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bodyetalEdit (Jan 5 2025): This post is very old, and while we stand by our criticisms, we do want to note that this post is not comprehensive (there are more problems—one notable one being that pronouns.page has repeatedly had language updates that ignore the criticisms and needs of fluent/native speakers) and also that the alternatives below are no longer our favorites. We primarily recommend pronouns.cc now. Now, onto the original post.
So, fun fact about this entry.
Originally it was about ten pages long, with hours of writing that went into it.
And then my computer crashed and deleted it.
I remember my points, though, so here we go.
Again, originally, this was much longer and more detailed. But since I've already written this, I'm going to cut to the most serious and clear examples. I very much recommend (if you are able) looking at Sai Vos's site yourself, rather than just taking my word for it. I am not immune to bias/propaganda and neither are you.
I'm going to start with the most blatant instances, because dramatic effect doesn't matter here and because it matters more to me that you get the relevant information than it does that you read every word I write.
Beginning with the quote that is the reason I decided I was going to post this instead of just being quiet and personal, in a post with the less-than-ideal title "Let Islam In. It will not survive here." (Bolding is added to highlight phrases and is not taken from the original text.)
For those not in the know, the use of the term "Western society," especially posing it as beneficial for the purposes of educating and eradicating a culture is a far- and alt- right--specifically imperialist, white supremacist, colonialist, and some forms of neo-Nazism--talking point, and is deeply rooted in those ideologies. The "West" is white Europe and Anglo America. The West also is responsible for almost all imperialism currently happening in the world.
And yes, Vos does insist that they mean only the religion and not the culture. But that's not how this works. If you call for the eradication of a religion tied to a culture, you call for the eradication of that culture. This, for the record, is how structural racism has picked up speed for centuries to the point of ethno- and/or genocide in Anglo and European culture--"we hate the Catholics, the religious Jews, the Native American religion--destroying those will save them!" In other words, it's posing.
This kind of colonialism also often isn't recognized by... well, anyone, but especially Anglos and Europeans, but it's essentially the basics of how the Spanish colonization & geno/ethnocide of Indigenous Latin American peoples functioned. This is something we're very familiar with, because our own tribe's culture did not survive Spanish ethnocide (though the people survived genocide). When you're not from a place or culture it happened to, it's easy to ignore. But this is an extremely violent ideology responsible for the deaths of millions of people and hundreds of cultures, and it cannot be ignored.
If you thought that was it, though, I have bad news for you.
Mx. Vos is very fond of insisting religious people are inherently stupid, at one point saying religion could be considered delusional, and for blaming European hate on religion instead of white supremacy, thereby threatening the existence of the cultures that European racism seeks to destroy.
A little collection of examples:
That one's pretty clear.
So, look. Clearly this is a personal subject for Mx. Vos. Clearly they've been harmed by religion. Clearly religious people can do harm, religion is frequently a tool of harm, obviously religion isn't inherently good or better, we know all that.
But this also demonstrate's Vos's inability to decenter themself and their experiences in the subject for even a moment. Sai Vos is about as white and goyish as anyone can be, currently living in the Netherlands and apparently German and/or Polish. So, yes, from their perspective, this is all about religion--which is also why they (hopefully by accident) stumbled into blaming Islam for ISIS and Al-Queda (instead of Western involvement and greed, complex societal factors, economic instability, etc), Christianity for the Inquisition (instead of antisemitism and white supremacy), and religion for the Rohingya genocide (which is a product mainly of Islamaphobia and racism and is a genocide of Muslims).
And no, those genocides, those terrorist organizations, do not "very personally and substantially" affect them. Not even close. Polish legislation? Sure. The persecution of Muslims? Not hurting someone who wrote an entire article on how hard Islamaphobia is for them because it means people will say they're racist if they call for the extinction of a marginalized religion.
Vos's antisemitism is more lowkey.
One of the main issues there, I think, is that Mx. Vos can't make a single comment about "every religion" that's not instantly disprovable through the Talmud or any knowledge of the Jewish community.
The words of someone who has never even breathed near a Rabbi. Have you ever asked a Rabbi a question? If you ask a Rabbi which passage of the Torah mentions sheep, you'll somehow end up doing four hours of self study and turning in a fully cited original essay on how Jewish law intersects with secular morality.
It's worth noting that when Vos is "proving" the evils of "every religion," they only ever compare Christianity and Islam--the two youngest Abrahamic religions--and a very white version of Christianity, at that.
"Ignore obvious atrocities"? What about a ton of Indigenous spiritualities where care and protection of the land comes above all else, where the priority is everyone getting what they need? What about non-literalist Christians, who don't take the Bible as a perfectly moral fully accurate document? What about the million schools of Jewish thought that stem from deconstructing this?
"They aren’t really that different from each other"? Put a Shinto practitioner, a Jew, a Catholic, a Protestant, and a Native in a room. Then tell me that line again.
Secular parents do these things. Secular parents choose circumcision because secular doctors tell them it's "more hygienic." Secular parents are anti-vaxx and anti-transfusion, because it's "untested" or "unnatural." Vaccines were invented by a Christian who was the son of a vicar and cherished the Bible. This is not a religion thing, it's an ignorance and misinformation thing.
Vos also has a post talking about how the atheist view of death is better than the religious that describes one of the most common views on death held by Jews (and other religions) to a T.
For the record, I have no great love for the Church, for the authority granted to religious figures, to the hatred and violence committed in the name of religion. But this subject is more complicated than the experience of the ultra-white who can't think on the issue past their own hangups. This issue is deeper than "religion bad," and antitheism only worsens the problem.
Pronouny.xyz: Create a profile that has your pronouns (& how to use them in a sentence), name(s), and preferred nouns/gender of nouns that you can link on other sites. You can also friend people you know and get updates if their pronouns change. Custom, non-standard (& non-English) pronouns are supported, and there's an extremely detailed selection of neopronouns. This is ideal for individuals who still want something similar to Pronouns.Page.
Pronoun Island: Link to usage guides for your pronouns. Custom pronoun sets are supported. This is ideal for individuals who are making their own custom page (information below) or who only use one or two sets of pronouns.
Rentry: Very similar to Carrd, but markdown based (this is what you use to format messages on Slack and Discord) and more "plain." It's absolutely free, you can add links, headings, images, tables of contents, etc., and you can make as many as you like. Crow actually made a template for Rentry pronoun pages that's extremely similar to the layout and functioning of Pronouns.Page!
Txti: Virtually identical to Rentry, but hides images automatically unless they're clicked.
Carrd: I hate to say it, but Carrd is a pretty good option and is arguably already better than Pronouns.Page. The main disadvantage is that it's annoyingly paywalled, but if, for example, you're plural and want multiple profiles in one place, it's very good for it.
Linktree: Definitely unconventional, but can work well for pronouns when combined with Pronoun Island (or to link to multiple separate term/name/pronoun pages).
I am taking suggestions and critique for the alternatives list, so feel free to comment them, and thanks for sticking around.
So, fun fact about this entry.
Originally it was about ten pages long, with hours of writing that went into it.
And then my computer crashed and deleted it.
I remember my points, though, so here we go.
TL;DR: the coder & co-owner of pronouns.page (who also runs all Avris projects, such as the gender & sexuality spectrum tool, the attraction layer cake, and emoji pride flags) is an extremely islamaphobic antitheist (with antisemitism and general eurocentrism thrown in) cosplaying as a leftie who, intentionally or not, repeatedly echoes far- and alt-right talking points and ideologies and should definitely not be given the ridiculous level of power and authority they currently hold in the queer community through the project. (This is also your content warning for the subject of this post.)
Again, originally, this was much longer and more detailed. But since I've already written this, I'm going to cut to the most serious and clear examples. I very much recommend (if you are able) looking at Sai Vos's site yourself, rather than just taking my word for it. I am not immune to bias/propaganda and neither are you.
I'm going to start with the most blatant instances, because dramatic effect doesn't matter here and because it matters more to me that you get the relevant information than it does that you read every word I write.
Beginning with the quote that is the reason I decided I was going to post this instead of just being quiet and personal, in a post with the less-than-ideal title "Let Islam In. It will not survive here." (Bolding is added to highlight phrases and is not taken from the original text.)
"We are scared of how Islam might potentially negatively influence our Western society, but do we ever wonder, how the Western society might might potentially positively influence Islamic world? [...] A child born in Saudi Arabia, who sees solely Islam both at home and at school, who is threatened with death for apostasy – has poor chances to escape the snares of religion. But a child, who sees Islam at home, but learns tolerance and western values at school, who is protected by a secular law and a secular police, if their family wanted to harm them? Getting out of the religion trap is incomparably easier for them!
"From that perspective accepting immigrants from the Arab countries seems to lead to destruction of Islam rather than its expansion, doesn’t it?"
For those not in the know, the use of the term "Western society," especially posing it as beneficial for the purposes of educating and eradicating a culture is a far- and alt- right--specifically imperialist, white supremacist, colonialist, and some forms of neo-Nazism--talking point, and is deeply rooted in those ideologies. The "West" is white Europe and Anglo America. The West also is responsible for almost all imperialism currently happening in the world.
And yes, Vos does insist that they mean only the religion and not the culture. But that's not how this works. If you call for the eradication of a religion tied to a culture, you call for the eradication of that culture. This, for the record, is how structural racism has picked up speed for centuries to the point of ethno- and/or genocide in Anglo and European culture--"we hate the Catholics, the religious Jews, the Native American religion--destroying those will save them!" In other words, it's posing.
This kind of colonialism also often isn't recognized by... well, anyone, but especially Anglos and Europeans, but it's essentially the basics of how the Spanish colonization & geno/ethnocide of Indigenous Latin American peoples functioned. This is something we're very familiar with, because our own tribe's culture did not survive Spanish ethnocide (though the people survived genocide). When you're not from a place or culture it happened to, it's easy to ignore. But this is an extremely violent ideology responsible for the deaths of millions of people and hundreds of cultures, and it cannot be ignored.
If you thought that was it, though, I have bad news for you.
Mx. Vos is very fond of insisting religious people are inherently stupid, at one point saying religion could be considered delusional, and for blaming European hate on religion instead of white supremacy, thereby threatening the existence of the cultures that European racism seeks to destroy.
A little collection of examples:
"I think [all mythologies] are just awful and i hate them." (Their site's home page.)
That one's pretty clear.
"I'm surprised by the number of atheists who say that we shouldn't even tell believers that there is no god, for fear of ... disrespecting their faith.
Well, screw your faith. I have absolutely zero respect for it, whatsoever.
"And I have good reasons for it.
"It's stupid [...]
"[They personally experience bigotry.] It's all because of religion. My family's homophobia is religiously motivated. Polish anti-LGBTQ, anti-abortion, and anti-euthanasia laws are religiously motivated. ISIS, Inquisition, Al-Qaeda, Rohingya genocide were all religiously motivated.
It's not just some set of ideas that you have in your head to make yourself feel better. It's a system of abuse that affects me – very personally, very substantially, and very intensly [sic]."
So, look. Clearly this is a personal subject for Mx. Vos. Clearly they've been harmed by religion. Clearly religious people can do harm, religion is frequently a tool of harm, obviously religion isn't inherently good or better, we know all that.
But this also demonstrate's Vos's inability to decenter themself and their experiences in the subject for even a moment. Sai Vos is about as white and goyish as anyone can be, currently living in the Netherlands and apparently German and/or Polish. So, yes, from their perspective, this is all about religion--which is also why they (hopefully by accident) stumbled into blaming Islam for ISIS and Al-Queda (instead of Western involvement and greed, complex societal factors, economic instability, etc), Christianity for the Inquisition (instead of antisemitism and white supremacy), and religion for the Rohingya genocide (which is a product mainly of Islamaphobia and racism and is a genocide of Muslims).
And no, those genocides, those terrorist organizations, do not "very personally and substantially" affect them. Not even close. Polish legislation? Sure. The persecution of Muslims? Not hurting someone who wrote an entire article on how hard Islamaphobia is for them because it means people will say they're racist if they call for the extinction of a marginalized religion.
Vos's antisemitism is more lowkey.
One of the main issues there, I think, is that Mx. Vos can't make a single comment about "every religion" that's not instantly disprovable through the Talmud or any knowledge of the Jewish community.
"They all require you to suspend your rational judgement, to believe stuff without evidence, to do as you’re told by a self-proclaimed authority (an old book, pope, bishop, imam, ...)"
The words of someone who has never even breathed near a Rabbi. Have you ever asked a Rabbi a question? If you ask a Rabbi which passage of the Torah mentions sheep, you'll somehow end up doing four hours of self study and turning in a fully cited original essay on how Jewish law intersects with secular morality.
"... to ignore obvious atrocities (Bible’s praise for slavery and ethnic cleansing, Quran’s threats towards non-believers). If you compare the religions, they aren’t really that different from each other.
It's worth noting that when Vos is "proving" the evils of "every religion," they only ever compare Christianity and Islam--the two youngest Abrahamic religions--and a very white version of Christianity, at that.
"Ignore obvious atrocities"? What about a ton of Indigenous spiritualities where care and protection of the land comes above all else, where the priority is everyone getting what they need? What about non-literalist Christians, who don't take the Bible as a perfectly moral fully accurate document? What about the million schools of Jewish thought that stem from deconstructing this?
"They aren’t really that different from each other"? Put a Shinto practitioner, a Jew, a Catholic, a Protestant, and a Native in a room. Then tell me that line again.
"Religious parents mutilate their children's genitals, because they believe that god wants them too. Some deny children life-saving vaccines and blood transfusions, because god."
Secular parents do these things. Secular parents choose circumcision because secular doctors tell them it's "more hygienic." Secular parents are anti-vaxx and anti-transfusion, because it's "untested" or "unnatural." Vaccines were invented by a Christian who was the son of a vicar and cherished the Bible. This is not a religion thing, it's an ignorance and misinformation thing.
Vos also has a post talking about how the atheist view of death is better than the religious that describes one of the most common views on death held by Jews (and other religions) to a T.
For the record, I have no great love for the Church, for the authority granted to religious figures, to the hatred and violence committed in the name of religion. But this subject is more complicated than the experience of the ultra-white who can't think on the issue past their own hangups. This issue is deeper than "religion bad," and antitheism only worsens the problem.
Alternatives
For sharing pronouns
Pronouny.xyz: Create a profile that has your pronouns (& how to use them in a sentence), name(s), and preferred nouns/gender of nouns that you can link on other sites. You can also friend people you know and get updates if their pronouns change. Custom, non-standard (& non-English) pronouns are supported, and there's an extremely detailed selection of neopronouns. This is ideal for individuals who still want something similar to Pronouns.Page.
Pronoun Island: Link to usage guides for your pronouns. Custom pronoun sets are supported. This is ideal for individuals who are making their own custom page (information below) or who only use one or two sets of pronouns.
"DIY" pronoun page
Rentry: Very similar to Carrd, but markdown based (this is what you use to format messages on Slack and Discord) and more "plain." It's absolutely free, you can add links, headings, images, tables of contents, etc., and you can make as many as you like. Crow actually made a template for Rentry pronoun pages that's extremely similar to the layout and functioning of Pronouns.Page!
Txti: Virtually identical to Rentry, but hides images automatically unless they're clicked.
Carrd: I hate to say it, but Carrd is a pretty good option and is arguably already better than Pronouns.Page. The main disadvantage is that it's annoyingly paywalled, but if, for example, you're plural and want multiple profiles in one place, it's very good for it.
Linktree: Definitely unconventional, but can work well for pronouns when combined with Pronoun Island (or to link to multiple separate term/name/pronoun pages).
I am taking suggestions and critique for the alternatives list, so feel free to comment them, and thanks for sticking around.
