One of my favorite books on the matter is called “Nonbinary: Memoirs of Gender and Identity” (emphasis mine)
This is why I always debate on any given new place if I should list my preferred/assigned pronouns (because they’re all assigned originally, though the debates over the semantics of that are challenging), or not do so as way of showing that they shouldn’t matter anyway. As in they shouldn’t be requested by some random site or piece of paperwork, not that they don’t matter to people for themselves.
It doesn’t help that while I am cishet male, I don’t actually care what pronouns get used for me. I had long hair in the south in the eighties; I got over being called a girl a looong time ago because I reject the fucking misogyny inherent in people trying to weaponize it, and I managed to divorce myself of that same misogyny in my own perceptions of masculinity. Like, I’m genuinely fine with any pronoun, and I’m mostly on the side of working to just get rid of them entirely.
The mostly is because on a personal scale I don’t have the energy for that specific fight when there’s so many other ones that are dire.
So I end up just leaving such things blank when possible, they/them when I can’t select multiple as a point of effort at making the idea present.
Dang. Memes be all relevant and thought provoking up in this piece!
Pass the blunt homie. You’re getting all philosophical and shit. <3
Pffffffffff, cough hack wheeze 👌
because I reject the fucking misogyny inherent in people trying to weaponize it, and I managed to divorce myself of that same misogyny in my own perceptions of masculinity
🩷
thank you for making this comment! it’s really insightful to see gender-apathetic feelings coming from a cishet person ^^
Its worth noting that cis allies, and others who don’t care about their pronouns, giving/listing pronouns no matter what they are, both normalize pronouns and act as a sort of smoke screen for trans individuals by making pronouns stand out less.
Its also worth thinking about how listing pronouns publicly or wearing pronoun pins/patches serves the above but also to communicate safety and acceptance to others.
It can’t be understated how nice it feels when you encounter someone while going through your day who’s visibly communicating themselves as an ally without any words about it being spoken.
This isn’t to disagree with any of your personal thoughts on it, just worth considering.
I appreciate the perspective :)
I actually have hats lol. Various symbols and iterations of the usual flags. Which isn’t the main point of your comment, but you’re absolutely correct about how even very subtle signs of support can be a positive experience. For everyone, since I very much enjoy the responses when someone in need of some public support says something about it. The sense of community can be thin on the ground, but it’s never stronger than when two strangers can find mutual respect.
I think I might well need to piddle around with the settings on my accounts on lemmy at the very least.
Preach comrade
❤❤❤❤
You sound like a cool dude
I’m not an expert in this space by any means, but aren’t these the terms that the community picked themselves?
i think this is more about how trans folk get described by folks outside trans spaces, which amounts to most media. we say “trans women are women” but publications will still say “x, who identifies as a woman”
No, these are the terms that prevailed in the public discourse, to cater to the underlying cisgenderist absolutism.
Sometimes we need to succumb to these terms if we want at least part of our message to come through. Otherwise cis people look confused and start emitting weird noises.
My thoughts exactly.
Cis-genderism in a nutshell.
Lots of people in the community should get more woke about this stuff. It is the absolute essence of our oppression.
We should all be fighting to get the language back on the side of the people.
Damn that’s a good point
One time, my doctor had a student following her and she asked me if I would me okay telling them about how to address nonbinary people and what kind of language to use. She asked if it was inappropriate to ask for someone’s “preferred pronouns.” She seemed like she’d never considered that that may be insensitive when I said you should probably just ask for their pronouns bc preferred made them sound optional
May we have your pronouns?
only if i can have yalls pronouns in return :3c
[- charm]No, you may not, I need those.
