You're not "fucking IE" though, you're fucking the end-users; many of whom might be stuck on XP (and therefore IE8) without a huge choice. Corporate users, education users, those without the money to upgrade their OS/machine, etc.
The less usable the net is for older browsers, the closer we move the users of those browsers to the threshold of upgrading.
It may mean more complaints from the staff to the IT department, it may mean grandma asking her grandkids why the google is broken, but if enough people are vocal about it, it will encourage upgrading.
Every time you support IE, you are slowing the uptake of newer browsers, and you are a bad person for it.
You can either stick with JQuery 1.9 for as long as you want to support IE8 (hopefully not more than 10 or 20 more years).
Being stuck on XP does not mean that you have to use IE8. You can still use the latest version of Chrome, Firefox, Opera, or even Safari.
Awareness: when sites don't work, they'll be aware of the problems. The truth is, most users at getting more educated about browsers all the time. It can't e helped that Microsoft has tied browser innovation and standardisation to their operating system.
Familiarity: really fairly bogus as an argument. There is really not that much different between the interfaces of Opera, Chrome, Internet Explorer and Firefox these days!