this post was submitted on 26 May 2025
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It's called a neopronoun.
The choice of the specific one makes it look like it's third person, but that's not the way it's used. While strange in implementation, it is a variation of the general concept of genderless speech that has been around for a few decades at this point.
If you change the specific one, drag, to something random like dey, it's easier to parse. That it's similar to the user name makes it more confusing than other options might.
It's a lot to wrap one's head around. I still can't manage to think that way, and suspect I may never be able to. I can't even manage to use that type of pronoun reliably in short bursts. It is, however, a very interesting concept that makes examining our language structure an informative process.
As an example, take a look at your own comment. It starts off aggressive, and making assumptions. Why? While the atypical pronoun usage can be confusing, it obviously isn't a personal attack against you. So why does that confusion trigger aggressive word choices and structure? It's at least partially because of dissonance stemming from unfamiliar language use.
But, why does that dissonance result in a desire to go after someone that was talking to someone else? Why does an unfamiliar form of communication shift a brain from just scrolling into aggression? It's a fascinating thing once you step outside of the knee jerk reaction. Once you start looking at what's happening inside yourself, and pick apart the chain of reactions, you see some inlaid patterns between language, expectations, and behaviors that's enlightening.
See, we have this proclivity as people to reject the strange. Often on a very personal level, even when the originating stimulus isn't personal at all. Again, the comment wasn't directed at you. It's obvious from the structure of it that it was directed at me in specific. It is also obvious that it was part of a conversation between two people familiar with each other.
It's the equivalent of walking down the street, hearing two people talking, and getting upset at how they're talking. It's unlikely you would roll up to two people babbling in pig latin and say "what the fuck are you talking about" to one of them. I mean, I assume you're not that big of a dick, nor stupid rich enough to ignore the risks of speaking like that to someone you don't know. Maybe you would do exactly that. But most people wouldn't.
So, why would this be any different? See? What a fascinating opportunity for increasing one's understanding of themselves
“I” is the most genderless pronoun in existence - is it not? It literally means me, as a singular human entity. Linguistically I am yet to see any valid argument for its exclusion or substitution in speech. I get the whole problem with he/her etc - there are a specific niche of humans where those words are not sufficient nor apt to describe them and thankfully language then evolved for the sake of inclusivity.
Well, the valid argument is that we don't get to decide when and what pronouns to respect. There doesn't need to be any other rationale. It is definitely more difficult to parse than "I", but that's a matter of practicality, not validity.
You either respect the person's pronouns, explain that you have enough difficulty using them that it would be prohibitive (like I have elsewhere in other conversations) and be nice about it, or you choose to disrespect the pronoun choices. It is every individuals choice whether or not to respect pronoun choices, but the hard truth is that when the choice is based on lack of respect, it just makes the person choosing a jerk.
The use of person-independent neopronouns is a very difficult thing to adapt to. If you scan over my comments in this thread, you'll likely notice that I don't really use drag much because I have multiple barriers to communicating effectively while trying to use it. Which, I've discussed with them, and reached an understanding that it isn't about rejecting their pronoun and isn't meant as disrespect.
I do usually manage to not use pronouns at all in most cases when discussing DR's pronoun with them, and sometimes when discussing it with others like this. It's harder than just writing with the built up language patterns I already have, but easier than trying to substitute a different word entirely.
But those person-independent pronouns do have a point. The role they play in shifting how we think of gender, pronoun usage, and language in general is certainly absolutely a linguistically applicable idea. PI pronouns don't always conform to standard grammar, at least not in English, but they don't have to, to be valid as a personal expression or for the study of language.
A PI pronoun serves a similar role to other neopronouns. We do already have the singular "they/them" that are gender neutral, so neopronouns aren't absolutely necessary in the sense that other options already exist. But, if you look at it from the perspective of questioning gendered language as a whole, or from the perspective of wanting a shift entirely away from gendered language in English entirely, neopronouns start becoming much more interesting as a phenomenon.
If Noel calls themself Noelself then Noel is not using a pronoun but rather Noel is referring to Noelself in the third person - and unnecessarily cluttering-up a sentence.
But, fuck Noel’s life, that’s just Noel’s opinion.
And… forgive me for saying so, but they’re tedious, at best. That’s not punching down on anyone’s identity. It’s a commentary on how such neologisms make parsing a sentence far less reflexive and a good bit more unnecessarily arcane, without actually communicating any level of additional meaningful information or context.
Yup, I pretty much agree with all that you say.
It's quite easy, when you read "drag", it means "I", that's literally the extent of it.
But let's dig into this a little. Your argument covers literally half of all words. Let's take this comment as an example, we want to strip everything out of it that doesn't communicate.
No one adheres to this because it makes you sound like a damn caveman. But if you feel so strongly about this, that's how you prune all the unnecessary cognitive load from your speech.
But if replacing one meaningless pronoun with another meaningless pronoun is so arcane that you can't parse the meaning of the sentence afterward, there's always the option of just not engaging with it. It doesn't harm you or anyone else and it isn't hate speech so just let people express themselves how they want to.
I also find Picasso's cubist paintings to be tedious to look at but you don't see me trying to tell him that he's painting The Weeping Woman the wrong way.
But drag isn't their name. While I have clue what their real name is, their user name is Dragon Rider, not drag. If you look at their display name, the drag part is in parentheses the same way gender tags usually are, like (he/him).
If drag said something like Dragon Riderself, that would be speaking in the third person.
And, yeah, I know that choosing a shortened version of one's user name as a person-independent pronoun is going to be confusing as hell. It looks like it's a dimunutive.
Even in your comment here, there's another telling difference. Noelself. You capitalized it even in the middle of a sentence. Dragon Rider doesn't capitalize drag (not usually, anyway, and I've interacted with them a good bit) except at the front of a sentence.
Again, it is confusing, at least at first. I've gotten used to it mostly, and it scans as a pronoun for me now.
Which is part of the point of PI pronoun usage, in my opinion. Ignoring whether or not it improves a person's ability to function without internal distress, which is an important factor in respecting pronoun overall, the fact of them serves to have us reexamine exactly why and how we think about labels, specifically pronouns and gender labels.
But, I'll also repeat, "unnecessarily" cluttering up a sentence is a value judgement, and while everyone has that right, it does indicate a degree of bias in thinking. It assumes that you have the authority to decide what is and isn't useful about another person's gender and pronoun/label preferences.
It could also be argued that a single word being used as a pronoun instead of the dozen or so in common usage is de-cluttering. If there's only one word to keep track of, that's a lot simpler than shifting between they/them/their. We're just not used to it, so it takes extra effort to parse. That's not the same thing as clutter though.
I get to dictate exactly what I respect.
Well, surr.
But if you aren't respecting people's pronouns, you're an asshole, so the choice comes with that
If you insist on respecting that user's identity, I suggest you first open their profile and look at what they actually mean by "drag/dragon rider".
Drag is a fucking scalie who wants to be referred to by their kink.
And?
You act like my approval or disapproval of their hobbies, lifestyle, or whatever is supposed to change basic decency. It doesn't.
There are limits to what I'll call someone for sure. I'm not calling anyone master. Beyond that, it's just good manners to try and call people what they prefer, within the limits of our own capabilities. DR knows my brain is fucked and it would make it a nightmare to have a conversation if I tried to use the person-independent neopronoun reliably, so they don't give me shit about screwing up.
That's basic decency.
If I'm talking to a preacher and they prefer to be called reverend, I'll call them that, and that's someone who talks to their imaginary sky friend on a daily basis. Wanting to fuck a dragon isn't any weirder than that. It's just basic decency.
Out here irl, people sometimes use my middle name instead of my first. Usually because they know a family member that talked about me. But I don't let anyone but family use my middle name. The people that refuse to honor that are assholes, and I have nothing else to do with them. Because it's just basic decency.
If DR was wanting to be called furher, or messiah, I can see refusing to use their preferred terms. But they aren't.
And it doesn't even matter if they were trolling because someone else's bad actions aren't an automatic excuse to be an asshole too.
What kind of person do you want to be? The sort that errs on the side of kindness and manners, or the sort that's an asshole? That's what it comes down to.
Well, aren't you just a ray of sunshine. Answered my question at least
Drag knows a lot of nonhumans and decided to choose a first person pronoun for a dragon rider. After all, dragon riders aren't entirely human. The magical bond changes us. And a dragon rider is no longer a single individual. Not in battle, not in soul. Drag is soulbound.
Are we really going to let playing into complete delusion be part of the ethics that shape left wing progressive culture and politics?
We all know this user does not ride or fuck* or magically bond with a fucking dragon. It's not something we should "respect".
*(u/[email protected] is their actual username, "Dragon Rider (drag)" is just a display name.)
https://www.healthdirect.gov.au/delusions
Not a delusion. Believing in dragons is completely normal in drag's cultural background, religion, and social group. If you like, drag can refer you to a few discord servers for dragonkin - otherkin who identify as dragons. Drag can also introduce you to @[email protected], drag's fiance and dragon.
The alternative to respecting cultural beliefs is cultural intolerance. You're arguing for cultural intolerance to be part of the ethics of the left. Drag thinks that's gross.
Drag's dragon doesn't identify as male, and wouldn't like being called a bro. Drag thinks you called a nonbinary person a "bro" for the same reason you don't respect its species identity - you're a conservative. You don't get to have any input on leftist ideas until you stop misgendering trans people.
I get to advocate for social safety nets and general welfare at the cost of the rich as much as I want regardless of how little acceptance I have for delusional scalies.
This should not define left wing politics.
You should be allowed by the rest of this userbase to define left wing politics with this nonsense.
If you are the left wing, the left wing loses the majority forever.
The progressive movement was supposed to be a realistic movement, without the delusions of religion.
But you lot managed to co-opt the culture of the progressive movement into accepting all kinds of alternative forms of idiocy, but this otherkin shit is arguably less annoying than astrology's rampant infection of feminism.
Our movement is crippled by insanity. Our contemporaries are nothing like our predecessors. We are significantly worse.
Less capable, less intelligent, less successful.
I hope for our sake it's the fucking microplastics, because if we managed to fuck this up so bad without suffering from some poison, if it's completely our own fault, then that's just fucking sad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delusional_disorder
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/9599-delusional-disorder
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK539855/
https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/conditions/delusional-disorder
You can't appeal to being "realistic" while you deny science by calling cultural beliefs delusions. You are denying science. Drag has explained the science to you. If leftism is going to do what you say, it will have to leave science behind. And that's wrong.
We seem to have found the crux of it, this is how you convince yourself.
I have little sympathy for you on this one.
You just have a weird, unimportant problem.
I have some sympathy, I think you'll need a friend when you crash out of it.
You are denying science.
I'd argue two things:
Especially considering almost all furries know they're not actually a dog or a wolf or a cat, regardless of how enthusiastic their roleplay gets. When your seriousness is not shared by the majority of your culture I think it should be obvious even to you that the exception would not apply. That is unless you claim a different, even more niche culture.
And I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess your parents aren't "dragonkin" or any otherkin, either. It's not the culture of your hometown or family.
Your otherkin "culture" is no more valid an exception than the joining of a cult.
Drag's biological father is a witch. Drag forged drag's own path, and isn't a witch, but occultism runs in drag's family. Instead of a witch, drag became a dragon rider, and the occult side of drag's family accepts that. The otherkin community isn't the same as the furry community. Drag would like to reiterate drag's offer to introduce you to some otherkin spaces. There are even otherkin on Lemmy. One Lemmy user is a spaceship. You should visit [email protected].
Dear fuck, this rabbit hole goes too deep. I'm done spelunking.
Drag made a mistake in the prior comment. Lemmy actually has two users who are spaceships. Drag visited the community and was reminded of Slikki. But the ship drag was thinking of before is Gravitas Deficiency.
I wish you were joking, Dragster.
You've lived a sheltered life without meeting many otherkin until now. Now you know better.
I'm reminded of a few nonhumans whom I know!
They're called cats, and they similarly eat a lot of plastic.
Are you using plastic-eating as a way to call drag dumb without breaking the instance rule about civility?
We all eat plastic these days, it's the modern thing to do, like huffing lead in days of yore.
Who's to say it's dumb? I am not one to presume. Besides, my cats are really smart. They catch moths and everything. Please don't refer to my kitties as dumb...that hurts my feelings
Aye-aye, dream that dream. We all gotta reach for something.
I disagree. I don't think I would have had any clue what was going on if drag had chosen a different pronoun.
I can see that. That it's in the displayed user name could still be easy to miss if it was a seemingly random word as well.
Ever since drag started using neopronouns, drag has learned that confusing other people is an act of violence. They genuinely feel hurt by it. Drag isn't sure exactly why, but it might be an ego thing. Possibly drag is making other people feel stupid when they don't understand. Whatever the cause is, it's very clear when people talk about incidents where drag upset someone by using a neopronoun. Random bystanders who've never met drag before seem to overwhelmingly agree drag is rude, aggressive, confrontational, forcing the conversation... people could only react that way so strongly if they felt that they saw an attack.
At this point drag has just accepted that using drag's pronouns is violent behaviour. And drag is going to keep doing it, because people who are uncomfortable seeing neopronouns deserve to feel that way. Either they convince the people in charge to punish drag, they keep on being uncomfortable forever, or they grow up. Drag wants the third to happen.
It reminds me of the early days when I became aware of, and got involved in, the struggle for gay rights.
The whole "don't shove it down my throat" malarkey. When someone just living their life, and not even talking to you is "shoving it down my throat", it isn't the responsibility of that other person to shift their life to preserve your limited world view.
Yeah, the choice of drag specifically when the user name involves dragon isn't easy to parse. But unless drag is/are (I still suck at the grammar of this) initiating the conversation, it's a total douche move to pretend that it's drag's problem.
So, fuck 'em. At some point, people just need to realize they can just scroll the fuck past and mind their own.