feuervogel | Third-gender pronouns and binary-identified individuals

I don't think you're talking out your ass.

Then again, I specifically identify as a girl. (Yes, I know, my feminist cred, blah blah blah.) That is to say that I claim girl as my gender, even above and beyond claiming female. (I am femme, there's really no getting around that seeing how much makeup I own and that my favorite color is pink... :) )

I strive only to use zie when I am identifying someone who has used that pronoun, or when I am deliberately obfuscating all identity in something I'm relaying. (I.E. "I had a tough client at the crisis line tonight. Zie needed to talk about the impact poverty was having on zir emotional state." [Which is a completely fictitious example.])

For the situation you use in your example, I'd just use singular they. Which makes a lot of prescriptivist purists cringe, but, you know, Shakespeare used singular they.

I wanted to comment this to her* post, but it would be totally derailing, and she's already dealing with trolls. I can just hope she finds it, I guess.

*I assume.

I just dislike they in general as a singular non-gendered. Plus if I have to be conscious enough to obfuscate there's less chance of me tripping up. But totally just me, it's not like I expect the rest of the world to conform. :)

And yeah.

It makes ignorant prescriptivist purists cringe. And they deserve it.

The problem is they think they're trying to prevent a change to the language, but they actually got fooled and are the ones trying to make the change.

I don't know that it's worth trying to play Oppression Olympics. It may be the case that in some average sense, binary-identified cisgendered folks are less harmed by gender identity erasure or spiteful misgenderings. However, when it happens, you have to look at it situationally and at the individuals involved. Some folks take great offense and some don't care at all.

As you say, the important point is that it's not appropriate to misuse pronouns when you know better. Whether

sohotrightnow should have known better is a different question entirely.

I agree, there's always a situational aspect to it. And at the same time, I don't want to promote the idea that people fall into the binary unless otherwise specified (though it seems that a lot of non-binary-identified people put that in their profiles, though of course not all will, for whatever personal reasons.)

I don't know whether SHRN should have known better or not. It wouldn't take much effort on their part to click the profile button.

"zie/ze" has a habit of getting used as a replacement for singular "they" when the author doesn't want to preemptively ascribe a gender to whoever they're responding to when they think there might be any confusion at all on their part; I myself have used it in the past because I think, in the absence of a definitive statement on the part of the individual, I consider impolite in the extreme to shove my own assumptions about their gender onto them when I don't know - because I find it offensive every time someone does it to me.

THAT SAID. Repeatedly using "zie/ze" when someone, anyone (but especially a trans person) has explicitly said what gender they are - that is ungendering and cissexist and presumptive as fuck. :| Ihave it in my intro post and I'm pretty sure my profile that I am pretty firmly identified as female and if I caught someone referring to me with "zie/ze" I would - well, I'd probably rage internally but I'd be so hurt by it I wouldn't say a fucking thing, because look, I have said what my gender is, the least I ask is that other people respect that, not doing so is already a sign the space isn't safe for me and I won't be welcome there.

I understand that, and that's what I figured SHRN was doing, but it still twigged me. I think we'd be better off with people just kicking prescriptivists in the teeth and using singular they. It's got a long history, after all.

I don't know why "they" doesn't bother me but "zie" does; perhaps the association "zie" has with the genderqueer community and those who reject the binary, so person a referring to person b (whose gender identity person a does not know, or doesn't feel like looking for in the profile) as "zie" is assigning them a genderqueer identity? While person a is trying to avoid shoving their own gender assumptions on person b.

And, yes, dammit, use people's preferred pronouns. If someone called me "he," I'd be annoyed. (Though I periodically get mail for Mr. Feuervogel, which goes immediately into the recycling bin.) If someone referred to me as zie, it may or may not bother me, but being cis, I have the privilege of every instance of misgendering not being another knife in my side. (That, and I'm unlikely to be misgendered in person.)

Interesting. I have never been upset when someone has used male pronouns for me. I am sometimes amused, and I actually kind of like to have it happen now and then, because I figure when people are guessing my gender, I'd rather they not guess consistently.

But then, I don't care much about gender personally. I don't mind being she, he. or zie. But I do get that some people do, and the issue isn't unimportant just because I am not personally harmed by it.

I almost never correct people's pronoun usage for me, because I'm really fine with any of the gender options and don't feel that it matters what gender people view me as.

I think annoyed is the wrong emotion. It's more that it's the wrong word to refer to me, so I find it odd. It doesn't offend me, it's just weird and wrong.

I feel the same way.

I usually get her/she so I like occasionally getting him/he. I like the inconsistency.

"But then, I don't care much about gender personally. I don't mind being she, he. or zie. But I do get that some people do, and the issue isn't unimportant just because I am not personally harmed by it."--mhmm, except I feel like I only get it in a very superficial, theoretical way; on a gut level I do not understand it.

Some people just use "zie" instead of "they" as a gender-neutral pronoun. Personally, I find "they" to sound more neutral. "Zie," as you mentioned has connotations of being specifically genderqueer; plus, it is not really a part of day to day language so it sticks out.

I usually default to gender-neutral pronouns unless it is obvious the person prefers other wise. And as princess, says it is away to obscure the person's identity so as to make what you are saying sound more general and less directed at a certain person.

"I obviously do NOT believe that using "zie" to refer to a binary-identified cis-individual has anywhere near the emotional impact it does on a binary-identified trans-individual." - This I agree with strongly.

At its root, it's an issue of respect: respect what people tell you about themselves. Don't be an asshole. You know?

I'm also all for using gender-neutral pronouns when the referent's gender isn't important (instead of "generic he," which does nothing but perpetuate male normativity).

Out of curiosity, how'd you find my post?

Of course, it boils down to respecting what people tell about themselves. Basically, yeah, do not be an asshole.

I found your post by googling bandom meta gender, you are on the second page.

That's kind of terrifying. (Though less terrifying than my initial thought of "oh shit, don't tell me I'm on metafandom." Yeah, I don't know why metafandom is scarier than google.)

Because once something gets posted on metafandom you get swarms of people.
I think metafandom usually informs people before they link the post. (Or am I wrong?)

Google just relies on someone (ex. me) having too much time on their hands and googling things they want to read about.

It's definitely the expanded audience thing. MF doesn't always inform people they're linking, but they'll always remove the link if you ask.

I tend to think that unless you solely use gender neutral pronouns (i.e. cis-gendered or trans, male or female, all parties are "zie" in your work), then using them for someone who definitely has a binary gender identity is ungendering. It implies that while the people of whom you use binary pronouns have a "right" to their gender, the person of whom you don't doesn't have the same right.

And of course, people who have to fight societal norms for their gender identity are going to be much harder hit by that sort of ungendering than people who have all the societal backup in the world supporting theirs. It's sort of like "Is it wrong to steal? Of course!" But a couple bucks doesn't mean as much to a millionaire as bus fare does to a single working mom at the end of a long day.

ETA: Looking at the sohotrightnow post (how do I link to dw from lj anyway? I could never seem to find a good means), I notice that there's a fair attempt to avoid pronouns in general, but by the end, promisethestars is "she" and Gabe is "he". So I'm not sure if it was a failed attempt to be gender-neutral in the whole post, or just "I don't know what the gender of this person might be", or what.

Edited 2010-06-22 17:37 (UTC)

There's not a good way to link, afaik. DW makes it easy to link here, but.

At a guess, it's an attempt to be gender-neutral the whole time. It seems to be in fashion in certain circles right now.

There must be a way, because DW embeds it in crossposts. I think I'll just have try crossposting from DW and then edit the result to find out how they code it all up. Then I can decide if it's worth it.

*nod* And I think if you can manage it without sounding crazy and stilted, that's a worthwhile goal - but one you have to commit to 100%. I tend to try to use s/he when I'm unsure of someone's gender on the interwebs, even recognizing that I'm doing binary gender re-inforcement just by that, but there come points and contexts where explaining/defending your pronouns to an audience just won't rate the effort...

For being such a simple idea (treat everyone like individual human beings), social justice is fucking complicated, yo.

Oh, there's a code on how to link to a journal in the profile page if you scroll down. It's a span style.

If I don't know, or am too lazy to check, what gender someone identifies as, I'll use they. Partly just to piss off prescriptivists.

I should check that out at some point soon. Right now, I've managed to saddle myself with translating some 18th century German, and it's going to require some focus.

I try to use the s/he his/her - I find myself occasionally using "they", but then I scold myself because that's the plural pronoun, damnit. It's just one of those Things.

The singular they is called the epicene pronoun by grammarians and has been around for quite some time in common usage (15th century), until someone decided that using masculine pronouns was so much better as the universal because girls don't count (18th century).

/word nerd

Really? So it's up there with prepositions as things to end clauses with, on the Big List of Erroneous Prescriptivist Bullshit? I never knew.

Well, shit, that simplifies my life enormously.

*word nerd fist bump*

I've seen a lot of people use third gender pronouns when referring to lj users they're not particularly familiar with, presumably because they don't know or don't want to look up how they identify. It's always pinged as strange for me, but I don't have a lot of exposure to third gender pronouns in general. My lazy preference has always been to use "they," although I also (dangerously) find myself defaulting to "she" in fannish spaces.

...but god, that story.

Yeah, I often default to she in fannish circumstances. Then again, if you look at the demographics, that's a fairly safe assumption. But if it's someone I'm unfamiliar with, I'll click the little button beside their username and see if they have any information in their profile to let me know which pronoun to use.

This whole post-gendered thing I have going is seriously held up by the people who are still binary-identified. ¬_¬ *annoyed a bit* My ungendered paradise is never going to happen.

The idea that the gender binary is something to eliminate is a bit problematic.

That doesn't mean one should stop working against oppositional sexism (the idea that male and female are mutually exclusive categories) or traditional sexism (the idea that males and the things society calls masculine are inherently more valuable than females and feminine things). I certainly intend to do that, by being who I am.

I have a gigantic problem with that post. The entire contents is basically summed up in the final sentence: "Yes, many of us identify as a gender, and modify our bodies to fit that. So what? If that reifies gender, then cis people reify it more." She's not even addressing the core discussion here--which is the construction of gender and whether or not it is valid or good that somebody can take a wide swatch of behaviors loosely correlated with biological sex binaries and apply a significant identifying label to it--and instead seems to be just saying, "Shut up, you cis-gendered feminist hypocrites. Your existence reifies gender too, so all your points are moot." You can't insult the population making the argument and pretend that you've won the argument itself when you haven't addressed it at all.

This person is apparently really bitter against the post-gender feminist crowd. "Generally, my response to the reifying trope is, of course, “as opposed to practically everybody else?”" Seriously? "Pot calling kettle black" doesn't actually invalidate the point that somebody is making. Occasionally you can use it to shame the other person into shutting up, but it doesn't actually address the arguments they were making. *facepalm*

The problem in with gender is inherent--behavioral stereotypes constructed around some idea of biological sex, so that when the behavioral stereotype and the biological sex are at odds, society has issues with it. I think that behavioral preferences should be addressed in ways that aren't tied to sex, but instead tied to what particular interests you end up exhibiting. To try to fit people into two broad categories is confining and FUCKING SUCKS. The problem here is not with transpeople deciding that they are one or another, but that there is a construct and you only have TWO CHOICES.

If we all agree that gender is a spectrum, we should either abolish it and not bother to draw boundaries, or we should, like most spectra, draw more boundaries than JUST TWO, or put the "everything" option out there. Sheesh. That post pissed the hell out of me.

Edited 2010-06-22 20:37 (UTC)

The larger point Queen Emily is making is that saying "gender does not exist" is that it erases trans-spectrum experience. Queen Emily and other trans* people have every right to be angry at their lived experience being erased.

There are people born in male bodies who identify as female because of their subconscious sex. It is highly unlikely that it's because they're pressured to fit norms of femininity; rather, they're more likely to be pressured to fit norms of masculinity. Because of this experience, which falls on the trans spectrum (trans women) and is real, saying "gender is just some thing society made up" invalidates and erases their lives. That's why Queen Emily is pissed, and, frankly, I would be, too, if people kept telling me my life is fake.

Smashing oppositional sexism and traditional sexism will achieve the same goal (eliminating the rigid binary and allowing for "other" or "none of the above" to be an option) without erasing people's identities.

The larger point Queen Emily is making is that saying "gender does not exist" is that it erases trans-spectrum experience.

Yes, I understand her viewpoint, and her anger. But "this makes me angry" is not a valid argument. I wish she'd have gone about saying that in a way that didn't involve the "pot calling kettle black, so shut up" fallacy.

saying "gender is just some thing society made up" invalidates and erases their lives.

I'm not entirely sure what the radical feminists Queen Emily is pissed off at are saying, but saying "gender doesn't exist" doesn't invalidate the trans experience. It doesn't suddenly make everything go away, it simply frames the issue in a different light. People have the right to be pissed off at how they want to frame their story, but I'm annoyed at the fact that she seems to dismiss the argument entirely because it results in her experience, and the experiences of those similar to her being reframed. She doesn't really seem to acknowledge that the core problem here is that gender != sex but that gender is an important perception in society and they use biological sex to determine gender and then REINFORCE IT RIGOROUSLY. She doesn't seem to want to acknowledge that both her actions and the actions of the accused cissexual feminists do result in the reification of the binary gender structure because she is ignoring the presence of multiple options. The fact that cissexual feminists are reifying gender by being cissexual doesn't mean that she automatically isn't. Just because something is worse doesn't mean that the current case isn't bad.

Smashing oppositional sexism and traditional sexism will achieve the same goal (eliminating the rigid binary and allowing for "other" or "none of the above" to be an option) without erasing people's identities.

Agree, but also disagree on the grounds that smashing oppositional and traditional sexism are necessary but not sufficient. Both relax the rules and equalize both ends but not offer the option of "not applicable."

I feel there is a large group out there who believe that neither gender nor sex are important factors in one's identity, and there needs to be emphasis on the fact that neither biological nor subconscious sex are determinant factors in one's behavior. Why is a gender important? Why can't some people choose not to be somewhere on it? The fact that this is rarely brought up in gender theory discussions bothers me a lot. Important, if rather subtle requirement.

Edited 2010-06-23 02:24 (UTC)

but saying "gender doesn't exist" doesn't invalidate the trans experience. It doesn't suddenly make everything go away, it simply frames the issue in a different light.

The light you're framing it in ignores the lived experiences of trans women, who were NOT pressured to fit into the box marked with an F. If anything, they were pressured to fit into the box marked M, but they felt it was Wrong. They felt like women. Yet saying "gender is some bullshit society made up" invalidates their lives. Read Whipping Girl. Serano, a trans woman, spends a good deal of time on how this theory of gender invalidates her lived experience.

If you want to know more about radfems and transphobia, here's a set of links, and google has more. See also "michigan womyn's music festival." Serano discusses this in her book as well.

Even in magic happy post-gender land, there will still be people who identify as male or female. I get that identity in general means nothing to you, but it is important to a lot of people.

Serano, Julia. Whipping Girl. Berkeley: Seal Press, 2007.

To me, the most surreal part of this whole transgressing-versus-reinforcing-gender-norms dialogue in the queer/trans community (and in many gender studies classrooms and books) is the unacknowledged hypocrisy of it all. It is sadly ironic that people who claim to be gender-fucking in the name of "shattering the gender binary," and who criticize people whose identities fail to adequately challenge our societal notions of femaleness and maleness, cannot see that they have just created a new gender binary, one in which subversive genders are "good" and conservative genders are "bad." It is merely the original oppositional sexist binary flipped upside down. So now, gender-nonconforming folks are on top and gender-normative people are on the bottom—how revolutionary! (348-349)

While no gendered expression can subvert the gender system as we know it, we are nevertheless still capable of instituting change in that system. However, such change will not come by managing the way we "do" our own gender, but by dismantling our own gender entitlement. If we truly want to bring an end to all gender-based oppression, then we must begin by taking responsibility for our own perceptions and presumptions. The most radical thing that any of us can do is to stop projecting our beliefs about gender onto other people's behaviors and bodies. (193)

♥

The most radical thing that any of us can do is to stop projecting our beliefs about gender onto other people's behaviors and bodies.

Word.

Word, but I feel like we have to start somewhere? The original beef with Queen Emily's post I had that

akiko linked was that the person never directly addressed the issues, but instead said, "you reify gender more, so ha!" and sort of left it at that. She probably addresses the issue more seriously elsewhere, so it was probably not the best example of an entry to link to.

For the record, I have no problem with people who strongly identify as one gender or another. But sometimes I feel like both the trans- and cis-communities are so focused on gender==because of the importance of their experience--that they forget that there are those of us who don't care or would like to move fluidly between both extremes frequently. They seem to get offended when people point out that their actions can reinforce binary genders. So what? Yes, their insistence that gender is important and identifying--in the eyes of someone for whom gender is neither--can seem to force upon them the importance and necessity of it. But so? That's who they are and that's okay.

We would just, once a while, like to them to realize that some people would rather not identify with one gender or another, because even if there one day is a spectrum, I don't want to be on it at all. ANYWHERE. Because I don't like the idea of it, and I am not playing that game. I feel like a lot of people are becoming aware of the spectrum, but there isn't enough awareness of the folks who don't believe it's a deal at all.

My comment was really in response to your original comment, which said "This whole post-gendered thing I have going is seriously held up by the people who are still binary-identified."

Wanting people to realize that there are people who don't want to be gendered and who don't want to identify as any gender at all is a very different statement. If you really have no problem with folks who strongly identify as one gender or another, then maybe you should refrain from saying things like your original comment.

Wanting people to realize that there are people who don't want to be gendered and who don't want to identify as any gender at all is a very different statement.

Okay, point. People who binary-identified don't necessarily believe that gender is simply binary. I retract my original statement and modify it to say, "This whole post-gendered thing I have going is seriously being held up by the people who insist that gender is binary."

Sorry if I offended anybody.

Even in magic happy post-gender land, there will still be people who identify as male or female.

I know that. I know a lot of people who are strongly identified as one or the other. But do we have to name it and neccessarily associated a set of genitalia with it? I say 'no,' it's not necessary. I feel like the best way is to dismantle the idea of gender, so people are just people with a spectrum of behaviors--but a lot of people disagree with me. This is fine.

I get that identity in general means nothing to you, but it is important to a lot of people.

Sorry, it's gender identity that means nothing to me. Yes, it is important to a lot of people, but I think that some people in the trans community forget that for a group of people it also means nothing. Their very trans-ness makes gender identity a big deal, so sometimes they forget there are people who don't wanted to be labeled, or people who would like to move fluidly between both extremes frequently behaviorally.

Yet saying "gender is some bullshit society made up" invalidates their lives.

What's the definition of "invalidation" here? Does Serano think she's being invalidated because the seriousness of her life experience is being ignored or erased? Does she think it's because her life experience then comes "some bullshit society made up?" It doesn't, but she can think whatever way she pleases.

Edited 2010-06-23 17:27 (UTC)

You've said before you don't like identity politics and extended that to ethnicity in the topic that was at hand at the time (possibly The Last Airbender?) I extrapolated. Perhaps incorrectly.

I can't speak for trans people or whether they forget there are people who don't care, but there are plenty of trans voices out there.

The issue we're arguing past is one of respect. It's disrespectful to say to someone "the identity you claim is bullshit, because gender qua gender is bullshit." It's also disrespectful to say to someone "no, you have to choose a gender." Academic gender theory does a lot of the former, as does radical feminist gender theory.

If gender is a figment of society's imagination, then why do trans people exist? Why can't they just overcome this figment of their imagination and be happy in the bodies they have? Do you see how this can piss trans people off?

Identity politicking is very different from having things that identify yourself. I hate identity politicking because it is the broad case of "here's a label, now we're going to enforce everything that we think it means onto you." It's the broad case of why I also dislike identifying as a gender. I doesn't mean that I don't have an identity, just that I dislike having to label myself, and especially to label myself depending on physical attributes. I realize that humans prefer convenient labels because we naturally associate and extrapolate data based on past experiences, but I really do wish that there was less of this "everybody who is Label X has to behave in A, B, C, ways" going on.

"the identity you claim is bullshit, because gender qua gender is bullshit."

I think I have been interpreting the "gender is bullshit society made up" phrase differently than you have, which is why we're both arguing the same point from but still thinking that we disagree with one another. Let's rephrase what I believe: "the idea that gender is binary, related to your biological sex, non-fluid, necessary to identity, and must be enforced in order to operate a stable society is bullshit." Can we come to a consensus on this? That should resolve the "why do trans people exist?" and subsequent questions. Gender can be inherent. But it isn't with everybody, and I REALLY GET ANGRY when people automatically assume that gender is a part of my identity.

Edited 2010-06-23 18:31 (UTC)

Can we come to a consensus on this?

Yes :)

Yay! Consensus reached. *high five*

I think you should avoid using non-gendered pronouns for those who don't want them. To me, that's just a politeness thing. But if you use them as your default for everyone, and you slip up and use them on someone who wanted a gendered pronoun, that's a very small thing, and I don't think it is ungendering. However, if you deliberately deny someone a gendered pronoun they want when you know better, than that's not okay.

It's a lot like Ms. for an adult female. As soon as they taught me the Ms. option in Elementary School, I used it exclusively with all of the adult females around me. I was taught none of the social context whatsoever, and I had no ideas about how it connected to feminism. I just knew that Miss. was for unmarried women, Mrs. for married, and Ms. could be used for either. And I leapt at that, because I would not need to keep track. So, it's my default, and it's more efficient. However, now that I am older, I know that it's a bit rude to make someone else's title choice for them, so when I can remember, I use someone els's preferred title. In some cases that will still be Ms., but sometimes it will be Mrs. And I think it's a bit rude to force Ms. on someone who doesn't want it. But if I simply mess up, I don't think anyone should get upset at me over it, whereas if I force it on someone, then they have a right to be annoyed. And the same the other way around if someone defaulted to Miss or Mrs and got it wrong. A mistake is understandable, but pushing your choices onto other people's self-identification is not.

I think it mostly boils down to "use the form of address the addressee prefers." Which may take a little effort on the addresser's part.

Well, I think another point to be made in discussions like these (and an awful lot somewhere in the chain on the fanfic post about some Big Bang Theory Fic set in Haiti) is that people seldom intend to marginalize or hurt non-privileged groups - but it doesn't change the result, or make it better. How "big" it is has a lot more to do with the impact than the intention, unfortunately, and all you can control is the response when someone points out that you've given offense.

I don't think anyone imagines (with a first offense, anyway) that the other party is twirling a waxed mustache chuckling over how they've shown that [insert group here]. Rather, they want to point out that regardless of intent, it's hurtful, and either raise awareness for the future or at least receive an acknowledgement of error - as opposed to an "apology" that amounts to "I'm sorry you're so sensitive."

So, you're in the position, generally, of saying "It was a mistake, I apologize for hurting you, and I will [correct it / do my best to be correct in the future]."

I think I've just had this drilled into me pretty well. I'm a large, relatively strong guy, and owning the responsibility for accidentally hurting people is something I've been doing from a fairly young age.

Well, I think the person who has the pronoun used on them does have an obligation to take into consideration whether the person who used a non-choice pronoun had an ability to know the person's preference and should reasonably be expected to be aware of it.

For example, when I was on IRC using a gender-neutral nick, there was no way for anyone just meeting me to be aware of my gender. When people used "he" in reference to me, it would have been unreasonable for me to take offense. It would have been reasonable for me to correct them (politely) and they should then take responsibility for using the correct pronoun, but I feel that expecting an apology would be unreasonable and they do not bear responsibility for hurting me, since it wasn't really reasonable to expect them to avoid it.

If somebody ignores a known and stated wish, I have a problem with it. But I am not willing to say that someone else's sensitivity is my problem if I make a reasonable mistake in a situation where I don't have much reason to know better. I'm all for respecting other people's right to choose their self-identification, but you just cannot expect strangers to know your self-identification until you tell them. They will get it wrong. Just as strangers will do other annoying things like mispronounce names or such. Someone who does that should be corrected, but you have to suck it up and not hold it against them unless they are unwilling to fix the mistake. Someone who repeatedly doesn't get your name right, that's a different matter.

If a good faith error impacts someone so strongly that they are deeply hurt, then they ought to work on those personal issues.

If a good faith error impacts someone so strongly that they are deeply hurt, then they ought to work on those personal issues.

Sometimes, a good faith error comes after the hundredth deliberate-asshole-"error", and it's the proverbial straw.

An analogy: a bunch of people kick a person in the shin, then someone accidentally steps on their toe. The pain of having their toe stepped on isn't lessened by its having been an accident.

I don't know about their obligation. I think, when you're struck, you're not really obliged to stop and calculate how intentional it appears to have been and appropriately moderate your expression of pain.

I'm not saying you're obliged to beat your breasts and tear your hair, but when you hurt someone accidentally, you don't question whether they have a right to be hurt, you say "Oh, I'm sorry, that was accidental, I'll try to be more careful." If you offer an honest apology for what you've done, and someone still wants to berate you, that's probably out of line, but it's still likely less hurtful to you to hear it than to another person, to have real pain shrugged off. I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding here - I'm not talking about holding anything against anybody, I'm just saying people have a right to say "Ow, that hurts" and get a response that acknowledges the hurt. Beyond that, it's all contextual, but that much is a given.

Maybe it's the Recovering Catholic in me, but one concept that stuck with me from early religion classes was fault vs responsibility. I'm responsible for the consequences of my actions. I have an ability and a duty to respond to the results of what I have done. I may not be the root cause of that outcome, because very little beyond yourself is entirely in your control, I may not be at fault for that situation, I may not have planned the outcome, I may not be in full control of the factors that create it, but I am responsible for my particular part in it.

I tend to use an analogy not unlike

akiko's - If I step on someone's toe, it's not up to the person with a broken toe to go "Oh, he doesn't know that people just like him stomped my foot till my toes broke, I shall smile and ask him to be more careful so he doesn't feel too bad about it." They have every right to yell ow, and curse a bit, and get a sincere apology, and if they need to vent a little more after that, it doesn't cost me nearly as much as my accidental injury cost them. I certainly don't have the right to say "Oh, jeez, I only stepped on your toe, stop being a baby!" or get offended, or demand an explanation for why it should hurt so much. If they push it to legal action, or if they start accusing me of malice aforethought, I have a right to defend myself, sure - I'm responsible for my accident, not the broken toe, I'm not at fault for the whole pain - but immediately acting defensive and denying their pain is not a reasonably polite response to the situation.

There's a whole range of this sort of behavior, and it depends enormously on context. It's one thing to trip and accidentally step on a toe. It's another to stomp someone's foot. It's also another thing to, say, walk down a busy street carrying long lumber and constantly knocking people upside the head because you're not paying attention. There's different levels of responsible behavior for each of these, but you have to be ready to asses them on their context. The accidental toe-step is unfortunate, but it'll happen now again. The stomp is generally mustache-twirlingly evil. But if you shrug off every injury you cause carrying timber at head-height without paying attention as "just an accident, don't get upset", that's disingenuous as well. You could be taking more responsibility for that action and preventing issues better.

This got rather rambly, I apologize for that. I tend to try to overexplain things online. I think we're largely on the same page, I don't think people should generally be hounded for an occasional honest mistake - but I likewise think it should be acknowledged that the mistake will have markedly different impacts in different situations, and while you aren't at fault for all of them, you're still responsible in the situation, to the degree you're involved. It's up to me to modulate my reaction to the situation I've created based on my responsibility, not for the injured party to moderate the situation based on my imagined culpability. They're generally already bearing enough burdens without having to add to them.

Well, you shouldn't be stepping on anyone's toes anyway, so the analogy fails.

Should you acknowledge the pain? Sure. Should you state that you didn't mean to cause it? Yes. Should you avoid doing it in future, of course.

But I don't think that the speaker ~did~ make a mistake. And I don't think that's a true apology, because nothing changes in the speaker.

In order for it to be a real apology, I have to acknowledge a flaw in my actions, regret my actions, and act differently in the future.

In this case, since there was no reasonable way to know the correct pronoun choice and I chose incorrectly, I don't really see the flaw, nor a good way to avoid the mistake in the future. It would be awkward and clumsy in many settings to inquire about someone's preferred pronoun choice before ever referring to them. And since there is absolutely no pronoun choice that doesn't cause offense to some people, there is no way not to hurt some people. So, what behavior is expected to be changed? If put in the same situation, I'd make the exact same action. So, what mistake was made? That it turned out poorly is unfortunate, but all you can do is make the best decision you can with the information you have to work on, that that sometimes turns out poorly is part of life, but it does not make the decision wrong. It was the right thing to do. It just didn't work out.

That's why it is vital to know the circumstances, because if it actually was a mistake, if the person's preference should have been known, then that changes everything.

And I really do think people have a responsibility to moderate their reactions based on someone else's ability to understand what will be an issue for them. For example, I've been in social circles where tickling is considered friendly and okay and people will do it without even asking. I do not give people consent to tickle. Tickling me is not okay and triggering. However, if someone who does not know this is tickles me in a setting where they really did feel that they had cause to think it okay, then I will react moderately. However, I tend to try to inform people I get close enough to of this, because I do not want to be stuck in this situation. If someone who does know this tickles me without my consent, it is a completely different matter, because now they know they do not have consent, and I will not take the energy to not react more strongly.

But you can't go around holding things against people or randomly blowing up at them when they have no way of knowing that they are stepping on a landmine. If you need to do this, you need a great deal of help. I admit, help is often not available and even when it is, it takes time and won't help everyone. But there is an extent to which I hold people in public to a basic level of ability to act decently socially, and that includes keeping your extreme sensitivities under control. Anything set off strongly by correct behavior on someone else's part is an extreme sensitivity. But I won't hold it against you if you rant about incorrect behavior.

This post seems to have been started by an example where the person was in a context where it was deemed just due social decency to take the effort to learn the correct pronouns, so it doesn't apply there. But I do think the situation is vital, and you cannot give people free license to always hold the person who hurts them accountable. People can be hurt by anything. It is not always my job to deal with your pain, even if I "caused" it by doing something completely innocuous that I had no way of knowing was a problem. Sometimes saying, "hello" to someone causes pain. Is that a mistake? Is that something to apologize for? What change in behavior should one make if one knows that greeting people means you run a percentage risk of hurting someone? Especially when not greeting people also runs that risk.

Well, you also shouldn't be denying people's gender identities, so I'm going to say the analogy doesn't fail. I know I shouldn't be stepping on people's toes, but, y'know, I'm human, and sometimes I trip or don't see people's feet. It's that damn fallibility - like using the wrong pronoun, you know you shouldn't, but sometimes it happens. Like using the wrong pronoun, it's usually minor anyway. Except when it's not, like for someone who's nursing an injured foot.

Acknowledging the pain and stating that you didn't mean to cause it is the majority of what I'm talking about with an apology, anyway. If you don't regret causing other people pain, intentionally or not, then I guess, yes, it would be misleading to apologize. But I generally do regret hurting people, even by accident, even if I couldn't have known. Even knowing that I can't reasonably prevent it from ever happening with anyone else ever again, I don't think it rings hollow. Obviously, that's going to depend enormously on the audience and the situation. Context again.

Ultimately, I think we've got irreconcilable paradigms. It's hard to imagine myself in a situation where tickling wasn't considered intimate, but in that case, if someone knocked my hand away full force and explained they had issues, I'd apologize and try to be understanding, not expect them to convince me to stop less directly/violently. I'd honestly accept it as a reflex and move on. I guess I wouldn't stop the behavior in the context, but I'd stop it with that person, and that's the behavior correction I'd be including in my apology.

So, yeah, I'm thinking that's where we're hitting the wall. I thought I'd already said it, but I don't think holding a grudge over an honest mistake is justified either. I just think that having a strong immediate response is understandable and acceptable, and that "I'm sorry, I made a mistake, I know it can be an issue, and from now on I'll make sure to call you what you prefer." That's the correction you're making, not how you address everyone, how you address this individual.

In the end, people should be accountable for what they do. Yes, it's wrong to hold them accountable for more, but it's equally wrong to shrug off the responsibility. The correct approach in a given situation is somewhere in the middle ground, and it's going to vary by the context. So, yes, you can say "It's wrong to hate someone for saying 'Hello!'" That has next to no bearing on real world situations, though, so it's a bit of a strawman argument. If you can expect people to moderate their reactions to your actions based on how likely it is to be a simple mistake, they can expect you to moderate your reaction to their pain based on how likely your simple mistake was to be the 50th such "simple mistake" they've had to deal with today, that you might be the straw that broke the camel's back. You don't have to be a smiling, groveling punching bag, but you should acknowledge and apologize, because you did contribute to someone else's pain and we generally regret doing that.

You state, however, that you believe you did nothing wrong and will do the exact same thing again in the future and what you are sorry for is that the other person got hurt. I thought a "I'm sorry you got hurt by what I did" wasn't a real apology.

I'm just not seeing how this apology is in any way meaningful as an apology. Sure, change your actions with this particular person - we both agree on that. And sure you're responsible for hurting them if you do it again once you know. But I don't see how you even consider it to be a mistake when you go on to claim you'll do the exact same thing in the future when in the same situation.

It just rings very hollow as an apology and a belief in having made a mistake.

If there is some actual mistake here, then what is it and how can it be avoided altogether? I'm all for recognizing that this may be a common area of sensitivity. So, do you think you should always ask someone's pronoun choice before ever referring to them? What if you want to make a comment about someone in an online discussion who doesn't make their pronoun choice clear? What degree of research should you be obligated to do?

Clarification: the fic in question is a real-person fic about the lead actors of Supernatural. A Big Bang is a fic fest in which people write long (novel-length) fanfic.

Ack. My bad. This is a world I only skim occasionally, so my attempt to hook tags to concepts was, obviously, lacking. ;)

No worries. For people who don't run in these circles (and I run barely tangential to them), it's not always obvious what terminology means.

Yeah. Either way, the grist of fail was impressive. Curse my linkaholism - your links here cost me most of yesterday morning and got me all worked up. ;)

I know that feeling, mate. I've lost entire *weeks* to following discussions of people being stupid on the internet.

I tend to just lose a day at a time. By the end I'm so worn out and worked up that I just start killing tabs and convincing myself to go to sleep already. I just lack the energy to maintain the levels of outrage this sort of nonsense tends to engender. ;)

My problem is that every day there are new links of wtf on my reading pages, and I can't stop myself from clicking on them.

And this is why I largely avoid drama-prone communities (in either the more normal or the LJ sense). There are also any number of days where I go "I simply lack the outrage reservoir to read this post, because I know I won't stop till I've read all the links and then it will be Thursday. Ignore!" If I do it long enough, I might not even come back to plumb the depths.

And, uh, I apparently got the fandom wrong; it's some hipster/emo band thing. (I was thinking of the SPN fic where two white guys hook up on the backdrop of the earthquake in Haiti and there's a Magical Dumb Negro and offensive caricatures and all sorts of horribly offensive shit.)

Honestly, I was also thinking of Beautiful White Men Find Love And A Native Pet In Devastated Haiti, too. So, it's multiple layers of confusion to untangle.

Third-gender pronouns and binary-identified individuals

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