In French, at least, that wouldn’t solve your gender-identification problem, as you’d still have to have some basis for making the call to address an individual as citoyen versus citoyenne.
Gotta say, I find it curious that no nongendered set of words to cover the third person animate singular, that is catchy, pleasing to the ear and a majority of people can embrace, has yet come up. We have neologisms out the wazoo but that particular void somehow fails to fill organically.
The religious denomination Society of Friends (Quakers) has been using “friend” as a generic genderless form of address for some time now, AFAICT. It may not be coincidental that American Quakerism was strongly influenced in the late 18th century by a voluntarily androgynous/nonbinary/transgender leader called the “Public Universal Friend”, born Jemima Wilkinson.
Incomplete, ISTM, unless that can used as a direct-referent pronoun: “You hear about Jesse? Friend’s granduncle just left friend ten million dollars!”
True, but singular “they” seems to be working out pretty well in that capacity.
AS shown above, I use E/es/em/emself.
And you’re the only one who does that, which exactly proves his point.
You can be proud of your partner/spouse for being brave enough to live as their true self and supportive of them and queer individuals, without needing to commit yourself to remain in a relationship with them. Sure, we don’t know their private relationship details, but there seems to be some sort of assumption here that someone is owed a relationship and entitled and that the spouse is obligated to remain. And that only a “trans phobic” spouse would leave the relationship if they want to be married to the gender they want to be married to. Seems very abusive to me.
I’m just going to start referring to everyone as “Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla”.
…yep.
Nope. None of that is happening at all. Not in this thread. Not by me.
With all due respect, and I mean this in the nicest of possible ways: what the fuck is this shit? Why are you saying this to me? When have I ever implied anything like this?
This fantasy scenario you’ve managed to invent would probably be very abusive. But it bears no relation to anything I’ve actually said.
No, singular they/their is terrible. Nails on a chalkboard every time.
Just seems alot of trouble and run around to just admit to being straight even though its opposite.
Again, its algebra. Negative times a negative is a positive. So if you are born a woman, come out as gay (attracted to other women), then later decide to transition to becoming a man, then you have become a straight man.
Do you understand that sexual orientation and gender identity are separate things? The gender you are attracted to may have nothing to do with whether you identify as trans or not.
This is a nice analogy for describing how to deal with someone you love “transitioning”, but everybody ages over time. That’s what time is. Not everybody transitions over time - very few do. And this is where the policy of massively updating entries and records in Wikipedia, IMDB, etc., feels like it’s erasing history (it literally is, after all).
Saying “Elliot Page” won plaudits for starring in “Juno” in 2007 (much less an Academy Award nomination for “Best Actress” that year) feels wrong to me, because the person as they existed then was “Ellen Page”. Yes, Ellen Page decided to transition to Elliot as of a certain point in time, and no doubt had it in mind for quite a while before coming out publicly with it. But should that retroactively make everything “Ellen Page” ever did or was something “Elliot Page” did?
Consensus seems to be “yes” right now, and I would say that’s the wrong call.
For example, I would say, “Bruce Jenner becoming Caitlyn Jenner didn’t take away the Olympic medals they won.” Here, I would feel it’s appropriate to use the word “they” as a non-binary or non-specific gender term, because I’m talking about something from before a M->F transition (an “M” event) in the present tense (an “F” context).
I would refer to “Caitlyn’s/her Olympic medal display” in her house (I assume there is one). Because that’s the present tense “F” context alone, and she’s a woman now.
But I feel it’s absurd to refer to medals that “she” or “Caitlyn” won those medals, if I were writing or talking about the 1976 Olympics. Because one can see that it was a man named Bruce Jenner on the podium, doing interviews, going on Wheaties boxes, etc., in archived footage or memorabilia.
But that is the Policy of Acceptance right now. If you go to the Wikipedia entry for the 1976 Olympics, there is mention of how “Caitlyn Jenner (born William Bruce Jenner) won the gold medal for decathlon, setting a world record of 8,634 points.”
No, it should be “Bruce Jenner (now Caitlyn Jenner) won the gold medal decathlon”.
If this feels like grammatical pedantry, well, first of all this is the SDMB so what’s your point?; but second of all, consider what it feels like for a trans person’s family, their parents. 18+ years of thinking you had a daughter, and now they’re transitioning to male and changing their name?
Obviously, the parent should love and support the child as a person who is only doing what they have to do to be happy in this world. But at the same time, can you demand that all those photos celebrating “Ellen’s First Birthday!” or some Daddy/Daughter Dance from when she was 13 years old be… Erased from memory because “Ellen” was never a “Daughter”?
I disagree.
People should be addressed as either their name of choice or their legal name (often, they are one and the same). If a married woman did something as Jane Doe as a fifteen year old, later married and is now Jane Smith and we’re talking about her accomplishment we don’t say “Jane Doe did this when she was 15” we say “Jane Smith did this when she was 15”. If name clarification is needed we would add “known as Jane Doe before she married and changed her name”.
Likewise, I feel it’s fine to say “Caitlyn Jenner won the 1976 Olympic decathlon” and add clarification on names or anything else if needed. And this construction
Does that in a clear and concise manner. The person is now known as Caitlyn Jenner. In the past, she competed under a different name that she no longer uses. Given that both names are gendered (and a person can easily look up the history given that information) it’s pretty clear that the individual is trans gender.
We actually have a few Dopers who have had that exact experience of a child coming out trans. It would be great if they were willing to share their experiences.
Personally (and this is strictly my opinion) I think some of the trauma trans people experience in being “dead named” stems from bigotry and social stigma that is still present. I am hoping that in the future, as this becomes less of a Big Deal/Scandal/Horror references to the past will be less painful. Sort of “This is a picture of my son Jake’s first birthday. He was assigned female at birth and that’s why the frilly dress and pink ribbons. Thank goodness we got that sorted out a few years later - let me show you the tux he wore at his prom, what a handsome young man.” Along the lines of “oh, my child was born with a harelip, that’s why the bandage in this picture, but you can hardly see the scar now, we got past that problem”.
Maybe I’m too much an idealist.
a lot more surveys now have M,F, other as options for sex/gender.
Watching Season 2, with Vanya wearing clothes that were very much not the usual expected dress for a woman in the 60s, I kind of got a trans vibe off the character, so it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to write this into the story. Hell, when I heard this news, I’d kind of wondered if he’d shared this with the writers or producers during production, with thoughts towards the future of the series.
You don’t say.
I am a Doper (obviously), and one of my children “came out as transitioning” to me earlier this year, so I write/speak as one who knows. Which is why I wrote those last two paragraphs from the perspective of a parent.
I have known transgender people before and have (and still) consider myself supportive; I just never realized how deep these emotions embed when it’s your own child versus a friend/peer.
The most painful thing about this for me, which I am of course not confronting my child with any of this because they’ve got enough to deal with on this whole gender subject (and have, for years, been unhappy), is the idea that the girl/daughter I saw born and raised for the best years and some of the best memories of my life was somehow a “deep fake”.
“I was never [girlname]! I was never your daughter!” This has not been said to me, or stated in this thread for that matter, but is essentially the sentiment captured by the “the now overlays the before” convention, and that… Just can’t be true.
Are you a parent? If you now have a “son Jake” who was “assigned female at birth” who was named, say, “Jocelyn” - named by you, with perhaps a family history or extended meaning or reason for that name - I find it hard to believe you could just dismiss that history as Jocelyn with a casually cheerful “wow, glad we got that sorted out eventually!”
Imagine spending years changing “Jocelyn’s” diapers. Buying and clothing for Jocelyn. Singing lullabies where you weave in the name. Refrigerator art with Jocelyn’s increasingly confident signature on it.
“Jocelyn” was “Jake” all along and just had to realize it, to emerge like a butterfly from a chrysalis? What a beautiful image. And yet, what a lie that is. Because if that’s not a lie, then all of that Jocelyn-as-daughter branded history was a lie. Or it feels like that is what is being pushed.
I have had nightmares of me holding or being with my “Jocelyn” as a youngster again, ranging from 6-10 years old, holding my hand, then releasing it to run off and fade before my eyes. Or to simply get lost and never found again in a department store. That sort of thing. I wake up sobbing. I don’t tell anybody why, especially not “Jake”. But it is not something easy to reconcile internally.
And to address this particular grammatical context (separate from my much more personal post from a few minutes earlier):
In my earlier example, I agreed with this as long as the contextual POV is the present, i.e., speaking to someone directly in the now.
In the context of something presented as a historical recap, like a documentary or biography, I think keeping things in chronological context is critical. The decathlon gold medalist in the 1976 Olympics was Bruce Jenner - that’s an objectively true and recorded fact. That is separate from “Bruce Jenner later transitioned to be who we now know as Caitlyn Jenner”.
If you are speaking with, to, or about Caitlyn Jenner, then sure, you can refer to “her” past achievements in the 1976 Olympics.
So your last example follows suit with that: you would refer to what “Jane Smith” did when she was 15, because you’re talking about Jane Smith. But if what was done at age 15 was to be in a high school production of “Into The Woods”, well, she’s listed in that school yearbook recap or program for that performance as “Jane Doe”, yeah?
Just because that information may now be online instead of bound in printed material doesn’t mean that kind of entry should change to “Jane Smith” - though it’s reasonable to have a hyperlink for people’s “recorded” names to another “live” entry.
No one says it’s easy. The feelings you describe are common and very real. But being truly supportive means realizing that those are your issues to deal with, not your kid’s. And dead-naming someone can be very traumatic for them.