Wow. Shows what I know. Not much apparently.
Help me out here. These folk claim 7% of cis youth attempted suicide in 2017?!
Do other sources support this frequency? What is the source of the supporting data?
My guess, somewhere dark and smelly.
I suspect it’s from the CDC Youth Risk Behavior Survey rather than their own work.
This strikes me as an entirely reasonable approach.
If a small minority of any group has some special wants/needs, I’m all for accommodating those (within reason). There is no need for the majority who do not have those special wants/needs to say, “Nope, not me!”
Curiously, we watched a Neil Brennan comedy special last night. He said he doesn’t wish trans people bad - he just doesn’t think of them. He wishes they have all the want, but he thinks of them no more often than he thinks of left handed Filipinos. Thought it curious that he used the “handedness” analogy.
One young person (HS freshman) I’ve played music with appears biologically female, but expressed a preference for they/them. I do my best to use those terms, and consider it good exercise for me. The other day, another member of our group said she overheard this persons’ mother referring to the child as “he.” I don’t see her often, but I’ll try to keep up.
Thx for the link.
They say 10% attempted suicide. Wow! I find that hard to believe, but I certainly lack any data to refute it.
Do they define “attempted suicide” in that lengthy document?
What if the accommodation they’re asking for is to not be singled out as the only people in the office who mention their pronouns? Are you “all for accommodating” as long as it isn’t saying two syllables at a couple of meetings a year, or putting 10 additional characters in your default email signature?
It isn’t so much the idea of resistance to requests, as the vehemence of the resistance over requests that are so trivial.
I don’t mean to pile on you personally here, but you’ve done a good and succinct job with this of stating what is probably the attitude of a lot of the so-called “silent majority” beyond just yourself.
FTR: In my current circles the issue of pronouns simply doesn’t come up. I don’t offer them, but I’ve also never been asked about them, nor have I ever had an IRL encounter where anyone else offered up their pronouns, be they prosaic or exotic. I have learned to use they/them here on the Dope for everyone. I do encounter the occasional quite gender-ambiguous person but either know their name from the tag on their shirt or have no reason to refer to them by pronouns at all. What’s going on under their clothes or inside their head is no concern of mine.
I believe my attitude towards individual’s chosen pronouns is more favorable than @Darren_Garrison’s but again that’s not a dig at them; I’m just doing full disclosure of the half-in / half out place I am so the rest of my post will perhaps make more sense. My actual behavior towards my pronouns is no different than theirs is. I don’t offer, I’d be surprised to be asked, but after a moment’s recovery I’d answer if asked.
With that out of the way, I’ll argue by analogy …
Back around 1850 or 1880 or so, uppercrust people felt no need to use common courtesies to servants and underlings. Clerks were ordered to bring out the goods, not asked with a “please”, nor thanked with a “thank you”. Servants were brusquely ordered to bring tea, light the fire, fetch the carriage, etc. Meanwhile the discourse between fellow members of the uppercrust was elaborately filled with courtesies; far more than is commonly done here in 2024.
The fundamental difference was that the uppercrust believed that the feelings of their fellow uppercrusters mattered, whereas those of the lower servant classes did not. It was literally beneath their uppercrust station to be nice to the below-stairs crowd. The way uppercrusters behaved was considered polite at the time. By the people who were the arbiters of politeness: the uppercrust. If the servants had an opinion on courtesy, it sure didn’t matter enough to ask about.
Over time that changed. At first it was eyebrow-raisingly unusual to watch a felllow uppercruster thank a clerk. Later more uppercrusters did it, and eventually, say by 1930, it was commonplace. Meantime lots of aging uppercrusters groused and moaned about what the world was coming to that those folks needed to be thought of at all, much less thanked. Good gosh, if this keeps up, soon enough we’ll have to think of them as equals! Egads, my good man! The horror.
Fast forward to 2024.
When I walk into a bar today I am the customer. The bartender is the servant. Period. Everyone in the room knows that. My role is to tell them what I want and their role is to fulfill that order without pushback or delay. Period. That much at least is no different than it was 200 years ago in 1824.
But if I barge in there making noisy demands, versus asking with a “please” for whatever I want, other customers, my peers, will take notice of my boorish behavior. Being loud and demanding and uncaring towards the bartender as a person, not merely as an actor in a role, is no longer considered polite.
Now on to pronouns and gender non-binariness in all its social implications.
I’m going to argue that we’re in a similar spot today with e.g. pronouns as those uppercrusters were as servants began to demand courtesy and at least some especially generous or kind uppercrusters began to offer it.
It’s early days yet in this transition. But make no mistake, there is a transition going on, and what is considered polite in this are will be very different in 2050 than it was in 2020 or 1990. Net of some inevitable backsliding along the way.
Here in these early days each of us can choose to be an early adopter, a reactionary saboteur, studiously pretend the change does not exist even as the ground shifts beneath our feet, assert (mostly correctly) that the change doesn’t directly affect themselves so they wont’ play along, or simply be oblivious to the whole thing since they’re not paying attention to the larger world and it doesn’t come up in their own little microcosm of daily existence.
Meanwhile, whatever tack you choose, by conscious choice or unconscious default / inertia / habit, that tack will be either reinforced positively, negatively, or not at all by the encounters you have with others IRL and online.
IMO most of us with active online lives probably find the online world out in front of our IRL world on this. For folks whose IRL includes for whatever reason a lot of involvement with trans people and trans issues, the opposite will be true. I’m an example of the former and I believe e.g. @puzzlegal is an example of the latter.
My bottom line to myself and the e.g. @Darren_Garrison’s of the world: You can lead, follow in step, or drag your feet. Ref the hoary proverb, there’s probably not a way to “get out of the way” and be unaffected as the slowly-growing crowd marches on. Certainly not for the long term.
What’ll it be? And when?
I mean I get how in many circles (not just gender but racial, political, etc) there are those who will say “no, it’s not enough to get out of the way and applaud, you’ve got to be in the fight, lukewarm moderates are worse than enemies!” whatever their particular issue is. The pronoun thing by itself is just a part of the greater picture.
Okay help me there is this an autocorrect issue or something new about the jargon – as a cisgender person I have never been gendered in the Commonwealth of Independent States.
Absolutely. That is what I find especially deplorable, the artificial “you provoke us by insisting on being visible” backlash.
Myself? I’ll do my best in my interactions with everyone else, though if someone gets on my grill about me not meeting expectations right from a blind start, well, what-ever have a good life. Heck, online boards are a great exercise in this, given that if it weren’t for posting histories + the apparent general demographics of this board I could as well flip a coin to name half of all y’all’s genders.
I don’t find this hard to believe as the parent of a teenager with no apparent mental health issues, and a person who does not regularly deal with people in difficult financial, health and personal situations.
Maybe you can read the document and tell us why the CDC’s methodology is bunk.
In many settings it’d be simpler to use honorifics like Ms Mr Mx that correspond to she, he, they.
I’m not fond of Mrs even though I am married I’d prefer Ms over Mrs.
It would be very odd, in America at least, to go back to using Mr. [last name] instead of calling someone by their first name.
One introduced as MsMx or Mr call them by their first name but now you know which pronouns to use…
So, in at a conference, “I’m Mr. RitterSport Bananahammock”? Then, it sounds like I want you to call me Mr. Bananahammock. And, what if I’m a doctor? We can do the German thing: Ich bin Herr Doktor RitterSport Bananahammock.
Seems easier to say, Hi! I’m Rittersport, and my pronouns are he/him.
How is Mx pronounced? Like “mix”?
Mix or Mux according to M-W.
This sounds like a pretty healthy environment - safe enough that nobody is going to feel picked on or misunderstood or sidelined - nobody really has to do anything difficult at all.
A friend of mine came out to our little group as bi a little while back and she sort of made a build up to mentioning it (maybe was a bit cautious or something) - to the effect that we thought she was about to announce that she’s moving to Australia or something; when she finally said her piece everyone was like ‘oh, cool. Um. Anyway…’ - because it’s not as if the conversation was ever going to get detailed about sex or anything, because we are just a group of friends out for a meal.
I’ve always heard it said “mix”. I suppose you could use a schwa instead.
Last night I thought about a different analogy (than the one that you posted but I didn’t quote). Those schools where the students shave their heads to support a student or teacher who has lost their hair to chemotherapy treatments. (It isn’t one single incident, google and you’ll find a number of them.) Before that decision, you are the asshole if you mock the person for having a bald head. But after that decision, you are the asshole for having the position “I’m sorry you have cancer, but I don’t want to shave my head, thanks.”. It is pushing the needle into forced activism through peer pressure.
(And of course there is Kramer not wanting to wear the ribbon.)