{"items": [{"author": "John", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696691228072", "anchor": "fb-696691228072", "service": "fb", "text": "I really like the concept of Weirdness Budget you mention in http://www.jefftk.com/p/toward-ungendered-language. Its an idea I had been using for a while when talking about why you might want to dress well or otherwise spend effort to come across as 'cool' (in short, it increases your weirdness budget), but I didn't have a name for it. I think its a super useful idea.", "timestamp": "1416339008"}, {"author": "Laura", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696692854812", "anchor": "fb-696692854812", "service": "fb", "text": "Interesting... to go almost totally off-topic, I find the use of the singular with \"they\" to be much weirder than the \"they\" itself. I just can't wrap my head around \"They hurt themself by jumping off the swing.\" (Come to think of it, neither can my Web browser - it took me at least five tries to figure out how to get it to not change it to \"themselves\" (I ended up having to write the word, go back, and change it from the middle. Not that this is the most important part of the conversation, but I'm ridiculously detail-oriented.)", "timestamp": "1416340122"}, {"author": "Laura", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696692944632", "anchor": "fb-696692944632", "service": "fb", "text": "Also, I like your idea of a \"weirdness budget.\" It's so very important to realize that when pushing for a major societal change, you actually have to address people where they are to some degree.", "timestamp": "1416340198"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696694217082", "anchor": "fb-696694217082", "service": "fb", "text": "@Laura: \"I find the use of the singular with 'they' to be much weirder than the 'they' itself\"
I'm not sure I understand what you're finding weird. Are you saying using they for individual people is weird, using \"are\" for individual people is weird, or something else?", "timestamp": "1416341062"}, {"author": "Oliv", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696696083342", "anchor": "fb-696696083342", "service": "fb", "text": "\"Gendered pronouns are a problem. Let's make more!\" -> nicely averted. Gender is boring and I don't get why we're so obsessed with perpetuating the obsession of fitting into groups.", "timestamp": "1416342098"}, {"author": "Laura", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696697061382", "anchor": "fb-696697061382", "service": "fb", "text": "Jeff Kaufman, I\"m saying that using a word that combines the singular and the plural, like \"themself,\" is weird to my ear. I still struggle with using \"they\" to mean a singular person (because to me, using the word to mean an unidentified person is contextually plural, as the person suggests of potential individuals)... but to me, the weird is in the plural/singular combination. I actually find it easier to say \"They are...\" when talking about a person who prefers that pronoun than to say \"they is.\"", "timestamp": "1416342628"}, {"author": "Laura", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696697455592", "anchor": "fb-696697455592", "service": "fb", "text": "In terms of weirdness budget, I think \"They are coming\" is more likely to gather acceptance than \"They is coming\"... if we want to get something into the common vernacular, it's probably wise to acknowledge that the latter makes the speaker sound uneducated.", "timestamp": "1416342886"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696697814872", "anchor": "fb-696697814872", "service": "fb", "text": "@Laura: When \"you\" went through a similar plural to singular+plural transition people needed to get used to \"yourself\" in the singular. It worked out OK and now no one hears anything weird with it.
As for \"they are\" vs \"they is\", it's definitely \"they are\". Just like it's \"you are\" in the singular and not \"you is\".", "timestamp": "1416343069"}, {"author": "Laura", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696697849802", "anchor": "fb-696697849802", "service": "fb", "text": "That said -this contextual grammar stuff is my own head; I will use whatever pronouns people prefer (or none at all, if I can't remember)", "timestamp": "1416343080"}, {"author": "Laura", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696697964572", "anchor": "fb-696697964572", "service": "fb", "text": "I\"ve heard the \"you\" argument before and I don't dispute it... I'm just saying that's how it sounds NOW. I have heard \"they is,\" though, and I'm thinking based on your response that it is an effect of the language transition and will phase out quickly enough.", "timestamp": "1416343157"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696698558382", "anchor": "fb-696698558382", "service": "fb", "text": "@Laura: I agree that almost everyone has some uses of singular they that feel wrong to them, but I've felt myself become more ok with it over time, and I've noticed other people using it more. This seems like a change we can make. And once we've made it it will all sound fine.", "timestamp": "1416343461"}, {"author": "Josh", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696698827842", "anchor": "fb-696698827842", "service": "fb", "text": "I can't figure out where to change my preferred pronoun on Facebook.", "timestamp": "1416343710"}, {"author": "Becky", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696698897702", "anchor": "fb-696698897702", "service": "fb", "text": "Oliver, you're able to find gender boring because (I am guessing - correct me if I'm wrong) people typically treat you as the gender you identify with. That's not everyone's experience.", "timestamp": "1416343771"}, {"author": "Josh", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696699022452", "anchor": "fb-696699022452", "service": "fb", "text": "Ah, I figured it out; You have to select Custom as your gender (and then you can select Male again) in order to get the pronoun preference at all.", "timestamp": "1416343882"}, {"author": "Josh", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696699047402", "anchor": "fb-696699047402", "service": "fb", "text": "So I am apparently now a custom male, as opposed to an off-the-shelf male.", "timestamp": "1416343906"}, {"author": "Oliv", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696699256982", "anchor": "fb-696699256982", "service": "fb", "text": "I think one of the things we strive for as a liberal society is away from people dominating other people and towards a sort of common peace, and ability to interact with people in a basically equal way (until alternate preferences between individuals are established at least). What I think turns me off about people having specific, sometimes esoteric, pronoun desires is that accepting and incorporating the use of such things feels like submission - perhaps more than I think random strangers should be expected of each other. It's like someone demanding that you carry or hold something heavy for them. It's not that you wouldn't if they ask nicely - it's that they make out that you have some obligation to do so, on the basis of it being hard for them to carry, or some such thing. Not saying this outlook is right, but just that it might be informative to know that it's kinda how it looks/feels in my head, and could possibly explain others' behavior too. It's why I like the idea of having no gender pronouns. I don't see genders as groups particularly relevant to the kinds of futures we typically claim to aspire society to - they seem distinct enough from biology and anything else useful - and they seem to cause enough problems of the kinds I dislike - that to me they lose any relevance.", "timestamp": "1416344042"}, {"author": "opted out", "source_link": "#", "anchor": "unknown", "service": "unknown", "text": "this user has requested that their comments not be shown here", "timestamp": "1416344779"}, {"author": "Oliv", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696701247992", "anchor": "fb-696701247992", "service": "fb", "text": "Becky, I think I find it boring because I'm mostly pretty androgynous, although in terms of who I'm attracted to I've bought into liking more \"male\"-grouped traits that I'd have liked; I guess groups in this area are messy and I don't know how my brain parses everything! I kinda wish I weren't though. I kinda wish people made more specific, diverse decisions about how they express themselves, and fewer \"stock\", subliminal/unconscious decisions, like the ones that seem to inform gender grouping and the kind whereby people imitate others' behavior out of little more than tribal instincts.", "timestamp": "1416345614"}, {"author": "Ruthie", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696701587312", "anchor": "fb-696701587312", "service": "fb", "text": "Leah, I think you and I have different preferences, and I don't know how to reconcile them. I'm a cisgendered female, but I have a strong preference against being treated differently from the other-gendered people around me. For example, I work in a male-dominated field, and I know I'm treated differently in some of the same subtle ways you mention because I'm female, and my gender may be a barrier to advancement for me. On the other hand, I've become aware that men often have a harder time making intimate friendships than I do, and then find themselves without people to talk to about the things their going through, and I would definitely wish such friendships on them. I agree with Jeff that using a gender neutral pronoun more of the time would help decrease these differences, if only because we would spend more time not knowing the genders of the people we were talking about, and so we would have to make sure our comments on them apply regardless of gender.", "timestamp": "1416345901"}, {"author": "opted out", "source_link": "#", "anchor": "unknown", "service": "unknown", "text": "this user has requested that their comments not be shown here", "timestamp": "1416345943"}, {"author": "Josh", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696702914652", "anchor": "fb-696702914652", "service": "fb", "text": "Elliot, I see a distinction between saying \"any non-inaccurate inoffensive pronoun is ok with me\", and saying \"any pronoun whatsoever is ok with me\". If someone wanted to describe me as male, manly, masculine, a person, a human, a biped, or a mammal, any of those would be fine with me, even though some of them are a lot more specific (and include ideas about my sex and/or gender) than others. If someone wanted to describe me as female, womanly, feminine, a chair, a chimp, an ameoba, or a bird, I'd object to that, because those convey information about me that is explicitly wrong.
I see Jeff's proposal as being in favor of less specificity in pronouns, and that seems fine to me -- and different than \"any pronoun should be fine for anyone\".", "timestamp": "1416347002"}, {"author": "Ruthie", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696703742992", "anchor": "fb-696703742992", "service": "fb", "text": "Leah: I definitely see the distinction, and in retrospect my examples were bad because nobody here wants those gender differences. However, I still think there are some overlaps between the type of different treatment you want or are ok with, and the types I don't want. For example, like you said, most people are more informal with people who they perceive to have their own gender. I want to have close friendships with men (and people of other genders), and I want to have more casual office friendships. In both cases, this gender barrier hampers me. I'm also pretty annoyed by a lot of the more benign ways that women are treated differently. I'm fine with people holding doors for me, but when a man makes a big deal of holding a door for me, I worry that he'll also treat me differently in ways that matter more.", "timestamp": "1416347682"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696704436602", "anchor": "fb-696704436602", "service": "fb", "text": "@Leah: \"if there's benign social details that you handle differently with men than with women, put me in the 'women' category.\"
I'm not convinced this is a category that should exist. In as much as I have social differences between how I treat men and women I'd like to stop, even if these differences appear benign.
Part of it is I'm not convinced any of them are truly benign.", "timestamp": "1416348194"}, {"author": "opted out", "source_link": "#", "anchor": "unknown", "service": "unknown", "text": "this user has requested that their comments not be shown here", "timestamp": "1416348359"}, {"author": "Ruthie", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696705035402", "anchor": "fb-696705035402", "service": "fb", "text": "Elliot: I don't think I personally will ever be able to treat differently gendered people exactly the same way, but I have some hope that people of future generations will, and I think that making every effort right now, and making fewer gender distinctions in language will help.", "timestamp": "1416348540"}, {"author": "Jan-Willem", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/100580955183019057735", "anchor": "gp-1416349568643", "service": "gp", "text": "Especially after that last post. \u00a0Jeesh.\n
\n
\nAsk me about singular they next time I see you in person. \u00a0Or preferably over lunch.", "timestamp": 1416349568}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696706846772", "anchor": "fb-696706846772", "service": "fb", "text": "@Jennie: \"In my experience, the utility of \"they\" is not as a panacea/replacement for all gendered pronouns, but as a tool to help me not assume gender before someone has shared their preference.\"
I agree with you that this is the role \"they\" mostly plays now, but I can't tell whether you're additionally saying that you think \"they\" as a replacement for all gendered pronouns would be bad.", "timestamp": "1416349869"}, {"author": "David Chudzicki", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696706901662", "anchor": "fb-696706901662", "service": "fb", "text": "Jeff, re \"I'm not convinced this is a category that should exist. In as much as I have social differences between how I treat men and women I'd like to stop, even if these differences appear benign.\"
I'm not quite sure, but it seems plausible that you're trying to eliminate gender as a concept, not just gendered pronouns. If we eliminate all subtle gendered differences in what we expect of people and how we behave toward them, I'm not sure there'd be any content left to concepts like \"man\", \"woman\", etc.
I'm raising the question just to point out that your endeavor may be a lot larger than it seemed, not to make any value judgment on that endeavor.", "timestamp": "1416349904"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696707610242", "anchor": "fb-696707610242", "service": "fb", "text": "@David: \"it seems plausible that you're trying to eliminate gender as a concept, not just gendered pronouns\"
Getting rid of gendered pronouns solves a bunch of problems for different types of people so I'm more strongly in favor of that, but yes, I'm also somewhat skeptical of gender as a concept:
\"If we remove from the concept of being a real man silly ideas like 'eats lots of meat', 'doesn't cook except on a grill', 'can't dance', and 'drives fearlessly and rapidly', and also remove ideas like 'does what needs to be done' and 'supports their family', what is left? I think there might not be anything.\" -- http://www.jefftk.com/p/being-a-real-man", "timestamp": "1416350287"}, {"author": "Oliv", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696708418622", "anchor": "fb-696708418622", "service": "fb", "text": "Elliot, regarding people having esoteric pronoun desires, I guess I object to new ones because 1) new ones take effort and 2) even old ones, while being now trivially easy to follow due to being endemic, I see as clearly irrational and unnecessary. I only learned them cause I wasn't critical enough when being taught them. Like what Jeff says - strip out all the toxic stuff, and what is even the content of masculinity / femininity?", "timestamp": "1416350829"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696708927602", "anchor": "fb-696708927602", "service": "fb", "text": "@Oliver, Elliot: It looks like Oliver is opposing requests like \"please use zie/zim/zer with me\" while Elliot is defending requests like \"please use he/him/his with me\", and you may be talking past each other a bit.", "timestamp": "1416351197"}, {"author": "Becky", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696715254922", "anchor": "fb-696715254922", "service": "fb", "text": "It sounds like a lot of folks on this thread are reasoning as follows:
1. In an ideal world, I would want X to be the case.
2. I will base my opinions and choices on what I believe is most likely to make X the case in the future.
I think this is skipping some critical steps. It's all well and good to talk about how gender might work in a hypothetical future utopia, but as some have pointed out, none of these utopias is likely to come to pass in our lifetimes. And what's happening right now is that people are hurting (experiencing misogyny, transphobia, dysphoria, the effects of toxic masculinity, etc.).
Focusing on this far-future (\"we should just not have gender anymore!\") to the exclusion of tackling more immediate problems (\"how can we avoid supporting and reinforcing harmful elements of the gender roles that *do* exist right now? how can we support and affirm trans* and genderqueer people's identities?\") strikes me as callous as well as impractical, and I don't think a token \"oh, I guess I'll grudgingly call people by their chosen pronouns\" really fixes that.
Personally, I think focusing on these immediate issues will set the stage for longer-term positive changes, but regardless of that, I think it's the more sensible place to put my energy. (And for the record, I think Jeff's decision to endorse \"they\" is a fine and sensible one - it's just that it feels weird to me that so much of the conversation has focused on far-future benefits, while dismissing trans* and genderqueer people's current lived experiences in favor of those theoretical debates.)", "timestamp": "1416354816"}, {"author": "Becky", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696716751922", "anchor": "fb-696716751922", "service": "fb", "text": "And a quick postscript to that: there's an unfortunate kind of irony in saying \"I'm taking X step because it will make life better for everyone, including trans* and genderqueer people!\" and then arguing with a trans* or genderqueer person who chimes in with reasons why the step you're taking might not actually make their life better.", "timestamp": "1416355910"}, {"author": "Oliv", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696717864692", "anchor": "fb-696717864692", "service": "fb", "text": "I guess I just don't see getting rid of gender to be particularly utopian. It takes ages to program but seems relatively easily deprogrammed. I'm saying I'm swaying towards getting rid of he/she asap, the only reasons I'm not doing so more strongly are cultural inertia.", "timestamp": "1416356729"}, {"author": "Plymouth", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696718149122", "anchor": "fb-696718149122", "service": "fb", "text": "In all my years of attempting to understand gender, admittedly from a kindof outsider perspective of someone who doesn't actually HAVE a gender (other than goth, which is kindof a joke), I have not been able to come up with a single trait that all women have in common other than \"Calls themself a woman\" or a single trait that all men have in common other than \"Calls themself a man\". To continue the joke, I haven't actually been able to come up with a single trait that all goths share other than \"Calls themself a goth\" :)", "timestamp": "1416356863"}, {"author": "Becky", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696719815782", "anchor": "fb-696719815782", "service": "fb", "text": "Oliver, \"cultural inertia\" is exactly why it's nigh impossible to deprogram gender from our society. It's a massively powerful force and I see no evidence that it can be overcome in our lifetimes.
Plymouth, I'm not seeing the connection. Gender identity is just that - an identity - and yes, people have such varied gender presentations that there's no one trait that can always define a particular gender. Doesn't change the fact that gender identities exist and are important!", "timestamp": "1416358082"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696719825762", "anchor": "fb-696719825762", "service": "fb", "text": "@Plymouth: Not having a single trait in common among all members of a class is a kind if normal thing, though. Like, take any common word (\"music\") and it's pretty hard to come up with a description that divides everything we want to call music from everything we don't. Definitions are fuzzy, but that doesn't mean categories can't be useful.", "timestamp": "1416358086"}, {"author": "Plymouth", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696720399612", "anchor": "fb-696720399612", "service": "fb", "text": "Connection to what? People have tried to foist a gender identity on me my entire life. And I am like \"ok, what things are associated with that identity that you associate with me? why should I accept that identity? it is clearly VERY important to you that I accept it!\" and then they tell me some traits that they associate with that identity and then I show them people who have that identity that don't have those traits and then we're just kinda... at an impasse. Music is not like gender - we have categories of things that are \"maybe music and maybe not\" and it doesn't cause our society to crumble, but \"maybe woman and maybe not\" doesn't seem to be a category we can handle.", "timestamp": "1416358508"}, {"author": "Plymouth", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696720664082", "anchor": "fb-696720664082", "service": "fb", "text": "The thing I was connecting to in this conversation was Jeff's statement \"I'm also somewhat skeptical of gender as a concept\".", "timestamp": "1416358703"}, {"author": "Julia", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696724117162", "anchor": "fb-696724117162", "service": "fb", "text": "I don't think getting rid of gendered pronouns is necessary. Consider the old Miss/Mrs. dichotomy, which did not feel good to some women and created awkwardness about what to call someone whose marital status was unknown. Enter Ms.\u2014 a third, neutral option which has now become mainstream. And yet it's not a problem that some women still prefer Miss or Mrs. We don't have to get rid of the old ones.", "timestamp": "1416360815"}, {"author": "Becky", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696733992372", "anchor": "fb-696733992372", "service": "fb", "text": "Plymouth, that makes sense. If you don't identify with a gender, having one imposed on you is quite unpleasant, and I think (or hope, anyways) that everyone in this conversation agrees that it's important to work to legitimize non-binary, agender, and genderqueer identities. But gender as a concept is still important (perhaps not to you personally, but to this debate and to society in general), because for people who *do* have a gender, it's quite unpleasant to have a lack of gender imposed on them.", "timestamp": "1416362176"}, {"author": "opted out", "source_link": "#", "anchor": "unknown", "service": "unknown", "text": "this user has requested that their comments not be shown here", "timestamp": "1416364203"}, {"author": "opted out", "source_link": "#", "anchor": "unknown", "service": "unknown", "text": "this user has requested that their comments not be shown here", "timestamp": "1416364855"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696738288762", "anchor": "fb-696738288762", "service": "fb", "text": "Some semi related thoughts on how you could figure out how many people are only cis because that's where society puts them: http://www.jefftk.com/p/cis-by-default", "timestamp": "1416364949"}, {"author": "opted out", "source_link": "#", "anchor": "unknown", "service": "unknown", "text": "this user has requested that their comments not be shown here", "timestamp": "1416365280"}, {"author": "Plymouth", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696739915502", "anchor": "fb-696739915502", "service": "fb", "text": "Elliot - an identity for which neither necessary nor sufficient conditions exist? Now you're just making my head hurt. Now the question is - does my head hurt because I have no gender or do I have no gender because this makes my head hurt? *implodes from contradictions*", "timestamp": "1416366058"}, {"author": "Ruthan", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696745509292", "anchor": "fb-696745509292", "service": "fb", "text": "/me offers Plymouth some ibuprofen", "timestamp": "1416370464"}, {"author": "Todd", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696746387532", "anchor": "fb-696746387532", "service": "fb", "text": "I'm totally fine with getting rid of, or at least decreasing our dependency on, gendered pronouns, but if we're going to do that then we REALLY shouldn't use they. What you were proposing yesterday has plenty of confusion potential, but this is much worse.
I know the counter-argument is you (singular) vs. you (plural). To that I say two things: first, that DOES create ambiguity, and it's annoying. Second, that's why there are so many workarounds (you guys, you all, y'all, etc.).
Would it be so bad to push one of he or she (I don't care which) as the non-gendered third person singular for persons and just dump the other one? That would be completely unambiguous and wouldn't require any adaptation of our intuitions about e.g. verb agreement.", "timestamp": "1416371371"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696748363572", "anchor": "fb-696748363572", "service": "fb", "text": "Can anyone give examples of beneficial or at least benign ways we treat men and women differently?", "timestamp": "1416372891"}, {"author": "opted out", "source_link": "#", "anchor": "unknown", "service": "unknown", "text": "this user has requested that their comments not be shown here", "timestamp": "1416373742"}, {"author": "Plymouth", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696754037202", "anchor": "fb-696754037202", "service": "fb", "text": "I'm sincere that gender makes my head hurt. That's about as much a I know.", "timestamp": "1416374849"}, {"author": "opted out", "source_link": "#", "anchor": "unknown", "service": "unknown", "text": "this user has requested that their comments not be shown here", "timestamp": "1416376716"}, {"author": "Todd", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696768707802", "anchor": "fb-696768707802", "service": "fb", "text": "\"Can anyone give examples of beneficial or at least benign ways we treat men and women differently?\"
Health care", "timestamp": "1416399466"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696770494222", "anchor": "fb-696770494222", "service": "fb", "text": "@Todd: The ways we treat men and women differently in health care are generally about biology, though. So if someone is born XX, raised as a girl, and transitions to being male, his doctor needs to still take his XX biology into account.
I'm looking for beneficial ways we treat men and women differently where that treatment applies just as well to people who transition to that gender.", "timestamp": "1416402176"}, {"author": "Todd", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696777784612", "anchor": "fb-696777784612", "service": "fb", "text": "If you adhere to a strict mind/body duality, then sure, but that's not how biology works. It seems completely reasonable to think that at least some aspects of mind-gender are purely biological in nature, even if we may not know which. As an example, if you're a psychologist, surely you need to take that into account.", "timestamp": "1416408950"}, {"author": "opted out", "source_link": "#", "anchor": "unknown", "service": "unknown", "text": "this user has requested that their comments not be shown here", "timestamp": "1416409701"}, {"author": "Todd", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696780693782", "anchor": "fb-696780693782", "service": "fb", "text": "So as an example, people have different hormones based on their gender genotype. Hormones affect your brain, and your brain governs your behavior. Therefore it is reasonable to infer that there are genetically/biologically-driven differences between male and female behavior. What that means specifically is complicated, but we shouldn't just assume that men and women are functionally equivalent just because it would be simpler from a social justice standpoint if they were. I posit that mental health is an area where such differences are important, just as racial differences are important to certain disease risk factors.", "timestamp": "1416410126"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696781347472", "anchor": "fb-696781347472", "service": "fb", "text": "@Todd: Again your examples are of situations where we might treat people differently on the basis of sex in which trans* people wouldn't be grouped with the gender they identify as. I agree these situations exist, but they're not really related to the question.", "timestamp": "1416410613"}, {"author": "Todd", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696781522122", "anchor": "fb-696781522122", "service": "fb", "text": "It's related because gender is not a completely separate concept from sex-which is part of what I'm trying to illustrate.", "timestamp": "1416410785"}, {"author": "opted out", "source_link": "#", "anchor": "unknown", "service": "unknown", "text": "this user has requested that their comments not be shown here", "timestamp": "1416411215"}, {"author": "opted out", "source_link": "#", "anchor": "unknown", "service": "unknown", "text": "this user has requested that their comments not be shown here", "timestamp": "1416412029"}, {"author": "Todd", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696786262622", "anchor": "fb-696786262622", "service": "fb", "text": "Whether hormones are well understood is beside the point. The point is that we shouldn't act as if gender is entirely social, because it's not. Hormones are just an example of why that's true.", "timestamp": "1416412500"}, {"author": "opted out", "source_link": "#", "anchor": "unknown", "service": "unknown", "text": "this user has requested that their comments not be shown here", "timestamp": "1416413828"}, {"author": "Todd", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696826731522", "anchor": "fb-696826731522", "service": "fb", "text": "Define social gender, then, in a way that can help me distinguish which gender-related characteristics don't count towards an answer.", "timestamp": "1416435271"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696828183612", "anchor": "fb-696828183612", "service": "fb", "text": "@Todd: A working definition of social gender could be \"what a trans person adopts when they transition\".", "timestamp": "1416436193"}, {"author": "opted out", "source_link": "#", "anchor": "unknown", "service": "unknown", "text": "this user has requested that their comments not be shown here", "timestamp": "1416437738"}, {"author": "Karla", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696837934072", "anchor": "fb-696837934072", "service": "fb", "text": "I am going to jump into this thread in addition to Jeff's other gender thread! I have to say I find myself agreeing strongly with Jeff and Plymouth--maybe some other folks as well but their comments stood out to me.
After many years of reading and talking and thinking about it I still am not quite clear on what gender really means. Is it just how I feel inside? Is it how I want people to treat me? Is it the traits I have? Because all but the first one seem hugely problematic to me and I'd rather that we didn't have expectations for people. I'd rather that I could sometimes wear a \"men's\" suit and sometimes a dress, and pride myself both on being \"tough as nails\" and on my compassion, and i can like sports and sparkly things, and none of that is expected or unexpected or grouped together apart from it's what I am like as an individual. And we ALL have \"masculine\" and \"feminine\" characteristics, and it we stopped grouping those traits together or associating them with biological sex, it's hard for me to see why that wouldn't be better!", "timestamp": "1416443071"}, {"author": "Karla", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696839181572", "anchor": "fb-696839181572", "service": "fb", "text": "It seems to me like Leah is saying (please correct me if I'm mischaracterizing!) that for her, being female gendered is something indefinably that she just felt very strongly. I can't necessarily identify with that--I feel far more similarly to what Plymouth describes--but I certainly can't and wouldn't argue with it. But it's not easy for me to understand what gender _is_ from that (not that Leah was intending that, I know she was just describing her experience!). [Also, my read on your other comments, Leah, is that you prefer she/her pronouns, please correct me if I'm wrong there!]", "timestamp": "1416443738"}, {"author": "Todd", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696847519862", "anchor": "fb-696847519862", "service": "fb", "text": "\"the basic point is to distinguish between your actual biological sex characteristics and the fact that basically everyone you interact with classifies you as a man or woman and treats you very differently based on that classification.\"
The problem is, I don't think we can do that very well at present.
\"what a trans person adopts when they transition\"
Obviously I can't speak with any authority on what that involves (which in itself presents problems for it being a definition), but I would imagine that in at least some cases, this is informed by biology, from both sides. The first side being that biology may have influenced the decision to transition, the second side being that biology may have influenced the social norms that, in turn, influence what is adopted.", "timestamp": "1416449283"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696974685022", "anchor": "fb-696974685022", "service": "fb", "text": "@Leah: \"See, and my experience is that after spending three decades removing all those silly ideas from the concept of being a man, something DID still remain \u2014 and it was something that I found myself fundamentally unhappy with. So I transitioned.
If all I wanted to do was eat less meat, cook more (but not on a grill!), dance better, and drive more timidly, I could have saved a lot of money, hassle and emotional pain by just DOING that stuff \u2014 as a guy. The whole reason I've instead declared myself to be female is that that wouldn't have been enough for me.\"
There are two things I want to separate here. One is the way society currently does treat men and women differently. As much as any one of us may want to avoid being treated differently because of our gender, lots of people are still going to have gender-specific ways of interacting with us. I can decide that my conception of gender has nothing to do with eating meat, but if some coworkers are going to mock me as a defective man for eating veg this still has an effect on me. So what you're saying makes complete sense to me: in as much as society has different ways of treating men and women you'd like to be grouped in with women, and yes, we should do that.
The other, though, is whether we *should* have any of these differences in the way we treat men and women. And I haven't been able to think of any that we should keep. None of the ones I can think of are beneficial, and even for the ones that might be benign it's easy to see downsides.
So now imagine a person, Sam, who who has fully succeeded in removing any gender-specific behaviors from the way they treat others. This person has a friend, Pat, who is transitioning. It seems like there aren't any changes Sam should make in the way they interact with Pat. It still makes sense for Pat to transition, of course, because (among other things) the whole world isn't like Sam. But now I'm wondering: is Sam being disrespectful of Pat's wishes in not treating them in a gender-specific way?", "timestamp": "1416577051"}, {"author": "Timo", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696982219922", "anchor": "fb-696982219922", "service": "fb", "text": "It might be useful to add that the \"Custom\" gender only becomes accessible if one has set one's facebook language to \"English (US)\".", "timestamp": "1416583325"}, {"author": "opted out", "source_link": "#", "anchor": "unknown", "service": "unknown", "text": "this user has requested that their comments not be shown here", "timestamp": "1416584588"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696984380592", "anchor": "fb-696984380592", "service": "fb", "text": "@Elliot: idealistic view: that would break search. cynical view: that would break ad targeting.", "timestamp": "1416584939"}, {"author": "opted out", "source_link": "#", "anchor": "unknown", "service": "unknown", "text": "this user has requested that their comments not be shown here", "timestamp": "1416585024"}, {"author": "Vivian", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696986700942", "anchor": "fb-696986700942", "service": "fb", "text": "Write-in pronouns are the challenge there, I think. We're much better at using a pronoun in a way that sounds right, than *listing* all the grammatical forms and exactly when they're used.
Come to think of it, you could have a fill-in-the-blank-example configuration, like a better version of this:
[she/he/they]____ posted on Facebook.
Someone commented on [her/his/their]____ post.
Someone poked [her/him/them]_____.
[Your name] poked [herself/himself/themself/themselves]_____.
The post is [hers/his/theirs]_____.
(Which a lot of people would still get wrong, but it's one step better than nigh everybody getting it wrong. Oh wait it's not good enough because of \"she is\" vs \"they are\". Adding a \"singular verbs\" vs \"plural verbs\", but explained properly, might be good enough to capture English's third person pronouns.)", "timestamp": "1416586892"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696986945452", "anchor": "fb-696986945452", "service": "fb", "text": "@Vivian: write-in pronouns are hard, but write-in gender shouldn't be.", "timestamp": "1416587091"}, {"author": "Vivian", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=696987095152", "anchor": "fb-696987095152", "service": "fb", "text": "I think Facebook doesn't want to ask most people for their pronouns directly because many people will think \"pronouns? what are those?\", so it asks for a gender multiple-choice as a proxy.", "timestamp": "1416587233"}, {"author": "opted out", "source_link": "#", "anchor": "unknown", "service": "unknown", "text": "this user has requested that their comments not be shown here", "timestamp": "1416588099"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=697034215722", "anchor": "fb-697034215722", "service": "fb", "text": "Followup, in which I paraphrase Leah: http://www.jefftk.com/p/gendered-behavior", "timestamp": "1416620199"}, {"author": "Yaron", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=697035922302", "anchor": "fb-697035922302", "service": "fb", "text": "Might be interesting to find out how, if at all, this issue has been dealt with in cultures with gendered languages (most European languages have 2 or 3 genders) - there might be some cues there... Some ideas to borrow or perhaps to frame our thinking. Speaking a gendered language does affect the mindset regarding pronoun use. (Would be particularly interesting to find out about this in the case of cultures with 3-gendered languages, with neuter grammatical forms.)
Of course, the problem with such a comparison would be that language is not the only difference between our culture and a given other culture... There are differences in the extent of gender equality (and identity equality in general) (generally better in US than Europe), differences in the extent to which people express themselves in direct vs. nuanced ways - and conversely, the extent to which people read implicit meanings in the words of others (generally more nuanced/cryptic in US than much of Europe), differences in the extent to which expressing your discomforts is seen as whining - the extent to which you're expected to buck up and shut up (generally more so in Europe).
There are also differences in the way wildcard pronouns are used in casual parlance. Where we use \"the infamous they\" in English, other languages use other structures (or sometimes they use \"they\" structures, depending on context).", "timestamp": "1416621531"}, {"author": "Plymouth", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/696689990552?comment_id=697214704022", "anchor": "fb-697214704022", "service": "fb", "text": "Aaaaand, thanks to this conversation I met Elliot at a talk by Julia Serano last night. Because that's how the Bay Area Social Networking Field operates.", "timestamp": "1416782762"}]}