Third-gender pronouns and binary-identified individuals

[feuervogel]

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?

Comments

[princess]

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.])

[feuervogel]

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.

[princess]

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.

[leora]

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.

[picklish]

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.

[feuervogel]

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.

[eisen]

"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.

[feuervogel]

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.)

[leora]

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.

[bloodrivendream.livejournal.com]

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.

[feuervogel]

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?

[bloodrivendream.livejournal.com]

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.

[smarriveurr.livejournal.com]

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.

[feuervogel]

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.

[smarriveurr.livejournal.com]

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.

[corbae.livejournal.com]

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.

[feuervogel]

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.

[doctorskuld.livejournal.com]

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.

[feuervogel]

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.

[doctorskuld.livejournal.com]

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.

[leora.livejournal.com]

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.

[feuervogel]

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.

[smarriveurr.livejournal.com]

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.

[leora.livejournal.com]

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.

[feuervogel]

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.