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. 🙂
To me it seems like the important question is:
Why wouldn’t one do something that makes others feel valid/happy/comfortable for so little effort?
It’s easy to respect name and pronoun preferences and admit when mistakes are made. One needn’t to dive into the full nuance and complexity of trans experience to understand that.
I fully agree with this sentiment. People should be able to put forth what makes them feel comfortable in a social situation and it’s polite for the other parties to adhere to it.
However I’d like to point out that there is a relevant spectrum here: how much a person stresses out about social queues like these. On one side we have folks who don’t sweat it, they know if they make a faux pas they’ll just ask for forgiveness. On the other side we have socially anxious people who are constantly in a panic in social situations. These more and more complex social rules put a lot of stress on people on that side of the social spectrum.
This is exacerbated for people that don’t pickup and adapt quickly to social queues naturally, like old people or autistic people.
My friends and I used to play a drinking game where you’d have to drink if a certain designated person asked you a question and you answered. It was surprisingly difficult to remember in conversation to adapt your behavior from the norm for a particular person. I think about this when I see someone like my mom trying her best to be polite to someone with a pronoun preference that is different from what she’s used to. She’s stressing out because to her this isn’t a fun drinking game, it’s whether someone will like her or potentially consider her a bigot.
None of this is to say that someone doesn’t have the right to a pronoun preference, or really any social boundary they wish to ask for. But just that it might not be “so little effort” for some. It can be stressful and people express stress in weird ways, like frustration. I think it’s good to be compassionate and patient around that.
Hm, I don’t know how I feel about that. It’s obviously an ambiguous social situation where we could think of all parties involved feeling and behaving in all kinds of ways.
It kind of feels obvious to me that if people make a mistake and misgender me and feel genuinely sorry for it, that I won’t rub it in.
And I get your point that it might be harder for some folk to get new pronouns and not everyone has even heard of what that means. I wonder why you focus so much on the person not getting the pronouns right and not so much on the trans person themselves. Many trans people, especially people with non-binary pronouns, feel anxious about their pronouns being disrespected already. I don’t think your comment has much to add to the conversation. It’s not like trans people had a lot of power in society and could will people to respect their pronouns. So why caution against being too harsh on the other person?
What I feel uncomfortable about in your comment is that you tell trans people, who are oppressed, get discriminated against and made feel shit about themselves by society, to be more patient and compassionate. Now way! We are supposed to go through this transphobic world, try to survive it and also empathize with people who disrespect our pronouns? I strongly disagree with that. Yeah sure, if a person is generally nice to me I give them the benefit of the doubt. But they are not the ones who have to go through a dysphoric day afterwards.
I think this position of being “compassionate and patient” with people who are dominant in society is rather apologetic of oppression. Oppression doesn’t need to educate itself but lets oppressed people do the job for it. We shouldn’t fall for this fallacy of “neutrality”. There is a huge power imbalance in society that you miss if you want oppressed people to behave to society’s norms. Trans people already do so much to accommodate society’s backwards rules every day they live. It is already a great burden on most trans people to try to get along with society, telling them to also be “compassionate and patient” about their identity not being seen is not as understanding as you think it is.
I know you probably meant well with your comment, but I think it is important to caution against such apologetic behavior.
Oh, and btw in my experience autistic people are the ones who get pronouns much easier/faster because social norms feel more arbitrary to us anyways and because a much larger proportion of autistic people is also trans.
Thanks for the response and critique! I focused on the non-trans perspective specifically to add to the conversation because that’s the outsiders perspective for this community. Here, there’s a lot more understanding around the trans perspective. If I were to leave a comment for someone who was being transphobic or something, I’d try and foster the same patience, compassion, and understanding on the other side.
It’s not “who does the burden lie with” – it lies with all of us. But if we encounter someone struggling to carry their weight, I think the first response being one of patience and understanding is a great foundation for progress. Now I am not advocating for a trans person, or anyone, suffering in silence. If someone made you uncomfortable, let them know. Just try and meet them where they’re coming from and be understanding.
Of course if someone is being hostile the strategy needs to change a bit. I still believe in compassion and understanding here. But priority one is letting the other person know where your boundaries are, that they’re crossing them, and that’s not ok.
None of this means you should conform. It’s not “Oh you want two refer to me by my dead name? Well I guess I’ll be compassionate and let you.”
It is [without anger] “Again, remember, my name is X, that’s important to me. […] Hey, you called me X, I appreciate that.”
I think in general the trans community has been amazing about this and really gets it. But I thought I’d share my perspective seeing as how it was relevant to the original comment. I welcome any other opinions or perspectives, maybe I’m missing something.
I think you didn’t understand what I was trying to say. No, what you commented on is not an outsider’s perspective. You see, everyone who deviates from societal norms has their own perspective but is also forced to be familiar with the normative perspective. Every single one of us gets bombarded from birth to their death with the cis perspective. Because it is the norm you have to adapt to. So the cis perspective is nothing new to anyone here. Just as queer people also have to accommodate the straight perspective and black folk have to live with the white perspective as default.
I know you mean well, but it feels rather patronizing to me.
Oh no, no patronizing intended! Thanks for understanding my intentions. I agree with all that. It’s very true that the societally normative perspective will always be more widely understood. Even by people who deviate from that norm. Not disputing that one bit. And the struggle of having to work around a society that’s not set up for you, is some real bullshit. I feel for anyone here who has to deal with that. The onus should really be on society to change.
But practically speaking it’s extremely useful to gain new insights into different people’s perspectives. You never truly, completely understand someone who lives a different lifestyle from you. That’s ok. We don’t all have to be omnipotent, but filling in those gaps can help. I noticed the gap in that understanding when the original commenter referred to changing the way someone speaks to a trans person who’s come out as easy. I’ve heard that sentiment a lot, and even echoed it myself when talking to someone I felt like needed to hear it. In many cases they’re not wrong. But I’ve actually seen how difficult it can be for some people, leading to unnecessary tension.
Should it be on them to figure out how to be respectful to other members of their society? Sure. But I think in practice, understanding on both sides can help bridge the gap.
I’ll ruminate on what you said about patronizing. I must have implied undue ignorance or responsibility on the side of tans people. Which was not my intention, my bad. Sorry if there’s something I’m still not getting. I’m trying to understand more about the world every day 😅