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

[smarriveurr.livejournal.com]

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.

[leora.livejournal.com]

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?