Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Conservatives, Common Courtesy, and the Gender Police
Transgender issues seem to be a tricky thing for many conservatives. (And it’s only going to get worse.) For example, a conservative told me the other day that “Misgendering is not a thing.” If you’re not hip to the lingo, misgendering is when you call someone by a gender label other than what they identify as. Like, if you call a lady “sir.” And it can be done accidentally or on purpose. People who care about transgender issues tend to (rightly so) get worked up about it, especially when it is done intentionally.
They also get worked up about “deadnaming.” That’s when you refer to a person who has transitioned by their pre-transition name. I see both misgendering and deadnaming occur here regularly on Ricochet anytime someone brings up Caitlyn Jenner. You may not realize it, but both intentional deadnaming and misgendering are insensitive at best and offensive at worse.
Now, I understand why conservatives do this. They’re taking a stand to preserve what they see as objective reality. If you have a penis, you’re a man, after all. To deny that damages reality or something, so it must stop here and now. This far and no further. Ils ne passeront pas!
Yeah, okay. I could try to explain the difference between sex and gender, but that tends to fall on deaf ears among many conservatives. So let me pose a question to those who believe such: Who made you the gender police?
For those of you taking this stand, I suspect you don’t really want the job of being the gender police, because at the end of the day the only way to know for sure is to reach into someone’s pants and check.
Now, I don’t deny that minding everyone else’s business is a time-honored conservative tradition, but it directly conflicts with another equally time-honored and very American tradition: Live and let live. Still another conservative tradition this gender police mindset conflicts with: basic common courtesy.
There aren’t a lot of Freds in the world. There was only one other in my high school. And, unlike me, he wasn’t a Frederick, he was Ferdinand. But he went by Fred, and didn’t much care to be called Ferdinand, so that’s what we called him. This is pretty common. Lots of people go by names other than their birth names. To call someone by their birth name after they’ve expressed a clear preference to the contrary would just be rude. That is what intentional misgendering is: rude. It’s calling someone by the wrong term, even when you know better.
Intentional misgendering is also supremely arrogant. Setting aside transgender people, there’s a non-trivial percentage of people in our daily lives where you can’t easily identify their gender. There are men with gentle features, there are women who look masculine, and there are people who are androgynous in appearance, either by choice or because that’s just how God made them. When I encounter such a person, I stay neutral until I know what pronoun to use with them. The alternative is to flip a coin, take a guess, and make a horse’s ass of yourself if you’re wrong, embarrassing both you and the other person.
Look, you’re welcome to your opinions and far be it for me to stop you from expressing them. That’s not my goal. But when you intentionally misgender someone or deadname them, it’s disrespectful and discourteous. You don’t need to be the one person who tries to push back the tide. You’re not going to make the difference and not enough people care to make your effort worthwhile.
These issues are all in flux right now. It’s still going to be a few years before norms and customs settle down. But in the meantime, it’s no excuse for rudeness and discourtesy to make some kind of quixotic point. You’re better off being civil to people.
Published in General
I get that. I rarely end a sentence with a preposition, and I always use the Oxford comma, because I am a civilized man.
He’s not 6. He’s 52.
“a” name and address? Ok, I’m chosen.
Charles Brown, 12 snoopy way, anytown USA
I’ve fulfilled your mandate.
I knew some smart— would do that. ; )
If you’re going to “write around it”, you better make sure it says what you intend.
No need to apologize. I’ve been addled before.
I’m sorry to hear that. I think “don’t stare” is good advice that should be in every mother’s handbook. I’m glad mine had it.
Just gotta work on the ‘stache…
I’ve met female Randy’s before. And one Randi.
I’ve met some randy females myself.
Yeah, yeah.
It’s definitely good advice. But like all the advice I gave (for that matter, give) it was never followed.
Fred Cole actually wrote this.
Don’t be bigoted, MWM. It’s rude.
I think this is an urban legend. Either that or they did have more at one time and then reverted. I just checked my Facebook page and tried to change my gender. It offered “Male” and “Female” and then the option of inserting your own preference under “Custom.”
Of course this may just be an acknowledgement that even Facebook can’t keep up with the proliferation.
Fair Warning: Don’t try this at home. I stopped before actually inserting a new gender. If you don’t, Facebook is going to notify everyone you know that you’ve transitioned into a gyragirl.
You should be hired for creating new genders.
Much easier than speaking around it, though.
So it’s like those odd designer names for colors at the paint store?
I once had our house painted in ‘Tadpole’. Perhaps that’d be a good one for that creature up-thread?
It occurs to me that the more options available, the more mistakes will be made. Yay.
I don’t think the psychiatrists are treating this problem with the best interests of their patients in mind. I don’t understand the treatment goal. So I feel very sorry for the people who have this problem. I think they are being exploited for political purposes.
Any chance the OP will wander over, and respond?
Hah ! That’s a good one. As if a response would add anything more but the same superciliousness of the OP.
No, I just googled “weird gender identities” to find an example and that was among the many I found.
Funny you should go to colors. Apparently some gender identities are color related. I can’t claim to understand that, but to each his (her/ze/zir) own.
Not according to Fred and like minded folk.
My favorite quote about normalcy is from Malcolm McDowell’s character in Star Trek: Generations – “Normal is what everyone else is and you are not”
Oh please dear sir explain. I’m mightily confused. I mean this
Asexual
Female to male trans man
Female to male transgender man
Female to male transsexual man
F2M
Gender neutral
Hermaphrodite
Intersex man
Intersex person
Intersex woman
Male to female trans woman
Male to female transgender woman
Male to female transsexual woman
Man
M2F
Polygender
T* man
T* woman
Two* person
Two-spirit person
Woman
The list of the 50 previous gender options:
Agender
Androgyne
Androgynes
Androgynous
Bigender
Cis
Cis Female
Cis Male
Cis Man
Cis Woman
Cisgender
Cisgender Female
Cisgender Male
Cisgender Man
Cisgender Woman
Female to Male
FTM
Gender Fluid
Gender Nonconforming
Gender Questioning
Gender Variant
Genderqueer
Intersex
Male to Female
MTF
Neither
Neutrois
Non-binary
Other
Pangender
Trans
Trans Female
Trans Male
Trans Man
Trans Person
Trans*Female
Trans*Male
Trans*Man
Trans*Person
Trans*Woman
Transexual
Transexual Female
Transexual Male
Transexual Man
Transexual Person
Transexual Woman
Transgender Female
Transgender Person
Transmasculine
Two-spirit
Is going to make polite social interaction, not to mention bathroom use a bit complicated
I think this is
10% concern for people who don’t fit in
90% delight in the exercise of power: “You know that thing you’ve thought and said all your life, that was normal and used by everyone, well it’s now wrong and you can’t say it anymore. I have deemed something else to be the only acceptable way to speak, and you must comply.”
“And next week it will be something else so that you will always be wrong and out of date. What’s that I see in your hand? A plastic straw!?”
And … if I understand this all correctly … cannot one change which gender one
choosesinternally knows themselves to be … each and every 365 (366 in leap years) days of the year? If you can change once, there is no limit, right?It would help if the enlightened could just publish a dictionary of the things we’re allowed to say in this new way of speaking. Next year they can publish an updated one, which I understand will be smaller.