@IStandWithHer1 I have no idea why Greece is always left off these lists. We've had self ID (age 15+) since 2017. And the story of how we ended up with it needs to be told.
In the absolute blackest depths of economic crisis, with an unimaginable refugee crisis, political turmoil on all sides,
@IStandWithHer1 the Greek Parliament with an extremely short window for minimal and discouraged debate, passed an absolutely preposterous self-ID law that practically no one, nationwide, knew anything about, nor understood, nor wanted, nor ever asked for. The only way to make sense of it is to
@IStandWithHer1 suppose that the European powers pushed for it and our very weak centrist (in name "radical left") gov't saw no strong reason not to let it happen.
The Greek LGBT community wasn't even asking for it. They were asking for same-sex marriage and blood donation.
@IStandWithHer1 In Greece now, if you want to get same-sex married, one of you had to change your gender (which is easy-peasy). That's how it's done. And there are so many questions that were never answered. What about mandatory military service for men? (Which ones are the men in that case?)
@IStandWithHer1 What about prisons, hospital wards, etc? There's no GRC in Greece. Your sex designation is changed and no record remains of the fact it was ever something different as far as we've been told. There is no "trans" in Greece at all. There's male and female, and some men are female.
@IStandWithHer1 And when all this happened, the only "debate" of it were a few teenage butch lesbians who were shown on TV talking about how it would really help them out if they could change their ID to male. No discussion of the other side of things. And the only political party that raised
@IStandWithHer1 the sort of objections that feminists do, was the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party, with only 6-7% of MPs and stood no chance.
& when it was all said and done, what was the response of the trans community in Greece?
To raise a hue & cry about the lack of non-binary option.
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People who speak English (or whichever language these preferred pronouns are demanded in) as a foreign language, especially who learned as adults, autodidacts, who had to work while learning, who have learning disabilities,
who were excluded from schooling, etc., often find pronouns confusing even when they are intuitively linked to sex.
For many new speakers of English, it is very common to switch up he and she, and not to be able to construct a singular they.
Talking down to, berating, scolding, ostracizing, and silencing new English speakers because they aren't conforming to your pronoun demands excludes them from participating as equals in society. It pushes people who may already be marginalized even further to the margins.
Correct sex pronouns (she/he) have a grammatical purpose: they smooth out speech, reducing the antecedent to a neutral placeholder in the brain. They are anti-unique, easy, & unimposing. They allow you to focus on the content; are there to facilitate communication. 1/4
Neopronouns also have a grammatical purpose: with every utterance, they reinflate the importance and uniqueness of the antecedent. They require mental energy; the speaker is on the defense; there will be mistakes, corrections, apologies, and self-corrections. 2/4
A neopronoun's antecedent rules the sentence, and the speaker. They exhaust you. The speaker ceases to be the speaker; and becomes a parrot. They are a barrier to communication by non-fluent speakers especially. 3/4