RE: Please convince me gender is binary
January 29, 2019 at 3:07 pm
(This post was last modified: January 29, 2019 at 3:36 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
Our cultural semantic already revolves around those demands...is already a construct that differs from other constructs, and explains why you see others as "identifiably x" and "inauthentically x" even if they, in the gender construct of their own culture...would think that you had lost your mind for saying so.
What you and many others are sick of is the specter of some attack or offensive that simply isn't happening. You have been made to feel uncomfortable in your binary normativity only because you've been forced to confront what shittiness it produces...and up to this point it seemed to you like an uncontested biological truth.
If you call someone he, and they correct you..you are..in plain point of fact...being an asshole by perpetually insisting otherwise and continuing to employ the innacurate term. It is very, very easy to call a girl "she". We do it all the time.
I assume that you've had a trans friend or knew a trans person at some point in your life? Someone that might even have had to indicate to you that they preferred to be referred to as a she, that they like you held to some binary norm but for whatvr reason identified with the opposite gender of their biological sex. I assume that you found it easy to refer to that person as a she. That you could understand why being called he might grate on a person, in the same way that my constantly referring to you as "she", or arguing away (or flat out rejecting) your masculinity, might?
Insomuch as the insistence of some of the things said in this thread contribute to, support, or advocate for that shittiness we are now forced to confront..yes, that mindset and that habit is an act of violence, and yes, blurting out those things you know to be broadly aligned with an ideology that does violence to those people creates a rational and palpable fear in those people..and is the definition of verbal assault. Perhaps, if simply correcting people carried with it a societal expectation of assent - then those people would not have to dive down the rabbit hole to describe in needling detail exactly what you're doing and contributing to by denying the validity of their very existence and asserting that they are an inconvenience to your cultural semantics. Semantics which are nothing more or less than expressions of the status quo of a historically and presently abusive construct.
You're allowed to look at a person and get it wrong, Benny. It happens all the time. It happens to cis and binary as well. That, getting it wrong, is not what anyone is being taken to task for. This is a wonderful state of affairs, because it offers the mulligan many people seek in other similar contexts, but which doesn't exist in them.
What you and many others are sick of is the specter of some attack or offensive that simply isn't happening. You have been made to feel uncomfortable in your binary normativity only because you've been forced to confront what shittiness it produces...and up to this point it seemed to you like an uncontested biological truth.
If you call someone he, and they correct you..you are..in plain point of fact...being an asshole by perpetually insisting otherwise and continuing to employ the innacurate term. It is very, very easy to call a girl "she". We do it all the time.
I assume that you've had a trans friend or knew a trans person at some point in your life? Someone that might even have had to indicate to you that they preferred to be referred to as a she, that they like you held to some binary norm but for whatvr reason identified with the opposite gender of their biological sex. I assume that you found it easy to refer to that person as a she. That you could understand why being called he might grate on a person, in the same way that my constantly referring to you as "she", or arguing away (or flat out rejecting) your masculinity, might?
Insomuch as the insistence of some of the things said in this thread contribute to, support, or advocate for that shittiness we are now forced to confront..yes, that mindset and that habit is an act of violence, and yes, blurting out those things you know to be broadly aligned with an ideology that does violence to those people creates a rational and palpable fear in those people..and is the definition of verbal assault. Perhaps, if simply correcting people carried with it a societal expectation of assent - then those people would not have to dive down the rabbit hole to describe in needling detail exactly what you're doing and contributing to by denying the validity of their very existence and asserting that they are an inconvenience to your cultural semantics. Semantics which are nothing more or less than expressions of the status quo of a historically and presently abusive construct.
You're allowed to look at a person and get it wrong, Benny. It happens all the time. It happens to cis and binary as well. That, getting it wrong, is not what anyone is being taken to task for. This is a wonderful state of affairs, because it offers the mulligan many people seek in other similar contexts, but which doesn't exist in them.
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