[ SECRET POST #2406 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2406 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 077 secrets from Secret Submission Post #344.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Fair enough, but now turn the concept around. To what extent are the rest of us required to change because we're making them uncomfortable?

(And before anyone starts: I am not talking about assholes who like to taunt or abuse people, any people, because they're different. Fuck them. I am also not talking about those who would deny people, any people, fundamental legal protections and rights because they're different. Fuck them too. I'm speaking of society at large being asked to rewrite our language and our fundamental understanding of concepts like gender because a very small percentage of the population are exceptions to the general rules. By what logic are we morally required to do this?)

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT--languages and cultures and concepts change all the time, though. And there's a difference between 'uncomfortable' and 'hurt,' at least in my head. I dunno how it works for everyone. But say there's an obese sweaty guy who goes jogging past my house every morning wearing a pair of tight hot pink spandex short shorts. Looking at him kind of grosses me out. But that's my problem, not his. He's not doing it because he wants to make my life difficult, he's doing it because he likes pink and it's very hot out and he doesn't want to sweat up a bunch of clothes. I'm very very hairy for a cis woman, and sometimes people mock me for it. They're wrong for doing so, I'm not wrong for being hairy. Neither hypothetical obese sweaty guy in spandex nor actual me with my yeti legs and mustache and beard are hurting anyone by existing. And I don't see how examining the language people use about gender and sex, and applying it a little less haphazardly, is much of a hardship. Gender and sex are words for different concepts but people mix them up all the time. As for the rarity of trans* people, I don't think that should preclude stuff like using the pronouns they ask people to use. I mean, forms that ask for things like eye color have options for pink because of the occasional albino who's got pink irises.

[(Anonymous)]

No, of course you and Pink Spandex Guy are not hurting anyone by existing and should not be mocked. As I said, that's not what I'm talking about. Nothing gives people the right to be cruel or harm others. There are basic rights, freedoms and dignities that all people are entitled to.

I'm just arguing that some of what I see expected or demanded, around here and elsewhere in fandom, goes way beyond that basic decent treatment and amounts to asking all of society to bend over backward for the benefit of a very few people. Adding a tickybox to a form for pink eyes is simple and has very little impact on anyone who doesn't have them. Ditching gender-specific pronouns in everyday speech and replacing them all with neutral alternatives (as one example) is an entirely different matter.

At what point does mere discomfort become suffering? Who is expected to just suck it up and who isn't, and why? And just how rare does something have to be before we're allowed to acknowledge that it's out of the ordinary and treat it as such?

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know about language, but I don't see what's so great about our current "fundamental understanding of concepts like gender", even being cis myself.

[(Anonymous)]

Great? Maybe not. But the binary model is practical: simple, easily understood and adequate for the everyday needs of the vast majority of people a vast majority of the time. If it wasn't, we would have already replaced it with something more complicated. (And setting aside for a moment the questions of what's moral and who should feel obligated to do what, that's probably the single biggest obstacle to making any widespread, lasting changes to it. People, by and large, crave simplicity. Hence why politics can be reduced to sound bites and Apple products command such a premium.)

[(Anonymous)]

I think you're conflating "productive" and "practical", or rather I think that that distinction is an aspect of discussing gender/finding language for gender in terms outside the binary. Discussing gender in binary terms is "practical" in the sense that it works well with the gender roles that are most compatible with the societies a lot of us live in (and since we're posting on the internet in English in a comm where everything is in English, and you've made a reference to Apple products, I'm going to assume that we're both speaking from a place at least influenced by Western-style democratic capitalism). Binary gender is very compatible with capitalism because roles were work is divided on binary gender roles are compatible with capitalism. I couldn't tell you which came first, but it's apparent that they are compatible. Easily recognizable, discrete gender identities are also compatible with capitalism, in that they can be more easily marketed to and provided for.

But binary gender is also "productive" in that these binary roles - and the assumption that they exist because of binary identity, the assumption that they are inherent - are also "productive" in that they repeat the assumption that this arrangement is natural and just how things are (for example, in your assertion that people crave simplicity. Possibly. But also, within capitalist societies, we don't really have a great deal of time and space to spend thinking abut how we might define that simplicity, or whether it might take the form of binary gender roles. Perhaps referring to everyone without gender would feel 'simpler' if we had that option, if we'd always lived with it? It's hard to say. Or if we lived in a society that didn't to a certain extent run on gendered divisions of labor. It's pretty difficult to tell what people's definition of simplicity might be in a situation that is already to some extent foreclosed).

Binary gender is also "productive" in that it's part of an enlightenment rhetoric of rationalism: A = A, A =/= B and et cetera. Definitive category in terms of identity is comparatively recent, even in the west, and is strongly associated with advancing rationalist empires (colonization, capitalism & c). Every time it's reproduced, it reproduces the rightness of the empire, and this is to a certain extent its original intent.

(Note that I'm not saying "not real." I'm saying "productive." Understanding gender on binary terms produces binary gender. Literally. There's no such thing as a man or woman until someone says "man" or "woman". Until then, it's just a mess of unnamed body).

This is why I suspect that what you, and other people confused or uncomfortable about pronoun use, are referring to here isn't so much about the fact that binary gender is "correct" but is more about the fact that discussions of gender outside binary are indeed still culturally new in the mainstream (trans*folk certainly aren't new, but a general mainstream - say, Hollywood movies, or the news - is only gradually trans*folk now, if at all), but fandom spaces will often treat these discussions as if they are widely understood, and as a result can be very regulatory about new participants coming to correct use with no prior knowledge, to the point of being pretty harsh. Am I right about that?

This is also why I'd ask you, "practical" to what end? What are you trying to get done that requires shorthand for gender, and who is benefitting? If it's a conversation about yourself and your life, then yeah, people shouldn't always yell at you for your language when you're trying to articulate crap about your life that is not about gender. A lot of people will understand "man" and "woman", and that's got problems, but a lot of times people are talking from and to frameworks where "man" and "woman" are understood while they try to talk about something else and it's not fair to derail. Fine.

But if it's anything else, I'm thinking, "well, why's it so important to be practical? What is so time sensitive?"

[(Anonymous)]

*(trans*folk certainly aren't new, but a general mainstream - say, Hollywood movies, or the news - is only gradually trans*folk now, if at all) should read (trans*folk certainly aren't new, but a general mainstream - say, Hollywood movies, or the news - is only gradually recognizing and acknowledging trans*folk now, if at all)

[(Anonymous)]

This is everything I wanted to write about, but ended up deleting in frustration, before posting "what's so great about our current fundamental concepts". Thanks for showing me the language to talk about these issues, I really appreciate it (even if transphobic anon has run off heh)

[(Anonymous)]

There's a difference between asking someone to change who they are - which, hell, they can't anyway, even if they have to pretend - just to make you less uncomfortable, and asking you to change your mind about how something works so people who are different can at least feel like they have a place in society. If you think having to feel like society doesn't accept you is some mild discomfort, you've no place to be discussing morality.