Guest post: Misgendering as validation
Originally a comment by Sastra on Your instructions.
Beth Clarkson #1 wrote:
Why are people so traumatized by misgendering?
I can grant that the transgender are indeed traumatized, but not that this is the natural outcome of Dysphoria, or of “feeling like your insides don’t match your outsides.” What might normally be expected when referred to as a “she” instead of “he” is a sense of sadness, or mild frustration. What occurs instead seems to be something akin to a panic attack, or perhaps the sort of outrage someone might feel encountering a bully kicking their grandmother.
That’s culture, I think. It’s a socially-induced reaction following a template of expectations, and in extreme forms close to what’s been called “social media induced psychosis” — “ a connection … between the gradual development and exacerbation of psychotic symptoms, including delusions, anxiety, confusion and intensified use of computer communications.” It started percolating on corners of the internet like Tumblr and Deviant Art. Now it’s gone mainstream, through the schools, a kind of feedback loop between those who react to being misgendered (or the thought of being misgendered) and those who respond with concern (or the facsimile of concern.)
The more traumatized you are, the more obvious it is that you really, really are trans. Preferred pronouns may not be as validating as the unpreferred kind.
To the content: Yes, quite!
To the title: Not sure what you mean. Misgendering as validation of what?
GW, Validating their transness based on how traumatized they are by being misgendered.
Ah, OK. Well, they claim that the most important thing for their mental health is to constantly validate them. So we’re doing them a favor when we use the pronouns that they don’t prefer! A win-win situation!
The only time I remember being “misgendered” was when receiving a deliberate insult as a teenager. Some of the more bullyish kids thought this was amusing, but I knew that they knew better. They really weren’t fightin’ words, so it wasn’t much of a problem. We had thicker skin back then, and also, I didn’t think girls were such a bad thing. :)
@3 Yes, they always work both sides of it, victims no matter what. They play it as a zero sum game.
@GW;
Although all trans people are of course valid, I’ve come across detransitioners who say that there’s a hierarchy within the community. Trans people who suffer more in being trans are often considered to be more seriously trans.
The gay transman who wears drag (dresses) and dates boys doesn’t get as much respect as those who don’t just have mastectomies, but get their ovaries removed. A transwoman with a genial O Well shrug response after being referred to as “that guy” isn’t as obviously trans as the transwoman who has a public meltdown and refuses to come out of the bathroom.
If it’s performance, it’s apparently for their own sake as well. Unlike being gay or lesbian — the existence of which becomes obvious to anyone interested the minute they engage in sex with the same sex — being trans is disputable because transgenderism itself takes massive leaps of faith. It’s complicated, counterintuitive, and … yes, not really a thing. So the transgender themselves are at least sometimes secretly wracked with doubt.
Suffering then can make it look and feel real, and justify the claim that this is their solid core self which can so easily and carelessly be erased by others.
Of course, so many people are telling them how deeply traumatizing it is, they need to feel that trauma to be legitimate in the trans community. What, you’re okay with being misgendered? You don’t swoon, faint, or commit suicide when someone uses the obvious pronouns? You don’t belong here; you’re not one of us.
Wow, posted at the same time as Sastra! My mother would have said “two great minds with but a single thought”. I’ve never been sure why that’s considered good, since it sounds more like mindless conformity the way she said it, but…
And another thing about the trauma…it is a tool of the advocates and allies, and they do everything they can to make sure as many trans as possible report traumatizing; it is the only brick they have in their wall (and not a very solid one, even, which is why they have to keep repeating it).
This is fascinating. It reminds me of Christian missionaries that go out to heathen lands and get spat upon, beaten, even killed — the more you get abused, the move valid you are as a missionary.
Also: there are “gay” transmen that wear drag? So, women, who dress in stereotypically womany clothes, and dates men, and don’t get mastectomies?
I’m getting pretty pissed off with everyone else being the “most marginalised” while I am left wallowing in my white male privilege. Henceforth, I am no longer the man I grew up to be, but I am now a trans man and don’t you dare tell me I’m not. I also like boil ups, fry bread, and hangis, so I am now also declaring myself a trans-Maori. Call me Rongo. My pronouns are ia and ia.
@ iknklast
Jinx!
@ GW
Oh yes. Try googling “feminine trans men.” Or “tucute.”
Gender expression is not the same as gender identity! People look down on me because they always look down on effeminate men!
My daughter once used the example of a trans friend of hers to rebut my argument that trans ideology reinforced gender norms. “He’s a very feminine transman who even likes to dress in drag!”
I’ve read that there are girls who decide they’re trans boys after reading a form of porn which features wispy, delicate gay men. I don’t remember what it was called.
I know about “tucute” as the opposing school of, ahem, thought, to “truscum” — truscum (from “true scum”, apparently) believe that you need to experience dysphoria to be True Trans, and sometimes even get piled together with transmedicalists, who (if I understand correctly) believe that you need to transition (with surgery or at least hormones) in order to be True Trans; whereas “tucutes” (from “too cute to be cis”) believe that Anyone Can Be Trans And Anyone Can Be Any Gender, regardless of dysphoria. But I hadn’t heard that tucutes were into Presenting the Stereotypes Associated With Your Actual Sex But Claiming That Your Gender Doesn’t Align. Thanks for that edification. I guess it fits the whole “Anyone Can Be Trans” mindset.
Sastra @# 6
I might be wrong, but that looks to me like classic attention-seeking behaviour; known to psychologists. Treatments available. Best one I know is: go alone to the top of a mountain, set up camp and sit and meditate with as much of the planet as possible in full view. For about a week. No need for lotus positions, etc. Take a comfortable portable chair, but don’t nod off. Grizzly bear country not recommended.
As endorsed by generations of Japanese Zen masters and samurai.
Does that work as well as the Castration Treatment, so popular among certain sectors today?
My dad’s version was “Great minds think alike, and fools seldom differ.”
GW @# 14:
Well, you could sneak up on a hibernating boar grizzly and have a go at the castration treatment; but you gotta be quick. Come to think of it, you could take an attention-seeking trans type, as long as you can outrun him/her/it. Prune off the balls and go for your life. ;-)
@6, 7, 9–really interesting points, yet another example of how genderism functions like a religion.
I think you’re right, Sastra, but we should always remember that ‘trans’ is deliberately undefined. There are a lot of routes into being trans, lots of ways of being trans and consequently lots of ways, I think, of seeing misgendering as violence.
For example, we know that a common characteristic of AGP males is deep, unrelenting shame. This can manifest in a lot of ways and might explain some of the hostility some AGP males show toward the terven-inclined and especially to women. I speculate, with my armchair psychology, that your proposed performance reaction to misgendering might – in some AGP males – be a deliberate trigger for misplaced shame manifesting as anger.
To put it another way, the taboo on misgendering might be a convenient social fiction that allows some AGP men to express real pent-up hurt and anger. Which is why the response can be so disproportionate (IT’S MAAAAAMMMM!).
This is pure speculation and doesn’t undermine anything you’re saying. I just think that since ‘trans’ is such a deliberately obscure term, we need to remember that one size of batshittery doesn’t fit all.
@Various comments here – aaah so the sensitivity at being misgendered is like the parvenu, newly entitled, insisting on being addressed as My Lord whereas Your True Blue Aristocrat is indifferent/amused if someone calls them Sir. Similarly Doctor/Professor in the academic world.
I am constantly misgendered on the phone – I have a deep voice – and am indifferent, or mildly embarrassed for the caller who will have to apologise when hearing my unmistakeably feminine first name.
On the idea that there’s something akin to a panic attack going on when someone is misgendered, well, maybe. My own experience after flying for decades on airplanes that have been squeezing in passengers closer and closer together of having a panic attack because of claustrophobia was instructive in that I *knew* it was irrational but to hell with rationality, I _felt_ like I was trapped and that I couldn’t get out of my window seat. Thankfully the flight attendants were experienced with this sort of thing and moved me to an open row in the back where I could relax, and they tossed in a couple of free bottles of booze, which helped with that.
I’d been feeling uncomfortable on planes on some earlier flights and I do have a fear of being trapped in tight places, so this didn’t come out of the blue. Now if someone felt ‘trapped’ in their own body that wasn’t the right sex for them, maybe being misgendered would bring on a sort of panic attack as well. They still would feel trapped in their own body though, and that won’t ever change even if they get surgery, hormones, etc. as they still wouldn’t have the body they want. I just wish I could get the airlines to respect my own sense of space and increase the size of their damn seats in the coach class. Thankfully I can pick an aisle seat at least, which doesn’t trigger my claustrophobia. Maybe trans people should look for a similar crutch rather than hyper focus on their own phobia.
Of course the extreme anger and lashing out at those who don’t believe in the TWAW/TMAM mantra no matter how nice they are to transgendered people is going to eventually backfire and result in the real societal stigmatization of trans people. The sort of trans activism that Prof. Kathleen Stock and others have been subjected to is harassment, and said activists seem utterly unaware that people will only put up with so much. Given what I’ve seen of how trans activism (and similar wokeist activism) [operates], if I ran my own business I would NEVER hire a transgender person because who needs the fucking shit behaviors that would inevitably come with them in the office?
@Roj,
No need to go to such lengths. We straight white males are clearly the most marginalized people of all, by dint of never being marginalized.
“I’ve read that there are girls who decide they’re trans boys after reading a form of porn which features wispy, delicate gay men. I don’t remember what it was called.”
Sastra – I think you might might be thinking of “Yaoi”. It’s a subgenre of Japanese Manga that is popular with young women worldwide.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaoi
JA, I also suffer from panic attacks, but with me it isn’t just being in a tight space. I can be in a fairly open restaurant seated far enough from other people to be comfortable, but still have a panic attack. We usually eat early to avoid the crowds if we go out.
If they are truly having a panic attack, I can definitely sympathize. No matter how rational you are, you can’t avoid the terror, because it doesn’t respond to reason. But I’m somewhat less generous, and think a lot of the ones that are creating the most noise are performing. Some of that may be the assumption that women are fragile and break down under the slightest strain; some of it may be the need for attention; some of it may be just good old fashioned misogyny, finding a socially correct way of abusing women even in public.
Panic attacks can be treated, if one will get treatment for them. I’m not sure there is any treatment for being an asshole.
@JA #20:
Interesting analogy between claustrophobia and being misgendered — feeling “trapped,” etc. That could very well be the case. One difference, however, is that someone with claustrophobia doesn’t have to be told that it’s triggered in airplanes, nor is there any cultural role assigned to claustrophobics that fits within its values or expectations.
. I don’t think that’s the case with trans people being triggered when someone uses the wrong pronoun. They know what’s expected of trans people. It’s not that they’re faking it. It’s more that a lot of our specific fears are shaped by the environment we grew up in, and we see or do accordingly.
Mostly Cloudy #22:
Yep, that’s it.
Here’s something I came across, by way of Dr. Jane Clare Jones’ twitter feed, from a detransitioner who has seen this “hierarchy” in both the anorexic and trans communities:
https://hormonehangover.substack.com/p/thinspo-and-gender-goals