PredatoryTunicate wrote:
I’m posting this here because I don’t want to get in trouble on this other internet thing for posting about this yet I also need to get it off of my chest. Hopefully this is the right board for this sort of thing.
I’m active on this small art and animation program/social media site called Framecast, and one of the things people do there is make species for people to use. I made a character in a species that are weird magical fox-things, and one of the rules of the species was that they lacked genders and used they/them pronouns. On my original ref of my character in the species, I referred to the character with ze/zim pronouns because I thought that would suit zim. The species creator was fine with it. Today, I made a somewhat updated ref of the character, again using ze/zim pronouns, and another person who I’ll be calling Snake noticed. Snake first made a callout post, not revealing my name, that basically said they felt betrayed by someone they follow happening to use pronouns other than she/the/him for a fictional character. Snake later commented on my ref that I should use they/them pronouns for the character, because people might make fun of me for using them. I told them that people probably wouldn’t make fun of me for that, and they responded my use of ze/zim for a character might cause people to think that those pronouns are valid, and that they were somehow transphobic. I wanted to avoid their ire, so I didn’t get into a debate on what the definition of transphobia was, and I instead just questioned their first statement. Snake said people would believe pretty much anything on the internet and I should be careful around pronoun-related stuff, and the conversation ended there. I’m somewhat annoyed at Snake because I comsider pronouns like ze/zim to be perfectly valid, if a little weird to use since I’m not used to them.
How are ze and zim transphobic? I thought that they were meant to be gender neutral. I don't like using "they" because it is a plural pronoun and I think it's inappropriate to use it when referring to a single person.