an intrinsic matter. Now, whether they can benefit from that dynamic in a given time and place is a different discussion, but even in places that do not afford them the systemic backing of the patriarchal system, they can still support and reify it themselves. Any person who attempts to enforce a male-dominant systemic power dynamic can be supporting patriarchy.

The end of that sentence seems to confirm that this is about a show of religious reverence? Or is the assertion that by capitalizing the pronouns of not-the-christian-diety one is inherently attacking Christianity?

I think that if these are simply the neo pronouns that make someone comfortable, it is for the most part fine to request this, but the article is directly drawing the link between capitalized pronouns and religious reverence, and that is not something anyone can demand someone else extend, and not one that is inherently inappropriate not to.

There are plenty of arguments over the limits of neopronoun usage within the neopronoun-using community, but generally neopronouns like “master”, that confer or denote a power dynamic, are considered inappropriate.

This feels like this is skirting that line to me.

There is something very uncomfortable to me about demanding the use of a deferential title, while also insisting that not to do so is a moral wrong, while also claiming not to support hierarchy of peoples… which the creation of distinct and deferential titles would seem to contradict.