(Untitled)

[scatterheart]

This is just something I was thinking about while browsing the flist, and I realized that I know about most, but not nearly all of you. So for future reference, please tell me:

Poll

For those who are as "awake" as I am right now: This is about how you want people to refer to you, not about the sound of them or anything. Just in case that wasn't clear

Comments

[keeplistening]

I think I'm confused :/

[scatterheart]

YAY! No, seriously, sorry to confuse you, but I think that's really necessary when it comes to gender.

This is pretty much because I have so many people on my flist, and I don't know how half of them identify - there are transpeople who don't identify as either male or female, people I (for some reason) thought were female but are actually male (or the other way around), people I got to know as female, but who are transitioning... There are so many different permutations of gender, and I don't want to refer to anyone in a way they're not comfortable with.

I need a gender-related icon.

[keeplistening]

Aaah okay! Well, I'm pretty easy to remember, at least. :)

[sinuous_curve]

When it comes to gender, I'm kind of at the point where fucked if I have any idea what I am, but I'm most used to responding to she/her, so that's what I checked, but I really, really like ze/hir, so I checked that as well.

Really, though, I'm very hard to offend. :)

[scatterheart]

I'm kind of at the point where fucked if I have any idea what I am, but I'm most used to responding to she/her
Yeah, I know what you mean. I'm at a point where I really don't identify as female anymore, but since there's no applicable pronoun anyway, I'm way too lazy to try and get others to change the way they refer to me. *kinda fails at genderfuck*

Really, though, I'm very hard to offend. :)
That's good to know! :)

[sinuous_curve]

I'm way too lazy to try and get others to change the way they refer to me.

Exactly. Plus, if you make that announcement to the world, "I'm not a girl," the inevitable next question is, "Well, then what are you?" And I don't really know at this point. Not anything that really has a good pronoun. :) Plus, like you said, I'm just lazy and don't want to spend twenty minutes having a conversation about gender and sexuality with every person I meet. I can roll with female pronouns, at least for the time being.

[scatterheart]

Plus, if you make that announcement to the world, "I'm not a girl," the inevitable next question is, "Well, then what are you?"
Very good point! People don't seem to understand that you don't have to look like or even identify as the "opposite gender" if your identity isn't the same as you biological gender.

Or what I personally get a lot is "*look at boobs* *look at skirt* Yeah, right. *laugh*" I probably shouldn't blame them, but seriously. Just respect a person's identity and trust that I know who I am better than you do, damnit.

I'm just lazy and don't want to spend twenty minutes having a conversation about gender and sexuality with every person I meet.
!!!!!!!

[moondarri]

lol! it's funny to me thinking about it in a "which is your favourite pronoun? :DDDD" kind of way.

but i ticked she, anyhow. *nodnod*

[scatterheart]

It kind of is. :D But seriously, I'm so confused sometimes that I might have interpreted it that way. Uh, had I not posted it. You know.

[8hrs]

Is the ze/hir thing common(ish), then? I only recently ran into it within some LJ wank and somehow figured it was one person's idea. :/ Then again I didn't really end up thinking about it much.

It's cool though (if irrelevant for me personally), because I can see this kind of thing being problematic.

We don't have personal pronouns based on gender in Finnish. Sometimes there are articles etc suggesting we'd move into that system, sometimes I see English (and a bunch of other languages, I know at least German and Scandinavian languages have gender pronouns) text about the Finnish model being good.

[scatterheart]

It seems to be common-ish at least on the internet and a significant bit of writing on gender, but maybe it depends on the circles you move in?

And yeah, it really is problematic, because there's such a chaos with all kinds of gender-neutral pronouns and very little (if any) mainstream-recognition of any of them. But well, those things take time.

We don't have personal pronouns based on gender in Finnish.
That is an ideal situation, in my opinion. Gender should not matter in everyday life, and not having gender-based pronouns sounds like a pretty good step towards it. (How do you determine the gender of a person in writing, not in novels but for example in letters or news reports? Does it just not matter as much, or is there some other way of identification that is used, like referring to "the woman" or "the man" a lot?) Gender is so deeply ingrained in our language (both German and English), it would probably be confusing if gender-based pronouns were suddenly abolished, but I really wish that would happen.

[kaoru_is_here]

I had to look up for that "ze/hir"-thingy because I never read or heard it before. And... no. Seriously. Hell no. Apart from the thing that it reads like orwellian Newspeak, I have to say...

...if words like "he" or "his" are used in a sentence because the sex/gender/otherthings are unknown to the writer, then they are indeed meant in a neutral way. This just is the way the language grew. Not the words are important, it's the context they are used in which matters.

I dunno. Maybe I'm the villain in this case here... but I find it almost as OTT as replacing "man könnte ja..." with "frau könnte ja..." in the German language.

[scatterheart]

*shrugs* I personally am not offended by using gendered pronouns to refer to persons whose gender you don't know, and I'm not going to use those words in German, where they sadly don't fit (the man/frau thing is different, imho, since "man" there does not actually have any male connotations, making the use of "frau" pretty unnecessary). However, as someone who does not feel they fit into either gender, and thus is acutely aware of just how present gender and all prejudices and stereotypes pertaining to it are in everyday life, it bugs me how much meaning just a simple "she" or "he" carries, and what difference it can make in the way you are treated (obviously it's not quite that easy outside of writing, but that's not what I was getting at so much, since this is about adressing people on LJ).

Not the words are important, it's the context they are used in which matters.In general, I agree. However, with traditions that are so deeply ingrained like binary gender, new and maybe "provocative" words are needed just to throw people off,