Moderated Using wrong pronouns= violence??

[lobosrul5]

Um, in what way is that wrong to do?

"I would never agree to have sex with a stranger for $500."

"If I were standing on the roof of the Burj Khalifa I wouldn't jump off."

"If my clothing caught fire I would stop drop and roll."

"If I had a pet ferret I wouldn't coat it with peanut butter and carry it around in my underpants."

As I am currently ferretless, not on fire, and far from the Burj Khalifa, and no stranger has ever offered me $500 for sex, I suppose I can't take such hard-line unshakeable stances? I'm not seeing it.

Uhh, because you'll never know for sure until faced with those situations.

What if that strange is REALLY attractive and you REALLY need $500!?

What if you are the top of Burj Khalifa and, I dunno you have a parachute, or you are suicidal?

What if you don't stop drop and roll, because you are 2 feet from a swimming pool.

Yeah, I got nothing for your last example.

 

[Upchurch]

We are talking about English here, not German. English doesn’t have gendered nouns except “ship” weirdly. In English, gendered pronouns were only used for things that have a sex and ships. Until recently, in English, gender and sex were considered to be roughly the same thing at least for the purposes of choosing a pronoun.

English didn't originate in a vacuum. It is primarily based on western Germanic roots, with a heavy influence from the European Latin-based languages and, to a lesser extent, picking up words from other languages and cultures.

Nations, for another example apart from ships, are also a commonly gendered in English. e.g.

God bless America, land that I love
Stand beside her and guide herThrough the night with the light from above

English is neither unique nor special. It is the product of its roots and historic influences.

People are trying to change that and I am fine with it, but please don’t gaslight the situation as it used to be by bringing up examples from languages that aren’t English.

I'll make you a deal: you stop misrepresenting English and I'll stick to current usage of it, because that's what actually matters when talking about how it is currently used.

There's nothing in what I wrote to remotely suggest that. Language can be fluid and complex and *still* it can be empirically true (or false, too) that some word has retained one stable meaning for a fair while.

But not exclusively one meaning. A word can maintain many stable meanings for extended periods and not be. Taking only one of those meanings as The Truth^TM is simplistic and misleading.

Not sure what is arbitrary about it; I'm talking about the period of time for which the word "he" has retained the meaning previously mentioned.

Why not 500 years ago? Or last week? Why cherry-picking a single time period that most of us have lived through and might have an emotional, nostalgic attachment to, but was also particularly transphobic and/or homophobic, as a model for how best to use modern language?

Nothing I said stated nor implied that "he" can't have other meanings than referring to a previously mentioned male. Words can take on new meanings while still maintaining their original meaning.

So, what purpose does it serve to cite decades old dictionaries, then? That's what my argument was about, remember.

You're missing what I was asking that mattered. I'll try again: Why is how language is used now, in current context, the only thing that matters for this thread?

Because now is when we are. We are talking about how we use words now.

Citing a 1980s dictionary, for example, as being meaningful today when language usage has evolved since then makes very little sense. It's missing words. Meanings of words have changed. It would make a ton of sense if we wanted to understand something about the how language was used in the 1980s, but that isn't what we're talking about.

I don't know how to make that any more clear, other than to use an analogy. If you wanted to write an interactive website on modern browsers, what is more useful: developer.mozilla.org or a hardcover book on HTML and JavaScript the late 1990s*?


* Which I totally bought at one point and it had a third section on Java. It was thick.

 

[Sherkeu]

You are conflating transvestitism - a sexual fetish - with being transgender. Your friend's correct pronouns are he/him. I once worked with a drag queen who regularly came to work in clothes traditionally worn by women. I asked because I wasn't sure and he confirmed that he/him were correct. Neither your friend nor my work colleague are transgender.

In most cases I'd use the preferred pronoun. Like most humans, most trans persons arent harming anyone and just trying to live their best life- surgery or not, kink or not, I dont care. But I also should have the right to my own discretion of my own language.

When it becomes encoded by the law, you get disturbing cases such as female rape victims (raped by males, looking male), journalists, members of the court, police, and even crime statistics having to treat the "now-a-woman" convicted rapist in female language of she/her, just because they 'said so'.
Should the victims words be her own? Or legally mandated lest they be violent to her rapist?

Maybe those were actually a good thing because it made clear how ridiculous the whole thing can become from otherwise good intentions.

Over the years it went:

-Gender rights, Process for ID change. Sounds ok. We like fairness and politeness
-Ok, fair enough still. We'll try to adapt. Hardships can be alleviated. (But you arent serious about xi and xer or mx? I'll never remember them all!)
-Still good- but surely there are exceptions for the.. right ??
-Wait? What?! Holy cow. You guys have gone off the deep end!
Backlash ensues.


You may say those rapists were using 'trans' as a cover to get different treatment and go to the women's prison. And I'd agree! But how would anyone legally define the difference?
What is the law on impersonating a woman to the court or with lascivious or criminal intent?

So yeah, preferred pronouns are fine, most of the time. But not ALL of the time.

eg. In a workplace, using the 'wrong' ones to intentionally harass would already fall under laws most western countries have in place and, if it had merit, that boss/company would be legally punished and the employees compensated. It is not a criminal charge, and certainly not violence.

 

[arthwollipot]

That seems like gatekeeping. Surely they are transgender if they say they are?

They didn't.

 

[Matthew Best]

They didn't.

How do you know?

 

[Sherkeu]

They didn't.

I thought this thread was about preferred pronouns. I KNOW he likes the female pronouns when dressed up. That is sort of the point of it. He is his alter gender in that mode. That does not count? A brief internet search says it does count.

In fact a brief internet search gives me quite a few names to describe 'trans. transfemme, boymode, girlmode, femmeboy, femme girl, butch lesbian (but male), etc.... about 30 more if you want me to list them all.

 

[Upchurch]

When it becomes encoded by the law,

What law are you talking about? We’re talking about CU Boulder’s guidelines on using pronouns. Ostensibly, also about words being violent, but that seems to have been resolved.

 

[Paul2]

But not exclusively one meaning. A word can maintain many stable meanings for extended periods and not be. Taking only one of those meanings as The Truth^TM is simplistic and misleading.


Why not 500 years ago? Or last week? Why cherry-picking a single time period that most of us have lived through and might have an emotional, nostalgic attachment to, but was also particularly transphobic and/or homophobic, as a model for how best to use modern language?


So, what purpose does it serve to cite decades old dictionaries, then? That's what my argument was about, remember.


Because now is when we are. We are talking about how we use words now.

Citing a 1980s dictionary, for example, as being meaningful today when language usage has evolved since then makes very little sense. It's missing words. Meanings of words have changed. It would make a ton of sense if we wanted to understand something about the how language was used in the 1980s, but that isn't what we're talking about.

I don't know how to make that any more clear, other than to use an analogy. If you wanted to write an interactive website on modern browsers, what is more useful: developer.mozilla.org or a hardcover book on HTML and JavaScript the late 1990s*?


* Which I totally bought at one point and it had a third section on Java. It was thick.

I'd like to regroup, if I may. This started here:

You won't find any "resource that says that the person using the pronoun gets to choose the pronoun" because that was just the way it was, since pronouns in English were invented. Everybody used the pronouns they deemed appropriate based on what they knew of the person's gender/sex. If they got it wrong (e.g. I always used to refer to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracy_Kidder]the author of The Soul of a New Machine as "she" until I found out who he was), well that was a mistake and they perhaps corrected it and then moved on with their life.

The fact that there is so much writing about misgendering and pressure to declare your pronouns for the benefit of others is a tacit acknowledgement that, in the past, the person using the pronoun did get to choose and now we are trying to change the previous accepted behaviour.

jeremyp is saying that we can't say that, in the past, which pronoun to use was not decided upon by the person the pronoun referred to, but by the speaker, and this is supported by (but, as I see it, is not totally determined by) the stability and long-term length of the dictionary definition of "he" as the male previously referred to. Everyone did their best to determine if the person they were using the pronoun to refer to was a biological male or not. BTW, IIRC, the OED shows that same definition of "he" going back to the 1600s.

 

[Thermal]

I'd like to regroup, if I may. This started here:
jeremyp is saying that we can't say that, in the past, which pronoun to use was not decided upon by the person the pronoun referred to, but by the speaker, and this is supported by (but, as I see it, is not totally determined by) the stability and long-term length of the dictionary definition of "he" as the male previously referred to. Everyone did their best to determine if the person they were using the pronoun to refer to was a biological male or not. BTW, IIRC, the OED shows that same definition of "he" going back to the 1600s.

Pretty sure it was a straightforward guideline for usage: if it's aale, use he, if it's a female, use she. Admittedly, I don't specifically recall, but I am confident that if you told a bunch of little kids that you first have to ask the subject what they were because you can't assume anything, we'd all recall the ensuing ruckus and we certainly wouldn't be discussing it now. This new multi gender gig may have been bantered around for a while, but this angle of never assuming gender is pretty spanking new.

 

[Upchurch]

I'd like to regroup, if I may. This started here:
jeremyp is saying...

Oh, if only it had started with jeremyp's post. My post was not a response to jeremyp, specifically, but to the whole line of fallacious reasoning that language can't or shouldn't evolve because older dictionaries say something different. I mean, that's what evolution is, things changing over time.

I'd like to regroup, if I may. This started here:
jeremyp is saying that we can't say that, in the past, which pronoun to use was not decided upon by the person the pronoun referred to, but by the speaker, and this is supported by (but, as I see it, is not totally determined by) the stability and long-term length of the dictionary definition of "he" as the male previously referred to. Everyone did their best to determine if the person they were using the pronoun to refer to was a biological male or not. BTW, IIRC, the OED shows that same definition of "he" going back to the 1600s.

And not even that is true, because it was largely based on societal gender constructs. Pink used to be a "boy color", then it became a "girl color". People would use pronouns on infants and small children based on how they conformed to the gender norms of the time. The same from era-to-era with long vs short hair or any number of other aspects.

BUT, as I have been trying to point out, none of that matters, because the CU Boulder pronoun guidelines weren't written decades ago. They were written, or at least published, for the 2022-2023 academic year.

 

[Upchurch]

I'd like to regroup, if I may. This started here:

I can't edit a moderated post, but I just realized you snipped the start of jeremyp's post, which is the specifically the part that connects the post to all the other "my dictionary is older than your dictionary" arguments, which is what I was referring to.

Why did you do that?

 

[Paul2]

I can't edit a moderated post, but I just realized you snipped the start of jeremyp's post, which is the specifically the part that connects the post to all the other "my dictionary is older than your dictionary" arguments, which is what I was referring to.

Why did you do that?

Because I took your reply to jeremy p to be self-contained and capable of standing on its own, and that formed the basis of my reply.

I didn't mean to surrpetitously change what jeremyp was saying. I'm not sure I did, either.

 

[Paul2]

. . . .
And not even that is true, because it was largely based on societal gender constructs.

But gender was used in this case to predict biological sex. If a male fully passed as a woman, based on appearance, calling that male a she meant that the speaker believed the male was a female. That someone could be mistaken doesn't change the fact that pronoun use was intended to indicate biological sex.

Pink used to be a "boy color", then it became a "girl color". People would use pronouns on infants and small children based on how they conformed to the gender norms of the time. The same from era-to-era with long vs short hair or any number of other aspects.

That there existed (and still exist) socially constructed gender stereotypes doesn't mean that pronouns still weren't determined by the speaker to indicate the biological sex of the subject. Both can operate. Sometimes, socially constructed gender is determinative for some linguistic (or other) purpose, and sometimes it was (perceived) biological sex.

BUT, as I have been trying to point out, none of that matters, because the CU Boulder pronoun guidelines weren't written decades ago. They were written, or at least published, for the 2022-2023 academic year.

But a change has happened (that's what I'm claiming and you, I think, are disagreeing) and it **seems** (please note that emphasis) that the change was made not through an organic, grassroots, up from the bottom process but is being promoted for political purposes.

 

[Upchurch]

Because I took your reply to jeremy p to be self-contained and capable of standing on its own, and that formed the basis of my reply.

I didn't mean to surrpetitously change what jeremyp was saying. I'm not sure I did, either.

My argument was based on the type of argument jeremyp was presenting and how the premise of it fails. When you remove the premise, and given that people don't always go back and read the thread of the conversation, there is a non-zero chance that people will misunderstand what I'm responding to.

As I have said, this isn't just jeremyp's post. There have been many attempts to make that argument and they fail, again and again. My post was an attempt to summarize that get it out of the way so we don't have to continually retread the same ground.

But, here we are. Again.

But gender was used in this case to predict biological sex. If a male fully passed as a woman, based on appearance, calling that male a she meant that the speaker believed the male was a female. That someone could be mistaken doesn't change the fact that pronoun use was intended to indicate biological sex.

Is it a fact, though? There is the very common misunderstanding that gender and biological sex are synonymous when, in actual fact, gender is a social construct as can be seen in evolving gender norms over time. Further, it is not uncommon, both now and in decades past, to intentionally misgender as a form of insult, despite "knowing" the person's sex.

Short of a genetic screening, MRI, and/or physical check (which can be misleading), gendered pronouns are almost always applied based on conformity to current social gender norms and self-identification.

That there existed (and still exist) socially constructed gender stereotypes doesn't mean that pronouns still weren't determined by the speaker to indicate the biological sex of the subject. Both can operate. Sometimes, socially constructed gender is determinative for some linguistic (or other) purpose, and sometimes it was (perceived) biological sex.

That's the thing. When you say "perceived" biological sex, what you're really evaluating is someone's conformity to gender norms.

Let's take a hypothetical example. You see a thin young person with long hair, a wispy mustache on their upper lip and visible hair in their arm pits, wearing a pink tank-top and shorts. Literally every one of these qualities can be present in both biological males and biological females, however some attributes do not conform with male gender roles and some do not conform to female gender roles. For whatever reason, maybe they don't speak your language, they do not self-identify their gender and let's take it for granted that you do not have this person's genetic information and have not performed a physical examination into their shorts.

The CU Boulder guidelines recommend using "they/them" pronouns since you do not know, but you insist that pronouns are based on (perceived) biological sex. So, what sex-based pronoun would you use?

But a change has happened (that's what I'm claiming and you, I think, are disagreeing) and it **seems** (please note that emphasis) that the change was made not through an organic, grassroots, up from the bottom process but is being promoted for political purposes.

I think the only change is that there has been a better understanding of sex, sexuality, and gender that has been disseminating through US popular culture and gained greater acceptance over the last 30ish years. When you get right down to it, not even the actual definitions have changed all that much, except that there is this idea that gendered pronouns retro-actively were really "sexed pronouns" even though no one ever called them "sexed pronouns".

 

[arthwollipot]

I thought this thread was about preferred pronouns. I KNOW he likes the female pronouns when dressed up. That is sort of the point of it. He is his alter gender in that mode. That does not count? A brief internet search says it does count.

Same for my work colleague, and that's typical of drag queens. They get addressed as their character when they are in character, and their character is female, so she/her is correct. When they are not in character, they are referred to by their correct pronouns.

My work colleague's drag character name was "Sheneeda Beverage" by the way.

In fact a brief internet search gives me quite a few names to describe 'trans. transfemme, boymode, girlmode, femmeboy, femme girl, butch lesbian (but male), etc.... about 30 more if you want me to list them all.

No need. There are as many different ways of describing people as there are people to describe, and people describing them. But "transgender" has a specific, commonly-accepted definition ("A transgender person (often abbreviated to trans person) is someone whose gender identity or gender expression does not conform to that typically associated with the sex they were assigned at birth" - Wikiepdia), and drag queening or cross-dressing for a sexual fetish is not transgender.

Furthermore, regardless of the description used (bringing it back to the thread topic), there is one simple way to determine what a person's correct pronouns are, and that is to ask them. It's not difficult, and most trans people will appreciate you making the effort.

 

[arthwollipot]

Pretty sure it was a straightforward guideline for usage: if it's aale, use he, if it's a female, use she. Admittedly, I don't specifically recall, but I am confident that if you told a bunch of little kids that you first have to ask the subject what they were because you can't assume anything, we'd all recall the ensuing ruckus and we certainly wouldn't be discussing it now. This new multi gender gig may have been bantered around for a while, but this angle of never assuming gender is pretty spanking new.

Yes, it is. That doesn't mean that it's wrong.

Us oldies will take a bit of time getting used to it. I accidentally misgendered my own nonbinary child the other day (I changed their goddamn nappies so I know very well what happens to be between their legs). I caught myself, correct it, and moved on. They appreciated that I demonstrated awareness and made the effort.

 

[Upchurch]

Yes, it is. That doesn't mean that it's wrong.

Us oldies will take a bit of time getting used to it. I accidentally misgendered my own nonbinary child the other day (I changed their goddamn nappies so I know very well what happens to be between their legs). I caught myself, correct it, and moved on. They appreciated that I demonstrated awareness and made the effort.

Anecdotally, kids don’t have any problem with it. Both my kids have had trans peers since around 3rd grade and neither one has had the panic demonstrated in this thread.

Insisting kids are going to be confused by preferred pronouns is mere projection.

 

[Steve]

Anecdotally, kids don’t have any problem with it. Both my kids have had trans peers since around 3rd grade and neither one has had the panic demonstrated in this thread.

Insisting kids are going to be confused by preferred pronouns is mere projection.

Have you found this to be predominant in this thread? Or have you noticed a couple of specific posts that you can easily reference for us?

 

[Paul2]

My argument was based on the type of argument jeremyp was presenting and how the premise of it fails. When you remove the premise, and given that people don't always go back and read the thread of the conversation, there is a non-zero chance that people will misunderstand what I'm responding to.

As I have said, this isn't just jeremyp's post. There have been many attempts to make that argument and they fail, again and again. My post was an attempt to summarize that get it out of the way so we don't have to continually retread the same ground.

But, here we are. Again.



Is it a fact, though? There is the very common misunderstanding that gender and biological sex are synonymous when, in actual fact, gender is a social construct as can be seen in evolving gender norms over time. Further, it is not uncommon, both now and in decades past, to intentionally misgender as a form of insult, despite "knowing" the person's sex.

Making a claim (an estimate, even) about someone's sex based on how they appear, in light of gender norms, is not conflating socially constructed gender and sex. (from here on in, gender is always "socially constructed gender" and sex is always biological). It's using gender to point toward sex. That estimate may be wrong or correct, but it's an estimate of sex using gender.

Short of a genetic screening, MRI, and/or physical check (which can be misleading), gendered pronouns are almost always applied based on conformity to current social gender norms and self-identification.

That's correct. But my point was about how, through the period of time in which "he" mean that male which was previously mentioned, calling someone "he" that one didn't know well was based on reading gender signs and was a claim/estimate, right or wrong, about that person's sex.

That's the thing. When you say "perceived" biological sex, what you're really evaluating is someone's conformity to gender norms.

I grant that, with emphasis on "really." But my reading of how "he" was used was as I've stated above.

Let's take a hypothetical example. You see a thin young person with long hair, a wispy mustache on their upper lip and visible hair in their arm pits, wearing a pink tank-top and shorts. Literally every one of these qualities can be present in both biological males and biological females, however some attributes do not conform with male gender roles and some do not conform to female gender roles. For whatever reason, maybe they don't speak your language, they do not self-identify their gender and let's take it for granted that you do not have this person's genetic information and have not performed a physical examination into their shorts.

The CU Boulder guidelines recommend using "they/them" pronouns since you do not know, but you insist that pronouns are based on (perceived) biological sex. So, what sex-based pronoun would you use?

That's not what I'm insisting. See above. Plus, I'm only saying what was going on when people said "he." They were referring to what they thought the person's sex was. Sometimes they'd have sufficient information, sometimes not. Sometime they were correct, sometimes not.

I think the only change is that there has been a better understanding of sex, sexuality, and gender that has been disseminating through US popular culture and gained greater acceptance over the last 30ish years. When you get right down to it, not even the actual definitions have changed all that much, except that there is this idea that gendered pronouns retro-actively were really "sexed pronouns" even though no one ever called them "sexed pronouns".

On further reflection, allow me to edit "promoted for political purposes" with "promoted for deliberate purposes" (as distinct from an organic, grassroots situation).

 

[Upchurch]

Have you found this to be predominant in this thread? Or have you noticed a couple of specific posts that you can easily reference for us?

Admittedly, I lost track of which thread I was in when I wrote that, but there has still been an existential panic throughout the thread. Even as far back as the OP, there is the underlying fear that using the wrong pronoun will cause one to be expelled and/or thrown in jail, which has never been suggested or supported by anything in the available CU Boulder documents.