So, I don’t think I have much to add to this thread, but there are still some things I wanted to talk about. They might have been brought upon earlier, but I did not muster the courage to read 14XX posts of the thread, I only read about half.
(Also, I’m a white cis het man. I don’t know if it’s relevant, but I wanted to clear that up. (I’m French too, so not a native English speaker))
“Shouldn’t this be on the other side”
There are many reasons why this is the perfect place for this thread.
(First of all, the mod team let it there, so it most likely belongs there.)
But why ? Because, if you read the OP, you can see that they created this thread because of something gaming related (“I just asked a person to not use the word in a discord chat”. To me this sounds clearly gaming related).
Video games are political. You can’t just act as if you were blind and didn’t see colors/genders/etc. As a form of media (and art), video games have an influence over the players. And so does everything related to them, which includes this very forum. If we want things to change, then we need to discuss them from every point of view that matters, even slightly. Discussing how to be inclusive in a video game context matters for inclusiveness itself, not just in video games.
And we cannot do that on the other side. The discussion probably wouldn’t be video game-oriented. Let’s say OP made the same thread on Etcetera, replacing the Discord part with let’s say “I just asked a person to not use the word at a party”. I can guarantee you that the thread would be different from what it is here. I don’t know if OP would have received more or less support, but it would be different. The debates would be different. But this issue needs to be discussed and shared as much as possible.
Indeed, OP’s message is addressed to gamers. And as far as I know, the Etcetera posters and the Video Game posters are not the same (or at least not at 100%). And so, the best way for them to pass their message was through this side.
“I would be totally fine with being called girl, even though I’m a man”
Maybe you are, but maybe some aren’t. But that was not OP’s point. To their question, I would answer that it would probably bother me. But I can’t really know, it never happened to me, let alone on a daily basis. And that’s the thing really, one can think they can handle being misgendered once, but that’s not what non-binary/gender-fluid/trans people live (or even women, especially in OP’s situation – playing online). Being misgendered can be a DAILY issue.
This is kinda like chinese water torture (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_water_torture). Ask anybody, they’ll tell you they can handle receiving a water drop on their forehead, and even a dozen. But it’s the regularity of it, the fact that it NEVER stops, and that you can’t do anything about it, that make it a torture that truly harms.
Now, to speak from my own experience. I take an English course in which I’m the only guy out of 14 students. The teachers usually does their best to use neutral terms or both when it’s impossible to do otherwise (which is often in a Latin language like French). And honestly, it feels weird when one of them forget and say “girls”, or stuff like “vous allez toutes y arrivez” (you will all make it : “all” is gendered in French. “toutes” for a group of women and “tous” for a group of guys or a mixed group. Though this latter use is slightly less employed nowadays, and they just use both). I can’t blame them, they are used to having only women in their course. And when the mistake is made, it’s weird, but I’m not really offended. But the fact is that it feels better when I’m not forgotten. So I kinda understand how being neutral/inclusive matters.
“You are the minority, you can’t ask 99% of people to change the way they act”
In my opinion, that’s just being polite. It does not harm me in any way to stop saying exclusive terms like “boys”. To me, it just looks like the people being annoyed by it are too lazy to change the way they act. They are living in their comfy bubble where they can say anything they want and don’t want to be told no. That’s literally called being conservative: you don’t want things to change, you want to protect your traditions (here, calling a group of people online “boys”).
(They don’t want to be told no, or how to act. This is a bit like people not wanting to become vegetarian just because they don’t like being told how to do things. Or people not wanting to change their habits to protect the environment just because it’s not their own initiatives. A form of individualism)
Because that’s what this is, a tradition. But not every tradition deserves to be kept. The worlds changes when they don’t. Some traditions disappeared because they were outdated. That’s what this is. If you can’t give up on this custom, you are living in the past. (Well, the problem here being that it is not something from the past, as it is still ingrained in people’s mind. But it should be)
But whatever, let’s talk about this majority thing. It is a fact that it is a minority (the non-binary/gender-fluid/trans people) that is potentially harmed by the use of “boys”. I don’t know the exact numbers, but let’s say it’s 1%. Indeed, it means that the 99% others will have to change for just a tiny minority. But this change is also for a minority of their time! Nobody is asking anyone to stop using entirely using the word “boys”. They are asking you you to stop using it when it refers to them. Which logically means a small part of their time. Basically, what I meant is that, it’s not that big of a deal.
But the thing is, this majority argument does not hold up. Because it is NOT in fact about a minority. OP is non-binary, and speaks for the non-binary people they know. But “boys” is not just an exclusive term for them and non-binary people. It is exclusive to them AND women. Now I don’t have any numbers, but I pretty sure that this should add up to more than 50% of the people (considering the same numbers of women and men. You add to the first group the non-binary people). And so now, it’s about respecting a majority.
One might tell me that in the gaming community, there aren’t as many women as there are men. That’s most likely true, I still don’t have the numbers though. But that’s the thing. If the gamers keep using exclusive terms, then the video game community won’t be able to achieve a true gender equality, as women might still feel rejected. As OP said repeatedly, it’s a Boys club thing.
The question of custom changing a word’s meaning
I kinda want to speak about this. Most of the arguments that can be found in this thread revolve around the fact that “Boys” or “Guys” are not gendered anymore, they are meant to talk about a group, no matter the gender of the people in that group. It is true for guys, I just checked in the dictionary, but it definitely isn’t for “boys”.
But the dictionary definition does not really matter. The significations of words change with time. I just checked in Diderot’s Encyclopedia the word “nčgre” (I don’t need to translate that…). You can find a, very, racist description of black people. Check in a modern dictionary the same word, you will learn that the word is offensive. Definitions are not fixed, they can be changed, for the better. Usually, the dictionary is updated when the custom changed, not the other way around. Which means that the definition is not a universal rule that cannot be broken.
Sometimes, it is true, the custom changes a word from offensive to neutral. Maybe “cunt” is the example in English ? I’m not sure. But in French, the perfect example is “Putain”. Literally, it means “whore”. But in reality, it’s used in the same way as English speakers use “Fuck”. For some, it’s almost punctuation, or an interjection. I’ve never met in my entire life someone who thought it was disrespectful to prostitutes to say “Putain”. But these things take time. A lot of time. It needs to be accepted by every one to effectively change in meaning.
I’ve seen people argue that “PD” (“f*g” but I feel like it’s even worse) is not homophobic anymore. And I just don’t think so at all. Gay marriage is 6 years old in France, and there are still people that wished it was banned again. Homophobia is frown upon. And that’s why the word is still harmful. But as for “Putain”, it is different. The scorn towards sex workers is deeply engrained in people’s mind. Nobody cares. It’s at a point of no return. I personally try not to say the word (I’m using “Punaise” (stink bug) or “Purée” instead), but it’s not the case for every one.
Boys is not, yet, a neutral word in custom. But even if it was, as guys is, it doesn’t mean that the custom is right. But what’s the most infuriating to me is that there are alternatives.
It is exceptionally EASY to use gender-neutral words in English. Try speaking a Latin language: it’s hard to be neutral.
Indeed, words like “folks”, “mates”, “y’all”, “everyone” or “people” are inclusive and mean the exact same thing. In a way I’m jealous as I can’t find proper equivalent in French, and I suppose the same is true for other Latin languages. We can say “les gars”, “les mecs”, “les filles” or “les meufs”, which are all gendered. But to stay neutral and inclusive, I could only find two words, maybe there are more but I can’t seem to remember them : “les gens” (which feels weird honestly) and “tout le monde” (everyone literally, that’s the one I use). That’s not a lot of options.
Even better, English has gender neutral pronouns! French doesn’t. In my post, I can talk about OP as “them” or “they”. I wouldn’t be able to do so in French, we only have “il” or “elle”. When that happens, the only solution I can find if I don’t know their preferred pronoun is to use their username, which might feel weird sometimes.
Similarly, let’s say I talk about a game players. If I say “Les joueurs de smash” (“Smash players”), I use a mas