feuervogel | Third-gender pronouns and binary-identified individuals

Current Mood: hungry

Entry tags:

links: feminism

Third-gender pronouns and binary-identified individuals

I read a blog post yesterday, an intro post from a guest blogger at feministe who usually writes over at Questioning Transphobia.

Queen Emily writes Don’t use third gender pronouns (eg “ze” and “hir”) on a binary identified person because it ungenders them. (Third-gender pronouns are also known as gender-neutral pronouns.) Then down in comments, she says, When someone uses “ze” to refer to me when I have explicitly referred to myself as a trans woman, it’s ungendering and cissexist to boot.

When I read this post by

sohotrightnow, Queen Emily's post was the first thing I thought of, even though the writer of the problematic story (which I agree is problematic, and that is not the topic of this post; I'm not even involved in bandom) identifies as female.

The section that made me click the link to the writer's profile:

When I engaged promisethstars in discussion and tried to explain why this was bothering me, zie raised the point that the story is an AU, and argued that from zir perspective, there was no difference between making Gabe Saporta a Catholic priest for zir AU and making Patrick Stump a prostitute for another AU.

(You can see the wtfery evidenced by promisethstars in this quote, but that's not what I'm looking at.) I clicked the profile tag, and saw that Megan will occasionally "fangirl out." To me, that reads as "I identify as a girl."

Ungendering is a tactic used against trans-spectrum individuals by the media, academics, and radical feminists. 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. But it isn't appropriate, either.

Or am I talking out of my ass here?

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

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.

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 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.

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 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

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)

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*

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 2 of 3

Third-gender pronouns and binary-identified individuals

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject