Originally published at: 29 Bullshido Forums LIVE - Bullshido
In a special edition of the podcast, we’re sharing a recent live conversation held with members of the Bullshido.net forums on various, current hot-button topics, including: the difference between being “nice” and being “kind”, the push to de-gender gendered languages, shaming as a method in effecting changes in behavior, exploiting fragile masculinity to sell dudes crap they don’t need
I genuinely wish America could have a clear, calm, rational discussion about different types of identity.
Because identity can be based on a whole lot of stuff, such as
- Physical appearance, whether inherent or chosen (fat, bald, tattooed, hard of hearing, muscular)
- Nation of origin (American)
- Religion (Sikh)
- Ideological position (pacifist, libertarian, feminist)
- Sexual orientation (bisexual)
- Psychological/neurological status (autist, agoraphobe)
- Gender (male, female, nonbinary)
- Gender/sex category (cis male, cis female, trans man, trans woman)
- Behavior (reckless driver, philanthropist, jogger, bully)
And on and on. Some of these are objective qualities, others subjective, and others float around in between. Even more confusingly, some are assessments by others rather by than the person themself (brave, modest, fun, beautiful, funny, etc.)
Point being, we all need to think about the basis on which we accept or reject someone’s identity. I would suggest that it’s accurate to say that someone in the middle of eating a steak is not really a vegetation, but not to tell someone who identifies as a Sikh that they’re not a Sikh.
Religious people disavow each other all the time-- if someone’s a batterer or a murderer, etc. some will say they’re “not a true Christian.” But partially because I view Christianity as about beliefs, and partially because Christian history suggests that battering and murdering people is not at all out of line with common Christian behavior, if that murderer identifies as a Christian, I’mma call him a Christian.
I think that actually, society in general would be a lot more peaceful if we’d exercise restraint in denying each other’s identities, except when it comes to behavior, because your behavior has an impact on other people that your self-categorizations don’t.
And yeah, sometimes it can feel absurd. Like if someone says they’re bisexual, but you only ever see them date cis guys. But who’s it going to help if you badger them about how they’re not really bisexual?
Granted, bisexual people don’t walk around expecting people to call them bisexual, but if they’re wearing a t-shirt that says “I’m bi” on it, you’d be an asshole to say “No you’re not.” Both because you don’t know, and because you want to be a civilized, respectful human being.
Agreeing that someone is bi doesn’t commit you to any kind of ideology. It doesn’t make you approving of any behavior. It doesn’t require you to know their life story, or their physiology, or their genetics, or their neurological makeup.
I don’t see why agreeing that someone is a (trans) woman is any different. “Trans” and “cis” are both qualifiers, but they just indicate what someone’s gender was declared to be at birth. They don’t determine what pronouns you should use, or that you’ve chosen some kind of position (aside from being a civil, respectful human being) by using those pronouns.
We don’t demand a passport before calling someone American. We don’t demand a (lack of) voting record when someone claims to be libertarian. We don’t ask for baptism photos when someone claims to be a Christian.
We do sometimes challenge someone’s identity regarding behavior, such as if they claim to be the victim of a stabbing rather than the stabber. But being trans isn’t a behavior (much less an immoral one, unlike stabbing people). Trans women just want to live as women, like cis women do. If cis women are allowed to exist as women and nobody is harmed, why would it be different for trans women? And likewise for trans men?
We stop calling women by their maiden name if they took someone’s surname when they married, regardless of what we think of that decision or whether getting married was even a good idea for them to do, or a good idea in general. I’m not saying anything about marriage when I call the former Miss Jones by her new name Mrs. Roberts (assuming that’s what she wants), except that I recognize her preferences and don’t want to be disrespectful for no reason.
Let me suggest that the actual ideology declared regarding transgender pronouns is not in using the ones requested, but in the refusal to do so. Calling a trans woman “her” is just acknowledging her identity, regardless of whether you think she specifically chose it or not. Choosing not to call her “her” is saying “I explicitly reject showing a basic level of respect to someone because I view it as appropriate, or even necessary, to foist my own ideologies onto her.”
That’s also called “telling on yourself.” We’re familiar with the concept, and also that Maya Angelou quote “When someone shows you who they are, believe them.” Refusing to use someone’s pronouns doesn’t actually say anything about them, but it definitely shows the world who you are.
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This gets quite confusing.
I get your point about referring to a person by their preferred gender. I have a hard enough time remembering names. To refer to an individual as they, xe or some of the others shown? If I don’t remember it shouldn’t be my character in question or who I am.
Has it been asked of you to do this with anything other than lines 3, 5, and 6? Not saying it doesn’t happen, but it seems extremely rare.
And yeah, “they” can be confusing. More difficult than “he” or “she,” since people of any gender can look however gender nonconforming they want, but trans men and women tend to lean into those gendered aesthetics so it’s not difficult to figure out what pronouns they prefer.
But I’ve only ever seen a nonbinary person get bothered about this stuff when somebody knows they’re NB and yet persistently uses gendered pronouns while trying to argue them out of it. Like “Shut up, you’re a man and you know it. Just a sick man who can’t tell he’s even a man anymore.” That kind of thing.
(I saw a couple of people do this to a host of Youtube gaming show I used to watch a lot. Like, every episode after they came out as NB, people in the comments were saying “No, he’s mentally disturbed, you can’t make me deny reality and call this dude anything other than a dude,” etc. And this was one of the hosts of a show they ostensibly liked. Just so depressing. )
It depends.
And it is ironic, that you fail to see that by implying that you are in a position to tell others what to do on this issue,
You are exhibiting the same behavior that you claim to criticize others for, regarding denying the worth / validity of the other person’s views if they disagree with your own.
Which is ironic, and hilariously absurd.
Yeah, it’s terrible. When I tell people not to call someone a n*****, I’m just as bad as they are by denying the validity of their views just because they disagree with mine.
Fuck off, dingbat.
I’ve never experienced it myself. My daughter sat next to a person who identified as they at her Master’s commencement while at UT.
It depends.
Are you saying that to Dave Chappelle, who is black, when you are not?
I don’t use the “n” word, myself.
But, again, you are goal post moving and straw man’ing it, as usual.
We are not talking about people using the “n” word.
We are talking about another issue entirely.
It is not remotely similar.
Also, rather crass of you to steal the valor of the suffering of black people who were enslaved, and suffered decades of harassment afterwards, as if it was remotely similar to this issue.
It’s not, and you are quite the racist, in your analogy to attempt to do that.
Also where has anyone said someone who claimed to be “bi” was not “bi”?
@Rillion, you are goal post mover, and straw man’er like few others on this site…
Some of those kinds of things you see are concocted by alt-right shitpost trolls from the *chans to make it seem even more ridiculous, and some of them are the product of dumb teens awkwardly fumbling for an identity of their own.
I’m just amazed you read that crap, though.
I won’t watch Systema videos for the same reason.
I guess, it’s like reading through the daily tabloids, to find something exceptionally funny to lampoon?
If you are trying to build influencer audience?
From Gender Pronouns | LGBTQ+ Resource Center
edit to add-
She/her/hers and he/him/his are a few commonly used pronouns. Some people call these “female/feminine” and “male/masculine” pronouns, but many avoid these labels because not everyone who uses he feels like a “male” or “masculine.”
There are also lots of gender-neutral pronouns in use. Here are a few you might hear:
- They/them/theirs (Shea ate their food because they were hungry.) This is a pretty common gender-neutral pronoun and it can be used in the singular. In fact, “they” was voted as the Word of the Year in 2015.
- Ze/hir/hir (Tyler ate hir food because ze was hungry.) Ze is pronounced like “zee” can also be spelled zie or xe, and replaces she/he/they. Hir is pronounced like “here” and replaces her/hers/him/his/they/theirs.
- Just my name please! (Ash ate Ash’s food because Ash was hungry) Some people prefer not to use pronouns at all, using their name as a pronoun instead.
Never refer to a person as “it” or “he-she”. These are offensive slurs used against trans and gender non-conforming individuals.
