I’d probably still roll with a “she” in the case of Jenner. Because she won a gold medal when she competed in the Decathalon as a man. It requires some additional clarification, but for me pronouns are about referring to people as they are and how they want others to see them.
It’s complex, I’m certainly going to give it some thought over lunch. Good question.
All sorts of people like straight white men TELLING queer people how to feel and act within the queer communities. OH BOY! You’re so special and unique.
you’re too damn sensitive.
BINGO!
(Also oh dear! Heaven forbid oppressed people are sensitive about being oppressed! We need to act like non-feeling robots! Just like those “reasonable” and “polite” white men who are oppressing us by TELLING* us how to act within our own communities.
Treat people the way you’d like to be treated.
Oh, so now I’m being mean to straight, white, cis men. Wah.
That’s difficult for you to read? REALLY? That seemed really short and to the point and like basic 101 stuff. Have we devolved this much as a society that we can’t even handle a one-page “essay”?!
Well, we are asking people to educate themselves on an oppressed minority. So now lots of mostly straight people, mostly men, ALL CIS must tell us We Are Doing It Wrong. And apparently it’s super duper mean and offensive to create information for people to learn from.
As much as you do. Or I do. I think how not to be an asshole about it is the point.
Me and my girlfriend have been pondering the semantics of this since Chelsea Manning became Chelsea Manning (or since Bradley Manning became…). It actually is a very interesting linguistic and semiotic issue, on many levels. If the person didn’t identify as female (for example) at the time, can that identity be retroactively applied? What is the person wasn’t even aware of potential of switching gender identities?
Not to use real world examples, since I don’t want to presume to know the state of any real person’s mind; If Bob Smith became Sue Smith, but wasn’t aware that this process was even a thing until some later point. Is it fair to, basically, erase Bob even if Bob is later Sue? Historically “Bob did X” is true, since at the point Bob was Bob, and Sue did not exist. This, obviously weirds language, since referents become confusing (since Bob and Sue are the same). Further, if Sue was previously referred to in writing (Like Bradley/Chelsea Manning), as Bob, then we run into further confusion since there is no longer a Bob (if we accept retroactive pronouns).
But then, if we were talking to the modern Sue, it would be silly to ask them about Bob’s accomplishments as if Bob was a different person.
But if your reading something about the historical Bradley Manning (or Bruce Jenner), do you just mentally or verbally replace “Bradley” with “Chelsea” (Or Bruce with Caitlyn), or read the article as written?
I probably would try to err on the side of respect, and be retroactive. But when reading historical documents, this breaks again.
Edit: Interesting, and perhaps related fact. I Googled “Bradley Manning” while writing this, just to get some basic fact/spelling checks, and to see if I could find some use examples. Google’s side bar doesn’t reference “Bradley Manning”, but auto replaces it with “Chelsea Manning”. I’m guessing from this that Google’s point of view is to be concurrently retrospective (to make up, I mean coin… new words).
We’re not in your Sekrit No Boyz Alowd Treehouse and more importantly, this handbook wasn’t directed at the queer community. So yeah, the reaction of the non-queer population that it is meant for is entirely germane. But you don’t care about that, you don’t care about effective social justice, you don’t care about making a difference in anyone’s attitudes, you care about plying your demeaning Angry Feminist Caricature schtick and everyone else can go fuck themselves.
You’ve made it pretty explicit that you don’t want to have a conversation, so please stop replying to me. I will do you the same courtesy.
People don’t listen to you because you are deliberately offensive, as much so as the person you point out who is offending from the opposite direction.
Your response, apparently, is to put everyone on edge about whether or not they’re behaving correctly around you. That just makes people not want to be around you.
I propose to be nice to people. If they say something that offends me, I may gently and politely point that out and suggest an alternative. Then, we’ll both get on with our lives. That’s called common civility. You should try it some time. It works a great deal better than preemptively blasting out a 10 page long list of does and don’ts covering every possible social situation.
You don’t have the right to live in a world that never offends you. You do have the right to walk away from things that offend you. You have the right to try to correct things that offend you. If that’s what you’re trying to do here, you’re going about it ass backwards. Your behavior is pretty much guaranteed to piss people off, and prompt them to walk away from you as something that is offensive. If you goal is dialog, this is exactly the wrong way to do it.
If this discussion doesn’t constitute “listening to you” then clearly no one ever listens to you. If you think at any point I have been shouting you down, I’d like to see exactly where that point is. Disagreeing with you is not shouting you down.
Wow! Can you get any more insultingly predictable, bigoted pc person?
Another similar case is The Wachowskis. Before Lana became Lana they directed everything under the Wachowski Brothers, now they’re simply The Wachowskis. If I was to talk about The Matrix today, I would refer to it as being by The Wachowskis instead of by the Wachowski Brothers.
Even if I were watching it and reading the credits to myself I would still make the change because that’s what they do. So if I were to read about the 1976 Olympics I’d read “Bruce” and think “Caitlyn” and know that we’re all talking about the same collection of cells and that names are more flexible than written records. It’s like knowing the Silence Dogood letters are actually Benjamin Franklin. I would refer to them as Benjamin Franklin’s work.
Jesus H. Tapdancing Christ, that whole paragraph is venom. And if we took the time, in a thread concerning how to be respectful to straight people, to cherry pick examples of (a wrong-headed attribution of) ‘fetishistic behaviour’ and fucking murder and imply it’s a inescapable property associated with being cis and straight, people would rightly object.
Your hatred is apparent, why the hell would you take the time out of your day to do something like this?
So when talking about the Decathlon in the 1976 Olympics (does that come up often? I’m more about Daley Thompson in 1980 and 1984), why not just say Jenner, like people normally do when talking about sportspeople.
As far as this article goes, I like it. It’s helpful to get some advice, even if the most obvious stuff seems to be to ask, and avoid pronouns if at all possible.
I would if we were talking about it (as often as I talk about it 
) , but in this case the point was about historical written records. Like this awesome box from childhood:
Is the irony lost on you that you claim to fight for people to identify with whatever gender of sexuality they choose - yet you basically accost people in gender and sex based threads by labelling them to frame their side of the discussion? Sorry, but it is an exercise in pure bigotry on your part to tell people that they are gay/straight/etc, black/white/etc, male/female/etc, trans/cis/etc, rich/poor/etc - without consideration for how the other participants might choose to identify. It’s beyond rude. And it puts you at risk of becoming closed minded when you can dismiss views which differ from yours based upon presuming that you have a basis to excuse discriminating against them as a person.
Other than this tendency, I often enjoy and think about your thoughts and opinions. But this doesn’t change the fact that you are not entitled to tell people who they are.
Nobody actually reads the documentation. Spend a few minutes on any of the Q&A sites and you’ll learn that immediately. What does help, is having easily digestable sections of the documentation for people to cite.
What people do read is brief answers that summarize the documentation in TL;DR form and provide a relevant example. Which is, well…
… pretty much what I said.
Yeah, this. I call that person Steve. Or Miranda. Or whatever they say their name is. I guess it’s made somewhat complex depending on the language by gender specific pronouns.
Also I think the word is assholish things.
Actually that is a pretty good way of thinking about it day to day.
Though the semantics of the issue is still a fascinating thing. With Chelsea Manning though, for some reason, I still have a mental divide. He leaked, She is in prison, even if she is the same person and is a she. I recognize this… I don’t know why, perhaps my brain is just old, or language wasn’t really made for this, so it breaks (people changing pronouns, while remaining a singular person).
The point about the inclusive nature of transgender was precisely because NO ONE can tell SOME ONE ELSE if they are Transgender or not. I have no idea if someone is or is not transgender , but if they say they are that’s good enough for me. It’s like my saying I’m red sox fan, I might not meet someone’s criteria for being a fan - but I don’t care - I have been a fan since I was a Kid and one of my fervent hopes is that with Virtual Reality I can sit out in the bleachers and watch the game at Fenway.I am proud to be a sox fan, Just like I’m proud to be a tranny and a dyke, and if you want to come out as dyke then you go girl and if your a tranny as well hey its about taking back the words from the haters and abusers. And if you don’t like the words I use, that’s fine to.
Can i just say to all the people out there who get the words wrong and feel bad about doing so - your forgiven! Just try to get it right next time. What i actually want is your support and respect,.what I want is for you to help my siblings. Even more than that I want people to stop assuming that just because a transexual wo/man has surgery that will fix everything - because it wont - it wont take away the years upon years of trauma, I wish Caitlin well, and I sure she feels free now, but she still has a long way to go to heal herself of the trauma of what she went through and what she had to do to survive till now.So if you meet a guy in tears it isn’t because he acting like a girl, it might be because of all the years he was forced to live as a girl
But what I want, what I really, really want! Is for gender to consigned to history. Its such a stupid constant - what does telling you I’m a women tell you? I told you I’m a red sox fan and that should tell you a huge bunch more. I can tell you I’m a metal-head, a SF fan, a nerd all those things say as much about me as saying I am a woman. OK yes I fancy women and I like female bodies but I personally like those bodies to be strong, muscled, powerful and energetic are the things I love in female bodies. But if gender went away, then yes negotiating if I actually want to share with you becomes more difficult - but if the dwarves in Terry Pratchet can manage it - so can we.
I hope this clears things up. I don’t hate cis people - to do that would be to hate people i dearly love - my family. I don’t see a problem with someone going from closet cis to trans to closeted cis. Hell I recommend that as soon as you can pass, you should take a chance to take a break and heal, just be who you really are. My only problem with other transexuals is when they go around defining who can and can not be in ‘my gang’.who is and is not part of the in crowd. Just as I can’t stand the GLAAD deciding what and who is transgender I know they mean well, but by not be inclusive - by being exclusive they hurt a lot our community to support a few which may also include themselves!
Oh thanks for taking the time to read this and get involved in the thread - now that’s really appreciated by me!
big hugs
kate
