Yeah no, I don’t want to have to juggle as many pronouns as there are gender identities, because gender is a spectrum and that would result in almost as many pronouns as there are people. Remembering peoples names is bad enough for me already. I don’t want to gender anyone unless it’s actually relevant to the discussion. It adds unnecessary complexity and increases the probability of accidentally misgendering people drastically. IMO people should be free to express themselves, but in ways that don’t require others to actively participate in that expression. You know, clothes and stuff that can actually achieve the kind of variety that gender expression necessitates. Profile pictures, usernames, banner images and profile bios online.
I do sympathize with people trying to break the mold of cishet normative gendered pronouns, but long term I think neopronouns are not a scalable solution and doesn’t affect the underlying problem of gendered language (unless one adopts the accelerationist position that people will make so many gendered pronouns that the concept looses meaning that way, but that might be a long shot).
I have the precise opposite opinion, I think society needs to take more responsibility for how we gender others, and not just in language.
We have some ability to control our perceptions. That ability can be trained, and we can learn techniques to do it better. So there’s no excuse for perceiving a trans woman as “non-passing”. The passing is a thing happening inside everyone else’s brain, not in her body! So we need to take responsibility for our own minds and perceive her as female-presenting. And if we can’t, that’s a harmful skill issue we need to fix.
Pronouns are one of the techniques we can use to hack our perceptions. We can use language to manipulate our minds. That’s why neopronouns were invented. That’s the benefit of them.
Apologies on the ninja edits on my previous comment (the latter paragraph is new).
Gender isn’t biological, so the passing is not happening in their body anyways. Gender is social. If they present themselves as female, then sure, they’re female presenting. If someone presents themselves as something more bespoke, then they do just that. Usually it’s just a vibe to me. I don’t see why it would need to be anything more than that, or why I should change the words I use to refer to them.
Though at the same time I concede that it’s probably different for people who have always been changing the way they speak depending on the gender of the person being referred to, and I suppose you’re right in that neopronouns have a use in shaking up that framework. Still, I maintain that in the long term ungendered language would be preferable.
Yeah no, I don’t want to have to juggle as many pronouns as there are gender identities, because gender is a spectrum and that would result in almost as many pronouns as there are people. Remembering peoples names is bad enough for me already. I don’t want to gender anyone unless it’s actually relevant to the discussion. It adds unnecessary complexity and increases the probability of accidentally misgendering people drastically. IMO people should be free to express themselves, but in ways that don’t require others to actively participate in that expression. You know, clothes and stuff that can actually achieve the kind of variety that gender expression necessitates. Profile pictures, usernames, banner images and profile bios online.
I do sympathize with people trying to break the mold of cishet normative gendered pronouns, but long term I think neopronouns are not a scalable solution and doesn’t affect the underlying problem of gendered language (unless one adopts the accelerationist position that people will make so many gendered pronouns that the concept looses meaning that way, but that might be a long shot).
I have the precise opposite opinion, I think society needs to take more responsibility for how we gender others, and not just in language.
We have some ability to control our perceptions. That ability can be trained, and we can learn techniques to do it better. So there’s no excuse for perceiving a trans woman as “non-passing”. The passing is a thing happening inside everyone else’s brain, not in her body! So we need to take responsibility for our own minds and perceive her as female-presenting. And if we can’t, that’s a harmful skill issue we need to fix.
Pronouns are one of the techniques we can use to hack our perceptions. We can use language to manipulate our minds. That’s why neopronouns were invented. That’s the benefit of them.
Apologies on the ninja edits on my previous comment (the latter paragraph is new).
Gender isn’t biological, so the passing is not happening in their body anyways. Gender is social. If they present themselves as female, then sure, they’re female presenting. If someone presents themselves as something more bespoke, then they do just that. Usually it’s just a vibe to me. I don’t see why it would need to be anything more than that, or why I should change the words I use to refer to them.
Though at the same time I concede that it’s probably different for people who have always been changing the way they speak depending on the gender of the person being referred to, and I suppose you’re right in that neopronouns have a use in shaking up that framework. Still, I maintain that in the long term ungendered language would be preferable.
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