Mastodawn

#MixedMetaphor #ActuallyAutistic #Nonbinary #trans

2/2 But I'm actually even more inconsiderate than that.

I want to take all the boxes away! Those boxes mean that cis people don't have to do the work and can go on pretending that they live in a world they understand.

I want cis people to take on the discomfort of being uncertain of another person's gender identity and just LIVE with that uncertainty Permanently. There's no reason you need to know my gender identity in most meetings and social events.

(OK, don your eye protection because I'm about to take off my normal-person mask. The harsh light of autistic lack-of-theory-of-mind blasts out whenever I do that, and it makes people uncomfortable.)

We're none of us cis. When it comes to gender, we're all floating in a confusing sea of what-the-fuck, and our gender identities are just flotsam we're holding on to to keep us afloat.

That's OK. It's better to float than to drown. Or you can surf! Or scuba dive...

@Zumbador But … one of the most visible ways that uncertainty about someone’s gender manifests is misgendering. Which okay maybe the person doing it is uncomfortable but a lot of the time it’s the misgendered person who’s going to (*sigh* again) feel the brunt of the discomfort.

It sure wound be nice if there weren’t difficult to avoid grammatical implications for gender, because yeah there’s otherwise no reason to publicly focus on this aspect of someone’s person.

@aubilenon
Misgendering happens because of people making incorrect assumptions about a person's gender, not because of uncertainty.

Granted, this isn't true of all languages (including my own) but in English, at least, there are ways to speak to and about people without having to know their gender identity.

@Zumbador My alt account is on oulipo.social (a mastodon host that forbids toots containing Latin’s fifth glyph) so I totally know that folks *can* talk around almost anything. And in fact many popular pronouns are off-limits to my pals on oulipo!

But a distinction twixt linguistic possibility and practicality is fairly important on topics of normal daily communication. In two-way chats going no-pronoun is no so bad, but in group convos, talking about folks sitting in that room is common (1/2)

@Zumbador It’s clumsy to say “I want to go back to Zumbador’s point about how that plan won’t work for Zumbador, as Zumbador can’t talk Zumbador’s rats into liking wasabi” but that sort of talking (but with pronouns) is totally normal to do particularly in group chats with a work focus. (Sub out “rats” and “wasabi” with job topics) (2/2)

@aubilenon "they" and "them" are great options you could use.

@Zumbador I personally have no problem with they/them, but my impression was that there are people who interpret it as an indictment of how they’re performing their gender. Maybe I’m wrong and it’s fine for everyone, in which case: great, we don’t all need to learn and switch over to Finnish!

@aubilenon I guess there are people who are offended at being called "they/them"?

I can certainly see that happening if, for example, you know a person is a trans woman, and prefers "she/her", but you insist on "theying" her.

That could be a not so subtle way of othering her.

@Zumbador To a certain extent I feel like “just always go with they/them” would be easy and comfortable in a way that it sounded like you were opposing earlier upthread. In general I am in favor of “less gender reveal, more gender repeal!” But it’s hard to come up with any blanket policy that works well for everyone, other than “try to be kind, and muddle through a bunch of nuance all the time” (which isn’t really a policy and is exactly the sort of thing policies are meant to simplify)