The Pronouns Thread

[feralautistic]

oh yes, it's not anarchist of me to tell cis people to shut up. it is however, very anarchist to tell me to stop telling cis people to shut up.

and it's cis people because the only alternative term cis people offer is "normal"

cis people constantly tell trans people that they're forcing everyone to think a certain way. society is just like that. there's always pressure to comply with norms, whether you look at it as controlling people or simply not being an asshole. maybe you're just noticing that there's somewhat different pressures now, and it's trendy to not be awful to trans people

 

[croc]

If gender is just a social construction, and biological sex has nothing to do with gender, why is it very common for trans persons to take hormones of the biologically opposite sex in order to mimic the biological sex characteristics (beards, breasts, etc) of the gender identity they profess?

I wrote about this in a few spots of my previous comments. One comment of mine is a video and quotes from the video about exactly this actually.

But outside of the reasons in those comments, some trans people do feel their body parts are inherently wrong (body dysphoria) and change them accordingly.

"Tranny" has been correctly identified as a slur in this thread by people who freely speak of "cis" men and "cis" women. I thought labeling members of groups you don't belong to with terms rejected by members of that group was wrong, and made you a bigoted asshole?

Cis is the same as identifying that someone is trans, gay, straight, white, Asian, black, etc. It's not a slur but if u personally don't want to be called that we can absolutely call u something else. The reason it's been specified here is to clarify the difference in experiences between people who are trans or not trans

 

[Older Than Dirt]

oh yes, it's not anarchist of me to tell cis people to shut up. it is however, very anarchist to tell me to stop telling cis people to shut up.

Bingo, you got it! Trying to silence those you don't agree with is authoritarian and not anarchist.

Do you really not see the difference between telling a group of people they are not allowed to talk about a topic, and calling that out as bullshit? One is trying to shut down others, the other is doing the opposite.

One more time: calling folks "cis" men or "cis" women is rejected by pretty much all the people you are applying that label to (the few that have heard of it anyway), including several right here in this very thread. And not just "me personally", @croc .

If you choose to continue doing that after you are told repeatedly that it is an identity that those you label as "cis" reject, how is it that you retain the moral right to get on your high horse of indignation when others label you in ways you reject?

Obviously, i used the term "normal" polemically. "Normal" means two different things: socially desirable (a subjective judgement), and statistically common (an objective fact). From the latter point of view, it is obvious that it is far more common for people's gender presentation to align with biological sex than not. In the objective sense of "normal", non-trans folks are "normal" and trans folks are "non-normal" outliers.

The only reason there is any need for a word for non-trans people is the ideological contention that there is no difference between a "trans-man" or "trans-woman" and a biological male or biological female.

Since you believe it is incumbent on "cis" people to offer you a non-bigoted way to refer to us, please feel free to use "biological male" or "biological female".

 

[Older Than Dirt]

Incidentally, i've noticed in several recent banned folks threads, and threats of bans in other threads, that joining just to post polemical content about only one topic, and not creating a profile or posting an informative introduction thread, are big no-nos. Folks get threatened with the ban-hammer or hit with it for doing these things.

Wondering then why mods are cool with @feralautistic having joined solely to post polemical content about trans issues, and not creating a profile or posting an introduction?

Although we know they identify as a transwoman from their first post here (the only time they have posted other than in this thread), we don't even know their preferred pronouns!

Do u even travel, sis?

 

[feralautistic]

it's funny how real anarchists don't tell anyone to shut up but instead speculate about banning people for speaking their mind.... i've been lurking on squat the planet for a few months now and honestly i've been hesitant to post much here. i do travel and the resources here seem decent but it's threads like this that put me off.

if i'm not welcome here then i accept that. I don't think it's worth posting in this thread anymore at least. i know where you stand, and i think you and a lot of other people here are assholes but i'm not going to change anyone's mind.

 

[Older Than Dirt]

You do what you think best, @feralautistic.

I think this is obvious, but since you are fond of throwing out accusations: i was not encouraging anyone to ban you, or saying you should be banned. I think that would be silly and wrong.

I was perhaps encouraging the mods to be more consistent, and politely ask you to post a profile and an introduction, just like everybody else has to, so that folks know something about you other than that you like to call people who disagree with you "assholes", and are militantly pro-trans.

While it is not true that some of my best friends (or even any of them) are trans, i have known, lived with, hired, and worked closely with, a few trans folks over the years (all mtf except for one ftm person i saw at meetings for a couple years).

I referred to all of them as "she/her" (i cannot recall ever using a pronoun about or even mentioning the ftm person, who i barely knew), because these were people i liked and saw everyday who wore lipstick and dresses and had women's names (well, i suppose "International Chrysis" is not actually a gendered name but she sure was).

If i am an example of a bigoted transphobe enemy of yours, good golly Moses.

 

[Deleted member 125]

@feralautistic it is pretty standard to fill out yer profile yadda yadda yadda, so if you don't mind, that would be dope.

@Older Than Dirt I don't have the time or patience to argue or discuss with you about how all yer being is antagonistic.

[USERGROUP=17]@Staff[/USERGROUP] if anyone else wants to say something I'm sure y'all have better words for it then I do.

 

[Matt Derrick]

Oh boy... since people are getting a little heated here, I would like to remind everyone that you're allowed to disagree with each other as long as you keep it civil. You won't get banned for disagreeing as long as you follow the forum rules.

I would also like to make it clear that the [USERGROUP=17]@Staff[/USERGROUP] and I consider StP to be a safe space for people from all kinds of backgrounds (at least, ones that aren't fascist/exclusionary) and we believe in being as inclusionary as possible. So, while you might see some opinions on this subject here that you might consider a bit backwards, these are not the opinions of StP or it's staff and we don't support such statements.

That said, these people aren't breaking the rules if they keep things civil, and I think threads like this are a good opportunity to debate and hopefully educate folks that don't understand these views on pronouns, gender, etc.

So yeah, let's keep things cool and try to remember that no one is trying to make personal attacks on you; if they ARE making personal attacks, please hit the report link below their post to let the staff know and we'll handle it from there.

 

[benton]

I love this piece of art and the expansive sentiment in reflects. I think it is possible for you to accept others as they are, and I hope someday you do.
You say that you value debate, discussion, thoughts and ideas, but you also mention that you only "occasionally" meet a worthy adversary in debate. I know so many people who are intellectually stimulating and I feel sad when I encounter one who is struggling to get beyond the entry level respect necessary to knowing and growing with others.
I am a man, but I sense that what that means to me is a bit different than it is to you. Am I less of a man for walking off a roofing job in the middle of a shift to go home and put on a skirt and gaze upon my beauty in the mirror? You say that feelings can't be quantified, but I sense you have placed some value in how you have quantified how masculine you feel in comparison to how you perceive others. It is admirable that you want to "sharpen my sword, so to speak", but sometimes its also good to stop focusing on how sharp it is and just concentrate on not falling upon it.

Here's my entire comments, including the portion you snipped:

"If being a man is something I attained by various means (showing courage, determination, etc.) as I was socialized, and now we are seeing an extended adolescence and increasingly boys are never actually becoming men through their actions even as they age, it is simply not possible for a biological female to claim to be male and be accepted by me and other men as a man. Why? Because when I was doing day labor in Portland and we were roofing and the guy in his 20's quit after a few hours, that's not a man. Maybe he will become one in the future, but on that jobsite he was not accepted by me and the other men on the same level as us, and that has nothing to do with gender in my opinion. Another opinion is that I believe that my experiences as a biological male who identifies as male are being invalidated and demeaned, and this cannot possibly be healthy for our society."

In addition, your characterizations of my comments, views, and contribution to the discussion are solely comprised of your opinions. They may or may not be valid, and I would assert that they are certainly debateable.

I connected the fact that males are accepted or rejected at the level of "being a man" based on their actions to a biological female declaring that she is a man, and explained that there are males who are not accepted as men and to allow a biological female to say she is a man without demonstrating the actions and going through formal and informal rites of passage, this in my opinion invalidates and demeans my experience, which is what I thought we were trying to avoid.

Lastly, I will happily await the rebuttal of any of my actual assertions or arguments. Characterizations of my motivations, emotional state, character, etc. are largely irrelevant in the context of this discussion and really any debate, in my view. I'm certainly open to other ideas, but you will need to "show your work" as I have.

 

[Older Than Dirt]

@SlankyLanky : Perhaps it's the decades i spent as an academic, but i don't think i'm being particularly antagonistic; you wanna see antagonistic, go to a faculty meeting sometime. I will keep in mind what you said, though.

if they ARE making personal attacks

You mean stuff like this?

seriously, can cis people please shut the fuck up about being trans?

i think you [meaning me- OTD] and a lot of other people here are assholes

Please note that i am not "reporting" these posts, and think it would be stupid and wrong to somehow penalize @feralautistic for making them, but i've only noticed trans advocates doing anything that could be called "personal attacks" in this thread (unless me calling a hippie a hippie is a "personal attack"; i will try to be more tolerant towards hippies in future).

 

[croc]

Since you believe it is incumbent on "cis" people to offer you a non-bigoted way to refer to us, please feel free to use "biological male" or "biological female".

Biological male or biological female doesn't say what their gender is though. I'm a biological female but so is a cis woman. Do u see why the term exists in a conversation where ur needing to specify what flavor of man or woman someone is?

I promise u, regardless of feralautistic 's tone on here, cis is not a slur. I think the reason it's feeling like a slur is bc someone is saying it angrily.
It's basically the same thing as calling someone straight.

 

[Older Than Dirt]

@croc : Fair enough. However, "cis" is a term used almost exclusively by one group to label people in another group. It is virtually never used by the people labeled with the term as a self-description- i've never encountered this at least.

I have never seen it used in a positive way (eg "cis people are so cool!"), and often in the disparaging way it has been used here.

Labels like that, that are used for "othering", are sometimes seen by some as problematic. Like in this thread, with "tranny".

Since cis-gender applies to at least 95+% of all people, perhaps a marker is not needed very often? And in the rare case where it is, maybe "non-trans" would do?

As to the claim that "cis" is a just plain old non-offensive neutral term like "straight"- I'm a heterosexual biological male in a monogamous marriage with the woman who bore our son. I assume the mustache in my picture is kind of a clue that i am "male-presenting".

But i don't like being labeled as "straight". Not one bit.

First of all, i'm old enough that the opposite of "straight" was not "gay", but rather "freek" (kind of like a hippie except younger and into like Alice Cooper and Bowie not the Dead- young and countercultural). In 9th grade english class (1972), we had to write an essay about "Two kinds of people". Mine was about "freeks" and "straights"; my gay best friend's was about "fags" and "hardhats" (meaning construction workers; look up the "Hardhat Riots" that had just taken place in NYC between anti-Viet Nam War protestors and construction workers).

Neither of us would have understood you if you had said "straight" and "gay" are opposites. My pal might have known the term "gay" to mean homosexual, but i never heard him use it, and it was not common in that sense for a few more years. We both would have said "doesn't get high and has short hair" if you asked what "straight" meant. When i use the word "straight", which i do fairly often, i usually mean "doesn't smoke reefer", or maybe "non-countercultural and uptight".

Second, it makes my sexuality sound constricted and boring. It isn't a term of praise, but rather a negative value judgement that what makes your dick hard/your pussy wet is somehow better than what makes someone else respond that way. We none of us are responsible for what makes us horny. Judging others for what gets them horny is lame, whoever is doing it.

If you call me "cis" or "straight", am i going to fly off the handle and say you are erasing my identity and making me unsafe? No, because that would be really silly. But it doesn't mean that those terms don't annoy me when applied to me.

 

[croc]

@croc : Fair enough. However, "cis" is a term used almost exclusively by one group to label people in another group. It is virtually never used by the people labeled with the term as a self-description- i've never encountered this at least.

I have never seen it used in a positive way (eg "cis people are so cool!"), and often in the disparaging way it has been used here.

Labels like that, that are used for "othering", are sometimes seen by some as problematic. Like in this thread, with "tranny".

Since cis-gender applies to at least 95+% of all people, perhaps a marker is not needed very often? And in the rare case where it is, maybe "non-trans" would do?

As to the claim that "cis" is a just plain old non-offensive neutral term like "straight"- I'm a heterosexual biological male in a monogamous marriage with the woman who bore our son. I assume the mustache in my picture is kind of a clue that i am "male-presenting".

But i don't like being labeled as "straight". Not one bit.

First of all, i'm old enough that the opposite of "straight" was not "gay", but rather "freek" (kind of like a hippie except younger and into like Alice Cooper and Bowie not the Dead- young and countercultural). In 9th grade english class (1972), we had to write an essay about "Two kinds of people". Mine was about "freeks" and "straights"; my gay best friend's was about "fags" and "hardhats" (meaning construction workers; look up the "Hardhat Riots" that had just taken place in NYC between anti-Viet Nam War protestors and construction workers). Neither of us would have understood you if you had said "straight" and "gay" are opposites. When i use the word "straight", which i do fairly often, i usually mean "doesn't smoke reefer", or maybe "non-countercultural and uptight".

Second, it makes my sexuality sound constricted and boring. It isn't a term of praise, but rather a negative value judgement that what makes your dick hard/your pussy wet is somehow better than what makes someone else respond that way. We none of us are responsible for what makes us horny. Judging others for what gets them horny is lame, whoever is doing it.

If you call me "cis" or "straight", am i going to fly off the handle and say you are erasing my identity and making me unsafe? No, because that would be really silly. But it doesn't mean that those terms don't annoy me when applied to me.

We're solid on me not calling u straight or cis now bc you've told me u don't identify with those words n of course it wouldn't be fair to do so just to spite u. I wouldn't do that.
I actually entirely understand why some non trans people who would be considered cis are feeling like it's a slur. They've never heard it before and usually they hear it the loudest and clearest when someone is yelling at them.

This is honestly something that keeps me from being friends with a fair amount of other trans and queer people. I'm not on board with judging someone's character based on their gender or sexuality or sex or anything they didn't choose/has no bearing on their character. Sadly, it's hard to get some of my fellow t's and q's on board with that bc they're really angry with how we're treated and how people outside of our situations think we should handle it.

And I understand why they're angry.

But I also understand that yelling doesn't make anyone wanna listen. Putting ppl down for shit they didn't choose is what we're asking ppl to do for us. We need to show respect to get respect. Even when it's respect through a clenched jaw bc it's frustrating to be patient about something u feel so strongly about.

If any non trans people that identify with the word cis are down to say so, go for it. There are plenty and they're usually in the younger crowd since we're more exposed to it/modern ideas of gender. Times they are a changin.

Also, on the word tranny. Tranny is to transgender as faggot is to gay.
That's why it's a slur, not a commonly used word.

Just like queer has been "relcaimed" when it used to be an inherent insult, some of us are reciming tranny and faggot. So hopefully those won't even be considered slurs in the not so distant future.


***I'd really like to ask non trans/cis people to remember that honestly not most trans people are gonna yell at u. Those are just the ones ur gonna hear the loudest. They do not represent the community and are NOT the majority of us. ***

 

[Older Than Dirt]

Also, on the word tranny. Tranny is to transgender as faggot is to gay.

Just to be clear, i fully understand this, and in fact was using the earlier discussion of the slur "tranny" (which i referred to as a slur in an earlier post BTW) to point out that othering labels are problematic.

Maybe you weren't addressing that to me but to folks who genuinely didn't know that that term is an example of what the law calls "fighting words".

As to whether i am not so familiar with non-trans folk who identify as "cis" because i am not "in the younger crowd"- first of all i'm here. Second of all, i know very few people my own age, because they all OD'ed, drank themselves to death, or got murdered, and mostly hang out with people in their 20s and 30s. My son is 17; he was shocked when a teacher "misgendered" one of the several trans kids in his class. He has two close friends named Liam- we have to constantly ask "is that Foulmouthed Liam or Trans Liam?"

I do not live in some sort of old folk's bubble.

 

[croc]

If you call me "cis" or "straight", am i going to fly off the handle and say you are erasing my identity and making me unsafe? No, because that would be really silly. But it doesn't mean that tho

It's also important to understand that this isn't a fair comparison bc being trans is factually more dangerous than not.
So when we say something is unsafe, we literally mean that many of us have been UNSAFE in being trans.
The only time you'd be unsafe just for being heterosexual or non trans is internet arguments or maybe Seattle. I hear the queers and trans folk have built a fortress around the city where we're meant to shoot them down on site. I believe they're calling it "Border Patrol" which I think is a very distasteful name but missed the deadline to vote on it. Can't win em all.

 

[Older Than Dirt]

@croc Yes, again you are completely right about this, and i was once again being polemical (but not, i hope, antagonistic) in using that phrase.

But being trans is unsafe because bigoted assholes will do physical violence, not because of your friends using the wrong pronouns. Conflating pronoun usage with beating people up makes little sense.

Your last paragraph made me laugh hard. There may be some others- have you ever been to the West Village (NYC)?

 

[Beegod Santana]

Just to be clear "cis gendered" comes from the world of plant breeding where certain plants can have both female and male traits or just one. As in this plant could be self pollinating but it only produces pollen so it's "cis" meaning it only shows one gender trait. Also "tranny" can be a slur, however transvestite does not equal transgender. I've known a few drag queens who would not consider themselves transgender, and have no problem with the word tranny, shit, some have it in their stage names. The way I've always understood it is a transvestite has no desire to "transition" they're proud to be a hybrid, where's a trans gender person identifies (a least some of the time) as a member of the gender/sex opposite their biology. That being said, I agree that 99% I hear the terms "cis" or "tranny" they're being used in a negative way.

 

[Older Than Dirt]

@Beegod Santana - this is a fascinating claim as to the origins of "cis" as applied to sexuality.

I can't find any evidence you are correct, though. The only references to "cis" with regard to plant sex/gender i can find are a couple of weed growers using the term, but my guess would be that they are taking the term from the use of it around human sexuality, not the other way around.

Can you provide a source for this claim?

The person who invented the term does not mention plants, or any use of "cis" in plant breeding, at least in the first English-language paper they published using this term (alas, i don't read German, and can't check the original paper that they used the term in). Rather, it is a Latin word meaning "not across" or "on this side of", chosen as an opposite to "trans" (which means "across" in Latin).

https://sci-hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1018715525493

Nor does the wikipedia article on "cis" mention plants.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisgender

The articles on plant breeding and plant reproduction don't mention this term.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_breeding

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_reproductive_morphology

 

[Beegod Santana]

Lol, I guess your decades in academia weren't in the agriculture science department. Sexual epigenetics: gender-specific methylation of a gene in the sex determining region of Populus balsamifera - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5366940 if you want proof. "We therefore have an SDR with a sexually differentiated methyltransferase and a sexually differentiated methylation target, raising the possibility that sex-biased methylation of PbRR9 might be controlled in cis or trans or both." I believe its mostly just a shorter way of saying "dioecious" don't hold me to that one though. I just grow blueberries yo, never went to college for this shit

 

[Beegod Santana]

I should add it can also refer to "cisgeneisis" which is a gmo breeding practice. Cisgenesis - Wikipedia - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisgenesis