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.