Fair, but I don’t want every social interaction I have to be me messing up and apologizing to people that I have missgendered them. That sounds way more exhausting than current social interactions are for me, and I already find them exhausting.
I hear you saying you you would like a universal gender neutral pronoun. You rarely need to know someone’s gender when talking to them, just what pronouns to use.
Fortunately they/them works for this purpose, and is universally understood in English. It’s perfectly acceptable to refer to someone as they/them or their name when having a conversation not specifically about gender and preferred pronouns.
Not knowing someone’s gender has existed far longer than our modern understanding of the nuance of the concept.
I mean it wouldn’t be every social interaction. Not even a majority. Something like 2% of the population identifies as something other than their assigned gender at birth, and the majority of those are transgender individuals who make it very clear how they want to be referred to.
Understand that these people will continue to have the same gender identity whether you understand it or not. The alternative to apologizing to people when you misgender them is… not apologizing for it.
Yeah today. But we know gender is a made-up category now. And already it’s starting to diverge. I can easily imagine 20 years from now there being like 50 different genders, and the amount of people who don’t associate with men or women will be much greater.
You do that already, and it’s even worse actually because everyone has an even more individual and sometimes difficult to remember thing about them you have to balance in a social situation. It’s called a name. You have to be told it, you can easily forget it, and it’s a social slight to call someone the wrong name. Right now gender expression feels uncomfortable to have to tell people because of the politisation and stigma pressed on it, but it doesn’t have to be anything different than asking for someone’s name to better address them.
Yeah but I’m okay with names. I’m not okay with genders. At a bare minimum to interact with people in society, you need to know a name, some kind of identifier. If I knew of a way around that I would suggest it. However, interacting with people in society does not require knowing their gender. At least now it doesn’t require it as it’s pretty clear that gender is a made-up category.
Fair, but I don’t want every social interaction I have to be me messing up and apologizing to people that I have missgendered them. That sounds way more exhausting than current social interactions are for me, and I already find them exhausting.
I hear you saying you you would like a universal gender neutral pronoun. You rarely need to know someone’s gender when talking to them, just what pronouns to use.
Fortunately they/them works for this purpose, and is universally understood in English. It’s perfectly acceptable to refer to someone as they/them or their name when having a conversation not specifically about gender and preferred pronouns.
Not knowing someone’s gender has existed far longer than our modern understanding of the nuance of the concept.
Yes, this is what I mean. I am fine with they/them. I don’t need to know anyone’s specific pronouns or gender.
But if no one needs to know anyone’s specific pronouns or gender, then why have it as a concept other than as a niche topic of discussion?
I mean it wouldn’t be every social interaction. Not even a majority. Something like 2% of the population identifies as something other than their assigned gender at birth, and the majority of those are transgender individuals who make it very clear how they want to be referred to.
Understand that these people will continue to have the same gender identity whether you understand it or not. The alternative to apologizing to people when you misgender them is… not apologizing for it.
Yeah today. But we know gender is a made-up category now. And already it’s starting to diverge. I can easily imagine 20 years from now there being like 50 different genders, and the amount of people who don’t associate with men or women will be much greater.
You do that already, and it’s even worse actually because everyone has an even more individual and sometimes difficult to remember thing about them you have to balance in a social situation. It’s called a name. You have to be told it, you can easily forget it, and it’s a social slight to call someone the wrong name. Right now gender expression feels uncomfortable to have to tell people because of the politisation and stigma pressed on it, but it doesn’t have to be anything different than asking for someone’s name to better address them.
Yeah but I’m okay with names. I’m not okay with genders. At a bare minimum to interact with people in society, you need to know a name, some kind of identifier. If I knew of a way around that I would suggest it. However, interacting with people in society does not require knowing their gender. At least now it doesn’t require it as it’s pretty clear that gender is a made-up category.