Hey all,
So I’m looking to take an active step here to understand better some things that my straight/white/cis/middle-aged male brain has had a tough time wrapping itself around, particularly in the gender identity front.
I’m working from the understanding of physical sex as the bio-bits and the expressed identity as being separate things, so that part is easy enough.
What’s confusing to me though is like this. If we take gender as being an expression of your persona, a set of traits that define one as male, female, or some combination of both then what function does a title/pronoun serve? To assume that some things are masculine or feminine traits seems to put unneeded rigidity to things.
We’ve had men or women who enjoy things traditionally associated with the other gender for as long as there have been people I expect. If that’s the case then what purpose does the need for a gender title serve?
I’ll admit personally questioning some things like fairness in cis/trans integrated sports, but that’s outside what I’m asking here. Some things like bathroom laws are just society needing to get over itself in thinking our personal parts are all that special.
Certainly not trying to stir up any fights, just trying to get some input from people that have a different life experience than myself. Is it really as simple as a preferred title?
Edit: Just wanted to take a second to thank all the people here who took the time to write some truly extensive thoughts and explanations, even getting into some full on citation-laden studies into neurology that’ll give me plenty to digest. You all have shown a great deal of patience with me updating some thinking from the bio/social teachings of 20+ years back. 🙂
I get where you’re coming from. This is usually a habit that people develop with no ill-intent.
The trouble with using people’s descriptors as nouns is that in English, it has the tendency to sound disparaging, or at least “othering” (as in those people and us vs them), so as a general rule if you’re unsure it’s best to avoid it; e.g., “white person” is preferable to “a white,” “straight person” is preferable to “a straight,” etc.
If “____ people” or “people who are ____ ” sounds overly-formal/delicate/“PC,” one trick I see a lot is “____ folks.” You can see a few examples of it in this thread actually.
Similar to the ‘person first’ language that’s started to be used recently 'a person with autism’c rather than an ‘autistic person’, but backwards Yeah, just maintaining that balance between sounding like a clinician describing a subject and something overly familiar/informal that might offend. Using that person first to say ‘a person who is a transexual’ would make it sound like a medical condition but take out the ‘a’ and it sort of works since it doesn’t make them an ‘object/things’…
It does get a bit frustrating in general use though, particularly when some people can get really upset quickly if you phrase things wrong.
Hmm yeah person-first is tricky. Personally I would only default to that in specific situations. In conversation it might sound too careful and make someone feel like they were being handled or patronized. But if someone asks me to refer to them that way, then I’ll do my best to remember. Not to avoid offense really, just because it’s considerate.
IMHO it’s not worth worrying too much about accidental offense. An accident is an accident. If you listen to others, care how they feel, and are doing your best to be respectful and kind, that’s all that matters. The rest is just practice.
If someone gets mad at you for an honest mistake, or just refuses to believe you didn’t know and will do better next time, then that person is being unreasonable. You could choose to talk it out with them if you wish, but you’re definitely under no obligation to suffer abuse from anyone, no matter what they’re going through.
Not a common thing to be sure, but I’ve come across a couple people who one might call ‘aggressively correct’ in the way they speak and expect others to follow suit.
Moralism and vigilantism are common early attempts at allyship that are misguided and can become toxic — e.g. it can present as bullying.
When they’re acting as my ally, I try to pull them aside to discuss why prioritizing behavior over understanding is rarely a winning strategy and how to better help.
If they come at you, here’s how I usually handle corrections from external allies:
Any moralizing or remedial attempts beyond that is harassment. I’ll either extract myself OR start asking deep-cutting questions about their motivations, what they hope to accomplish. Get them talking about themselves and their credentials. So far in my experience, with only 1 exception these interactions have been exclusively online. Invariably the vigilantes are not actually part of the communities they claim at all, just using someone else’s cause to bully people online who they feel deserve it. Please report them.
Huh, only ever met a few but TIL it’s common enough to have a name. You’re spot on in that I don’t think any where actually a part of any LTBTQ space, just very loud about the morality of language and such things.
Yes, not terribly common, but frequent these topics, especially outside community-moderated spaces, and you’ll meet them. They’re sometimes used as examples of rabid attack-dog liberalism. I’m not sure of their motivation, but it might be similar to those who impersonate police, just the terminally-online version of hammers looking for nails.
Where they miss the plot is that the ultimate goal should always be kindness and respect, not appeasement or rule-enforcement. Education is part of it of course — understanding our implicit biases, where they come from, what the symptoms look like, etc — but the reason we learn to be better to each other is because that’s how we ourselves would like to be treated, not to avoid getting flamed, brigaded, “cancelled,” or what-have-you.
Anyway, thanks for putting in the effort to learn. I think you’ll make a good ally.