![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
"I don't even know how to communicate this clearly. I feel like I get reminded of the inconvenience and visibility of my gender pretty much all day. Pronouns, terms of address, bathrooms, shopping, interacting, corresponding â these are the tiny little things that make up day to day life, and they're all super gendered. I don't think that's as apparent if you're in a normative gender space, but when you're navigating a transition, or hold a non binary/gender queer identity, they all become little decisions and catches. How do I represent myself authentically here? Where do I fit? How can I be visible? Is this safe?
"Honestly, I'm often tired of thinking about gender. I would love to not think about it. I wish that existing in social spaces didn't make me have to think about it all the time. I really, really do have other things to think about. Oh, but here's an email for a survey for a service I use and enjoy. The second field? 'Sex: m/f'. Great."
-- Robot Hugs, 2016-05-25 (artist's note below comic)
Inventing Language
I think we need a broader set of customs around "we're inventing language here". Trans is a new concept, and so the people who *need* the language don't know what it is either, because they haven't invented it yet. And the people trying to talk with them/us are IME most often not trying to be unfriendly, it's that they don't know the as-yet nonexistent language either, and are guessing. Perhaps more of the flavor and custom of improv theatre might be useful here: "None of us know what we're doing, so wing it."
best,
Joel. Who's in favor of sex and gender, in as many flavors as are desirable and implementable.
Re: Inventing Language
But the quotation isn't even mostly about the language -- more extent to which socially constructed spaces and perceptions are so gendered and the expectations are so binary gendered. It's not just the language or even mostly the language; it's the stuff the language describes or doesn't describe or confuses, most often doesn't describe because most people aren't noticing and talking about it. Unspoken assumptions, gender-lensed perceptions, and unexamined expectations.
But that's not new either.
(no subject)
[disclaimer: I know that lady does not always associate to vagina and gentleman to penis.]
(no subject)
Oddly, this is about the only farging spot where the Danish language might make sense. They do have a pronoun without any gender. None. No need to venture into using a pronoun meant for plural usage just to buff over the genital sense. :-O :-D
(no subject)
Most of the time, when forms demand to know my sex (or gender) there's no reason for them to have that information. Even though I can definitively answer that question for myself, I tend to leave it blank when possible and choose random values when not. If they ask irrelevant questions, I'm not going to feel bad about messing up their data mining.