This is the type of pedantry that bores the fucking shit out of me.
Do I really need to explain the painful detail by which I came to first know that Seung was joining the team and that I’m not the one who creates the AD accounts and the endless other pointless explanations about why all that was provided to me by HR was the proper full name and no other information?
Fuck. I’m sorry I mentioned it. I blame myself.
No, because that’s got fuck-all to do with anything. The point is that when you make trans people explain to the rest of society, over and over, that they are trans, that others them, and leads to an environment where bigotry and transphobia run rampant. Including “He/Him/His” in your email signature right after your contact information and right before your company’s mandated tagline is not some huge sacrifice to make.
You mean we can eliminate transphobia by simply mandating a preferred pronoun in the corporate email sig/tag line?
Well why didn’t you say so??!!
QuickSilver (he/his/him)
Anyway, I started a thread in GD if anyone is interested in discussing this further:
Aren’t you the guy who defended calling women cunts way past the point when you were obviously wrong? Maybe you should shut up more.
Aren’t you the guy who insisted that the full context must be considered before rendering judgement regarding a moderator’s decision?
FWIW, I said “cunt” is a term of insult that can, and is commonly used, agnostic of gender.
Maybe you should go fuck yourself more.
That’s a fair question.
My name isn’t Steven, but let’s say it is for now (anyone curious can certainly do some sleuthing to figure it out). I prefer to be called Steven. I can tolerate, but dislike, Steve. I loathe Stevie. If, in a professional context, someone calls me Steve, I’ll eventually correct them if they don’t pick up from context that nobody else calls me that. If they call me Stevie, I’ll corrent them: “I go by Steven,” I’ll say. Either way, they’ll inevitably apologize and we go forth with life.
You know what doesn’t happen? Nobody says, “Oh, I don’t believe in that. You’re a Stevie, and I don’t care if you believe you’re a Steven, that’s not my problem, I’m calling you Stevie, guess you’ll have to deal.”
You know what doesn’t happen? Nobody says, “I’m sorry, Stevie, but I don’t think you’re a good fit for this workplace.”
There’s no risk in my correcting people.
Trans folk? They lack that assurance. Correcting someone who misgenders them can have a wide range of outcomes:
Because they don’t know how you’ll respond, and that puts them in the position of taking a genuine risk that you’re not a terrible person.
If, instead, you proffer your pronouns, you implicitly invite them to do the same, and you also, sure, let’s call it virtue-signal: you indicate to them through your gesture that you’re virtuous enough not to attack them for offering their own pronouns.
If we lived in a world where trans folk didn’t face massive, sometimes murderous, discrimination, then your approach of waiting for them to make a move would be perfectly appropriate.
But we don’t.
You’re right. We don’t live in that world. But it should not be implied that we live in a world where everybody or even the majority are a threat to trans-gender people in such a way. There are of course parts of the world where that is more true than not. But those don’t tend to be parts of the world in which stating a pronoun preference would make any difference.
It’s the lock on the door analogy. It let’s your good friends, and neighbors know you’re not home or want privacy. It doesn’t keep the burglar out. Do you think that if you give a burglar a key to your home (read: preferred pronoun) they’ll go in just to water your plants and feed your pets?
I’m not trying to offer snark as a response. I’m trying to show that it won’t change minds of those whose mind can’t or won’t be changed.
Sure. But if I knew that 5% of my country’s population were likely to fire me for claiming my name was Steven, not Stevie, I 100% would appreciate knowing that you weren’t in that group.
The percentage of Americans who are likely to maltreat transgender co-workers is, I fear, far higher than 5%.
Not really sure that works here. The lock on the door, like every other precaution, is going to prevent some small percentage of thefts: it makes theft that much more inconvenient, to the point that some percentage of thieves won’t bother.
The pronoun thing isn’t a lock. It’s a welcome. Its primary purpose is to help trans folk know there’s safety here. But it may have a secondary influence on transphobes, much like the lock has on thieves: it makes it clear that mistreatment will be noticed and unwelcome.
If I’m a transphobe in a workplace that regularly makes anti-trans jokes, I’ll know that I’m safe bullying anyone who doesn’t conform to gender stereotypes, and I’ll probably act like a colossal asshole. If I"m a transphobe in a workplace that normalizes asking about pronouns, I’m a lot likely to keep my transphobic yap shut.
Fair points. Maybe come make them in the GD thread that RitterSport linked just a few posts up-thread.
Well this thread has veered in many meandering directions…
Help me understand the trend of non-binary identification and the choice of “they/them” as pronouns. As a cis-gender heterosexual male that has numerous gay friends, trans acquaintances, I’ll admit, I don’t get the non-binary thing.
It seems that over the last few years, we have seen a number of celebrities that have come out as non-binary, and as such, I have a few close friends that their middle school age daughters have come out to them as non-binary, and in one case homosexual and non-binary. This daughter (call her Sidney) has also decided that she wants to change her name to “Laura”. Her parents are trying their best to be understanding. They support her decision on coming out, her use of “they/them” pronouns, but they don’t get her reasoning for changing her name from Sidney to Laura. Sidney is what they spent months trying to decide on what to name her before she was born, and they find it very difficult after 13 years to just start calling her a different name.
My lack of being close to this whole situation leaves me thinking that declaring yourself as non-binary is to just get attention. As I grew up, many kids were confused about who they were, where they fit into society, or the universe even. It’s part of growing up. So when did we have to put a gender or non-gender label on it?
Help me out.
Perhaps not. But if the practice becomes so common that it’s normalized into being the default, that will result in the group whose minds won’t be changed to outing themselves.
To be sure, the process of normalizing the practice will take time, work, and commitment. I’m inclined to think the effort is worthwhile.
I’m sure that’s true for some people, and many people will float back into some more gender-normative setting as they get older. But some won’t – if you believe (as I do) that gender is a spectrum, then there will be some people in the middle of the spectrum. Say I’m a red and you’re an violet, but there are oranges, yellows, greens, blues, and indigos. For a long time, anyone to the lower frequencies, just to the left of mid-green, would be called “he”, and those just to the right of mid-green would be “she”. However, for many yellows, greens, and blues, neither he nor she feels quite right – sometimes they feel like a “he” and sometimes a “she”, and sometimes neither.
For those people, they/them may make total sense.
In searching for cites for my other thread, I came across something like “nature just makes bodies. We’re the ones who tries to stick them in a box”
The fact that she’s switching to more androgynous pronouns, and a less androgynous name is, I admit, kind of amusing. But it also suggests that they’re two unrelated issues. Lots of kids decide they don’t like their name, and IANAParent, but 13 seems about the right age for a kid to start asserting stuff like that. My parents also spent months deciding what to name me - to the extent that my birth certificate doesn’t have a name on it - and while I like the name they settled on, it only barely edged out “Struan.”
No offence to any Struans out there, but I feel I dodged a bullet on that one.
We all end up in a box. 
That attitude presumes a culture in which the trans individuals feel safe. Most trans individuals don’t have that privilege. As a person in power and with privilege it is my responsibility to not only be a safe environment, but also to create and communicate safety.
Wasn’t that long ago that gay kids got routinely beat up and even killed for presenting as gay. We had stickers on our office doors to signal that they were safe opening up to us. Indicating our pronouns and inviting others to do the same is not different, but in so many ways simpler and easier.
“Getting” is overrated, in my opinion. If I only operated based on things I understood, I’d never leave the house. I just take people’s words for a lot of stuff. How does a car work, is there a France, what’s gender identity. What the hell do I know.
I mean, in a universe where I did leave the house otherwise, I would never leave the house.
Whatever helps them get through those years, support it! That is a terrible part of life that almost everyone hates. If being gender non-binary and being called Laura gets them through it with confidence, great! If it’s just a phase, oh well, as long as they come out healthy and happy at the other end.
I live in a relatively small town. Like many relatively small towns, ours has a rather material, yet – in some ways – nearly invisible – Hispanic population.
There are a couple parts of town where they tend to live and congregate, and they are probably disproportionately represented in the few mobile home parks.
I am functional in Spanish.
When my wife and I go out for Mexican food – not surprisingly, a place where we’re quite likely to encounter Hispanic people – it’s always been my practice to try to speak with them (restaurant workers, many of the patrons) in Spanish (not all of them speak much/any English).
Because …
Our relatively small town – many of the Hispanics have told me – is not the “live and let live” place that the majority would have you believe it is. There is subtle and not-so-subtle prejudice that I don’t daily face.
But they do. They all have stories. So do the relatively few African-Americans who live here.
My talking to them in Spanish – rather than othering them – has always been intended as a sign that I’m not a threat; much more of an ally.
It’s been surprising to my wife and me how often this is met with a free appetizer, something not on the menu but considered a true native delicacy, or a round of drinks on the house.
None of this (free stuff) is our goal. We even tend to politely refuse a time or two (but graciously accept the hospitality when not doing so would truly be rude).
When I have asked some of these folks if my message is received as it is intended – to convey a sense that some Gringo who is at least passable in their language – isn’t likely to be a bigoted asshole, the answer has always been a really immediate and unequivocal “Yes !”
This seems very similar to me: no downside, possible upside. Just a bit more concerted effort on my part, but … hey … nobody said this would all be easy.
First, my hot take: I think a lot of adults vastly overestimate the number of things kids to to “get attention.” It’s a motive adults ascribe to kids that lets adults feel good ignoring the action, instead of respecting the kid’s autonomy. So I think we need to be very, very careful about ascribing that as a motivation.
Second, I’ve thought about this non-binary thing, and would give pretty good odds that if it had been an option while I was growing up, I would’ve identified as non-binary. I didn’t see anything I identified with in traditional masculine roles, but I also didn’t identify as a girl, but I also got misgendered all the damn time (long hair, delicate features, small stature). It did not make adolescence any easier, for sure. Non-binary would’ve been a really comfortable role.
At the time, I took comfort in the feminism I read, like Steinem: your assigned sex determined your gender (it assumed but never stated), but did not determine anything else. And that more or less worked for me then. But a lot of kids today (up to 10%, according to one study) now see genderqueer identities as a helpful way to navigate these social pressures: your assigned sex doesn’t even determine your gender. And I think that’s pretty cool.
Will nonbinary be a common identity in fifty years? Hell if I know. Until we abandon gender as part of our identities a la Ancillary Justice, I figure kids who don’t fit in the neat boxes are going to figure out some way of navigating Scylla and Charybdis, and that method may change again and again. But that’s okay. Whatever kids need to do to help figure out who they are while growing up, as long as it’s not hurting other people, cool.
Would it be hard to remember to call a kid by a new name or pronoun set? Absolutely. But goddammit, one of us is going through the excruciating torment of adolescence, and the other one of us is the adult in the room. I can take on the pronoun/name change burden if it makes adolescence a little easier.