Question The Sacred Androgen: The Transgender Debate

Has anyone else read this? There seems to be an large negative response to it, yet I found it quite thought-provoking.

http://review.antiochcollege.org/sacred-androgen-transgender-debate-daniel-harris

I won't speak for others, but I found this article insulting from the very first line, and it got worse from there. I had to stop partway through due to how toxic it was.

Was there anything specific you wanted to bring up?

I found it deliberately abrasive. The guy WANTED a negative response, and he got it.

Wow, that guy has an amazing talent... for trolling.

And perhaps for missing the point, too. Sorry Sir Lee, the only thing I see to debate is whether this guy is just a well meaning if cringe-worthy person, or a jerk trying to set people off.

He had some points that tweaked at things that have been percolating in the vast, echoing cavern of my skull, but it was mixed in with so much crap that it was hard to pick them out, and I found my self shifting from reading, to skimming, to simply giving up. He didn't use the term, but I have to agree completely that the Social Justice Warriors have almost completely taken over the dialogue about TG, to the great and terrible detriment to the TG cause (IMHO). This business with 57 genders (there are NON-SATIRICAL articles out there with this number!), and every individual having their own unique pronouns, and suing or causing to be fired those individuals who do not use these - almost always made up from whole cloth - designated pronouns has made of the TG community a laughing stock. When a university student can fill out the pronoun form with "Your Majesty" - and the prof has to address him as such or face censure - the inmates are ruling the asylum.

The various government mandates that TG be allowed to use the washroom according to their identified gender has created a massive backlash, has caused difficulties and confrontations with TGs who had previously been able to pass because people were now watching for them, AND has led to predatory acts by perverts abusing the laws (and yes, I am aware of the contradiction between those last two points). You folks know the answer to this better than I do, but I was very much under the impression that any TG that was sufficiently along in their transition that they COULD use the 'proper' washroom should be pretty darn hard to spot!

TG, or at least claiming to be TG, has become almost a cult. Posers claim to be TG because it gives them something to throw in their detractors faces; it makes them the specialest of special snowflakes. Soccer moms sign up their 8yo daughters for Boy Scouts, claiming the little girl - who had been quite happily playing with dolls and wearing dresses last week - was "showing signs of being a boy," when in reality TG is a much more fashionable and sympathetic excuse to ply at the PTA than ADHD, or - God forbid! - acting out against crappy parenting. The woman who had her 4yo in transition needs to be beaten with an axe,and the doctor carrying out any such procedure wrapped in his license and copy of the Hyppocratic Oath and set on fire.

I am deeply, deeply disturbed by his conflating other-gender behaviour and homosexuality, especially among young children. My daughter loved dressing her dinosaurs in doll clothes while wearing a princess dress, then driving them around in the back of her toy dump truck. Children play as children play, and any attempt to diagnose anything from this is ridiculous. Going back to his article, he says that only 30% of TG are gay, but then seems to suggest that an enormous part of what I would have called being a tomboy (or the male version - I can't think of a word that ISN'T deeply insulting to describe that behaviour) is almost always due to being homosexual. Utter crap.

^ Ok thats a level of ignorance I wasn't expecting to see here, I though it only occured on reddit. Yes I also find the fifty seven genders thing kind of stupid. But then again English really sucks for lacking gendr neutral pronouns. Its a pity we can't agree on a set and just use them for everybody.

1. No sadly some people will be obviously TG no matter how far along they are, mostly it has to do with how late in life they transition, People who transition later, and don't have an androgenous apprence to begin with will have obvious signs of their biological sex. The other big one for m2f transgender people is that once the voice breaks it really can't be reversed.

2. I'm not aware of any cases of someone actually faking being transgender. And I find the cult claims laughable. And yes young children can know that their own gender, this has been shown repeatedly. Transition for children before puberty means wearing the cloths they are comfortable with, there is no surgery involved, so there is no doctor carrying out anything.

3. This one just wants me to say does anyone seriously think that doctors are this stupid? That they will make a diagnosis of gender dysporia based on what toys a child likes to play with or what their favourit colour is? No Just no, that is not how it works.

GrimGrendel wrote: I won't speak for others, but I found this article insulting from the very first line, and it got worse from there. I had to stop partway through due to how toxic it was.

Was there anything specific you wanted to bring up?

You got further than me.

I wasn't insulted at the first line but by the time I was a quarter of the way through it I knew the person was either horibly misinformed or willfully ignorant. I don't see much point in reading articles like that. My whole avoid negativity thing.

As for allegations of children being certain genders, let the kids do what they want and figure it out as they grow up. Don't force either gender on them and they will eventually figure out what they are and who they want to be.

I'm pretty sure Konzill is responding to me; I'm not sure about JG. The joys of communicating via internet - most of what I typed was what I have read and observed from idiots, and how so much of it meshes with the article being discussed - not what I personally believe. Quick background - middle-class professional cis-het white male; as close to "The Man" as you'll ever find riding the subway. Up until ... 7 years ago? when I discovered the Kimba stories, TG wasn't a thing I had any knowledge or experience about; I still have little Real Life^tm experience. I have tried to learn, and understand, some bit of what you folks live with and go through. I try very hard not to come across as the sort of idiot you find on 'reddit'.

Oddly enough, I've found myself a few times, using the information and (limited) understanding of attitudes of the TG people here from my years of participating on this site and its predecessor, to defend the very NOTION of TG on one site or another - that it really is a thing, and not simply a gaggle of mentally ill freaks, as so many still believe.

The thing with the 57 genders is part and parcel of the SJWs and part of what I meant by the 'cult' surrounding TGs. It's ridiculous, has no basis in anything resembling scientific fact that I've ever come across, and has no effect beyond making the TG community look idiotic, when it is the actions of poseurs who claim to be TG to enhance their Left Virtue-rating.

1. I've seen more "I caught a man in the women's washroom!" stories in the past year than in the past 10. Many of those were claiming to be TG. Some were well turned-out; some weren't even trying. Honest question, admittedly reductio ad absurdum - if a person identifying as female looks like Kodiak, should that person be allowed to use the women's washroom? Should that person EXPECT that they should be allowed?

2. I have indeed come across people quite clearly claiming TG (or more commonly, "gender fluid") for appearance's sake, and even for position within a group. And there are people beating the drums and waving the flags ABOUT TGs, but doing a shitty job of doing it FOR TGs; I mentioned the backlash caused by the washroom fussing. These are the people I call a cult, and they are inflicting tremendous harm IMHO to the actual TG community. I remember reading an article ... months ago; don't ask for a cite - that suggested a civil war was happening in the TG community, between those who suffered from Gender Dysphoria, and those who did not. The crux was that those who suffered from GD were accusing those who did not of being (ahem) 'poseurs'. This struck me as fascinating, and really made me think - if a person's conviction that they are in the wrong body is not so strong that the state of their body makes them unhappy, are they actually TG? Can a person who'd sort of rather be the opposite sex truly call themselves TG?

Reality check request - Isn't that the very definition of being transgendered, that you are so strongly convinced that your body is put together wrong that it makes you fundamentally unhappy?

3. I agree, but unless I misread that part of the article - entirely possible; I was getting impatient with it - that's very much what happened. I await correction by wiser and more patient heads.

Jarjarross wrote: As for allegations of children being certain genders, let the kids do what they want and figure it out as they grow up. Don't force either gender on them and they will eventually figure out what they are and who they want to be.

This. A thousand times, this. Said far better than my own babbling gibberish.

DonTZ125 wrote: You folks know the answer to this better than I do, but I was very much under the impression that any TG that was sufficiently along in their transition that they COULD use the 'proper' washroom should be pretty darn hard to spot!

Well, as somebody who has used both male and female bathrooms, I assure you that precisely zero amount of transition is required for any person to be capable of using either bathroom.

Ha! Ok, I walked into that one ...

And, to be sure, there are plenty of women (heterosexual ciswomen with no genital abnormalities) who can use male-restroom-type urinals. It requires either an accessory or appropriate technique, but it is doable and women do that for hygiene reasons.

I'll admit finding it ironic that the writer wishes to take issue with the TG community over pronoun use, and then proceeds to literally use "us" vs. "them".

I am a middle-aged, overweight, heavy-boned male, who has struggled with expressing the female part of me for over 20 years with no realistic chance of being able to do anything about it. Cogitating on this article made me re-think my feelings about myself, the actions I had always dreamed of taking, and my reasons.

I do agree that the author is abrasive and has a bone to pick about some issues in his life. I also disagree with much of what he has to say. However, he does have a grain of truth in many things that he mentions, and I do feel that these should be discussed:

• the issue of making pronouns an issue
• the terms of public debate
• the "shared reality"
• hyper-sexualisation
• the suppression of genetic identity and the consequences thereof
• the fluidity (or lack of it) of identity
• "self-help" culture
• acceptance and conformity
• the lack of any help for those who have no hope of ever being able to transition

Jarjaross and JG have already addressed everything else I would have in a more diplomatic way than I might have been able to, but the whole pronoun thing does really get to me.

konzill wrote: But then again English really sucks for lacking gendr neutral pronouns. Its a pity we can't agree on a set and just use them for everybody.

JG wrote: I will admit there's a certain level of irritation I have when it's implied that usage of pronouns is always intended as an oppressive act by some people.

"They" and "them" ("you" is always gender neutral and singular and plural) are perfectly acceptable as gender neutral singular pronouns. It's still a little awkward in writing, but works very well spoken. A little more time and it won't matter, it's not like English has rules or follows logic anyway.

The same way that, "begging the question," now means 'raises the question,' and "regardless" and "irregardless" should have opposite meanings but mean the same thing.

English is very adaptable.

edit:
The only ones making agreement on a set difficult are Canada and New York City. Everyone else is content to tell English where exactly they can stuff their "rules" and then go buy a coffee.

I would like to mention that the "lack of gender-neutral pronouns" being an issue is itself an artifact of the language -- because English does have gender-neutral pronouns for some things, it feels "incomplete" for not having gender-neutral pronouns for ALL things.

Portuguese (my first language) does not have gender-neutral third-person pronouns. At all. Even the plural has male and female forms. But, differently from English, nobody but the wackiest of the fringest of the fringe wants to add this feature to the language (the same sort of out-of-touch-with-reality people who think we should just abandon Portuguese and switch the entire country to speaking Spanish, in order to "integrate" better with the rest of Latin America). Why? Because it doesn't fit, that's why. It goes against the basic structure of the language, and therefore feels really awkward and unnatural.

(By the way, that's why ultimately artificial attempts like inserting "ze" into English failed -- because they feel unnatural. Singular "they" is slowly gaining traction because it feels less strange; for the uninitiated, it just feels like the writer initially intended to use plural and changed to singular and failed to adjust the pronouns. That is, it feels like somewhat mangled English, but it's still very recognizably English, and over time people get used to the new syntax. "Ze" feels like "WTF language is this?")

I'm not saying that we Brazilians and Portuguese live in a perfect-kumbaya-singing society. Far from it. We do have issues with gender in language, but they are different issues, related to how Portuguese grammatical gender works. And sometimes people go out of their way to use non-neutral gender language, even in the face of established grammar.

Case in point: our former female president. In Portuguese, most nouns are gendered -- some are always male or female, some have male and female variants, but there are few if any true "neutral" nouns; what we have are "either gender" nouns, which can be used in either masculine or feminine sentence structure. Most nouns ended in "-nte" (like "student", "servant") are "either gender", the gender being supplied (mostly) by the article, and the rest of the sentence (like adjectives, that often have male and female forms) adjusting to it. So, mainstream media used the grammatically-correct form "a presidente", while Ms. Roussef's party (and government officials), which harbors a number of militant leftist radicals, insisted on the grammatically-unsound form "a presidenta", because they wanted to emphasize her gender for political reasons.

So, is Portuguese really gender-biased? Well... not as much as one would expect, the reason being that, while in general the "masculine includes feminine" rule applies to Portuguese, there are lots of situations where the natural way to refer to a mixed group, or even an individual male, is in the feminine form. For instance, "person" is a female noun, and so is its plural "persons;" although "people" is masculine. Still, writing in a reasonably gender-balanced way in Portuguese (since true gender-neutral is, well, impossible) is a bit of a challenge -- it involves interspersing "male" generic nouns with "female" generic nouns.

It is true that languages change, but not all changes are equal. Some changes help to fill in gaps or streamline the language, and that's good. Some changes simply introduce fun alternative ways of saying things, which is also good. Both sorts usually introduce a little bit of ambiguity, but that's fine as long as they make up for it by being fun or useful. Words like totes, tubular, peeps, homies, and owned are good developments, even if they sound dumb at first. Using "they" as a singular gender neutral pronoun falls under that category too. Things like irregardless, (not) literally, and "could care less," on the other hand, do not. Those are, in fact, simple errors, and claiming linguistic evolution is just making an excuse for sloppiness. Odds are that they'll become institutionalized anyway, but that doesn't mean we should help them along or coddle the ignorant.

Also, change is confusing. My grandmother is a very sweet lady who fully supports LGBT+ rights. But trying to explain the concept of non-binary gender identities to her? Just give up now. She's long since reached the point where she cannot easily understand new concepts, even if she wants too.

We are trying to redefine how the world understands gender identity. We are creating concepts that didn't exist a decade ago. Compared to that, legal equality is easy (and look how 'easy' that is!)

Thanks Kristin, that actually fits a lot of what I was thinking but couldn't articulate.
I've been on some political comment boards where a good number of hard conservative commenters said "don't shove it in my or my childrens face and I'll do my best to be as polite as possible in daily life." Twenty years ago these people or people like them would have been saying send all transgendered people to professional help whether they want it or not.
That's a pretty good step, even if it's not as accepting as it should be.
And when I've entered the discussion I've more often been attacked by people supporting the TG cause because I only support "80% or 90%" of their agenda and recommend a slower less confrontational approach.
The your with us 100% or against us does so much more harm then good, but too often the noisiest people are demanding exactly that at the expense of everyone else.

Arcanist Lupus wrote: Also, change is confusing. My grandmother is a very sweet lady who fully supports LGBT+ rights. But trying to explain the concept of non-binary gender identities to her?

I don't know how sweet I am, but I think I've reached your grandmother's level of understanding - or at least, the logjam that's preventing more. The concept of non-binary and/or gender fluid makes no sense to me - I can't even tell if they're different concepts!

TG to me is relatively easy - someone is born with female parts but should be male? Ok, they're male. Someone is born with male parts but should be female? Ok, they're female. Still male / female.

Asexual and neuter I get. Male, female, straight, gay, bi (and the sliding scale thereof), TG, herm - I get those, and yes I know I'm mixing and matching sex and gender. I really don't grasp gender-fluid and non-binary.

Domoviye wrote: I've been on some political comment boards where a good number of hard conservative commenters said "don't shove it in my or my childrens face and I'll do my best to be as polite as possible in daily life."

Going back even further, I remember when the first Gay Pride parades were happening, which was also around the time adoption by gay couples was being discussed in different jurisdictions. I remember looking at some of the pics in the paper and thinking, "These people are their own worst enemies!" The notion going through my head was that when Ma and Pa Kettle next read about gay adoption in the news, their first thought was NOT going to be about that nice quiet couple down the street who always make such lovely dishes for the church bake sale, but rather the freaks sashaying down Main Street with their ass cheeks hanging out.

Fortunately, the gay community managed to put up enough of a 'civilised' front to drown out the idiots in the back. I would humbly suggest the TG community is in a similar position. You folks already used my poorly-chosen words about washrooms to make me look dippy; I ain't going there again!

As a side note on the singular 'they', it is by no means a new development, and is attested back to the 16th century (Shakespeare, even!). However, the 'official rules' of the language's grammar and orthography weren't formalized until the end of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th, with the publication of the OED in the UK and Noah Webster's dictionary in the US (which had the effect of formalizing several of the ways American English had diverged, though many of Webster's choices were more personal preferences or regionalisms for central Connecticut - some being specific to New Haven or even just the Yale student body - than real differences existing prior to that).

At some point, these early grammarians decided that 'they/them' would only be plural, and the previous 'thou/thee' for third person singular would be folded into the early 16th century corruption of pronouncing them 'you/your' (which may actually have started with written English only, as the thorn was losing usage in English around then and presumably people started seeing it as a curlicued 'y' rather than being equivalent to the 'th' diphthong). However, singular 'they' remained in widespread use, and never fully faded.

So why is this an issue at all? Because the 'official' grammar doesn't allow it, so you will always have a certain percentage of pedants who will complain. This leads to other pedants saying that there should be such a construction, ignoring the fact that in actual fact, there already is.

This is only one facet of the whole brouhaha, though, but still worth mentioning.

DonTZ125 wrote:

Arcanist Lupus wrote: Also, change is confusing. My grandmother is a very sweet lady who fully supports LGBT+ rights. But trying to explain the concept of non-binary gender identities to her?

I don't know how sweet I am, but I think I've reached your grandmother's level of understanding - or at least, the logjam that's preventing more. The concept of non-binary and/or gender fluid makes no sense to me - I can't even tell if they're different concepts!

TG to me is relatively easy - someone is born with female parts but should be male? Ok, they're male. Someone is born with male parts but should be female? Ok, they're female. Still male / female.

Asexual and neuter I get. Male, female, straight, gay, bi (and the sliding scale thereof), TG, herm - I get those, and yes I know I'm mixing and matching sex and gender. I really don't grasp gender-fluid and non-binary.

I'm hardly an expert, but my understanding is that genderfluid is the Almond Joy of gender identity - sometimes you feel like a nut; sometimes you don't. The main defining aspect of genderfluidity is that it is temporally variable. I see non-binary as a bit of a catch-all term for anyone who does not think that any of the other labels fit them.

Non-binary is a term for anyone who exhibits gender and isn't part of the gender binary, from demi-girls and boys to third gendered people to gender fluids like myself. (None of those were hard lines, just examples of what falls into). There are more identities that I have missed and it is a gender identity in its own right as well.

Left explicitly out of that are agendered people who experience no gender what so ever. They don't fall into the catagory of nonbinary gender as they don't have any gender. They can still call themselves non binary though, as was said by Arcanist on my reintroduction thread "In general, people define genders not the other way around".

Lack of understanding a new world is one of the reasons I will never be out to my grand parents.

Wow. I had to Google several terms you just listed, and I'm not an awful lot further ahead ...

I can't even begin to imagine what you're going through. All I can do is wish you well, and stand over here and try not to be too offensive when I say something clueless.

Jarjaross wrote: Non-binary is a term for anyone who exhibits gender and isn't part of the gender binary, from demi-girls and boys to third gendered people to gender fluids like myself. (None of those were hard lines, just examples of what falls into). There are more identities that I have missed and it is a gender identity in its own right as well.

Left explicitly out of that are agendered people who experience no gender what so ever. They don't fall into the catagory of nonbinary gender as they don't have any gender. They can still call themselves non binary though, as was said by Arcanist on my reintroduction thread "In general, people define genders not the other way around".

Lack of understanding a new world is one of the reasons I will never be out to my grand parents.

I mean no offence, but gender-fluid sounds like a headache for the person that has to refer to the gender-fluid one.

Also, what does one refer to "agendered" people as? It?

Personal gender identity is something essential to our construction as human beings, and as such varies quite a bit. However, effective everyday communication requires simple, easily-applied language constructs that can be determined by context, and for the majority of the world that is "I refer to you by the gender you appear to be to me".

Please excuse me if I have missed the point somewhere.

Ahimsa wrote: Also, what does one refer to "agendered" people as? It?

You ask them. Simple as that.
Although never refer to someone as 'it'. That's insulting. If you want a gender-neutral pronoun to use for the person before asking their preferences, 'they' is usually appropriate.

Personal gender identity is something essential to our construction as human beings, and as such varies quite a bit. However, effective everyday communication requires simple, easily-applied language constructs that can be determined by context, and for the majority of the world that is "I refer to you by the gender you appear to be to me".

If you meet someone in the street for the first time, sure you can assume and go with what that person presents as. Most people won't expect a stranger to get it right and probably won't correct you if the interaction is short, even though they might feel bad inside. However, if you are aware, and you keep meeting them, it will be doing them a service to ask politely what pronoun to use around them.

Ahimsa wrote:

Jarjaross wrote: Non-binary is a term for anyone who exhibits gender and isn't part of the gender binary, from demi-girls and boys to third gendered people to gender fluids like myself. (None of those were hard lines, just examples of what falls into). There are more identities that I have missed and it is a gender identity in its own right as well.

Left explicitly out of that are agendered people who experience no gender what so ever. They don't fall into the catagory of nonbinary gender as they don't have any gender. They can still call themselves non binary though, as was said by Arcanist on my reintroduction thread "In general, people define genders not the other way around".

Lack of understanding a new world is one of the reasons I will never be out to my grand parents.

I mean no offence, but gender-fluid sounds like a headache for the person that has to refer to the gender-fluid one.

Also, what does one refer to "agendered" people as? It?

Personal gender identity is something essential to our construction as human beings, and as such varies quite a bit. However, effective everyday communication requires simple, easily-applied language constructs that can be determined by context, and for the majority of the world that is "I refer to you by the gender you appear to be to me".

Please excuse me if I have missed the point somewhere.

No, no, no, being gender fluid is as much a head ache on my end as it is on yours. And not just because I'm trapped in this closet.

Personally I prefer 'they' if you don't know my current gender and alwasy prefer that you use it in reference to me online as my gender identity could shift over the period of time that these conversations take (since they can take days or weeks). Many gender fluid people who are much better at it than me are able to fully appear as whatever gender they want so your method may very well work on them. Others who are just much more confident than me have ways lf signalling their friends as to which gender they are, normally through accessories such as necklaces or coloured bracelets.

Also the response of 'ask them' is pretty much as accurate as you can get. It comes down to common courteousy. People assume all dogs are male until it is pointed out then they apologize, why can't the same happen for humans? Would you call a cis-woman named Claire 'Jim', no, so why are you misgendering that transgendered person?

Also case and point about something that bothered me in the article: Cisgendered isn't an insult it is the scientific term, until someone comes up with a better sland than cis you will be cis. It is like Neurotypical some people take it as an insult used by people with mental disorders to describe those with out. 'Tisn't and inslut it is the scientific term.

Jarjaross wrote: Also the response of 'ask them' is pretty much as accurate as you can get. It comes down to common courteousy. People assume all dogs are male until it is pointed out then they apologize, why can't the same happen for humans? Would you call a cis-woman named Claire 'Jim', no, so why are you misgendering that transgendered person?

I suspect I'm in the majority in thinking of all dogs as dogs. The default pronoun in English for most objects is "he", but it's a wild stretch of the imagination to mistake that for literally thinking the dog is male.

With regard to Claire, who's sometimes Jim:

Common courtesy would be for Claire to tell me up-front if she's changed her name since we last met, not lecture me regarding the discourtesy in calling her by the name I've previously known her by. Common courtesy also recognizes that the changeover will not be instantaneously registered, and that it's neither oppression nor deliberate misgendering that imposes delays or setbacks in that process.

Common courtesy would also preclude Claire/Jim from lecturing me over the discourtesy in not remembering her name, or mistaking them for Bob.

And here's a clue for rent by Jim-Bob Claire: In practice, changing a name is hard. It takes effort in the first place for an individual to learn the name(s) that go to any given person, and the features used in recognizing the person that are to be tied to that signifier. Changing that name requires each individual who knows the person to unlearn that signifier and learn that the new signifier that is to be connected to the current set of recognition features. The process IS harder for the people around the person the longer they've known them. Been there, done that.


"why can't the same happen for humans?"

It does. Common courtesy is based on common human experience. In that experience, it is necessary for common people to rely on the external markers that the person in front of them chooses to present. And it is that person's responsibility to choose from their culture's palette of gendered markers to best fit the persona that they are trying to convey.

If the choices made produce an indeterminate or confusing presentation to others, it is up to that person to politely correct or to accept honest mistakes, because the common experience among humans is that there will always be someone who doesn't "get" the message being conveyed.

In the midst of all this, the common person does not randomly change internal gender from day to day, week to week, or year to year. If they somehow do, they commonly don't demand new pronouns each time, so common courtesy does not require that every meeting start with an enquiry as which pronoun set each speaker has decided to use, in case it's changed.

And since you bring up the subject of neurotypicality later in your post, it should be noted that for a well-known fraction of the population, "body language" is not an easily recognized external marker for anything.

Jarjaross wrote: Also case and point about something that bothered me in the article: Cisgendered isn't an insult it is the scientific term, until someone comes up with a better sland than cis you will be cis.

Yes, "cisgendered", but more frequently "cis", is indeed used as an insult. To my knowledge the term did not originate in the scientific literature, but even if it did, that would not change the reality of its usage outside that literature.

Claiming that cisgendered people are morally wrong for objecting to the label you choose to label them with (Your own words: "until someone comes up with a better sland than cis you will be cis"), while you yourself object to any labels applied to you other than the ones you choose as "misgendering" is hypocritical as well as insulting.

Jarjaross wrote: It is like Neurotypical some people take it as an insult used by people with mental disorders to describe those with out. 'Tisn't and inslut it is the scientific term.

In this instance, you do not know what you are talking about.

The term "neurotyical", or "NT", was originated in social media among autists who were damn well tired of non-autists framing the entire discussion around how (regardless of level of functioning) autists are, by definition, flawed, dysfunctional people who need a permanent cure. The earliest blogs using and explaining the term may or may not still be online, but I did read them myself.

The term was NOT intended to cover all mental disorders as a blanket term, because the vast majority of people with mental illness ARE neurotypical. It was intended as a straightforward way of characterizing the methods of information processing and styles of communication used by non-autists, who are indeed the typical people that one will encounter. As far as I'm concerned, the fact that many neurotypical people DO take the term as an insult makes the original authors' case.

There is a legitimate question as to whether people with ADD/ADHD are neurotypical, because from the neurotypical viewpoint ADHD strongly "shadows" autism even though the perceived deficits are mostly arrived at through other mechanisms. (An aspie, an ADDer, and a neurotypical walk into a room. The NT's offended.)

Re "what do you call a genderfluid person when you first meet them?" Why, in English, the answer is simple: you call them "you." English does not have gender-forms for second-person (differently from, say, my native Portuguese, where adjectives may have male and female endings, depending on the subject). By the time the person leaves and you switch to third-person, you might have acquired enough data to choose an appropriate pronoun.

Re using "cisgender" as an insult... I recently had a whiff of it, during the whole "transgender vs. transgendered" thing over at the wiki. The militant visitor (M.V. for short) didn't actually go as far as using it; rather, they used the passive-aggressive version, saying "what do I know? I'm just transgender myself." The implication, of course, was that non-transgender people (or cisgender for short) like me are ignorant idiots whose input should be disregarded out of hand.

Now, I'm not saying that the M.V. did not have a point. They did, and a few days later we changed things at the Wiki to address their concerns. They just went at it in a needlessly heavy-handed way. Yes, being confrontational IS sometimes a valid tactic; but in this case, it wasn't -- the M.V. just assumed that we wouldn't be open to dialogue and plowed ahead. Being confrontational at the wrong time may lose you allies instead of gaining them.

DonTZ125 wrote: Wow. I had to Google several terms you just listed, and I'm not an awful lot further ahead ...

I can't even begin to imagine what you're going through. All I can do is wish you well, and stand over here and try not to be too offensive when I say something clueless.

TBH, it is hard even for those who are gender-variant themselves not to step on toes when they don't know someone. I've made regrettable mistakes of this sort myself all too often.

Most of the time, the confusion is cleared up rapidly, and no hard feelings linger. It is when an individual assumes that I am being deliberately offensive that it becomes a problem.

This is my biggest issue with the defensiveness often found among groups of all kinds: the twin assumptions that those outside of the group are aware of the group and what is and isn't considered appropriate by that group, and that anyone not in the group is going to be deliberately hostile to that group.

Now, to be clear, most groups have only a small number of members who take this position. Still, it is seen in many kinds of groups, large and small; indeed, one of the groups most taken with assumption of persecution is modern Evangelical Christianity (primarily for historical reasons relating to both the early development of the Christian church, and later schisms in which Evangelicals in particular often got the short end of the stick). This view of themselves as a beleaguered minority holds even when they are the dominant sect in their area.

Anyway, getting back to the issue at hand: this sort of thing has been exacerbated by the Internet, because, on the one hand, a lot of groups who had never gotten a critical mass to form a meaningful group before now find themselves numbering in the hundred of thousands or even millions, when previously most would have been isolated; while at the same time, it makes it easy to form walled garden communities, out of sight of the rest of society and serving as an echo chamber for their reinforcing views, with the result that the people within those walled gardens come to view their community's standards as 'norm' and the wider society as 'out of norm'. The result is that you have very small, passionate groups who see themselves as under attack whenever someone from outside the group encounters them without knowing anything about them.

There is also the matter of Poe's Law - both hostility and trolling are real enough, all too often - and the related question of how one can tell a deliberate insult from a misunderstanding.

GrimGrendel wrote:

Ahimsa wrote: Also, what does one refer to "agendered" people as? It?

You ask them. Simple as that.
Although never refer to someone as 'it'. That's insulting. If you want a gender-neutral pronoun to use for the person before asking their preferences, 'they' is usually appropriate.

Personal gender identity is something essential to our construction as human beings, and as such varies quite a bit. However, effective everyday communication requires simple, easily-applied language constructs that can be determined by context, and for the majority of the world that is "I refer to you by the gender you appear to be to me".

If you meet someone in the street for the first time, sure you can assume and go with what that person presents as. Most people won't expect a stranger to get it right and probably won't correct you if the interaction is short, even though they might feel bad inside. However, if you are aware, and you keep meeting them, it will be doing them a service to ask politely what pronoun to use around them.

What's wrong with "it," unless you are a "Knight that says 'ni'?" It's a perfectly good word, and gender neutral. I've thought of myself as an "it" for a long time. I'm not a him or a her or a hir or a hem or a zir or a zee or any of the others, I am an "IT."

Null0trooper (I don't know your prefered abreviatioin if you have one) you blew past the point (on the Claire/Jim arguement) so quickly it didn't ven see your dust trail.

Claire is a Cis-gendered woman who has never been 'Jim' if you are calling her 'Jim' or some other male name you are insulting her. If someone is transgendered and has told you they are transitioning and changing their name, calling them by their old one (without immediate correction or guilt over the accident) is an insult.

Claire in this example was not supposed to be trans or fluid, as mentioned in the argument she is cis.

As to your argument on dogs, yes people do assume they are male. To a large proportion of people, especially people who have not had dogs, all dogs are boys until proven otherwise. They expect stictly masculine (for dogs, not humans) behaviour from all dogs until they are told it is a girl, then they still expect some masculine behaviour.

As to your information on Neurotypical, thank you I did not know that. That does not mean it has not been adopted by other mental disorders in the mean time.

I actually just went and looked up 'cis', and it's a chemical term that means the carbon double-bonds in an isomer lie in one manner, while a 'trans' isotope has the bonds lying in the other direction.

'Cis' is the opposite of 'trans'. It's a pun, and actually not a bad one.

As with JG, I have witnessed SJWs screaming about "Take your cis hate and priviledge out of our safe space!" and other crap, so yes - it can be used as an insult. When used as a simple descriptor it doesn't have to be; I described myself as "cis-het male" in my second post in this thread; I've also described myself as "NATO Standard Male," but that's not a joke everyone gets.


It occurs to me that the problem with "it" as a third-person neuter term may be that the vast majority of English speakers only know about male persons and female persons, referring to them as "he" and "she." For that majority, "it" is only used to refer to a thing, not a person. To extend the example broached earlier, a dog may be referred to as he, she, or it, same with a boat or car, but it is almost always insulting to refer to a human as 'it'. I would suggest that even when a gender-fluid or neuter person presents as such and is aware of themselves as such, their own attitude towards the word 'it' is still that of someone raised in a binary gender society, thus the sudden inrush of terms such as Xe, Ze, and Xhi.

Jarjaross wrote: Claire is a Cis-gendered woman who has never been 'Jim' if you are calling her 'Jim' or some other male name you are insulting her.

There is no reason for me or anyone else to call Claire by any specific male name (nor for you to expect that to happen) unless she has indeed been introduced by that name, or unless she does in fact resemble a person with a male name who is not named Claire.

Jarjaross wrote: If someone is transgendered and has told you they are transitioning and changing their name, calling them by their old one (without immediate correction or guilt over the accident) is an insult.

No. It isn't. People make mistakes. People also forget people's names all the time - which makes that immediate correction you demand impossible.

First of all people do do things like call people by names that aren't theirs to insult them. Claire being called 'Jim' was just an example, a man named Ted being called 'Gretchin' is another example. These things do happen because people are assholes.

Secondly you'll note I keep bringing accidents being the exception. I'm not talking about people making a mistake and trying to change their habits, I'm talking about people making no effort to acknowledge the transition. (There this point should be underailable/unmissable. Sorry I was getting frustrated at our lack of communicability).

Jarjaross wrote: Secondly you'll note I keep bringing accidents being the exception. I'm not talking about people making a mistake and trying to change their habits, I'm talking about people making no effort to acknowledge the transition. (There this point should be underailable/unmissable. Sorry I was getting frustrated at our lack of communicability).

Apologies for the late response. I am not able to visit this site as frequently as I would like to.

One should also acknowledge the fact that for many people, "transgender" does not even exist in their universe of concepts. A male who wants to be female is, to them, a male, and vice versa. One cannot assume whether people do this out of wilfully being contrary or out of genuine inability to understand, but in general one should give humanity the benefit of the doubt, as people are generally inherently good (else society would have collapsed long ago). Bearing this in mind, an educational approach is probably far better than a confrontational one in the long term, no matter how frustrating and unfair it may seem to the individual trans-person in the short term. The meek shall definitely inherit the earth.

Ahimsa wrote: as people are generally inherently good (else society would have collapsed long ago)

I don't think we are ever going to settle the "debate" between Rousseau and Hobbes. But I favor Hobbes's position over Rousseau's, it might just be a cultural bias.

Esar wrote: I don't think we are ever going to settle the "debate" between Rousseau and Hobbes. But I favor Hobbes's position over Rousseau's, it might just be a cultural bias.

With respect, I knew nothing of Rosseau and Hobbes when I wrote my post. My words come from my own observation, and are meant to be society-agnostic. As Mahatma Gandhi said:

...for I can see that in the midst of death life persists, in the midst of untruth truth persists, in the midst of darkness light persists.

http://www.gandhiserve.org/information/listen_to_gandhi/lec_1_on_god/lec_1_on_god.html