gender frustration

[rax]

So, gender!

For a while now I've been mumbling about maybe using gender-neutral pronouns or something because I have this discomfort with gender. My name is Rachel, and I present myself as female, and you might think I'd be reasonably happy about both of those because I picked them. And in some ways I am! Because damn, are they better than the alternative.

Except that "the alternative" is a false choice; I don't have to choose either or. I could pick preferred pronouns of "they" or "ey" or "hir" or "xyzzy" and most of you would respect it and a lot of you would even use it most or all of the time. That's pretty awesome! I could say that my gender was "neuter" or "other" or "awesome" and that would be great. It's something I appreciate about my friends and even some of my family that this is true. I appreciate it a lot, and I work to extend the same courtesy to everyone, though particularly those folks who ask me for it.

Problem is: I can't get that from strangers, and that's who I actually want it from. I don't care that much if my friends treat me as female, because I think it has way less impact on how they treat me overall; sure, there's some amount of ingrained gender bias and I did notice people treating me differently before and after transition, but people who know me well think of me as more than a gender, even though they do think of me as having a gender. And I am OK with that. I did pick it, after all, even though I picked it from fewer options than I realize now that I might have had.

What really bothers me is when strangers and acquaintances and use gendered language for me. I don't want to be Mrs. Dillon (which I've been called like ten times today) and I don't want to be Ms. Dillon either. Mx. Dillon is tolerable, at least; I'd rather not have a title at all, but if I have to I would like it to not be dependent on my vagina. [0] I feel similarly about pronouns and social expectations and all manner of things. But at the moment I don't really have any desire to declare my gender other or change my pronouns or change much about my presentation, because I don't think it would change the situations I really care about. I want people on the phone who I will never talk to again to not use sir or ma'am, because it shouldn't matter, and they make it matter and I don't like it. I don't care if people I know well use that kind of language, though. Usually. [1]

I don't really have a point here, other than this is more formed than my usual pointing at gender and going "Urgh! Meh!" and so I figured I would write it down. I realize that I could ask random people on the phone to not use gendered language, and I could enforce that in all social situations, but it isn't worth it for me right now; the effort threshhold of saying "I prefer you not refer to me as ma'am or sir" to the clerk at the store is higher, to me, than just dealing with it. I recognize that not to be the case for some people and I totally support that! It's just not me, right now.

This comes up in part because I've had people in my new department ask me pronoun preference and I said "she or they, whichever" and they were like "...whichever?" and I was like "Yeah, basically." Because that's where I'm at, right now? It's a moving target, who knows where if anywhere it is going. If you wanna call me "they" and "Mx." I am neutral to vaguely positive on that. "male pronouns are still wrong, thanks"

[0] Or more correctly the social expectation that I have a vagina, and thus a particular set of social obligations, based on the way I am presented and present myself.

[1] There's one coworker who calls me darling, who does not accept correction on this (when I asked him not to, he started calling me sir, which is worse). In basically all other ways I really like working with him. I'm mostly used to it, but it's kinda frustrating.

Comments

[picklish]

YES to all of your frustrations. And then YES some more.

"Problem is: I can't get that from strangers, and that's who I actually want it from." Exactly. And, any genderfuck you add to your presentation only gets you read as queer, rather than getting you read as having a non-binary gender. You really can't win.

I only use gender-neutral pronouns and even for me the effort threshold of correcting strangers is always higher than just rolling with it. It's frustrating, but there never seems to be a good place to derail a conversation that's already gone many stops past pronoun town with a paragraph about my identity.

(These two thoughts are probably highly related. If you want to be identified as something that other folks don't even know exists, maybe it'd be a good idea to widely broadcast your identity, even to strangers. Maybe they'd think twice and give somebody else that space the next time.)

[rax]

I know (not well) someone who signs every message to a particular forum with "my name is X and I prefer the pronoun 'it.'" This choice seems to help it? I dunno. That's not where I am going right now but I don't think it's a bad idea necessarily.

[rushthatspeaks]

Yeah.

In Texas people called me ma'am a lot. Sometimes after visibly checking my hand for presence of wedding ring, which made me want to go berserk with automatic weaponry. But it's not like I'd do something as against myself as not wear my wedding ring when the alternative is, dammit, miss...

And then there's the thing where the ways that I enjoy appearing, the things that are built into my mental self-image as 'this is how I look', are going to be read as female despite the fact that that is not how I think of them and not how, in an ideal world, I would like them to be read. Like, I have long hair because I have long hair, and there must be ways for it to be read as more masculine but fuck if I know what they are.

I hate pronouns so much. Especially since with my presentation nobody is going to use the male ones, I don't think I can get that, neutral feels like pushing it, and it's not as though the male ones are precisely correct so if I were to go to a lot of work to make people use them (and it would be a lot of work and I'd have to change my appearance at least some I'm sure) it still wouldn't be the right thing.

All of which is to say, YES, frustrating, I feel that, yes.

[rax]

Like, I have long hair because I have long hair, and there must be ways for it to be read as more masculine but fuck if I know what they are.

There are ways to do this in nerd circles; you can wear a ponytail really low, you can braid a particular way, you can let it get kinda ratty. (Not recommended.) But in Texas I cannot imagine how you would do that short of a mullet.

I hate when people check for a wedding ring. (I have specific damage around this based on my recent history, I guess.) I want to be like there is a bike chain there that should tell you everything you need to know which is fuck off but I don't think that means anything to anyone who I haven't told what it means.

Basically, argh.

[bookofjude]

I feel like I am missing something, but this appears to be the first instance of "Mx". For some reason I'm stuck with the idea that it's a French abbreviation, but I presume otherwise that it is "Mx", where x denotes non-specificity?

My only interesting experience with "Ms" is that I was recently read (or is heard the accurate participle here?) as feminine over the phone when making a hotel booking. Thus, I am looking forward to seeing what sort of reactions I get when I check in, as my gender presentation is definitely at odds with this reservation.

Henceafter will I sign my name as "W/E" instead of "Mr", "Ms", etc.

[rax]

It's something I've seen a few different people use when they wanted a non-gendered title; it's not very common.

[picklish]

Re: Mx. http://lottelodge.tumblr.com/post/7757517589/uk-deed-poll-service-mx

[jadia]

This is why you go for your doctorate, so you can then correct people and say "Dr., please" when they use a gendered title...doesn't help with pronouns, unfortunately. (I have a coworker who likes to say "Miss Jade" at me, and at one point I finally got fed up enough to be like, "That's Dr. Jade to you!" - still kind of joking because there's an elitism issue there too, but it made me feel better anyway.) Though I guess in that case it's more about the diminuitive of the "Miss" than the gendered part of it.

I don't usually get annoyed at pronouns, but sometimes people interact with me in a way that makes me realize that someone is seeing me as a WOMAN first, and then as a PERSON second. Yes, I'm female, but I don't see why that should be relevant in almost all situations. Is this similar in nature to the discomfort you are expressing, or is it different? I'm pretty comfortable with what bits my body has most of the time. What I am uncomfortable with is how others react to it.

[jadia]

PS, I love your tag "the f on your license plate stands for fuck you" :-)

[ranyart]

I outed myself in conversation last night with a relatively new friend; most people in my crafting group know I'm trans, but she's a more recent member and I am often terrible at remembering who I've explicitly outed myself to and who may have heard from other people. It was part of a larger conversation about people saying "that's so gay" or "that's retarded" but we talked a little about my identity and presentation since she seemed interested in a non-creepy way.

What was jarring to me was how many times in this 5-10 minute conversation she said "I had no idea!" by which she meant that she didn't read me as trans. I really like male pronouns and the body I have right now, and those things are important to me, but it's also strange and uncomfortable when I realize someone is reading me as a cis man. Maybe that's what I'm "supposed" to want, but it's not comfortable for me.
With friends and acquaintances who seem receptive to it, I can talk about having a gender paragraph vs a one-word gender and feel pretty confident that they won't be mentally shoving me into a man-box I don't feel comfortable in, but I can't figure out what to do about strangers either. It takes a lot of effort for me to correct well-meaning friends; the amount of mental energy it would require for me to say something to strangers is more than I can handle right now, plus I'm not even sure what such a conversation would sound like.

Someone suggested I buy an Original Plumbing "No One Knows I'm a Transsexual" shirt, but that's not quite it either; maybe if it just said "trans" I'd buy one?

[electrickeet]

Entirely agreed with this, but you probably knew that. Of special note is [0] there: a zillion times, thank you! This is the sort of assumption that I want to work very hard to beat out of people, and for so many different reasons.

For a while, I was actively going by a set of non-gendered pronouns. I wasn't insisting people use them, but I would use them for myself (and sometimes others), and a few good friends picked them up and had no trouble with the matter. What I found startling is how offended certain others were! They seemed to assume that simply because a couple people used them for me, that I was somehow forcing them to do some crazy, language-breaking thing, when I hadn't even asked. They were reacting to hearing new words. Oh no, new words! Our poor techie brains can't cope with manufactired terminology!And we don't know "how to treat you"!

So, basically, people are gonna be stuck on this no matter how it's approached. So I tell them that the "F" on my I.D. means that I flunked sex, and now it's anyone's guess.

[damerell]

Apologies in advance for when I'm a numpty and forget.

[lhexa]

Well, at least English is one of the least gendered European languages. Imagine how much worse these worries would be if every single noun had a gender!

[q10.livejournal.com]

i've been ‘darling’ by friends on enough occasions that i'm not completely sure it's uniformly gendered.

also, there are lots of gender-neutral titles (‘Dr.’, ‘Rev.&rsqo;, ‘Lt.’, ‘Sen.’, etc.), although some of them are a real pain to come by, and all of them come with their own baggage. (easiest of the lot si ‘Rev.’ - try here (http://www.themonastery.org/?destination=ordination) or here (http://www.subgenius.com/scatalog/membership.htm).)

not much help, i know. sorry.

[tiamat360.livejournal.com]

Well, presumably in a matter of time rax will have Dr. :)

[inaki.livejournal.com]

My gender is: fluid

[rax.livejournal.com]

Can my gender be coloid, or bose-einstein condensate? :)

[keyoki.livejournal.com]

How do you pronounce Mx.? Mix? I really hate gendered honorifics and when I start teaching High School it's almost required that I use one. Maybe I'll demand that my students address me as Teacher or Instructor.

I have to say that I've only found gender useful when navigating the dating scene and, to be completely honest, I find that a little insulting.

[rax.livejournal.com]

I've heard it as "Mix," yeah, which I like well enough. I'd love to find something better; Dr. is great I guess in some contexts but in other contexts it feels awfully snooty.

I've always taught under my first name, but college classes are pretty different.

Gender has helped you in the dating scene? That is different from my experience. This may have something to do with the folks I end up dating...

[krinndnz.livejournal.com]

I still cherish the notion that "dude" may become gender-neutral.

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

Like "guys." It may be moving in that direction, from what I hear (everyday usage on the street).

[skuldchan.livejournal.com]

I'm in the same bag as you and bristle a bit when people use really feminine-gendered language in my direction, but I'd rather let it slide than bear the onus of having to educate someone (which is most people in the world) about gender theory. I wish that this thing were taught as a regular part of schooling instead of specialized college-level courses. The sad thing is that biology, in the vast majority of cases, divides the physical appearance of our bodies into two broad categories, and since we are creatures with giant brains who are really good at novel visual object classification, we tend to look at what's in front of us and immediately bin it into the category of either "male" or "female." Because society is slow to move away from functioning based on this biology, gender still really matters to people. It's part of the core of many peoples' identities and their mental concepts of themselves. As a result, it is one of the core foundations of how they probably construct identities for other people, and so they're not even aware of the gendered assumptions they make even in mundane social interaction.

It would be nice if society functioned in a way that was more gender-irrelevant, but you know, gender matters to most people, and I feel the real genderqueers and gender-neutral folks are in the minority. Some people want to be treated a certain way because they have a vagina or a penis. THEY LIKE IT. It boggles my mind too, but there you go.

Either we fight to change it in everyday language, which I am actually too lazy to do, or we have to put up with it. I find that the longer and longer it drags on for, the more and more apathetic I am by how people address me. Whatever, fine. As long as they're not telling me how to dress or how to behave, it'll roll right off.

[rax.livejournal.com]

I am glad that works for you! It... doesn't work as well for me, and it has gotten harder and not easier with time.

I do recognize that lots of people like gender, or at least like pretty big parts of it enough that they put up with the whole thing. And that's cool. I'm not actually a fan of abolishing gender specifically because a lot of people like it; I just want to open it up. "just" as if that's easy, of course, but. :) I wish there were a way to opt selectively in and out of the gender game, to use the parts of it I find useful and slide past the parts I find constraining. It may be that it's nice to want things, but dammit, I want them.

[identityfail.livejournal.com]

ohmygod, "the f on my license stands for fuck you" is maybe the best thing i've ever read. <3 <3 <3

but yeah gender is silly and difficult and blahblahblah.

ALSO LOLOLOLOLOL MRS. DILLON. (sorry :/) i think it's probably easier as a dude-ish person, because "mr." feels so much less loaded than any of mrs/ms/miss, but maybe that's just for me? or maybe oh god what if i am just male-ish-identified cuz male is the ~default~ and therefore feels more neutral? patriarchy makes gender so much more confusing than it already would be! in so many ways. :( fuck that shit.

also, when people ask me my pronouns i almost always say "he or they" which i feel weird about because it's like, i'm supposed to make the decision? not you? like you don't get to choose my gender, *i* do. but at the same time i am quite certain that those are the pronouns i like well enough--i don't want to be "she" and i don't want to be ze or ey so like i shouldn't feel guilty about saying "he or they" when like YES IT IS TRUE, THEY ARE BOTH COMFORTABLE AND GOOD (ENOUGH).

but yeah i could never operate as nonbinary-IDed on a day-to-day basis, it would just be too stressful and difficult. as you say, the effort threshhold (which spellcheck wants me to spell with only one 'h'??) is too high. *shrug*

if pressed, i wouldn't identify my gender as "other" so much as i would identify it as "irrelevant" (which is why i heart the way "they" functions as a gender-inclusive rather than gender-neutral pronoun) ... so while my like, screechy/reactionary GENDER DOESNT MATTER IT DOESNT IT DOESNT IT DOESNT reaction has gone down considerably since i stopped being a girl (thank god), it's still definitely a thing i feel / am not quite sure what to do with.

ho-hum.

probably none of that helped or was useful for me to say. also not super articulate cuz i'm tired and too lazy to edit. oh well!

[rax.livejournal.com]

AWESOME > ARTICULATE

keep on rockin' what you rock, yo <3

[sylvanstargazer.livejournal.com]

I can't even begin to generalize at all, since I don't know many agendered folks, but I get slightly annoyed even when my friends go out of their way to use a third-gendered pronouns or even "they", because it means they are consciously thinking about my gender and it's already obviously had more attention spent on it than it deserves. I am aware that there are people who identify as any one of a number of non-binary genders for whom such pronouns may be affirming, but they just don't do it for me.

My method of opting out has been to ignore gendered address the way I might ignore a small child doing something annoying for attention. I'm not sure if this approach would have satisfied me when I was performing a less unclear gender though*.

I do enjoy playing EchoBazaar and having it consider me "a lethal and crafty individual of mysterious and indistinct gender". And all the shopkeepers refer to my character as something like "Si.. er, Ma... er, hello!" I think that, if I could, that's what I'd choose.



*I'm using "performing" here from the perspective of performance theory, theater studies and how undictated-by-biology my own choices have been, not because I think gender is just a facade, is always unimportant or is not vitally real to some folks.

[rax.livejournal.com]

My method of opting out has been to ignore gendered address the way I might ignore a small child doing something annoying for attention. I'm not sure if this approach would have satisfied me when I was performing a less unclear gender though*.

I like this attitude and may borrow it, thank you!

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

I think I practically could have written this post, most parts, except for the picking part would be somewhat different.

There was a thread on a forum I frequent where people were asked to state what pronouns they prefer. My answer was pretty much that I hate all of them for slightly different reasons so use whatever. What I hate MOSTEST is when someone tries to CORRECT someone else on what are the proper pronouns for me because that implies that there IS a correct set of pronouns. There isn't.

Titles all suck too. In addition to the gender crap installed in them they always feel to me like they're full of artificial respect and artificial politeness. I'd rather someone be honestly disdainful than artificially respectful. The other day at my dentist's office they called me "Mrs. Mylastname" and I responded "firstname". Even if I didn't object to titles and gender that would be a wrong form of address for me.

"Gender, ew, yuck, get it OFF!!"

[lindseykuper]

This is silly, but I like this post because, well, until now, I think most of what I've seen you write about gender has been more theoretical and academic (as one might expect from, you know, an academic who studies gender), and I was sort of bummed because I thought that meant that I'd never be able to hold up my end of a conversation about gender with you, were I ever to find myself in such a conversation, because I don't have any of the academic vocabulary or background. But this post is basically totally understandable to a layperson and I just wanted to say that I appreciate that a lot.

[schrodi-kitten.livejournal.com]

I tend to use "sir" and "ma'am" a lot in professional life, because it does two things: it puts me in a position of service and respect for others, and secondly, it keeps me from memorizing a lot of names; which I'm very bad at.

That having been said, either I don't know many genderqueer/neutral persons in real life, or they don't care enough to correct me. I would be happy to instead use a gender-neutral term that fit the role of "sir/ma'am" if there were something short, sweet and to the point that was universal.

[lotusbiosm.livejournal.com]

I really wish there were such a word. I use "sir" and "ma'am" a lot professionally, though I tend to use it more often with patrons who are older or seem cranky. People my own age I'm less likely to use it with. But being aware of the fact that there are people who are genderqueer (or who aren't, but whose names or vocal ranges make most people assume the wrong gender, always fun on the phone) really does make me wish there were a word that meant "person I am currently providing service to".

(It also always amuses me when they call me "ma'am", because it seems to me a complete misread of the power dynamics of the situation, but those people are usually southern)

[rathdei.livejournal.com]

Problem 1) How do you get people to use pronouns they've never heard of and aren't included into the lexicon of the 90% of the population that don't even know what "Gender Neutral" or any of the associated stuff even means?
Problem 2) How do I pronounce these things and how can I best add them to my vocabulary? Hell I've never even heard of these things (probably because you didn't feel like introducing more vocabulary into your family etc)

although I really like what the F on your license stands for

Floodytox

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