{"items": [{"author": "Holly", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696625993802", "anchor": "fb-696625993802", "service": "fb", "text": "Super like!", "timestamp": "1416273661"}, {"author": "Ryan", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696626198392", "anchor": "fb-696626198392", "service": "fb", "text": "\"The genderqueer thing\" is, for some people, an essential part of their identity. I'm not sure what you mean by \"exclusive status symbol\" when it often results in discrimination and people devaluing/dismissing their identity (which you, by the way, are doing).", "timestamp": "1416273689"}, {"author": "Ryan", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696627311162", "anchor": "fb-696627311162", "service": "fb", "text": "I like the idea of more people being open to gender-neutral pronouns - particularly since we use them already (eg \"Sam's new friend is going to meet us at the restaurant once they get off work\"). That said, I think it's important to recognize that they are also used specifically as part of a person's gender identity sometimes, similar to the way some people are really attached to \"he\" or \"she.\"", "timestamp": "1416274052"}, {"author": "Becky", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696627555672", "anchor": "fb-696627555672", "service": "fb", "text": "Lila, you seem to be saying that the fact that Jeff is okay with a few different sets of pronouns (\"he\" or \"they\") somehow makes his choice better than that of a genderqueer person who is only comfortable with \"they\" or another neutral pronoun. Jeff's choice isn't \"a better way to frame it\" than having a single set of pronouns, it's just a different choice. We owe everyone the same basic respect of using the pronouns they choose for themselves, whether that's one set or a choice among several.
Of the many genderqueer people I know, none identify as such with the intent of being divisive, or because it's a \"status symbol.\" Rather, it's because they don't feel comfortable with the gender that was assigned to them at birth, and \"genderqueer\" feels like a better fit. In addition, remember that genderqueer isn't a set of behaviors or presentations, it's a gender identity. A woman may dress or act in a feminine, androgynous, or masculine way - if she identifies as a woman, she is a woman.
Also, I find the goal of creating \"gender-neutral culture\" to be a questionable one. Gender is so salient in our current culture that often the result of trying to ignore it, much like \"race-blind\" policies, is to perpetuate existing stereotypes, biases, and inequalities. But even though I'd love for gender discrimination to end, and for a wider range of genders to be regarded as acceptable by mainstream culture, gender is an important part of my identity, and of many other people's identities - I wouldn't want to erase it altogether!", "timestamp": "1416274242"}, {"author": "Perry", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696627605572", "anchor": "fb-696627605572", "service": "fb", "text": "I have seen new words being used as pronouns, like \"ze\" and \"zir\", which I believe are to be used as the new gender neutral pronouns.", "timestamp": "1416274270"}, {"author": "Ben", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696627919942", "anchor": "fb-696627919942", "service": "fb", "text": "I love them Jeffs", "timestamp": "1416274438"}, {"author": "Becky", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696627929922", "anchor": "fb-696627929922", "service": "fb", "text": "Perry, there are many sets of gender neutral pronouns currently in use, including \"ze\" and \"they.\" It's up to each person to decide what set(s) they would like to be used when others refer to them.", "timestamp": "1416274441"}, {"author": "Todd", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696627964852", "anchor": "fb-696627964852", "service": "fb", "text": "I maintain that expanding the definition of \"they\" in this manner is confusing and introduces ambiguity, and I base this not just on conceptual grounds, but on the fact that I was personally confused in a real situation less than 24 hours after having discussed the matter (which is to say, I was confused despite being primed not to be).
I realize it might be harder to make a different/auxiliary word catch on (ze/zir or whatever), but that would be entirely preferable.", "timestamp": "1416274491"}, {"author": "Todd", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696628823132", "anchor": "fb-696628823132", "service": "fb", "text": "Language is indeed ambiguous, but we should not strive to make it more so. The best way to 'deal with it' is to make it more clear.", "timestamp": "1416274939"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696629202372", "anchor": "fb-696629202372", "service": "fb", "text": "@Lila: \"It's probably the dumbest identity I've ever heard of.\"
Please don't trivialize people's experience of gender like that.", "timestamp": "1416275200"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696629641492", "anchor": "fb-696629641492", "service": "fb", "text": "@Lila: \"I entirely intend to devalue and dismiss these awful people.\"
You're really confusing me. That's the kind of comment I would expect to hear you giving about people who habitually committed violent acts or something. Awful people who deserve to be dismissed and devalued??!? You're not normally a jerk...", "timestamp": "1416275362"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696630145482", "anchor": "fb-696630145482", "service": "fb", "text": "@Lila: Do you want to have a conversation about gender and identity or do you just want to be mean?", "timestamp": "1416275610"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696630694382", "anchor": "fb-696630694382", "service": "fb", "text": "@Becky: \"It's up to each person to decide what set(s) they would like to be used when others refer to them.\"
It is, but one thing I really like about more people becoming OK with \"they\" is that it decreases the burden of remembering and using lots of different sets. Pronouns are a basic enough part of our language that they're hard to change, and the easier it is for people to respect people's pronoun choices the more we'll see it.", "timestamp": "1416275943"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696631018732", "anchor": "fb-696631018732", "service": "fb", "text": "@Lila: Disliking people for having an experience of gender that's different from your own is harmful to no benefit. Did a genderqueer person run over your dog or something?", "timestamp": "1416276125"}, {"author": "Karla", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696632840082", "anchor": "fb-696632840082", "service": "fb", "text": "I'm very much in favor of the epicine they (singular they). It's already plenty in use!
I'm all for people identifying as whatever gender(s) they feel are appropriate for them. I do, however, think it's counterproductive (and admittedly, find it kind of annoying) when people have their own unique pronouns, a la \"ou\" \"faeself\" etc. I think that that kiiiind of defeats the point of pronouns, which is to be a standin for someone who is contextually salient. Can we just converge on a single gender neutral pronoun, whether it's \"they\" or \"phe\" or \"zie\" or whatever?
Pronouns are a closed grammatical class, and it's really difficult cognitively for people to add to it. By insisting on a unique one for yourself, you increase the cognitive burden on people interacting with you, and then they are less likely to use it. Hence my preference for a single gender-neutral term (and I like \"they\" because it's already in that closed class and it's just a matter of slight semantic expansion).
For the record, though it loses a bit of information content, I'd be quite fine with/probably prefer it if we ditched gendered pronouns altogether, and we were all \"they\" or \"zie\" or what-have-you.
My honest apologies if I've offended anyone with this. If there's a reason that you feel it's important for genderqueer people to choose unique pronouns, I'd be very interested in hearing it.", "timestamp": "1416277303"}, {"author": "Becky", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696633748262", "anchor": "fb-696633748262", "service": "fb", "text": "Karla, the cognitive burden to me of trying to use an unfamiliar pronoun is miniscule, compared to the immense cognitive/emotional burden of living with dysphoria and having one's gender invalidated on a daily basis. It's not my decision whether having an unusual pronoun is \"important\" to a particular person, and I would never claim to be able to make that decision for anyone else. So I respect what people tell me about what pronouns they want used for them.", "timestamp": "1416277716"}, {"author": "Karla", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696634322112", "anchor": "fb-696634322112", "service": "fb", "text": "Becky--I completely agree with your first point. I was using \"cognitive burden\" as a term-of-art that's fairly standard in cognitive science, not to imply that it was a true hardship. You're totally right that that's not clear and it comes off poorly. So to rephrase: The less natural it feels to people, and the more they have to put forth even a miniscule amount of extra cognitive energy, the less they are going to want to do something (i.e. expand their repertoire of pronouns).
I ask people their preferred pronouns. I do my absolute best to use those pronouns. But I genuinely don't understand the idea of a pronoun that is unique to a single person, and I'm trying to understand why that is important.", "timestamp": "1416278151"}, {"author": "Gianna", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696635105542", "anchor": "fb-696635105542", "service": "fb", "text": "Curious: Why would \"they\" or another gender-neutral, but not super-specific-to-an-individual, pronoun not accomplish the goal of minimizing or eliminating the dyphoria that Becky mentions directly above? To Karla's point, pronouns are sort of supposed to be a generic stand-in for someone who's already been established in context. It seems like if every individual suddenly decides to ask every other individual they interact with to remember a very unique pronoun to use to refer to them, that's basically the equivalent of another specific name for that person. Expanded to everyone, it means you don't have pronouns anymore, you just have another name. If we move towards a world in which it becomes the default to widely diversify pronoun use, I'd at least hope that we'll all cut each other some slack when we inevitably mess up. (FWIW, I am a huge fan of \"they\" in ambiguous, neutral, and singular situations, and I know a handful of people who prefer either a gender-neutral pronoun or the \"opposite\" pronoun than the one they were assigned at birth...but I don't actively know anyone who prefers something extremely unique for their pronoun, so maybe I'm missing something).", "timestamp": "1416278628"}, {"author": "Becky", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696635389972", "anchor": "fb-696635389972", "service": "fb", "text": "Karla and Gianna, for me, the bottom line is that I don't need to understand why it's important in order to respect it (and I do mean truly respect it, not do it and then be grumpy about how hard it is - see \"miniscule effort\" above). No one owes me any kind of explanation or justification for how they identify or how they would like to be called.", "timestamp": "1416278817"}, {"author": "Steven", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696635734282", "anchor": "fb-696635734282", "service": "fb", "text": "I don't usually chime in on these, and it really may not be worth it, but I'm a bit miffed by Lila. People do not experience things so black and white as her polarized view suggests she is. Let's say for example that I am a man and that I use her \"attention whore\" argument against women's rights. Would she agree with me then? I doubt that she would as she has most likely experienced something similar to the problems women are popularly faced with today.
In that hypothetical, where I am disregarding all women's social issues as a call for attention, I would be claiming that not one of these people are validated for their personal experience of a problem which I cannot possibly experience myself. If I, the male, do not want to hear it I may ignore it. But that does not make their experience of the problem go away, because perhaps I am the root of it.", "timestamp": "1416279032"}, {"author": "David Chudzicki", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696635819112", "anchor": "fb-696635819112", "service": "fb", "text": "I also don't want to learn a new distinct pronoun for every individual, and normalizing \"they\" as a singular pronoun is progress (thanks Jeff!). However, more than one person has told me they find \"they\" dehumanizing when used for them as a specific person, due to the fact that most of its use as a singular pronoun is in a generic sort of way. So asking for another pronoun (\"ze\") is the one I've heard most seems pretty reasonable.", "timestamp": "1416279095"}, {"author": "David Chudzicki", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696635918912", "anchor": "fb-696635918912", "service": "fb", "text": "(of course, when we use \"they\" for Jeff, they're helping solve that particular problem with \"they\" by having it used for a specific person more often)", "timestamp": "1416279205"}, {"author": "Karla", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696636003742", "anchor": "fb-696636003742", "service": "fb", "text": "Becky, I'm glad that that's enough for you! Genuinely.
It's not enough for a lot of people though--people who are/try to be/want to be allies. People who are progressive, feminist/womanist, queer or queer-friendly--who have outright told me they find that *particular* issue of individual pronouns to make them feel things they don't want to feel--less than understanding--about the genderqueer community. For that reason, and because I always want to know more/know why/understand things, particularly social practices, I would really be interested in knowing why.", "timestamp": "1416279246"}, {"author": "Steven", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696637296152", "anchor": "fb-696637296152", "service": "fb", "text": "Lila Rieber: I think someday you'll grow to see that in every group or movement there is a person who is there for materialistic reasons. It does not mean there isn't good behind it or potential societal improvements to be made. Maybe to see that you'll also need to see that we come into this world in wildly different ways with no control over our own environments, and so some of us are looking to improve things for everyone instead of being happy with the way things are for ourselves.", "timestamp": "1416280247"}, {"author": "Dave", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696637346052", "anchor": "fb-696637346052", "service": "fb", "text": "Jeff, I thought about doing basically what you've done now, and telling people they can call me \"they\" or whatever pronoun they'd like to call me. I didn't, though, because I thought that it might trivialize the lived experiences of people who truly suffer dysphoria from constantly being misgendered for somebody who both identifies and very clearly presents as male to make that choice. It's very easy to say \"call me whatever you want\" when you know that 99% of the time, whatever they want happens to be what comports most closely with your gender identity, and it's easy to not mind being called other pronouns when there's no chance of it causing any dysphoria. I'm also not ok with choosing one particular non-gendered pronoun to allow (like you've done with \"they\"), because it's not my place to choose which of the pronouns genderqueer people use that I want to privilege. I agree with you that there are good reasons for using \"they,\" and I'm also glad that it's catching on, at least to some extent. But every person I've known who has ever chose a pronoun set other than he or she has had a good reason for doing so, and I don't think it's my place to say that \"they\" is the one I want to try to support above any others. That said, maybe I'm wrong, and I'm glad that there are people like you who think about these things and are willing to act to help aid acceptance.", "timestamp": "1416280273"}, {"author": "Margaret", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696637660422", "anchor": "fb-696637660422", "service": "fb", "text": "Lila: \"No one cares about their gender except them.\" Considering the numbers of hate crimes targeting trans* and gender-non-conforming folks, I'm not sure that's actually true.", "timestamp": "1416280407"}, {"author": "Lucas", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696637904932", "anchor": "fb-696637904932", "service": "fb", "text": "What about girls being bullied for being 'tomboys'? I know that happened when I was growing up.", "timestamp": "1416280598"}, {"author": "Margaret", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696638094552", "anchor": "fb-696638094552", "service": "fb", "text": "Actually, you're trivializing an important issue.", "timestamp": "1416280709"}, {"author": "Peter", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696639935862", "anchor": "fb-696639935862", "service": "fb", "text": "It's interesting that people rarely consider using \"it\" as a gender neutral pronoun. In English \"it\" has this strong connotation of \"not a person\" or \"not a living thing\", but the equivalent word in languages closely related to English does not. \"Es\" is the correct pronoun (nominative case) for a girl (not a woman) in German.", "timestamp": "1416282061"}, {"author": "Becky", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696643289142", "anchor": "fb-696643289142", "service": "fb", "text": "Personally, I don't think any of us is really trying to have a conversation with Lila anymore (I'm certainly not!). We know she's a troll looking to get kicks from being cruel and spewing bigoted hate speech. But voicing our own points of view still has value in that others who *are* looking to have a conversation or to learn something may read and benefit.", "timestamp": "1416284082"}, {"author": "Barbara", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696644846022", "anchor": "fb-696644846022", "service": "fb", "text": "People who speak out against trolls don't (or shouldn't) do it because they actually believe it will teach the troll some manners. They do it so that everybody else reading and being harmed by the trolling will see one more voice of support for them instead of overwhelming silence.", "timestamp": "1416285114"}, {"author": "Fred", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696646148412", "anchor": "fb-696646148412", "service": "fb", "text": "As someone who really wants to \"get it\", I care about this and am trying to grow and understand, really understand. I think being a monster or being mean could in fact hurt people who have no ill will toward you, but who may have felt real pain about identity. Identity is so basic. Someone in my family is a they. I love them very much. Most of the monsters I have known needed some love and understanding too. That's why I will engage here. Not to diminish or harm, but to to grow and to be loving. Let's not be mean. Ok?", "timestamp": "1416285918"}, {"author": "Ruthan", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696647041622", "anchor": "fb-696647041622", "service": "fb", "text": "Nothing to add, just wanted to publicly demonstrate my own righteousness by being mean. Or something. Off to take some candy from a baby.", "timestamp": "1416286458"}, {"author": "Harris", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696649706282", "anchor": "fb-696649706282", "service": "fb", "text": "I just wanna back up what Dave said. I've definitely been told by some gender non-conforming and trans people that they feel like their identity is being trivialized when cisgender people use gender neutral pronouns or say they don't care about their pronouns, which I totally get. It's a privilege to be able to not worry about how others interpret your gender.
At the same time I've also talked to trans people who really like being able to call other people by gender neutral pronouns, especially when gender isn't relevant to the conversation. So I still often say that I'm \"okay with he/him/his or any pronouns\" and just try to hold that paradox together as well as I can. I try to be clear that I'm sensitive to the complexity involved.
Lila: It costs you so little to respect another human's wishes about how you identify them and yet it means so much to them. I hope you truly believe that you have a good and noble reason for denying that respect that is worth hurting people in your wake. It's not nice to think that you really just want to hurt them.", "timestamp": "1416288593"}, {"author": "Harris", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696651303082", "anchor": "fb-696651303082", "service": "fb", "text": "Lila: Sometimes interacting ethically with other people requires making the firm belief that you are 100% correct about everything secondary to not being a dick. Like, I'm an atheist, but I don't run into conversations about religion yelling, \"GOD IS FAKE UR A DUMMY,\" y'know? Because that doesn't accomplish anything productive. It just hurts a lot of people. (And, honestly, it has often been the case with me that when I was open to listening to what other people said caused them pain that I realized I was never 100% correct to begin with.)", "timestamp": "1416289829"}, {"author": "Elizabeth", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696655095482", "anchor": "fb-696655095482", "service": "fb", "text": "@Jeff we only met once at Oberlin but I kept you friended because I've valued the content you produce and the quality of your conversation. I'm honestly astonished you've let Lila continue to post on your wall given her abuse of the lgbt community.", "timestamp": "1416294595"}, {"author": "Plymouth", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696656168332", "anchor": "fb-696656168332", "service": "fb", "text": "Speaking as a genderqueer person whose favorite pronoun is \"they\" - thank you. I don't know you but apparently you're a friend-of-a-friend and this showed up in my feed. I waited 19 years to ask for gender-neutral pronouns because I was waiting on the gender-variant community to decide on a set and I got tired of waiting so after some half a dozen of my friends asked for \"they\" I figured it was close enough to a consensus to feel comfortable asking for it myself. And since then I've been asking my friends (including cis-gendered friends) if they'd be ok with me using \"they\" for them too and for every person who says \"yes\" I add one more to the column of people I can relax and feel safe around. Not that the other people are UNsafe, just a little bit further outside my comfort zone. As far as I'm concerned 3 sets of pronouns is already 2 more than I should be expected to remember. I do know some folks who prefer \"zie\" and I try to remember but I suck at it. And the people who prefer things beyond \"he, she, they, zie\" I just plain avoid. I can't deal with it.", "timestamp": "1416296450"}, {"author": "Plymouth", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696656313042", "anchor": "fb-696656313042", "service": "fb", "text": "To Lila the troll-wanker if you're still listening: being genderqueer isn't the most interesting thing about me. Honestly, I wish it was the least interesting thing about me. I wish is was so commonplace as to be completely unremarkable. I wish it was common enough that gender-neutral bathrooms were everywhere and I didn't stress everyday about where I was going to take a piss. I wish it was common enough that I felt comfortable asking for gender-neutral pronouns and forms of address at work without fearing that that would put my performance under a microscope and have my boss searching for a reason to fire me because they decided I was a freak. Things that are more interesting about me than being genderqueer include being: a goth, an artist, a curler, an engineer, a bike commuter, of Latvian descent...", "timestamp": "1416297043"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696661622402", "anchor": "fb-696661622402", "service": "fb", "text": "@Elizabeth: \"I'm honestly astonished you've let Lila continue to post on your wall given her abuse of the lgbt community.\"
I went to bed early and just woke up. Please don't take my silence after ~9pm to indicate I thought her continued posting was OK. (Looking back, though, there's enough from before I went to bed that I should have banned her then. I've just never had to do that before here and really wasn't expecting to need to.)", "timestamp": "1416311676"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696661737172", "anchor": "fb-696661737172", "service": "fb", "text": "@Lila: I've deleted some of your posts, and will delete any new ones that don't contribute to making the world a better place.
@Everyone: I'm sorry. I'm planning to leave the other posts up so the responses to them will still make sense.", "timestamp": "1416311852"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696662211222", "anchor": "fb-696662211222", "service": "fb", "text": "@Dave: \"I thought about doing basically what you've done now, and telling people they can call me \"they\" or whatever pronoun they'd like to call me. I didn't, though, because I thought that it might trivialize the lived experiences of people who truly suffer dysphoria from constantly being misgendered for somebody who both identifies and very clearly presents as male to make that choice. It's very easy to say \"call me whatever you want\" when you know that 99% of the time, whatever they want happens to be what comports most closely with your gender identity, and it's easy to not mind being called other pronouns when there's no chance of it causing any dysphoria.\"
That's why we should push English toward a single pronoun for everyone. Then no one will feel dysphoric when hearing it used for them because it will have no gender implications a all.
\"I'm also not ok with choosing one particular non-gendered pronoun to allow (like you've done with \"they\"), because it's not my place to choose which of the pronouns genderqueer people use that I want to privilege.\"
I have an explicit goal here of getting gender out of language. I think this is a change that would be much more good than bad, both for trans* people and society at large. Helping push the likely winner forward works toward this goal in a way \"I'm OK with any pronouns\" does not.
\"every person I've known who has ever chose a pronoun set other than he or she has had a good reason for doing so, and I don't think it's my place to say that \"they\" is the one I want to try to support above any others.\"
In our current society we need to let people choose their pronouns, but pronoun choice is something that we can ideally someday abandon. Once we're using \"they\" for everyone and it has no meaning or connotation other than \"the third person pronoun\" there won't be a need for other pronouns anymore.", "timestamp": "1416312801"}, {"author": "Karla", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696674321952", "anchor": "fb-696674321952", "service": "fb", "text": "I remain curious about why individual pronouns are important for some people, but I think the thread got kind of derailed by Lila. (Just to be clear: as an ally I will try to use whatever terms people prefer. As a linguist, though, I am really skeptical of that catching on, and want to hear why it's a necessary thing.)", "timestamp": "1416325662"}, {"author": "Karla", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696674506582", "anchor": "fb-696674506582", "service": "fb", "text": "Also also, to be clear: No one *owes* me any explanation of their gender identity or preferences around that. I realize that receiving demands to explain yourself all the time is a micro- (or macro-) aggression that genderqueer folks deal with a lot. I am asking from a place of good will and with a desire to feel like I can helpfully explain/defend gender variance to others. And yes, to resolve my own internal discomfort with that. That discomfort is my own problem, but I hope someone will be generous enough to help me understand.", "timestamp": "1416325840"}, {"author": "Becky", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696676572442", "anchor": "fb-696676572442", "service": "fb", "text": "Karla, I understand that desire, but I think there are ways to explain and defend gender variance that focus on cultivating respect rather than on reasons for the choices people make. By saying that you \"want to hear why it's a necessary thing,\" it sounds like you (or the people you're trying to convince) plan to listen to the reasons and then decide whether they are \"good enough.\" As an ally to genderqueer folks, it's not my place or yours to pass those kinds of judgments.", "timestamp": "1416327485"}, {"author": "Plymouth", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696680155262", "anchor": "fb-696680155262", "service": "fb", "text": "BTW, Jeff, if you want facebook to call you \"they\" you can select a custom gender in your profile and then it will let you select pronouns. You can still have your gender be \"male\" as your custom option.", "timestamp": "1416330487"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696684162232", "anchor": "fb-696684162232", "service": "fb", "text": "@Plymouth: Done! Thanks!", "timestamp": "1416334033"}, {"author": "Karla", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696684311932", "anchor": "fb-696684311932", "service": "fb", "text": "Becky,
I get what you're saying--I really do. It is an imposition and it is a judgement when I say \"why do you need this thing?\" I don't know how to express with any more humility than I already have that it's MY problem. It bothers me to do things when I don't understand the reason. And as I said earlier, I know a lot of otherwise sympathetic people who bristle at this. So I am asking, with as much apology and acknowledgement of the presumptuousness of it as possible. You've made it clear that it doesn't matter to you, and that's admirable, but I can't claim the same.", "timestamp": "1416334126"}, {"author": "Emily", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696684820912", "anchor": "fb-696684820912", "service": "fb", "text": "Peter: you bring up a really interesting point about how some languages use the pronoun for \"it\" to describe words that to us describe people/gender. Many of these, though, in my experience, are left over from a time where (most male) people considered female people as property. All of the words in German like this using the neutral pronoun refer to ones we would gender to use female pronouns in English. none of those generally considered male use the neutral in German, they all use the male.
In German it's true that the word for girl uses the neutral pronoun. This is partly because the structure of the word contains a diminutive at the end (-chen), and words ending in this diminutive (and others like -lein) always take the neutral pronoun. same as Fr\u00e4ulein, the old-fashioned word for Miss (which, btw, is super insulting to say to someone in modern Germany, for those not familiar).
So while the word for girl is \"das\"/es, in practice when speaking about a girl, most Germans will say \"sie\", which is \"she\". They'll refer to the word \"girl\" as \"das\" (neutral pronoun) because that's jut how the language works, but to the person, or the informal pronoun in the feminine.
I've not met any Germans who have indicated to me they identify as genderqueer, so I'm not exactly sure what they do in the language, since German is a much more rigid language than English. I do know though, that referring to a person as \"es\"/\"it\" is most of the time considered just as insulting as it is in English.", "timestamp": "1416334689"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696691502522", "anchor": "fb-696691502522", "service": "fb", "text": "Followup: http://www.jefftk.com/p/pushing-they", "timestamp": "1416339234"}, {"author": "Plymouth", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696711781882", "anchor": "fb-696711781882", "service": "fb", "text": "Karla - I feel like your question deserves and answer and since no one else is stepping up I figured I would try. As previously mentioned, I'm actually really against everyone having custom pronouns so it's difficult for me to be entirely fair to the arguments in favor, but I'll try to the best of my understanding.
I think it comes down to two things: 1) having objections to many of the various options that are often similar to the objections of the cis-gendered or binary-gendered communities and 2) needing something to feel special and comforting in a world that generally denies one exists. The first part is pretty easy for me to understand: I have some understanding of the arguments as to why \"they\" is confusing because people think it's plural, \"zie\" is kinda awkward to pronounce, \"ey\" sounds too much like \"he\", etc. So someone thought through all those things and decided that, for example \"per\" was the best option that avoided all of those problems. The second part is a little harder for me and mostly makes me feel like people haven't entirely thought through the implications of rolling out a custom-pronoun system language-wide. But if someone feels like they're not just some generic non-gendered person but are in fact a fairy-gendered person they may ask people to use \"fae\" pronouns to make them feel recognized for that. They feel like having just \"they\" or \"zie\" used is ungendering or misgendering them because they DO have an actual gender, it's just not one of the binary ones most folks recognize.", "timestamp": "1416352766"}, {"author": "Rosemary", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696739122092", "anchor": "fb-696739122092", "service": "fb", "text": "@plymouth, thank you! That was helpful to me, too. I always use any pronouns a person wants but I've often been confused because it seems as if having a totally unique pronoun defeats the grammatical purpose of using pronouns at all. But your explanation helped!", "timestamp": "1416365550"}, {"author": "Rosemary", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696739536262", "anchor": "fb-696739536262", "service": "fb", "text": "I actually read the whole thread, past all of Lila's hideousness, just to get an answer to that question! So thanks again!", "timestamp": "1416365765"}, {"author": "Daniel", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696755199872", "anchor": "fb-696755199872", "service": "fb", "text": "I second thanks for Plymouth's explanation. I have a much better understanding of your first point than the second. Are you suggesting that genderqueer people as a group \"need something to feel special and comforting in a world that generally denies [they] exist\", or that individuals each need DIFFERENT special and comforting things specific to them? If the first, then it seems much more relevant to why we need a genderqueer/gender-neutral pronoun, than to why we need so many genderqueer/gender-neutral pronouns.
I try my best to get everyone's pronouns correct. I do find it difficult, though, just to remember. Not to remember which pronoun does this genderqueer person use, or that one, but just to remember that it's different from my automated pronoun usage that fits most people. It's so automatic that I often find myself saying the automatic one, and then correcting, rather than just having the right one come out at first. It's particularly challenging when referring to people I knew previous to the transition. But, it should get easier with time.
I do think the ideal long-term situation would be for us all to settle on one gender-neutral pronoun. We have so many different pronouns because no one is perfect, and people prefer one over another for any number of different reasons. However, I think most of those preferences within the category of gender-neutral-pronouns pale in comparison to the preference for a gender neutral pronoun rather than a masculine or feminine one. (If I'm wrong here, someone please correct me. I don't mean to offend.)
And, I think that the disagreement over which gender-neutral pronoun is best is an obstacle to the broader community, especially those with only tepid support/understanding, in adopting a gender-neutral pronoun into normal usage. I.e. it's a lot easier to adjust people's thinking from 2 pronoun categories for people to 3, rather than from 2 to 25 categories. Or even 4 categories: male, female, genderqueer/non-traditional-but-still-gendered, gender-neutral/agender.
I don't know which option is best for the gender neutral pronoun, and as a cisgendered person I don't have much at stake and shouldn't be deciding. But I think that the ultimate longer-term arch of genderqueer people choosing their own pronouns might be coalescing around one genderqueer pronoun that fits both the community and the individuals that form it. I think 'they' is the most likely one we'd end up with, simply because it has the most traction already, and requires the least change.", "timestamp": "1416375774"}, {"author": "Plymouth", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696759830592", "anchor": "fb-696759830592", "service": "fb", "text": "Daniel - I'm not trying to suggest anything - I'm trying really hard to put myself into the mindset of a group of people I disagree with strongly and present their feelings on the topic as neutrally as I can. If you see a flaw in my explanation I can't really tell you if it's because I've presented the position badly or that it is inherently flawed, though I tend towards believing the latter. I AM a genderqueer person who would like very much for my community to agree on a single set of pronouns that everyone can use. Sadly, no one has yet to declare me Arbiter of All Things Non-Binary Gender, so I don't get to make any such proclamations :(", "timestamp": "1416381571"}, {"author": "Daniel", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696775499192", "anchor": "fb-696775499192", "service": "fb", "text": "Hah, fair. I was hoping you would have insight into the argument, since you were able to present it on some level, but maybe I'll just have to look into it elsewhere.", "timestamp": "1416407462"}, {"author": "John", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696789131872", "anchor": "fb-696789131872", "service": "fb", "text": "This is what Lavender Country and Folk Dancers (we run gender-free dance camps and promote gender-free dancing) has on our web site:
http://lcfd.org/trans-ally-101.html", "timestamp": "1416414904"}, {"author": "John", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696817040942", "anchor": "fb-696817040942", "service": "fb", "text": "To put the \"singular they\" issue in some sort of perspective, we might note that it is documented in some of the earliest writings that are considered \"English\". It's function is primarily as an indeterminate pronoun, for one or more people of indeterminate or unimportant gender. The modern use to avoid specifying the gender of a known person is historically somewhat rare, but is also documented centuries back. The real problem is that people have a need for a pronoun with such vague meaning, and they/their/them is the natural candidate, so people have always used it that way. The same thing happened with our 2nd-person pronouns, to the point that most native English speakers rarely know the difference between \"thee\" and \"thou\", and use them incorrectly when they're trying to sound old-fashioned. There's no real sign that the same might happen with our 3rd-person-singular pronouns, but if it happened to the 2nd-person pronouns, it might happen over the next few centuries to the 3rd person, too.", "timestamp": "1416428096"}, {"author": "Karla", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696825563862", "anchor": "fb-696825563862", "service": "fb", "text": "Plymouth, thanks so much for taking the time to answer! I appreciate the insight and recognize it's not the position you hold. The first point you raise makes a lot of sense to me--everyone is trying to optimize and sometimes people come to different conclusions.", "timestamp": "1416434538"}, {"author": "Karla", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696827649682", "anchor": "fb-696827649682", "service": "fb", "text": "However, like Daniel and yourself, I am left a bit confused by the second explanation.
I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that of the \"standard\" gender-neutral pronouns (they, zie, per (a new one to me!), etc.) there's no direct correlation with particular non-conventional gender identities--like, it's not the case that zie is for genderfuid people, they is for bigender people, etc.
What I've seen (online) in terms of particularly individualized pronouns are, like you said, ones like \"fae, faer, faeself\" (which I actually like from a linguistic perspective--clearly differentiable and sound pretty!). So from your example, someone who uses \"fae\" pronouns feels that they are fairy-gendered. And I think that's where I get lost. I can easily intellectually grasp the genders that have traditional genders as their building blocks--e.g. \"I am sometimes male and sometimes female\", \"I am neither male nor female\", \"I am both male and female\", \"I am somewhere between male and female,\" etc. And I'm quite comfortable with the idea of a particular culturally-consistent \"third gender\" being in the mix.
But I really don't understand what it means to be fairy-gendered. How does that feel/manifest for that person? More to the point, what makes that a *gender* identity rather than some other form of identity? I don't know if anyone in this thread understands or wants to take a stab at explaining...", "timestamp": "1416435770"}, {"author": "Plymouth", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696832395172", "anchor": "fb-696832395172", "service": "fb", "text": "Karla - Yeah, to my understanding most of the common gender-neutral pronouns are not associated with any specific identity. And in my experience a large chunk of people who have chosen a specific pronoun as a favorite are OK with other options (they'll be like \"my pronouns are zie/zir but they/them is OK too\"). Why some people are super-picky that only a certain one is used I'm not really sure - maybe just once they've started to think of themself in certain terms other words feel weird and jarring. I know that for me hearing someone call me \"zie\" does feel strange and makes me do a double-take, but, whatever, if they're more used to using \"zie\" instead of \"they\" it doesn't actually bother me - I can do my double-take and then move on. \"Per\" is just short for \"person\" so that's where that came from.
As to the people with really specific genders, unfortunately, that's not something I can shed a lot of light on. I barely even understand what it means to feel male or female gendered!", "timestamp": "1416438779"}, {"author": "BDan", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696619556702?comment_id=696832534892", "anchor": "fb-696832534892", "service": "fb", "text": "Karla: Maybe it's like noun classes in things like Bantu languages? That's less common than grammatical gender, but it's really the same concept, just extended. A class like that probably seems just as essential to an object if you're a native speaker of a language that has them as a gender does in a language with grammatical gender. This is just speculation, of course...", "timestamp": "1416438931"}]}