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

[doctorskuld.livejournal.com]

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.

[listener.livejournal.com]

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.

[doctorskuld.livejournal.com]

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.