Life

[Mawd]

For anyone thinking about how gender is determined by genitalia is determined by birth or boys have y, women have x.

I'd urge you to look into John Money and David Reimer.

------------

This shin kicking argument is weird.

I think the important thing to ask is whether you still live around those parts and whether the spectre of shin kicking affects how you comunicate with other minorities.

Otherwise this sounds like a reason why you haven't in the past, not why you wouldn't now.

[Twig]

As someone who sometimes goes out of their way to not have to say people's names, and on occasion having to work really hard to remember the names of people I would call good friends, that is not actually the tension-easing thought you think it is.

As someone who's generally good with names and prefers calling people by name above all else, I also agree that it's not as tension-easing. For different reasons, obviously. Rewriting my internal automatic pronoun thought process is extremely difficult. I misgendered a trans person multiple times as he was making the (hormone treatment) transition (he started about the time I met him) about three years ago and it obviously irritated him every time. I apologized, of course, and it wasn't intentional, and I STILL have to catch myself when I think of this person.

 

Adding a whole new set of words? Nigh-impossible for me.

 

And then there's the thing where I also just struggle to relate. My gender is like way low on the totem pole of my identity, besides the fact that that's the first thing everyone sees (in that physically I am a male). It's not something I really think or care about all that much. I know I fall into the male half physically, but I've never been much of a "man" (we all know what I mean by this). So making myself care about that sort of thing is difficult. It just doesn't matter to me.

 

But I'm also very much in the "whatever floats your boat" camp and if someone asks me to do something as simple as changing the way I refer to them, I will endeavor to acquiesce to the best of my ability.

[Chris]

And then there's the thing where I also just struggle to relate. My gender is like way low on the totem pole of my identity, besides the fact that that's the first thing everyone sees (in that physically I am a male). It's not something I really think or care about all that much. I know I fall into the male half physically, but I've never been much of a "man" (we all know what I mean by this). So making myself care about that sort of thing is difficult. It just doesn't matter to me.

You probably already realize this, but it is worth noting that it doesn't really have to matter to you because your specific gender and sexuality are the least questioned/disadvantaged ones (same with me).

[Twig]

Oh yeah, absolutely. I was actually going to make a note of that but then forgot to. U:

 

Though a good deal of the bullying when I was younger was precisely because I was uncomfortable doing the more boy-ish things (e.g., talking about girls).

[Badfinger]

For anyone thinking about how gender is determined by genitalia is determined by birth or boys have y, women have x.

I'd urge you to look into John Money and David Reimer.

 

To be clear, I do not think that. I don't appear to be conveying that well at all.

[Mawd]

To be clear, I do not think that. I don't appear to be conveying that well at all.

I was thinking of posting it before as a related issue and your post reminded me to.

I should have also mentioned that it's also related to gender identity as social construct.

At least in the sense that someone can be brought up with female sex organs and encouraged/'corrected' into female behaviour and still reject that gender identity on their own.

[Hermie]

There is an interesting comparison to be made between using gendered pronouns in Real Life and using them here on the forum.

 

Just like the situation described that started this situation, here on the forum it's not always clear what gender someone is and how you should address them. I remember replying to someone new who was ambiguous (Apple Cider, maybe?), and not knowing how to which pronoun to use. I ended up considering it, and then rephrasing so that I didn't have to use gender at all.

 

Furthermore, almost everyone here has chosen their own display name. It would be so weird if I refused to call him "dibs" and insisted on calling him Christopher, because that's the name he was born with, damnit. Gendered pronouns shouldn't be any different. If you're close enough to someone to have a conversation with them that includes pronouns, then it shouldn't be that hard to adopt whatever they prefer.

[Deadpan]

I definitely agree that pronouns are more resistant to linguistic change than other word classes, but we're not talking about changing the whole language here.

 

I am though.

 

And I'm really sorry if I looked like I was just responding hesitantly to the idea of one person coming up to me and asking me to respect their expertise over their own identity, I guess I should have been more clear about this being less informed by the example here and more by some of the more radical ideas I've come across on this subject, but this is why I'm trying to make clear pretty desperately how largely hypothetical my concerns about such a fundamental change are, seeing how they depend on marginalized folk getting all their wishes. Even then it's pretty cynical of me to focus on one potential downside of this queer, post-gender wonderland being that its language would seem kind of complicated by current standards.

 

Oh, it's also worth noting I guess that this is partly informed by me speaking German, where we don't have the benefit of an established neutral pronoun, which has mostly led to using both male and female pronouns at once seperated by a slash (not ideal from a non-binary perspective), but also to ca. twelve different concurrent suggestions for a word that could take that place. And since we also still use gender-specific articles, all of those come with their own neologisms for that class too.

[deleted user]

_

[SuperBiasedMan]

Around here, you have to be careful about what you say and who you say it in front of. It doesn't matter what your personal views are, if you say the wrong thing in front of the wrong person, you could die. That's not selfishness, that's fucking self preservation right there and I don't have a say about it.

If I get my head kicked in, that's not going to help anyone.

I don't know where you live but if you can be literally killed for saying words supportive of trans people then it must be hell for trans people themselves. Self preservation is a pretty good reason to do something, sure, but that doesn't mean it's not selfish. You are still choosing to value your life over theirs.

I'm not nit picking for the sake of it by the way. I'm responding to the dismissive tone you used. It felt similar to things like "All lives matter" or when people argue that there bigger problems to be tackled before feminism. You can engage with these ideas on some level (eg online where you're relatively anonymous), it's dishonest to pretend otherwise.

[tberton]

I think the answer is we should just all start speaking sign language.

[SuperBiasedMan]

 

[deleted user]

_

[tberton]

I don't think anybody's saying you should use something like "xir" if you're not sure that the person prefers that.

[deleted user]

_

[Twig]

Because if someone wants to be called something else why don't you just do it?

[tberton]

I thought the discussion was "what pronoun should you use for a transgender person" and the answer was "ask and use what they want you to." I apologize if I was mistaken.

[deleted user]

_

[Patrick R]

I can understand if someone wants to be genderless, or a mix of the two, but xar or whatever is dumb tumblr talk from teens. Ignore everything I said about getting beat up, that doesn't really apply here. Anyone who says xer I will immediately think is dumb, and I don't care if anyone hates me for it, I will still support trans rights all the way but I reserve my right to think people are dumb and silly. It serves no purpose, other than to be different.

 

It sounds like you don't support trans rights all the way?

[Apple Cider]

I know that "dumb Tumblr stuff" is the tack a lot of the Internet community takes, particularly anyone from quadrants that get a lot of their jokes from Reddit, 4chan or Something Awful but honestly? There's a lot of people on Tumblr, from teens to adults and while some of it is weird and eye-roll worthy, teens grow up into being adults. I never had Tumblr when I was a teen. I grew up being bisexual and cobbling together what that meant fairly alone, because the Internet was still pretty new back then. If people write weird stuff on there and grow out it or stick with it, whatever, that's their right to. And brushing all of that aside as "dumb Tumblr stuff" negates that they are still people who have feelings. I really hate that Tumblr has become some sort of ideological catch-all for the sector of the internet that people still feel okay with shitting all over because it doesn't conform to a large part of the culture that was determined by straight white dudes, I guess? I can't think of any way other than that to put it but it kinda infuriates me because people use it as an excuse to shit on people who, despite using language or coming up with stuff that feels really ridiculous to you, are still probably pretty vulnerable. 

 

By the way? Most gender neutral pronouns being discussed here were developed in one form or another in the 70s, 80s, not Tumblr. But gender neutral pronouns in standard English have been circulating since the 1700s. 

[Bjorn]

I can understand if someone wants to be genderless, or a mix of the two, but xar or whatever is dumb tumblr talk from teens. Ignore everything I said about getting beat up, that doesn't really apply here. Anyone who says xer I will immediately think is dumb, and I don't care if anyone hates me for it, I will still support trans rights all the way but I reserve my right to think people are dumb and silly. It serves no purpose, other than to be different.

 

People have been trying to introduce new pronouns to the English language for over a century, or about a hundred years before Tumblr existed. The primary purpose has been to have a third option, or simply a single genderless set. A primary reason it hasn't caught is pretty much your attitude, adopting a new word into an existing, very limited class of words, can feel dumb, weird and awkward.

One of my newest pet peeves is when people try to blame Tumblr for things that have been going on in society for many generations.  Tumblr is the new perversion of the youth. It's the new metal, the new television, the new radio, the new fangled serial magazine, the new whatever that people want to blame everything they don't like on. 

 

Edited to add: Beat to the punch.  Pretty much what Apple Cider said. 

[SuperBiasedMan]

if you say the wrong thing in front of the wrong person, you could die. That's not selfishness, that's fucking self preservation right there and I don't have a say about it.

 

That's what I was responding to about the literally dieing bit, but I see now you weren't directly addressing trans stuff just the potential to get killed for making a mistake.

Also I didn't see your edit from the previous page, I was responding on the premise that you meant even to an individual you wouldn't respect their request to use a certain pronoun on the basis of being silly.

 

But really just read above, that expresses my response to what you said way better than I did.

[deleted user]

_

[Twig]

Lots of words look and sound dumb, especially new words. That's the worst and dumbest excuse for not introducing a word that exists.

[deleted user]

_