Okay… wait. There are people who suggested that Manning’s gender identity is an attempt to get an easy ride in prison? Really? Have people never seen a movie or show set in prison? I mean, Oz is great, for one.
This line of reasoning has me utterly dumbfounded.
One guy commenting on BB’s Facebook link to this article suggested Manning was trying to get a “cushy” punishment by “pretending to be a freak”. Someone I’ve recently unfollowed from Twitter said she was just trying to avoid a prison where she can’t risk dropping the soap. Both cases, they made no effort to refer to Manning with the correct pronouns or even name.
Both comments have had me fighting the urge to defenestrate my monitor.
If you want to posit a positive statement about Chelsea Manning that makes it polite, acceptable, and recommended to misgender her in the media, you’ll have to show that a) all men definitively meet these same criteria and b) that failing to adhere to that criteria would harm non-doctors in some concrete way.
Otherwise, it seems like you’re making a crappy normative argument for the media being a jerk to Chelsea.
See, I can academia too. 
Wow. Sometimes peoples’ pure and unadulterated ignorance amazes and disgusts me.
Also, more people should use the word defenestrate. Cause that word is awesome. For example, “We should defenestrate anyone who argues that Chelsea Manning is only transitioning to get off easy…”
Considering the fame/infamy of two of those individuals(O.J. Simpson and Whitey Bulger) the use of their nickname isn’t surprising. I don’t know if anyone ASKED them about their preferred name, those names were used because they had been used in multiple references and using any other name would confuse the public to no end. In fact, I think Bulger prefers James or Jimmy
Lil Wayne is different. I have seen MANY references to his REAL NAME when discussing his recent legal issues:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Music/10/22/new.york.lil.wayne/index.html
Further, these weren’t exactly major crimes. They were minor weapons possession charges and drug charges. If he had murdered someone, his real name would have been featured more prominently.
But sure, I am just making up my claim. Why doesn’t the media refer to Whitey Bulger as Jimmy Bulger?
Wait… I can use “academia” as a verb!!!
This thread is all kinds of enlightening in ways not 100% related to the topic at hand.
Right. To you this is a supposedly necessary “democratic” discussion about figuring out what being trans means and how you ought to refer to trans people. To trans people, this is our lives, and we already know, and you could just listen to us (or even just ask in the first place!). It’s exasperating to see people “debate” about whether to be assholes to us or to actually acknowledge us as the whole people we say we are.
Your Lil Wayne example has fallen flat, as well, at least as far as the automatic summary below your post goes. I don’t know why you’d go around looking for rules and precedents to use to be a jerk to someone, but at least in this instance it doesn’t seem to have worked.
NPR may have come around, but the CBC is still screwing it up. Embarrassed as a Canadian to see them using male pronouns for Chelsea.
Ignatius,
Thanks for replying again without calling me creepy or accusing me of fetishizing the personal lives of others, it really does contribute to civil discourse. And if there’s anything this issue needs, it’s civil discourse among considerate individuals. If you are on the team of desiring that all humans should be treated decently and fairly, and I assume that you are, then WE ARE ON THE SAME TEAM.
In the interest of finding some common ground, can we possibly agree on a few points:
I realize that you may take those ideas even further than I have, but it’s at least a common ground to begin the conversation, right?
Culture, maybe - because people are assholes. Language generally serves us fine until the aforementioned assholes start throwing hissy fits. If you don’t call Chelsea by the right pronouns, you may arbitrarily decide to stop calling me be the right pronouns (although it’s unclear if you would to start with), and anyone I have to be constantly wary of grievously insulting me isn’t really on my team.
Click on the link, in the[quote=“Corinth, post:114, topic:8056”]
To trans people, this is our lives, and we already know, and you could just listen to us (or even just ask in the first place!). It’s exasperating to see people “debate” about whether to be assholes to us or to actually acknowledge us as the whole people we say we are.
[/quote]
Sorry if people just don’t automatically treat you the way you want to be treated. However, this isn’t the way it has worked and this isn’t the way it will ever work. We don’t call Spain “España” in English speaking countries. I am sure that the Spanish would prefer “España”. This is what they call themselves, and I am sure it upsets them that other countries make up their own word. They don’t even anglicize it in English as Espana. We just decided that in the US it would be Spain. Trans people can come up with whatever words, terminology, etc they want. It doesn’t mean that anyone is obliged to use it. In fact, it probably won’t wind up getting used by the “cis” community at large. I suppose you are entitled to make a big stink about it, but I don’t know if that is the best PR move.
Yes, because apparently I would post a link that doesn’t prove my point. I suppose trans people can make mistakes too. Click the link, and read the next paragraph that was truncated by the summary. The only reason the article intros with “Lil Wayne” is because no one knows his real name. Considering that the name “Bradley Manning” is the more familiar moniker, it doesn’t even make sense to mention an alias that is preferred.
So, in the examples I was challenged with, we have the following results.
OJ Simpson-acquitted of criminal charges in first major case, plus “OJ Simpson” was a common household name and a simple abbreviation of his name.
Whitey Bulger-not even his preferred name, nor is it the alias he has been living under for the past 15 years. It is a catchy nickname that is popular for some reason and better known that either his preferred name or his alias.
Lil Wayne-a celebrity, who has his real name mentioned in every article I can find describing his criminal activity.
Whitey Bulger is actually similar to Ms. Chelsea “Queensbogglepicard” Manning. He has an alias and he has a preferred name(Jimmy), yet the press doesn’t use either because they aren’t his ‘famous’ names.
I am really enjoying this exchange.
Thanks for explaining that about people not feeling so hateful toward their own bodies; it makes me feel a lot easier and I feel like I can relate more to what you are describing.
I understand what you mean about language. I have long felt that the women’s right movement made a similar mistake by insisting that you abort a fetus, not a child - of course women have abortions because they know it is a child and they cannot make the commitment to that child at that time. The choice of language may have been effective at that time but long term I think it’s bit us ladies on the ass by shifting the focus to nitpicking on when a fetus becomes a child, rather than women’s right to determine whether to carry a pregnancy to term.
I can see how people who want to transition have had to figure out a way to communicate their situation to people who have never questioned their own gender and came up with this explanation of being uncomfortable with their bodies to get people to get a sense of the strength of their feelings.
I have a lot of thoughts about this gender divide right now. I grew up in the 70s where there was a lot of emphasis on nongendered toys and clothing, but my daughter was all about pink and purple. She was so gender identified that when she was 6 or 7 she even refused to listen to rock music (even women, who are mostly altos) and insisted that the soprano opera parts were “girl music.” Which has led me to have to bone up on opera and been wonderful to share with her - but, the whole world was divided into girl things and boy things with her for many years. My kid loves science and is so comfortable with herself despite her pink and purple vision of girliness. Having grown up with such an asexual focus for myself, it’s very odd to see this pink aisle stuff that is going on right now and yet I think girls have staked out a lot bigger area under the guise of what is “girl stuff” than the limited options for women in the 50’s and 60’s that the 70’s moms were rebelling against.
For myself, I work in engineering and I almost always one of very few women who will be part of an engineering team, and I feel like because I’m more womanly than most women in STEM - I know several female engineers are have that kind of “one of the boys” thing going on - it has really limited my opportunities to advance. I have known men who started, like me, as technical writers in R&D Labs that were quickly promoted into project management positions, whereas I have remained stuck in writing and training. A lot of the geeky guys in engineering really seem uncomfortable with a woman who is more traditionally pretty. I tend to seek out the really extraordinary, brilliant engineers to work with because they seem less limited by traditional roles.
For a trans child - I don’t know how they’d navigate the pink/blue gender world of preschool and elementary school today. Yeah, yellow doesn’t seem like the safe option it once was. On the other hand, I hear from my daughter that online, in the fan fiction sites where she hangs, that the kids are into very particular sexual and gender identifying across a huge spectrum of possibilities - self-identifying as bi, trans, pansexual, asexual - and it’s amazing that the kids are feeling like they can explore openly this wide range of sexuality and gender in their teens, at least in the anonymity of cyberspace.
Heterosexual women regularly change their names every time they get married and no one feels the need to wait until they get their new social security card to begin addressing them by their new name.
For Pete’s sake, Prince changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol and met less resistance.
I have difficulty believing people who say they need time or some sort of process before they can start referring to a trans person by their stated preferred name and pronoun. It appears the motivation is to deter people from changing their gender on a whim by intentionally making it difficult.
Because, if gender was fluid, well then, how would we know who to pay 20% less for the same amount of work? How would we know who to assume is inherently better at math? What possible justification could we have for treating men and women so differently if people could just change their gender easily? But most importantly how would we know if we’re gay or straight?
Actually, the Prince thing gets a bit more complicated. Prince didn’t “change” his name. His name is Prince Rogers Nelson.
The whole debate concerning “The Artist Formerly Known as Prince” was due to a contract dispute. Warner Bros. trademarked the name “Prince”. They had total ownership of the name. Most people at the time (at least in the media) understood that the publicity stunt by Prince was actually an attempt to draw attention to the ridiculousness of having your own first name trademarked, so they went along with it. It was also quite funny to people who didn’t understand that he was doing all of that because he legally wasnt allowed to perform under the name “Prince” without the permission of Warner Bros.
Well, in fairness, they do wait on them to legally change their names. A name change isn’t automatic when one gets married, and addressing the new bride with her husband’s last name if she doesn’t want to change her last name is actually rude.
If a bride wishes to keep her name after marriage, she would usually make this abundantly clear to her friends and family long before the big day, if not smack on it, and barring one or two arsebucket and the odd easily-correctable slip-up, those wishes tend to be respected from day one.
Chelsea Manning has made it abundantly clear to the world on how she wishes to be addressed, circumstances aside, of course, but somehow people who have read or heard these wishes find it difficult to adjust? I don’t buy it.
I honestly do not even understand what you’re trying to say, here. Is this actually a thing? Are you seriously bothered by the United States being les États-Unis in French? I’ve never heard anyone say this before in my life, but I’m not sure how it would be relevant anyway.
[quote=“pucksr, post:118, topic:8056”]
Trans people can come up with whatever words, terminology, etc they want. It doesn’t mean that anyone is obliged to use it. I suppose you are entitled to make a big stink about it, but I don’t know if that is the best PR move.[/quote]
It’s not required to not be an asshole, but the world is a much nicer place when people don’t go around deliberately being assholes. Do you even understand how what you said sounds in a wider social justice context? If supporting the basic right to define your own name and identity is a bad PR move, it’s not really worth avoiding bad PR. I’m not sure that you’re someone we’d want to take advice from re: GSM activism, though.
I’m probably one of the people doing this.
In regards to not being gay but knowing people who are, the writer of the book Stuck Rubber Baby, Howard Cruse, is a family friend. When I was little, he and his partner Eddie would come to the house when they were in town. They talked about what it was like to grow up gay, about what was happening when AIDS hit the community in NYC where they lived, and because they shared their experiences with me I think I grew up tolerant even though, as far as I knew, I didn’t know too many gay people my age, certainly none of them were good friends.
Flash forward to the 10s and Facebook - turns out lots of kids at my high school were in fact gay and covering it up - including a boy who had been best friends with my brother in childhood, and so I felt kind of ashamed that even though I was understanding, it seems like I missed an opportunity to be a true friend to people who might have wanted someone who would openly say they were supportive of gay people instead of just thinking it quietly to myself.
My daughter has an opportunity to meet in person a kid in her internet circle who is M to F trans and since I’ve never had chance to sit down with someone who is trans, this thread to me is a wonderful opportunity to interact and discuss it. I’m not trying to act like people who are trans are freaks to be studied; I want to figure out how to help my daughter be a true friend to a kid who seems like she really needs it. And, I want to make sure my daughter is emotionally prepared for what it might feel like to be with someone who is presenting female but physically has characteristics of a male so that she can be comfortable and considerate. How nasty it would be of us to try to make friends with this young person only to become another person who acted all weird and uncomfortable with her.
I’m sorry if I’m making anyone who is trans feel strange but I am willing to express my real fears here in order to try to figure out how to be a better friend - I have become aware of just how isolated trans people are in our society and - okay, educate me, help me to figure out how to not be a another oaf because I know I kind of am still, BUT I also think that all the gay marriage reforms have happened because of the support of the straight community so I want to be that straight person who makes a change for trans people so they can be out.
Also, while I think there are comparison to being gay and the social issues surrounding that, I think there are some unique issues to the social issues of being trans that are different, so I don’t think it’s enough to say it’s like that. There are parallels but it’s not exactly the same thing.
You and I apparently run in radically different circles then. I couldn’t name a single acquaintance that isn’t actively pro-gay marriage. Maybe you just collected shitty people?
Well, true. Maybe you don’t care if anyone gets lynched, in which case you’re not a bigot in particular, just a asshole in general.
I’m not sure why you’d think that’s better than “bigot”, though.
Because when a bride, or groom, changes their name due to marriage, or divorce, there is paperwork involved and it is fully a legal matter. I’ve never known anyone to actually ask to be called by their post-marriage name until the ceremony was actually over.
