![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Totally Random
I followed a link on a comm today to try to learn something more about using appropriate language with people who are not me. I finished the article, read the comments, and ended up more confused than ever. I still don't know what to call people who aren't me. Over the last year, I've learned that the label I put on myself isn't appropriate - it has to be prefaced. So if I don't know what to call myself, how am I supposed to know what to call everyone else?
This link was specifically about gender-identity and sexuality (I think - I honestly don't even know what to call it anymore), and how using a word - the example was "tranny" - can be damaging to a person, reinforcing years of verbal or other abuse.
I don't intentionally use labels to denigrate other people. I do have labels in my head that until they are pointed out to me, I don't read them as insulting. To me, who grew up in a family full of mechanics, a tranny is a piece of a car - a damn expensive piece of a car. I've never used the word to describe a person, but I have been told to stop using it, because it offends people. How? I'm not using it to describe people.
Specifically, I'm learning this because I'm personally affected by it - someone I know is dealing with this issue on a daily basis, and yet, I still don't understand it. Really, I am not afraid to say that I don't get it. I can't understand it, can't even empathize. I've never been uncomfortable in my own body - the kind of uncomfortable that makes surgery or a lifetime of drug-therapy a viable option. At most, I've wondered how much easier camping or road trips would be if I could whip out my penis and pee in a bush or off the side of the road. Still, I've never wanted to be a man.
What I can do is ACCEPT that you are presenting yourself to me as what you wish to be. You present to me as female, and unless you tell me otherwise, that's what you are. Same goes if you present as male. I don't go looking for subtle signs that you are just pretending. If you want to share that part of your journey with me, I will be as welcoming as I know how to be, up to my limits. I'm not afraid to say, "Okay, I've reached the point where I need to go away and process before I can take more input." That's not about you, about me thinking there's something wrong with you, it's about how my mind works.
According to the new labels, being born in a female body and feeling female makes me cis-female. I looked it up, because I needed to understand where the prefix came from in order to use it. Yes, I'm weird. The cis prefix is 'near' or 'in the vicinity of' making me near-female or in-the-vicinity-of-female? Except I'm not. I'm a girl. A woman. A female. A bitch, even. A cranky, curmudgeonly, twisted and deviant woman on the verge of fifty. I don't know how to respond when someone says, "Oh, you're cis-female." Except to say, "No. I'm a female. There's no cis about it." Why is that wrong?
Does anyone else understand this enough to talk me through this? I'm willing to learn new things. I just need more than "Oh, this is the new way to say it, but I can't explain it, it just is," to internalize it, to make it stick.
My apologies if I failed to express myself adequately or if I did it in a way that offends you. It is definitely not intentional.
This link was specifically about gender-identity and sexuality (I think - I honestly don't even know what to call it anymore), and how using a word - the example was "tranny" - can be damaging to a person, reinforcing years of verbal or other abuse.
I don't intentionally use labels to denigrate other people. I do have labels in my head that until they are pointed out to me, I don't read them as insulting. To me, who grew up in a family full of mechanics, a tranny is a piece of a car - a damn expensive piece of a car. I've never used the word to describe a person, but I have been told to stop using it, because it offends people. How? I'm not using it to describe people.
Specifically, I'm learning this because I'm personally affected by it - someone I know is dealing with this issue on a daily basis, and yet, I still don't understand it. Really, I am not afraid to say that I don't get it. I can't understand it, can't even empathize. I've never been uncomfortable in my own body - the kind of uncomfortable that makes surgery or a lifetime of drug-therapy a viable option. At most, I've wondered how much easier camping or road trips would be if I could whip out my penis and pee in a bush or off the side of the road. Still, I've never wanted to be a man.
What I can do is ACCEPT that you are presenting yourself to me as what you wish to be. You present to me as female, and unless you tell me otherwise, that's what you are. Same goes if you present as male. I don't go looking for subtle signs that you are just pretending. If you want to share that part of your journey with me, I will be as welcoming as I know how to be, up to my limits. I'm not afraid to say, "Okay, I've reached the point where I need to go away and process before I can take more input." That's not about you, about me thinking there's something wrong with you, it's about how my mind works.
According to the new labels, being born in a female body and feeling female makes me cis-female. I looked it up, because I needed to understand where the prefix came from in order to use it. Yes, I'm weird. The cis prefix is 'near' or 'in the vicinity of' making me near-female or in-the-vicinity-of-female? Except I'm not. I'm a girl. A woman. A female. A bitch, even. A cranky, curmudgeonly, twisted and deviant woman on the verge of fifty. I don't know how to respond when someone says, "Oh, you're cis-female." Except to say, "No. I'm a female. There's no cis about it." Why is that wrong?
Does anyone else understand this enough to talk me through this? I'm willing to learn new things. I just need more than "Oh, this is the new way to say it, but I can't explain it, it just is," to internalize it, to make it stick.
My apologies if I failed to express myself adequately or if I did it in a way that offends you. It is definitely not intentional.
The Mark of the Plural
Each person has theree elements in their sexual matrix. Biological gender, formerly thought to be a polarity, deals with the biology. Sexual preference deals with attraction, and we've known for a long time now that it's a pure spectrum, with few people sharing a place on it. Gender identity is the third element, and it too is spectral in nature, though our society thinks about it as another polarity. In fact society has approached all three as polarities in the general population until recently, and many still do. But this type of three-pole approach explains things like MTF lesbians.
There's a very good article out there titled "What's in Your Backpack?" (Lucy, it's on the server, ask me for the location if you're interested) that deals with a lot of this and how what's called "the mark of the plural" works. This is a concept that we stereotype anyone in the "other" category.
Calling yourself Cisgendered is a sign of respect for transgendered folks. As a society we don't tend to do this well in the general population, or we'd refer to "whites" as European-Americans. (I sometimes refer to myself, even though I detest labels, as German/Irish-American, Northern European American, or Texan-American because my family has been here for at least six generations)
I've said this before -- if you can't grok being gender incoherent, (the current term for this condition in the DSM-V released about a year ago) then I thank the gods for your lack of connection with this feeling. This is an experiental thing, and to understand it is to have it, much like understanding what it means to be pregnant or to go through a life-threatening encounter. For those who don't get the Gender Queer experience Kate Bornstein's book "Gender Outlaws", the follow-up to her "Gender Outlaw" book, has a lot of useful information in it, especially anecdotal accounts from folks who have no desire to conform to gender polarities. The Androgyny RAQ on the web also can provide some useful information on those who choose the middle path in gender expression, an area we lack effective pronouns for. (Zie and Hir are cumbersome)
I'm living this, and I've spent a lot of time learning the theories, in's, and outs of it, so feel free to ask. (Not only Lucy, but others too -- I live to increase understanding for folks)