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"Pronouns" in conservative circles is a dog whistle. They fixate on pronouns so they can say transgender people are bad without bumping into hate speech rules. Mocking them for using pronouns themselves or not knowing what pronouns are isn't the burn you think it is.
Have fun with circling all the pronouns in screenshots of their tweets if that's your jam, but remember that you are not the intended audience. It's messaging for others on the far-right and it's way worse than flunking English class
@geekysteven and every time you post that corrected screenshot, you amplify their message to your audience...
@geekysteven same thing with 'grooming'. Am the parent of a trans kid. The only way to diffuse the centrists is to explain gender dysphoria. This seems to get through to some people. The extreme right will never have a bridge to understanding.
I think not screenshotting it is solid. Good thinking.
@geekysteven I am glad to follow you. #translivesmatter
@geekysteven Vice signaling
@geekysteven Kirby Conrod (@kirby) wrote a blog post earlier this year making this argument in detail: https://kconrod.medium.com/the-right-doesnt-care-what-a-pronoun-is-540cc4cab79d
@pictureofitself @kirby this is excellent, thank you
@geekysteven there are only really three things political speech can do and you need to know your audience
1) Rally those that agree with the message to action (voting etc)by firing them up
2) Swaying those that can be swayed to sympathize with the message
3) Disheartened those that will never agree with the message so they are less likely to act
@geekysteven that's why I'm openly hostile to the mouth breathers who make fun of "pronouns." I want them to know I'm on to their bigotry and I'm willing to fight about it.
@geekysteven Totally agree.
@geekysteven: No wonder. Cons are against all sorts of pros, because they might know what they're talking about, unionise, or worse — both.
As a general rule, the cons prefer amateurnouns.
@geekysteven Whenever possible, the proper response is to ignore them. A post pointing out their stupidity is a free ad for their beliefs. Trump didn't need to buy ad space in 2016, he just tweeted out something stupid, and his enemies blared his name out over and over. They are seeking attention. For them, bad attention is better than no attention at all. Don't give it to them.
Find something positive to post in response. If they are mocking transgender people, post a good story about transgender people instead of a bad story about anti-transgender people. If they are using woke as a slur, use it as a word of praise.
Filling the air with beneficial stories will fight their fire. Fanning their flames will not. Don't give them the air to breathe.
See, they already made me spend precious minutes talking about them, when I am supposed to be delivering a bag of flour to my wife's second grade classroom so they can bake holiday cookies today. They win this battle, but I am off to save the cookies!
@karstenbondy @geekysteven OMG, no.
Trumps free publicity absolutely did not come from the people railing against him. The free publicity that boosted his campaign and elevated his presence in the minds of voters came from big media. From them pointing their cameras at an empty podium and their endless, breathless expectant gibbering. “What will trump do? What will he say today? How will he respond to this story? Is today the day trump becomes presidential?”
@RestlessJim @geekysteven that's the attention I'm talking about. Media that could have been highlighting good stories about Clinton's policy plans (or better yet, Bernie's) instead were tricked into promoting Trump by calling out something they hated.
And this has an even worse side effect. Now Trump has you doing exactly what he wants - saying that the media promotes lies, and is therefore not to be trusted. He is using a tactic favored by Putin - not pushing the idea that he has the truth, but that finding truth is impossible.
You can't win just by saying that he's lying, or that the media is bad for pointing out his lies. You have to point out something else true, or that the media is doing right. You have to give good attention instead of bad attention.
Look for important stories that got underreported because of the distraction. This weekend Elon changed his pronouns to "Prosecute/Fauchi" and shadowbanned @elonjet. Which story got tooted? And why the ban? 
1/2
@RestlessJim @geekysteven @elonjet
It's possible that the tweet that broke @elonjet's back was Musk's recent trip to Miami (here on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/p/ClvH0bOsFv4/?igshid=MDJmNzVkMjY%3D ), which could have been to discuss moving Twitter's HQ to Miami:
or possibly to continue his affair with Sergei Brin's wife, who was divorced by the Google Founder recently, allegedly for sleeping with the Muskrat at the recent Art Basel show in Miami:
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/art-industry-news-july-25-2022-2151481/amp-page
But even that is a big pile of alleged truths. Instead of wasting my time promoting the bad things Elon is doing, the world might be better served by me highlighting some unrelated good in the world, like the fact that scientists have found that short-term memory can be improved by shining lights on certain parts of the brain:
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/laser-light-therapy-tpbm-improves-short-term-memory/
Or that Japanese researchers have launched a startup that turns food waste into cement with 4-times better bending resistance:
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/want-to-live-in-a-literal-gingerbread-house-these-guys-are-making-edible-cement-to-reduce-food-waste/
@geekysteven it has a LOT to do with parents. You would be shocked at how many parents are upset about being lectured by their teenagers about gender. I live in a culdesac. I hear it all.
@geekysteven They are going to make me specify my pronouns aren’t they? I’ve been holding out.
@geekysteven if we were all Communists then everybody would be Comrade whoever. Pronouns would not be important or even used.
@geekysteven Now that you’ve said it, that seems obvious, but I had been just completely confused/irritated by that instead of realizing what was going on. Thank you for explicitly telling me what’s up with that whole thing.
@Marsh don't feel bad, you're not the only one. The Right is expert at manipulation, in part because liberals tend to assume good faith so it's provided an easy Achilles heel for them to target
@geekysteven
so I don't really get it. I am happy to use anyone's preferred pronoun but frankly, I don't want to use a pronoun as an identifier, I prefer people use my name. I haven't been convinced yet why this is bad. And no, I'm not a conservative.
@MB This post not about pronouns.
@geekysteven I have been saying this out loud for years and I don't know if anyone ever listens to it.
"Dunking" on conservatives by calling out hypocrisy or doublethink or whatever is totally pointless because they don't give a shit. But when we do this they can point at us and go "look at how utterly ridiculous the left is". It's no-win.
@mav @geekysteven I hate that this is true. But keeping it in mind helps dampen the reactive urge, and improve the s/n ratio.
@geekysteven saying "They" rather than a gender-specific pronoun is only a partial fix. I tell people to say "WE" rather than "THEY" as much as possible.
@geekysteven Sara Ahmed has some great work on the way that language is used by white supremacists and hate groups, one of the primary functions of "affective" language (which this absolutely is, imo) is to provide 'orientation' between speakers where solidarity is created at the same time as aversion/disgust/hate. White supremacists always say it's not about "hate" of non-white people, but about "love" of white people for a reason...
@geekysteven We may not be the intended audience but we are *an* audience, and our audiences are also an audience.
@geekysteven the mocking does work better in a real life encounter, bully them till they go full mask off and then you can deal with them accordingly.
@geekysteven
You can't gotcha a fascist. They don't do logic, consistency or authentic discussion. The truth has no meaning for them. They're not hypocrites because they don't actually mean anything they say.
If you feel you have to engage with a fascist, the only answer to a fascistic argument is a punch to the face.