Totally Random

[lanalucy]

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.

Comments

[kdbleu.livejournal.com]

I don't think that cis-female/male is going catch on as the normal descriptor of gender. But I do think it is important for cis-gender people to understand, to empathize with the constant need for transgender people to add explain themselves. At the same time I don't think that any of the transgender people I know or have known would really want people to use cis-gender. But I've never asked so I could be wrong.

[lanalucy]

"the constant need for transgender people to add explain themselves."

What do they need to explain? Seriously asking.

[kdbleu.livejournal.com]

In the sense that they have to defend their rights to be their gender and not an assigned gender. In the sense that they have to ask to called a preferred pronoun. In the sense that they all to frequently have to fight for their privacy and risk being outed or be accused of tricking people when their assigned birth identity is discovered.

Now, should they have to explain or defend themselves, hell no. But until we live in a world where we don't have to label and sub-label, it's a nice reminder of the privilege and ease that comes from living the norm. I still don't think cis-gender identifiers are going to become the casual norm. For medical or legal reasons maybe or when it's germane to a specific conversation or need, doesn't bother me.

I have, however, known more an a few people in transition male to female, female to male, both adult and children. One of whom is someone who is very willing to discuss his experiences so I have learned a lot about the minute struggles and the joy at being able to pick a pronoun on Facebook.

[lanalucy]

Okay. So they have to explain themselves to people who have no manners, as I grew up understanding them. People lacking in couth, as my grandmother would say.

Being around during the transition is new to me. I am learning as much about that, I think, as I am about being blind, as much as I can learn without going through either experience myself.

[kdbleu.livejournal.com]

But "those people" are being rude, they're being bigots. So if trans-gender need extra support and understanding in the form my using an extra prefix on occasion, it's the least I can do as an ostensibly straight cis-female.

[lanalucy]

I'm being as supportive as I know how to be.

I expect to be poked when I do something wrong, so that I can course-correct.

And I'm trying to learn, thus the questions - I'm aware that my knowledge of the subject and its impact are lacking.

[kdbleu.livejournal.com]

I totally get that you asking this question comes from a place of being supportive. I simply see using the cis prefix as a bigger picture course correction. A way for people to think about the privilege of normalcy.

But am I thinking now about what I would do if someone asked me to. To use cis-female as regular conversation. I don't know how often it would come up. I mean how often does anyone really introduce their gender that there isn't some kind of other motive. Because I'm not entirely sure I'd be comfortable with that. Nor am I sure about using 'they' instead of he or she on the off chance someone uses the other pronoun. Although I do use they/them in cases where I don't know who specifically I'm talking to.

The use of pronouns is how I've ended up knowing so much about my friend C's transition. C transitioned through 'they' on the way to 'he' from 'she', which has always touched me as one of the bravest things I've even know someone to do. It seems so simple and yet he had to go to HR and request a pronoun be added for forms. I can't imagine doing that. We were talking about it because of writing though. I have a weird thing for pronouns when I write and I was curious how C approaches pronouns in his writing.

[lanalucy]

I don't know how often it will come up, either.

This has been informative, for sure.

[kdbleu.livejournal.com]

Glad it's been informative. It's something that I've been thinking a lot about. Not just because I've known people in transition, including two men who are much more pleasant women and a child, but it fascinates me. Identity fascinates me. The idea of having to discover, rediscover and then fight for the ability to be the right you has really drawn me in.