[ 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)]

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)