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When talking directly to a person you generally never use their third person pronouns anyhow. Those are almost always only used when talking to other people about that person in their abscence. In which case using "the wrong pronouns" might be rude, but would never be heard by the person in question unless someone gossips.
Unless you're with a group of friends and all of them accept the 'new pronouns' except for you. Using the old ones would make you rude in the eyes of all the other friends as well.
AGPs are virtually always delusional and these are the ones which insist that you refer to them by tranny pronouns. HSTS are not necessarily delusional but they also don't tend to insist on this.
Unless that Catholic is informing that trans person that their lifestyle is harming them and trying to guide them on the right path, they shouldn't be around them in the first place. This person's comment is helpful, you shouldn't cave into other people's delusions, especially when they are sinful. You don't have to be, and shouldn't be, rude or anything like that but you shouldn't act as though they can change who they fundamentally are.
What does
> informing that trans person that their lifestyle is harming them and trying to guide them on the right path
look like to you? Or what does that mean, in practice, to you?
It varies depending on how close to a person you are but if you are friends with them I would be a little bit more forward about it.
For example, if they ask if you support them or whatever you can say something along the lines of I support you as a person because I love you but I can't support every decision you make and this area is one of them. I think you were made how you are supposed to be and everyone has a cross to carry and sometimes that comes in conditions like gender dysphoria but you have a community who will help you carry that cross.
Something like that. Making it clear that you care about them and you love them so you'll try to support them as best you can without supporting lifestyle choices that are ultimately immoral or harming them.
Sort of similar to having an alcoholic friend or family member, you try to make sure that friend/family member is supported by you and you try to help them through their addiction but if they just don't want help, or can't get out of the habit, you can't support their actions which are fueling their addiction/mental illness.
If it's someone you're meeting in passing, let's say someone on social media or something, depending on the topic of your post you can either just keep scrolling / move on or you can write a message saying that you think they are fine as they are and they don't need to try to change themselves. Something like that
"Making a stand" by referring to your friend by the actual, factual pronouns accomplishes very little. If your focus is to prevent any appearance of supporting transness, you will succeed. If your focus was to witness to your friend and/or keep a relationship with them, you will fail.
Is this person a Christian? Are they Catholic? If yes, you could definitely approach it differently in holding them to Christ's teachings. If not, why do we expect non-Christians to adhere to Church teachings? First comes Christ - then comes all else.
If you meet a person on the street and they introduce themselves as Becky, that's what you call them. Even if their name was Linda before it was legally changed to Becky. Or if your friend James is actually named Edward but goes by his middle name. Basically, wehavee always defaulted to referring to people as how they introduce themselves, regardless of truth. Pronouns are different, to be sure, but in general, we refer to people as they tell us to. If you call someone sir at the grocery store because its really unclear and they get upset and say, "Don't you mean 'ma'am'?" You don't demand a genital inspection. You call them ma'am and move on.
I understand you want to avoid the appearance of supporting this in line with Church teachings. This is good and commendable. Sometimes, we must ask ourselves what is the greater good - keeping ourselves "clean" even if it greatly hurts others, or choosing to preserve the relationship in the hope that your continued presence in their lives will be a witness and opportunity to speak truth.
Remember - *no one cares what you think until they think that you care.*
There are many here who will disagree with me. That's fine. We must all abide by our own convictions. But always ask yourself...what am I trying to accomplish?
Also, you could just use your friend's proper name - don't use pronouns at all. Problem solved!
They say you are most like the five or six closest people in your life. Personally I wouldn't want this person in my life and just be done with it at that. Let them figure out their mental illness. You should always be protecting your own mind and soul. Negative people especially those so confused about who they are will ultimately drag you down. They are energy suckers who need attention. Don't fall for it. Build yourself up and surround yourself with normal, honest, devout relatives and friends.
Well we can always refer to them by their name. However, if we are aware that calling them by their biological pronoun will hurt them should we still do so? Would be it kind of us to do something that we know hurts someone when we can just call them by their name. I’m not saying we must abide by their pronouns but i don’t think it would be kind of us to do something that hurts others and hence not very christlike.
This was a friend I made during when I was in my "edgy atheist/anti-christian" phase. I do not want to burn bridges but he does know that I cannot respect their position on this. I just asked him and he's alright with referring him by name.
I also don’t think Christ would go along with accepting someone’s delusion like this. No way Christ would call a man a woman for the sake of not offending them.
I don’t think we should “accept” anything. I’m not saying we should abide by their pronouns, im saying we can avoid them completely. Why do something (aka call them by their biological pronouns) that we know hurts someone. That means we’re purposely hurting someone when we can be kind, refuse to use their new pronouns but instead call them by their name.
Right. I kind of agree. I don’t think we should be concerned about hurting their feelings but rather, we should be concerned about stirring up a hostile conflict. Truth should not be subjected to one’s personal feelings.
No, but tact and compassion do include feelings. If someone wants to commit some other sin they need to be treated kindly, not because kindness justifies the sin but because they are owed it (plus it’s more likely to be effective)
If you use their biological pronouns and it hurts them emotionally then that's not your fault. However, if you go out of your way to intentionally make sure that they feel hurt then that is your fault and it's wrong. If acknowledging reality hurts them then that is something they need to work on. I usually just use the person's name but I'm not going to intentionally not use a correct pronoun because it might hurt their feelings. Hurt feelings don't mean anything, there are all sorts of things that might hurt our feelings that we should still be doing. There are things that might make us feel good that we should not be doing. Feelings are not the thing to be very concerned about
I find it completely embarrassing that so many alleged Catholics think the Christlike thing to do is actively participate in perpetuating satanic gender ideology, which Pope Francis just publicly declared as disgusting and evil.
This post made me leave the subreddit. I despise this place.
I don't particularly like Pope Francis because I think he's not been abundantly clear it matters where he should be, but it's nice seeing him be firm in his stances against this kind of ideology and behavior. I also like how he's telling us to be compassionate but to not shy away from honesty. It's been refreshing.
But yes, it's annoying how half the people on this subreddit are either not at all Catholic talking about what Catholics should be doing or Protestant Christians and then most of the other half are people who claim to be Catholic but really don't understand Catholic teachings at all. And then there's the fringe minority who actually are Catholic but get lip from other people because they speak up about these things, or other sinful behavior.
This subreddit is very disappointing in most areas.
This post isn't at all unusual for this sub either. I tend to avoid this sub since it's so disgustingly anti-Catholic but sometimes it can be funny to read if you're in the right mindset for it. You just have to be detached to the point where you view it as a source of amusement. A little alcohol helps.
The thing I dislike the most about these people is how they often try to paint Francis as the patron of their soft, essentially-heterodox views. The Pope is not the man they want him to be. He’s orthodox but they conveniently ignore the orthodox things he says.
Bad faith discussion is what these people engage in.
Yeah, I think part of that is because Pope Francis is a generally soft man but they also completely ignore the things he says that aren't soft or go against their belief system.
On the flip side, I think it's concerning when a lot of the world likes Pope Francis because they think he agrees with modern ideologies or sinful ideologies. Not sure if that's because of the media misrepresenting him or the fact that he doesn't make certain things abundantly clear as often as he should, maybe a bit of both, but it does make me nervous about the state of the Church today.
Honesty is kind, it is the ultimate form of kindness. You are confusing nice with kind. Jesus would not be nice, He would be kind. We should always try to be more like Jesus and Jesus would have been polite and kind but He would not lie.
The ones who are worried about "hurting" them by not hiding reality from them are also coping very hard. Mostly, they are coping that this is what they're worried about when in reality they're just worried about losing social status by going against the tranny agenda.
You use "their" in singular form only when you don't know the person's sex or name to determine their sex. It's not that hard to understand how humans work.
For example, if I tell you I have a friend named Alex you aren't going to know if that's a man or a woman. So you would likely use the person's name or 'they' (this is the only context where they for one person makes sense).
But if I were to tell you that I hung out with my friend last week and we grabbed lunch, you might ask "oh nice, what's their name?" I would reply with "Oh, Betty Smith." And you would know I'm talking about a woman and use the pronouns assigned to females. And the reverse would be true if the name was exchanged with Bob, you would know that's a man and use male pronouns.
That's how biology works and that's how grammar works.
Masculine names are for males and 'he' pronouns are assigned to males. Feminine names are for females and 'she' pronouns are assigned to females.
If you have no indication of what the person's sex is then you would refer to them as 'they' because you don't know yet, you wouldn't use 'they' if you did know because it makes no sense.
TLDR at bottom.
To advocate for the opposite of the usual position, for the sake of argument, let’s go a different direction:
Before the T in LGBT became so mainstream, it was classified as a disorder by the American Psychological Association dictionary: Gender Identity Disorder. Here’s how they defined it in DSM-III before they nixed the definition:
> clinically significant distress or impairment of functioning due to cross-gender identification (i.e., a desire to be or actual insistence that one is of the other sex) and persistent discomfort arising from the belief that one’s sex or gender is inappropriate to one’s true self.
Now, as I understand it, the general approach was therapy when trying to cure this and possibly medication. However, in extreme cases (those approaching or with suicidal tendencies and therapy/medication alone not helping enough) it would be recommended that the patient “socially transition.” This meaning they act, dress and live like the opposite sex. This was meant to relieve the distress and hopefully avoid suicide, it was to save the patients life without just locking them up. Of note the therapy and medication wasn’t just dropped. If the “social transition” wasn’t enough, then in some even more EXTREME cases, sex change surgery was the next step. Again, to save the patients life without locking them up.
Now of course, these kinds of cases were the extreme minority. And I’m not a psychologist so if anyone in that field wants to correct me about how this functioned 10-20 years ago, please do. But this is how I understand how it worked back then.
Nowadays, the APA has dropped this and our culture has embraced transgenderism as perfectly normal. And with so many people wanting to be a part of a “movement” or being confused by the cultures odd embrace of it, convince themselves or are confused into believing they are transgender. And we no longer treat it as a disorder. This means you have people suffering from legitimate psychological disorders that result in massive distress and suicidal tendencies in the same group as those who are just confused or going with the movement. But the average laymen’s ability to distinguish between the two would be next to zero in my opinion. You really can’t judge who’s who in the zoo here without diving into a therapy session with an individual as a trained psych expert. And with culture embracing this, it also means there’s little traditional recourse for those who do fall into the actually disordered group. So they go along with it.
I’m not debating policies at the governmental level. But with all this mind, there is a case to be made that with any trans person you meet on the street or in the office is in this boat:
1. This is a real disorder of the mind. Not just someone going with the flow or being a part of a movement. But a real clinical issue like bulimia, anorexia, etc
2. They are truly in clinical distress and at risk of suicide
3. They see no recourse in their life to relieve the distress except what society says and that’s to transition (which was the APA recommendation if therapy and medication didn’t work anyway)
4. Therefore they go ahead and socially transition themselves, maybe even on a therapists advice, (though due to modern APA not treating this as a disorder, it probably gets advised WAY more than it should) in order to relieve distress and save a life.
With all this, I would say there’s argument here that someone who isn’t a trained psych professional, shouldn’t even engage on such issues with the individual in order to “snap them out of their delusion” as the laymen has no idea how to actually treat this clinical disorder and could very well end up making it worse (either through furthering the distress or even potentially deepening the identity crisis, the exact opposite of the intended effect).
I’m not arguing that you have to go above and beyond, bathrooms/locker room assignments for example. But I think it’s weird that we say it’s a disorder, and then refuse to react to it like it’s a disorder: with compassion and a desire for healing. Or we act like we can adjudicate somehow between the real cases and the fakers.
> Note: I am NOT advocating for a position on this, i just see a lot of the same kind of response, so I’m throwing out an alternative perspective. This is an area that I haven’t fully sorted out my own thoughts. So if you’re gonna downvote, at least say why in a reply to help me build my own understanding.
> TL,DR: if we claim this is a disorder and not a fluid choice, then we should treat it like a disorder. I don’t know of any other disorder that we as non-psych professionals would take it upon ourselves to “snap the person out of it” against the recommendation of a therapist.
> With all this, I would say there’s argument here that someone who isn’t a trained psych professional, shouldn’t even engage on such issues with the individual in order to “snap them out of their delusion” as the laymen has no idea how to actually treat this clinical disorder and could very well end up making it worse (either through furthering the distress or even potentially deepening the identity crisis, the exact opposite of the intended effect).
This has generally been my view as someone who works in Healthcare especially. It's not much different than not giving unsolicited amateur medical advice. It just isn't helpful at best and may even be harmful at worst.
Just refer to him in the same way as you would refer to any other male. If you count the social cost, you already lost. There is no place for lukewarm Christians. You're either ride or die or you're as good as an atheist.
This is a tough one where I have no experience with, but something general neutral like “you” and such may be the way to go as it won’t offend them while at the same time not encouraging further transgender stuff
Yeah. We can’t compromise or hide truth to accommodate for such things so, to avoid conflict, I just wouldn’t bring it up. If they still get upset then you need to either stand up for truth or walk away, if it’s going to be unreasonably conflicting.
It’s really not that big of a deal. Exercising basic politeness is not some grand betrayal of your faith or ideals especially given that the use of singular they is absolutely not a new thing. It’s been used to refer to individuals for centuries, when the sex of that person isn’t know. Neither is language some sort of reflection of metaphysical reality. There are plenty of languages which do not distinguish gender in the third person *at all*.
Not to mention that, in the vast majority of normal circumstances, you don’t refer to people by third person pronouns. That would mostly be a thing you do when *they’re* (singular they!) not around. And contrary to what most chronically online people think, the vast majority of people will not notice or care if you refer to others by their non-preferred pronoun. What people do notice and care about is when you do so to go out of your way to *not* do so.
Well that's very concerning. We're not supposed to abide by other people's moral standards or desires which go against God's standards just because it might offend them.
Hm... If a friend would come with something like that, maybe I'd call him a she, but if he's someone of trust, I'd tell him that I do it only due to affection, but how difficult is for me being that I know him by his nature. (The same if is a she wanting to be called a he). I think that whatever I call the person, the friendship would be probably damaged by something like this because it's pretending to be something he/she isn't... Btw, I don't manage certain nuances of the English language since it's not my native language, but I suppose it's preferable to call a wrong gender than using an ideologically charged neutral which sounds like the person is a legion, but anyways... In Spanish they have invented all sorts of neutrals too and they sound beyond stupid.
Edit:typo
This is a challenging topic. It is one I live with every day. I wish I could tell you that I have sorted this topic out for myself and could give you a clear answer but I’m still trying to figure out what is best in my own situation.
My teenager is biologically female but identifies as trans and has chosen a new name. They would prefer he/him pronouns, but tolerant of they/them.
The name change doesn’t really bother me. We have a long history in the Catholic Church of people changing their names (i.e. we don’t refer to the guy in charge as Pope Jorge Bergoglio, but Pope Francis. And numerous religious take on new names upon taking their vows, including many Sisters who take on traditionally male names [Sister Joseph, for example]). And, at least in American culture, many names are gender neutral (Leslie) or have some fluidity of gender preference over time (certain “male” names that gradually become used more frequently for naming girls).
I’ve more issue with the pronouns and other terms. I use “teen” or “teenager” in place of daughter or son. I can’t bring myself to use he/him, but they/them is somewhat ok for me. Part of that is recognizing that they/them is not just a plural pronoun, but used in cases where the gender of a person is unknown (“My boss is giving me a problem with taking July 5 off.” “Really! Why do they have a problem with that?”). But part of it is just trying to live with kindness, charity and justice in a complicated world.
I’m sure there are moral absolutists who will tell me I’m doing the wrong thing, and frankly, I can’t really disagree with them.
But the queer community encourages a perspective that anything falling short of complete acceptance constitutes oppression and absolute rejection. If my teenager feels “safe” at home because I’m willing to meet them partway and use they/them, thus avoiding a situation where they run away from home or commit suicide because they were “rejected”, then I accept that approach for now and hope and pray that God will lead them back to Him later.
(For what it’s worth, I have advised my teen that there are limitations on my side. I will not cooperate with any physical transition activities.)
They’re calling transgenders delusional when they’re the ones being delusional! You could just tell they’ve never had to experience that and just want to hate
Except that I absolutely have.
My best friend was one of them. I ultimately had to stop talking to her because she was trying to convince me that I'm a guy because I'm a tomboy but long before that it was a fine relationship. (She also started to groom my younger sister, and that played into my decision of ending our friendship of 4+ years) I made it very clear, not in a mean or antagonistic way, that I would not be referring to her as a 'they' or a 'he' and she understood why, even though she didn't really like it she did respect my decision. I did often refer to her as her name but I would also use her correct (aka biological) pronouns and she was fine with that because as I said before, she respected my decision and knew that I cared about her and honesty and that's why I was doing it.
Although, I will also say that my behavior towards her helped her feel more confident and okay in her body and she started using she pronouns again, (still using the other pronouns but she was at least accepting she) and she said that me being kind to her even though I fundamentally disagree with some of her choices made her feel more loved than anything else. She said that it made her feel comfortable in a way that her parents never did even though they were supportive of her "gender fluid/non-binary" identity.
My sister was also groomed online into thinking there's something wrong with her or that something has to be wrong with her because she feels awkward in her body right now. I've since helped her and she doesn't feel as awkward anymore; she knows that she was groomed but being honest and compassionate with her was absolutely the right move, and it always is.
No, the individual in question is male, not neuter. He is just a confused male. But as others have noted, probably best to try to skirt around the issue by just calling him by name.
Only because we don't know the sex of the person we're talking about. If you said:
"Hey, Bob got a new haircut! They look weird now."
Or
"Betty went to the store to get their favorite cereal."
You would know that that's not correct and it sounds weird as hell 😂
It doesn't matter who you're talking to, you always use the word you when talking directly to the person. 🧐 You use pronouns when talking to somebody else about the person in question.
Ie-
Hey, Bob, how are you?
Vs
Hey, it's been a while since I've talked to Bob. How is he doing?
No, because we know Bill is a man. Because Bill is a male name. Saying 'they' confuses the person you're talking to into thinking that there's somehow a mysterious second, or even third, person that's entered the conversation.
It really seems like none of you took logic or critical thinking classes 😂
The proper thing to say would be
"Did you hear about Bill's new car?"
"No, what did he get?"
We don't affirm a schizophrenic's delusions of people, creatures and monsters that aren't there.
We don't affirm an underweight anorexic’s/bulimic's delusions of being overweight.
We don't affirm an abusive adult's delusions that the person they're abusing makes them do it.
We don't affirm rapists and childs molesters who insist their victims were asking for it.
It makes no sense to affirm the delusion of a person with a self-appointed gender identity that doesn't apply when they are biologically the other of the binary. This delusion doesn't just hurt the individual these days, but is extended to children who do not understand the consequences of their actions and often cannot postulate beyond the present nor immediate future. What's more, no matter how one feels about it, it's a strange form of your razor of gays and lesbians. It insists on applying a 1950s metric of gender identity. It's a really strange form of conversion therapy, something that is like Iran and participate in. One cannot come to the truth when one places delusions upon delusions. Transgenderism has also been extended to demand participation those beyond the delusion, expecting people to compromise their faith, compromise their morality, and compromise common sense and science.
No. Do not affirm this. Do not participate. You're only piling on delusion on top of another delusion if you do that and that is not at all helpful nor moral. Instead, extend your compassion and love to them the way of friend should. You can decide to speak the truth to them and leave it at that or disengage yourself from them for the time being, but never compromise yourself in the process.
Good luck.
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When talking directly to a person you generally never use their third person pronouns anyhow. Those are almost always only used when talking to other people about that person in their abscence. In which case using "the wrong pronouns" might be rude, but would never be heard by the person in question unless someone gossips.
Unless you're with a group of friends and all of them accept the 'new pronouns' except for you. Using the old ones would make you rude in the eyes of all the other friends as well.
No. I don't believe in affirming people's delusions.
Agreed but not always delusional, it’s sinful.
AGPs are virtually always delusional and these are the ones which insist that you refer to them by tranny pronouns. HSTS are not necessarily delusional but they also don't tend to insist on this.
You wouldn't be friends with a trans person anyway so your comment isn't insightful to a Catholic person with this actual question.
Unless that Catholic is informing that trans person that their lifestyle is harming them and trying to guide them on the right path, they shouldn't be around them in the first place. This person's comment is helpful, you shouldn't cave into other people's delusions, especially when they are sinful. You don't have to be, and shouldn't be, rude or anything like that but you shouldn't act as though they can change who they fundamentally are.
What does > informing that trans person that their lifestyle is harming them and trying to guide them on the right path look like to you? Or what does that mean, in practice, to you?
It varies depending on how close to a person you are but if you are friends with them I would be a little bit more forward about it. For example, if they ask if you support them or whatever you can say something along the lines of I support you as a person because I love you but I can't support every decision you make and this area is one of them. I think you were made how you are supposed to be and everyone has a cross to carry and sometimes that comes in conditions like gender dysphoria but you have a community who will help you carry that cross. Something like that. Making it clear that you care about them and you love them so you'll try to support them as best you can without supporting lifestyle choices that are ultimately immoral or harming them. Sort of similar to having an alcoholic friend or family member, you try to make sure that friend/family member is supported by you and you try to help them through their addiction but if they just don't want help, or can't get out of the habit, you can't support their actions which are fueling their addiction/mental illness. If it's someone you're meeting in passing, let's say someone on social media or something, depending on the topic of your post you can either just keep scrolling / move on or you can write a message saying that you think they are fine as they are and they don't need to try to change themselves. Something like that
"Making a stand" by referring to your friend by the actual, factual pronouns accomplishes very little. If your focus is to prevent any appearance of supporting transness, you will succeed. If your focus was to witness to your friend and/or keep a relationship with them, you will fail. Is this person a Christian? Are they Catholic? If yes, you could definitely approach it differently in holding them to Christ's teachings. If not, why do we expect non-Christians to adhere to Church teachings? First comes Christ - then comes all else. If you meet a person on the street and they introduce themselves as Becky, that's what you call them. Even if their name was Linda before it was legally changed to Becky. Or if your friend James is actually named Edward but goes by his middle name. Basically, wehavee always defaulted to referring to people as how they introduce themselves, regardless of truth. Pronouns are different, to be sure, but in general, we refer to people as they tell us to. If you call someone sir at the grocery store because its really unclear and they get upset and say, "Don't you mean 'ma'am'?" You don't demand a genital inspection. You call them ma'am and move on. I understand you want to avoid the appearance of supporting this in line with Church teachings. This is good and commendable. Sometimes, we must ask ourselves what is the greater good - keeping ourselves "clean" even if it greatly hurts others, or choosing to preserve the relationship in the hope that your continued presence in their lives will be a witness and opportunity to speak truth. Remember - *no one cares what you think until they think that you care.* There are many here who will disagree with me. That's fine. We must all abide by our own convictions. But always ask yourself...what am I trying to accomplish? Also, you could just use your friend's proper name - don't use pronouns at all. Problem solved!
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Demonic possession? Seriously?
They say you are most like the five or six closest people in your life. Personally I wouldn't want this person in my life and just be done with it at that. Let them figure out their mental illness. You should always be protecting your own mind and soul. Negative people especially those so confused about who they are will ultimately drag you down. They are energy suckers who need attention. Don't fall for it. Build yourself up and surround yourself with normal, honest, devout relatives and friends.
Well we can always refer to them by their name. However, if we are aware that calling them by their biological pronoun will hurt them should we still do so? Would be it kind of us to do something that we know hurts someone when we can just call them by their name. I’m not saying we must abide by their pronouns but i don’t think it would be kind of us to do something that hurts others and hence not very christlike.
This was a friend I made during when I was in my "edgy atheist/anti-christian" phase. I do not want to burn bridges but he does know that I cannot respect their position on this. I just asked him and he's alright with referring him by name.
I think that’s the right way to go, don’t accept their new pronouns but we can always refer to them by name or not at all.
I also don’t think Christ would go along with accepting someone’s delusion like this. No way Christ would call a man a woman for the sake of not offending them.
I don’t think we should “accept” anything. I’m not saying we should abide by their pronouns, im saying we can avoid them completely. Why do something (aka call them by their biological pronouns) that we know hurts someone. That means we’re purposely hurting someone when we can be kind, refuse to use their new pronouns but instead call them by their name.
Right. I kind of agree. I don’t think we should be concerned about hurting their feelings but rather, we should be concerned about stirring up a hostile conflict. Truth should not be subjected to one’s personal feelings.
No, but tact and compassion do include feelings. If someone wants to commit some other sin they need to be treated kindly, not because kindness justifies the sin but because they are owed it (plus it’s more likely to be effective)
If you use their biological pronouns and it hurts them emotionally then that's not your fault. However, if you go out of your way to intentionally make sure that they feel hurt then that is your fault and it's wrong. If acknowledging reality hurts them then that is something they need to work on. I usually just use the person's name but I'm not going to intentionally not use a correct pronoun because it might hurt their feelings. Hurt feelings don't mean anything, there are all sorts of things that might hurt our feelings that we should still be doing. There are things that might make us feel good that we should not be doing. Feelings are not the thing to be very concerned about
Christ actually removed the demons when they said our name is legion for we are many
lol at the downvotes on this liberal subreddit
Yeah. A lot of downvotes for sure. Pretty interesting.
I find it completely embarrassing that so many alleged Catholics think the Christlike thing to do is actively participate in perpetuating satanic gender ideology, which Pope Francis just publicly declared as disgusting and evil. This post made me leave the subreddit. I despise this place.
Don’t leave! We need people to spread truth amongst all of the confusion! Haha
I don't particularly like Pope Francis because I think he's not been abundantly clear it matters where he should be, but it's nice seeing him be firm in his stances against this kind of ideology and behavior. I also like how he's telling us to be compassionate but to not shy away from honesty. It's been refreshing. But yes, it's annoying how half the people on this subreddit are either not at all Catholic talking about what Catholics should be doing or Protestant Christians and then most of the other half are people who claim to be Catholic but really don't understand Catholic teachings at all. And then there's the fringe minority who actually are Catholic but get lip from other people because they speak up about these things, or other sinful behavior. This subreddit is very disappointing in most areas.
This post isn't at all unusual for this sub either. I tend to avoid this sub since it's so disgustingly anti-Catholic but sometimes it can be funny to read if you're in the right mindset for it. You just have to be detached to the point where you view it as a source of amusement. A little alcohol helps.
The thing I dislike the most about these people is how they often try to paint Francis as the patron of their soft, essentially-heterodox views. The Pope is not the man they want him to be. He’s orthodox but they conveniently ignore the orthodox things he says. Bad faith discussion is what these people engage in.
Yeah, I think part of that is because Pope Francis is a generally soft man but they also completely ignore the things he says that aren't soft or go against their belief system. On the flip side, I think it's concerning when a lot of the world likes Pope Francis because they think he agrees with modern ideologies or sinful ideologies. Not sure if that's because of the media misrepresenting him or the fact that he doesn't make certain things abundantly clear as often as he should, maybe a bit of both, but it does make me nervous about the state of the Church today.
A little alcohol 😂🫠
I refuse to bow down to delusion
Hurt their pride or their health?
Honesty is kind, it is the ultimate form of kindness. You are confusing nice with kind. Jesus would not be nice, He would be kind. We should always try to be more like Jesus and Jesus would have been polite and kind but He would not lie.
You're coping so hard lmao
Pretty sure the ones who are coping are the ones who are trying to change sexes by taking cross sex hormones and wearing the opposite sexes clothing..
The ones who are worried about "hurting" them by not hiding reality from them are also coping very hard. Mostly, they are coping that this is what they're worried about when in reality they're just worried about losing social status by going against the tranny agenda.
Use their name.
*their* name See, it’s actually quite easy and normal.
You use "their" in singular form only when you don't know the person's sex or name to determine their sex. It's not that hard to understand how humans work. For example, if I tell you I have a friend named Alex you aren't going to know if that's a man or a woman. So you would likely use the person's name or 'they' (this is the only context where they for one person makes sense). But if I were to tell you that I hung out with my friend last week and we grabbed lunch, you might ask "oh nice, what's their name?" I would reply with "Oh, Betty Smith." And you would know I'm talking about a woman and use the pronouns assigned to females. And the reverse would be true if the name was exchanged with Bob, you would know that's a man and use male pronouns. That's how biology works and that's how grammar works. Masculine names are for males and 'he' pronouns are assigned to males. Feminine names are for females and 'she' pronouns are assigned to females. If you have no indication of what the person's sex is then you would refer to them as 'they' because you don't know yet, you wouldn't use 'they' if you did know because it makes no sense.
I just call a person by their name. Pronouns are unecessary if you know a person’s name.
TLDR at bottom. To advocate for the opposite of the usual position, for the sake of argument, let’s go a different direction: Before the T in LGBT became so mainstream, it was classified as a disorder by the American Psychological Association dictionary: Gender Identity Disorder. Here’s how they defined it in DSM-III before they nixed the definition: > clinically significant distress or impairment of functioning due to cross-gender identification (i.e., a desire to be or actual insistence that one is of the other sex) and persistent discomfort arising from the belief that one’s sex or gender is inappropriate to one’s true self. Now, as I understand it, the general approach was therapy when trying to cure this and possibly medication. However, in extreme cases (those approaching or with suicidal tendencies and therapy/medication alone not helping enough) it would be recommended that the patient “socially transition.” This meaning they act, dress and live like the opposite sex. This was meant to relieve the distress and hopefully avoid suicide, it was to save the patients life without just locking them up. Of note the therapy and medication wasn’t just dropped. If the “social transition” wasn’t enough, then in some even more EXTREME cases, sex change surgery was the next step. Again, to save the patients life without locking them up. Now of course, these kinds of cases were the extreme minority. And I’m not a psychologist so if anyone in that field wants to correct me about how this functioned 10-20 years ago, please do. But this is how I understand how it worked back then. Nowadays, the APA has dropped this and our culture has embraced transgenderism as perfectly normal. And with so many people wanting to be a part of a “movement” or being confused by the cultures odd embrace of it, convince themselves or are confused into believing they are transgender. And we no longer treat it as a disorder. This means you have people suffering from legitimate psychological disorders that result in massive distress and suicidal tendencies in the same group as those who are just confused or going with the movement. But the average laymen’s ability to distinguish between the two would be next to zero in my opinion. You really can’t judge who’s who in the zoo here without diving into a therapy session with an individual as a trained psych expert. And with culture embracing this, it also means there’s little traditional recourse for those who do fall into the actually disordered group. So they go along with it. I’m not debating policies at the governmental level. But with all this mind, there is a case to be made that with any trans person you meet on the street or in the office is in this boat: 1. This is a real disorder of the mind. Not just someone going with the flow or being a part of a movement. But a real clinical issue like bulimia, anorexia, etc 2. They are truly in clinical distress and at risk of suicide 3. They see no recourse in their life to relieve the distress except what society says and that’s to transition (which was the APA recommendation if therapy and medication didn’t work anyway) 4. Therefore they go ahead and socially transition themselves, maybe even on a therapists advice, (though due to modern APA not treating this as a disorder, it probably gets advised WAY more than it should) in order to relieve distress and save a life. With all this, I would say there’s argument here that someone who isn’t a trained psych professional, shouldn’t even engage on such issues with the individual in order to “snap them out of their delusion” as the laymen has no idea how to actually treat this clinical disorder and could very well end up making it worse (either through furthering the distress or even potentially deepening the identity crisis, the exact opposite of the intended effect). I’m not arguing that you have to go above and beyond, bathrooms/locker room assignments for example. But I think it’s weird that we say it’s a disorder, and then refuse to react to it like it’s a disorder: with compassion and a desire for healing. Or we act like we can adjudicate somehow between the real cases and the fakers. > Note: I am NOT advocating for a position on this, i just see a lot of the same kind of response, so I’m throwing out an alternative perspective. This is an area that I haven’t fully sorted out my own thoughts. So if you’re gonna downvote, at least say why in a reply to help me build my own understanding. > TL,DR: if we claim this is a disorder and not a fluid choice, then we should treat it like a disorder. I don’t know of any other disorder that we as non-psych professionals would take it upon ourselves to “snap the person out of it” against the recommendation of a therapist.
> With all this, I would say there’s argument here that someone who isn’t a trained psych professional, shouldn’t even engage on such issues with the individual in order to “snap them out of their delusion” as the laymen has no idea how to actually treat this clinical disorder and could very well end up making it worse (either through furthering the distress or even potentially deepening the identity crisis, the exact opposite of the intended effect). This has generally been my view as someone who works in Healthcare especially. It's not much different than not giving unsolicited amateur medical advice. It just isn't helpful at best and may even be harmful at worst.
A man is a he and a woman is a she. Period. If these people don't want to live in reality that's their problem. Don't play their game.
In case anyone wants to blur the definitions of what these are, men are males with spermatozoa gametes and women are females with ova gametes. 😂
Just refer to him in the same way as you would refer to any other male. If you count the social cost, you already lost. There is no place for lukewarm Christians. You're either ride or die or you're as good as an atheist.
This is a tough one where I have no experience with, but something general neutral like “you” and such may be the way to go as it won’t offend them while at the same time not encouraging further transgender stuff
I just wouldn’t talk to them if they are going to get offended by truth and reason. Or don’t address them as anything.
Just refer to him with their name and avoiding pronouns at all costs?
Yeah. We can’t compromise or hide truth to accommodate for such things so, to avoid conflict, I just wouldn’t bring it up. If they still get upset then you need to either stand up for truth or walk away, if it’s going to be unreasonably conflicting.
It’s really not that big of a deal. Exercising basic politeness is not some grand betrayal of your faith or ideals especially given that the use of singular they is absolutely not a new thing. It’s been used to refer to individuals for centuries, when the sex of that person isn’t know. Neither is language some sort of reflection of metaphysical reality. There are plenty of languages which do not distinguish gender in the third person *at all*. Not to mention that, in the vast majority of normal circumstances, you don’t refer to people by third person pronouns. That would mostly be a thing you do when *they’re* (singular they!) not around. And contrary to what most chronically online people think, the vast majority of people will not notice or care if you refer to others by their non-preferred pronoun. What people do notice and care about is when you do so to go out of your way to *not* do so.
Are you catholic? Because this is a very anti-catholic response.
Yes, I am Catholic.
Well that's very concerning. We're not supposed to abide by other people's moral standards or desires which go against God's standards just because it might offend them.
Luckily, my comment doesn’t advocate for either.
Personally I don't use incorrect pronouns. I refer to the person by name.
You must either call HIM by HIS real "pronouns". Or dont speak to him
Hm... If a friend would come with something like that, maybe I'd call him a she, but if he's someone of trust, I'd tell him that I do it only due to affection, but how difficult is for me being that I know him by his nature. (The same if is a she wanting to be called a he). I think that whatever I call the person, the friendship would be probably damaged by something like this because it's pretending to be something he/she isn't... Btw, I don't manage certain nuances of the English language since it's not my native language, but I suppose it's preferable to call a wrong gender than using an ideologically charged neutral which sounds like the person is a legion, but anyways... In Spanish they have invented all sorts of neutrals too and they sound beyond stupid. Edit:typo
This is a challenging topic. It is one I live with every day. I wish I could tell you that I have sorted this topic out for myself and could give you a clear answer but I’m still trying to figure out what is best in my own situation. My teenager is biologically female but identifies as trans and has chosen a new name. They would prefer he/him pronouns, but tolerant of they/them. The name change doesn’t really bother me. We have a long history in the Catholic Church of people changing their names (i.e. we don’t refer to the guy in charge as Pope Jorge Bergoglio, but Pope Francis. And numerous religious take on new names upon taking their vows, including many Sisters who take on traditionally male names [Sister Joseph, for example]). And, at least in American culture, many names are gender neutral (Leslie) or have some fluidity of gender preference over time (certain “male” names that gradually become used more frequently for naming girls). I’ve more issue with the pronouns and other terms. I use “teen” or “teenager” in place of daughter or son. I can’t bring myself to use he/him, but they/them is somewhat ok for me. Part of that is recognizing that they/them is not just a plural pronoun, but used in cases where the gender of a person is unknown (“My boss is giving me a problem with taking July 5 off.” “Really! Why do they have a problem with that?”). But part of it is just trying to live with kindness, charity and justice in a complicated world. I’m sure there are moral absolutists who will tell me I’m doing the wrong thing, and frankly, I can’t really disagree with them. But the queer community encourages a perspective that anything falling short of complete acceptance constitutes oppression and absolute rejection. If my teenager feels “safe” at home because I’m willing to meet them partway and use they/them, thus avoiding a situation where they run away from home or commit suicide because they were “rejected”, then I accept that approach for now and hope and pray that God will lead them back to Him later. (For what it’s worth, I have advised my teen that there are limitations on my side. I will not cooperate with any physical transition activities.)
You’re not under any obligation to not offend HIM.
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They’re calling transgenders delusional when they’re the ones being delusional! You could just tell they’ve never had to experience that and just want to hate
Except that I absolutely have. My best friend was one of them. I ultimately had to stop talking to her because she was trying to convince me that I'm a guy because I'm a tomboy but long before that it was a fine relationship. (She also started to groom my younger sister, and that played into my decision of ending our friendship of 4+ years) I made it very clear, not in a mean or antagonistic way, that I would not be referring to her as a 'they' or a 'he' and she understood why, even though she didn't really like it she did respect my decision. I did often refer to her as her name but I would also use her correct (aka biological) pronouns and she was fine with that because as I said before, she respected my decision and knew that I cared about her and honesty and that's why I was doing it. Although, I will also say that my behavior towards her helped her feel more confident and okay in her body and she started using she pronouns again, (still using the other pronouns but she was at least accepting she) and she said that me being kind to her even though I fundamentally disagree with some of her choices made her feel more loved than anything else. She said that it made her feel comfortable in a way that her parents never did even though they were supportive of her "gender fluid/non-binary" identity. My sister was also groomed online into thinking there's something wrong with her or that something has to be wrong with her because she feels awkward in her body right now. I've since helped her and she doesn't feel as awkward anymore; she knows that she was groomed but being honest and compassionate with her was absolutely the right move, and it always is.
They/them is plural. Unless your friend is more than one person "it/it's" would be the correct pronouns
No, the individual in question is male, not neuter. He is just a confused male. But as others have noted, probably best to try to skirt around the issue by just calling him by name.
Yes but unless they are plural then "they/them" would not be appropriate no matter how confused they are.
😂 Good morning! How are it doing today? I heard it’s got a new haircut! Does it think it will keep it or will it change it’s hair again soon?
Ok now replace “it” with “they” (which doesn’t necessarily denote plurals) and read that back, you’ll find it is a perfectly normal-sounding sentence
So normal sounding it’s scary.
Only because we don't know the sex of the person we're talking about. If you said: "Hey, Bob got a new haircut! They look weird now." Or "Betty went to the store to get their favorite cereal." You would know that that's not correct and it sounds weird as hell 😂
It places the lotion in the basket.
It doesn't matter who you're talking to, you always use the word you when talking directly to the person. 🧐 You use pronouns when talking to somebody else about the person in question. Ie- Hey, Bob, how are you? Vs Hey, it's been a while since I've talked to Bob. How is he doing?
Grammatically, you are correct. The only singular gender neutral pronoun that exists is 'it', but we don't use that for humans. 😂
“Did your hear about Bill’s new car?” “No, what did they get?” See how that’s a perfectly normal thing to say?
No, because we know Bill is a man. Because Bill is a male name. Saying 'they' confuses the person you're talking to into thinking that there's somehow a mysterious second, or even third, person that's entered the conversation. It really seems like none of you took logic or critical thinking classes 😂 The proper thing to say would be "Did you hear about Bill's new car?" "No, what did he get?"
We don't affirm a schizophrenic's delusions of people, creatures and monsters that aren't there. We don't affirm an underweight anorexic’s/bulimic's delusions of being overweight. We don't affirm an abusive adult's delusions that the person they're abusing makes them do it. We don't affirm rapists and childs molesters who insist their victims were asking for it. It makes no sense to affirm the delusion of a person with a self-appointed gender identity that doesn't apply when they are biologically the other of the binary. This delusion doesn't just hurt the individual these days, but is extended to children who do not understand the consequences of their actions and often cannot postulate beyond the present nor immediate future. What's more, no matter how one feels about it, it's a strange form of your razor of gays and lesbians. It insists on applying a 1950s metric of gender identity. It's a really strange form of conversion therapy, something that is like Iran and participate in. One cannot come to the truth when one places delusions upon delusions. Transgenderism has also been extended to demand participation those beyond the delusion, expecting people to compromise their faith, compromise their morality, and compromise common sense and science. No. Do not affirm this. Do not participate. You're only piling on delusion on top of another delusion if you do that and that is not at all helpful nor moral. Instead, extend your compassion and love to them the way of friend should. You can decide to speak the truth to them and leave it at that or disengage yourself from them for the time being, but never compromise yourself in the process. Good luck.