Elon Musk and new pronoun rules on Twitter

But you can tag them so they see how you are talking about them. If you are persistently using the wrong pronoun and making sure they can see it, you are being deliberately rude.

oh. So you’re leaving the thread straight after saying “I genuinely don’t understand why you’d want to go back and forth with something that you view to be foolishness.” was* *not to be viewed as you declaring that you viewed me as discussing something you deemed foolishness then?

And you can’t see how anyone can have made that interpretation? While you are still telling us all that we are wrongly interpreting something that is clearly stated in the policy as ‘purposeful’ use as below as the level that Twitter has used in its policy. FFS. I am not sure how much clearer it needs to be. Just using pronouns that are different to what someone wants can be construed as ‘harassment and abuse’ according to this policy.

Just because Elon Musk says something doesn’t mean that his team will do exactly that. Plus…. Musk is not going to intervene in all cases, is he?

https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/abusive-behavior#:~:text=January%202024&text=We%20recognize%20that%20if%20anyone,express%20themselves%20and%20cause%20harm.

This is the relevant section.

Use of Prior Names and Pronouns

We will reduce the visibility of posts that purposefully use different pronouns to address someone other than what that person uses for themselves, or that use a previous name that someone no longer goes by as part of their transition. Given the complexity of determining whether such a violation has occurred, we must always hear from the target to determine if a violation has occurred.

I don’t believe in compelled speech. But I also don’t believe in Twitter/X. The easiest thing is to come off it altogether.

Anyone who thinks humans own pronouns and that others are "assholes" for using the language describing the world the way they see it, is the real asshole.

Here is another example of how it is being used.

https://x.com/ang052998/status/1763761332002701413?s=46&t=HTxp6zC_d4GZ2FFv4a-YeQ

How far does that extend? If someone is not a doctor but wants people to believe they are is it reasonable to expect everyone to call them Dr? Would you consider that someone who called them Mrs instead was just doing it to "piss them off" or would you recognise that the person using Mrs was reasonably refusing to play along with a dangerous affectation?

The problem, created by trans activism, is that the words trans people are demanding already have different, sex based meanings. It's not as simple as being kind, it's that if we allow the words that hitherto refered to sex to come to mean something new it means we no longer have words that refer to sex, and that means we lose the ability to name, describe and support the challanges we have because of sex.

If trans people were asking us to use new words that reflected their desire to dissociate from their birth sex without appropriating the words of the other sex I think very few people would have any issue with it.

Nowhere did I say anyone is being foolish! Please don’t put words in my mouth. I said, I genuinely don’t understand why you’d want to go back and forth with something that you view to be foolishness.

Yes of course everyone uses social media differently. Choosing to use social media to constantly interact with something you disagree with or something that you view to be foolishness, is something I can’t quite understand! As mentioned, I’d certainly like to hear from someone who’s faced repercussions in future

So I think we can gather that your don’t really understand all that much about how different people use social media. Nor do you quite seem to understand just how targeted reporting of Twitter accounts have always been done in the past.

Nor does it seem that you understand how the wording ‘purposeful’ can be abused by those targeting feminist accounts or how a investigation team can become biased as we have seen from previous Twitter and Reddit and other platforms. Yet you felt compelled enough to come and tell us we are being ‘foolish’ apparently.

It is quite remarkable.

And yet you're still here, telling us how much you don't care 😆

That’s a good point. It could be considered that tweets (which are on your own page) and not direct @‘s or QTs to the person may still fall into that category. I can see how that would start to impose on your free speech.

Too many people have quoted me and I don’t actually care enough to go back and forth with about 8/9 different people!

I think he's probably got an issue with the legalities of this differing between countries.

What is legal in the UK isn't necessarily legal elsewhere.

This is a problem with other areas on free speech on twitter and international users.

It's not free speech, no. But I think there is also other factors in play in terms of how reality collides with rhetoric.

I do believe Musk in his ambitions on free speech. What is workable in practice is something different. But on that note, it's not ok that harassment of women is viewed as legitimate either.

From a personal perspective yes, because I believe men are men, women are women and I would be offended if someone called me 'cis' when I consider 'woman' to be my correct title. I also believe that Musk believes men are men, women are women and that cis can be considered offensive. But from a policy perspective I can't see how he can treat one 'side' differently whilst claiming to be pro free speech, even - or especially - if it's his own side. I don't actually think the war on trans is to be won on Twitter regardless so I'm not sure how much it matters in the grand scheme of things.

The wording is ‘purposeful’. I think it is a valid question to query this. Because this says nothing about only ‘harassment.’

https://x.com/jamesesses/status/1763665915567042859?s=46&t=HTxp6zC_d4GZ2FFv4a-YeQ

Does this ALSO apply to sex offenders or those who repeatedly harass women or those who threaten women in various ways for stating they want resolution of issues where there is a proven negative impact on women?

Just to be clear, what protections are women getting from Twitter, or is it more of this one sided 'polite' Be Nice shit which fails to address practical legal implications?

It’s not interacting with them though. You’d refer to them using second person pronouns - you.

If it’s a they dared to use he instead of she issue, they were talking about you not interacting with you. And frankly it IS all about control.

Insisting it’s about politeness is disingenuous. No one has to be polite about you. They should probably be polite to you. But trying to control how they talk about you is just being controlling.

That was my exact thought. A poster arguing against a specific point on a forum asking why on earth others would engage online with people of differing views

Already Genspect has highlighted that this has happened to them.

https://x.com/genspect/status/1763650810372620739?s=46&t=HTxp6zC_d4GZ2FFv4a-YeQ

I highlighted how this could be easily used to abuse reasonable feminist campaigners in a sporting example up thread. While you are right about direct abuse such as calling someone ‘fatty’, I disagree that it will only be applied in that way. And if Genspect is correct, then it has already started.

yeah. Sadly if women had gone 'well we're not bothering with that', the lobby would have been able to steam roller our rights in peace and quiet.

Would I love to be able to not be permanently angry, upset and disgusted by all this awful behaviour and bullshit? Oh God yes.

Do I have better things to do with my life? Definitely.

But until the boundaries are put firmly around this political movement to stop it trampling over everyone else and doing further serious harm on top of what they've already managed? I'm kind of stuck, and so are most other people who manage to care about women and children, and things that affect everyone and ensure equality for everyone, instead of just bothering to get involved in what personally impinges on them and their own best interests. I think there was a word for it. Social something. Socialism possibly.

Up Terf Island, where enough women did give a shit about other people as well as themselves, and have put in the time, effort, energy and actions to wreck the tyres on the steam roller.

I never said pushing back on conflicts prioritising men was sexist or homophobic - never - I said these comments do exist and it is in everyone's interests for reasonable, polite GC comments to be separate from them in the general consensus.

The same way you can say "childhood obesity has increased and this comes with a risk to their health," but you can't say "Yo fatty, gonna die from eating all the pies," to a child. It isn't helping us to be grouped in with the people who say things like "god makes men and women, not Adam and Steve," or just comment on appearance in a nasty way.

The twitter team is a new one, I think, and the comment is worded in terms of abusive language, so lets give it a chance to see if we can reach a place where we are heard separately from those that the American left has force-teamed us with (their right).

You can push back in reasonable ways, keeping to the topic rather than the individual, using neutral pronouns or names. You don't have to actively validate someone to avoid using the wrong sex pronoun. I would avoid that because that will always be the end of the discussion and cue outrage and boring-ness. Twitter is odd anyway as you are not actually seeing the person, it's often just a cartoon, so neutral pronoun are the default.

Wimmin- you're so silly getting upset about this! Why bother with things that don't concern you? You shouldn't bother your pretty little heads about it!I certainly don't!

Well, that's us told 🙄

For someone who doesn't bother with things that don't concern them, you're certainly making a lot of effort on here...

But . . haven't you been doing just that in your posts on this thread?

But 'address' means to speak directly to that person. In which case the correct pronoun would always be 'you'. Not a third person pronoun like he/her.

Third person pronouns are used to speak about someone, not to them.

Words matter.

Anyway, if people can choose their pronouns, can I choose my adjectives? I'm going to demand to be referred to as 'excellent/glorious/wonderful'. If you refuse to use then you're just mean and unkind.

If you think that's daft, ask yourself how it's different?