No doubt
Oh lord, so confused. About those “pronoun badges” offered by the Edinburgh Student Union…
While I personally see this as a fantastic step forward on EUSA’s part, the wider reaction on Facebook has been less than encouraging. In a poll, 81 per cent of people (at the time of publishing) said that they don’t think the pronoun badges are a good idea, with only 19 per cent of respondents voting in favour.
While the results of this poll surprised me, many of the comments on both the original article and the poll unfortunately did not. In response to the original article, one Facebook user simply responded with a gif which stated “we need a new plague”. On the poll itself, another user commented “mine better say microwave” and accused someone who argued against them of being “confused about their gender”. Pronoun badges are not just a trans issue, yet the majority of people are using it as an excuse to air their no doubt long held transphobia.
Oh no doubt. No doubt at all. Why? Because they’re transphobes. How do we know? Because they’re transphobic. How do we know? Because of their no doubt long held transphobia. How do we know? Because they’re transphobes. This is easy – tedious, but easy.
As a gender non-conforming butch woman, I’m often mistaken for a man, and I’m often subject to the awkward “uh, actually” conversation that follows. While uncomfortable, as a cis woman (identifying with the gender I was assigned at birth) I know that I’m lucky to be able to correct people and feel safe in doing so.
Wait.
Wait.
She says she’s a gender non-conforming butch woman, and then a few words later she says she’s a cis woman, identifying with the gender she was assigned at birth. What sense does that make? Doesn’t “gender non-conforming butch” mean not “identifying with the gender she was assigned at birth”? If you’re gender non-conforming then you’re not identifying with the gender you were assigned at birth.
She actually means sex at birth, but the ideology of this pile of sick is so incoherent she doesn’t realize it.
For many trans people however, correcting people on their pronouns can be terrifying and downright dangerous. By introducing pronoun badges, EUSA is making sure that trans and gender non-conforming students are safer and less likely to receive harassment for their gender presentation.
Is it? Are we sure about that? If “correcting people on their pronouns” can be terrifying and downright dangerous, then why wouldn’t wearing badges announcing one’s pronouns be even more so? The badges turn up no matter what, while participants’ third person pronouns don’t turn up all that regularly in conversation, and when they do it’s not necessarily always the case that they need to be corrected.
It’s important to note these badges are in no way compulsory, but rather a new option for people to take advantage of if they please. The violent reaction makes it seem as if armed EUSA members will be holding people down and tattooing pronouns on them against their will.
The reaction isn’t violent.
Other than that, good piece.
Au contraire.
Any mockery is “violent.”
Any reaction that is not supportive is “violent.”
Any criticism is “violent.”
But only if performed by cis-individuals. If you are trans, though, you”re golden, you’re “innocent” as noted above.
No-platforming, vituperative tweets, simulated (?) bloody t-shirts and baseball bats lovingly wrapped in barbed wire? Not violent.
Seriously? Of course it is. I am not mistaken face-to-face for a man, because my appearance, while being non-feminine in many ways (no make up, comfortable shoes, etc) is still plainly female. But my voice on the phone? I am often mistaken for a man. My name on letters is often to Mr. Iknklast, because my name traditionally has been given to both male or female. Still, it is not that big a deal, and if I correct it, most people are embarrassed and polite. I don’t need a badge for my gender, nor do most people. There are some androgynous people who might care, I suppose, but still, this was never an issue when we talked about androgynous people. Pronouns are only an issue when we talk about trans. So this is disingenuous at best.
And when I am talking to people, I do not refer to them by pronouns. (In fact, I am quite annoyed by the extensive overuse of pronouns in general, and am currently waging war on them, because I am tired of student papers that never include a noun, just “it” and “they”). If I am talking to a third person (say, there is an issue with a student we need to discuss) and I accidentally misgender them, and no one hears, is it seriously going to mess up the person who is accidentally misgendered? This is truly thought police time.
At least, I’m not aware that “you” is gendered, and so not a problem in talking to someone, right? Or am I wrong? Is “you” an act of violence now?
I think that the ‘gender non-con butch woman’ is as confused as the rest of us over the terminology. It sounds to me that for her, ‘gender non-con’ means that she is a very masculine-looking woman and people tend to mistake her for a man. She was born female, she doesn’t identify as anything other than female, but her body, whilst having the usual female characteristics, suggests to a casual observer man rather than woman when she’s clothed.
She’s appropriating ‘gender non-con’ in the same way that ‘assigned at birth’ has been appropriated from those people whose physical sex genuinely was ambiguous at birth, having either both sets of genitalia or none, and so were assigned either male or female. That phrase was stolen initially by transgender people whose gender self-identity doesn’t match their unambiguous physical sex, possibly because ‘assigned at birth’ allows them to claim ‘I’m a woman who has been forced to live as a man (or vice versa)’, which fits into their oppressed victimhood narrative better than ‘I’m a man who thinks he’s a woman’.
Quite why our original ‘gender non-con butch woman’ feels the need to use ‘assigned at birth’ is anybody’s guess, considering that she also describes herself as ‘cis’. As U said at the start of this comment, I think she’s possibly as confused over the terminology as the rest of us.
Last paragraph in my comment above should read ‘As I said’, rather than ‘As U said’.
This could just be condensed to ‘butch woman’ to mean a woman that does not do the things to her appearence usually expected of women, which in turn can be condensed to ‘woman’ because there is zero reason for there to be any behavioural expectations in the first place. The author is just another person that has hopelessly conflated sex and gender.
Also, if the photo at the top of the article is the author herself, her claim that she gets mistaken for male is dubious. Mistaken for male ‘all the time’ is bullshit.
#2
Relatable – my name irl is Lee. I’ve turned up at job interviews, mentioned my name, and recieved “Oops I thought you’d be a woman! My bad” as a response. Momentary awkwardness, zero terror.
Holms, that is her photo. I have met people (all UK funnily *) who only look at clothing to determine if someone is male/female good looking/ugly. Talk about judging a book by it’s cover. Those people I suspect would die first in the zombie apocalypse, or even if their mums stopped feeding them. Still, it’s possible that some people would mistake her for a bloke under some circumstances. The ‘often’ claim is just plain bullshit unless she typically hangs out with inebriated mouth breathers.
* Totally unreliable anecdata.
“that is her photo”
I imagine she may be mistaken, at a distance, for a young lad, but not up close at all.
“The reaction isn’t violent.”
The violence is aimed at the poor saps who might dare to refer to a man as sir. Meltdowns and threats all round