They requires effort... or just using they left and right for everyone, who needs pronouns when they exists anyway? Or better yet, avoid using pronouns by using the name over and over.
That is what I do, not he, not she, not it, not especial ones. Only they, they supremacy.
Repeating the name over and over would be cumbersome.
I would agree with always using a genderless pronoun, the gender should almost never matter, but I would probably be in for endless debates if I started to do this now.
I agree that would be an actual progressive agenda. But people wanting me to call them with another pronoun where I can no longer use biological cues is just cementing gender roles. Because if I present as a man but say I am a woman you just also gotta accept that since a woman does not need to conform to some societal gender role. If a guy dresses up like a woman he can still be a he, maybe he just likes skirts and nail polish. If a woman can be whatever she wants what does being a woman even mean except biology. If you want to assume a gender role previously tied to sex it clearly reinforces the idea that gender roles are an actual immutable category. How you can at the same time also hold the belief that biology is not doesn’t make any sense to me.
Maybe it is the just deserved revenge on a society that ties so much to sex and gender roles that logically has no relation to it. I am talking about things like job expectations or assuming competence at random skills, division of domestic responsibilities etc. I cannot believe though that this fixation on gender identity continues forever. It just doesn’t seem like a sensible end state.
> But people wanting me to call them with another pronoun where I can no longer use biological cues is just cementing gender roles
I believe there's more to this. IIUC, for some (most?) trans people, there's actually something, probably related to their biology, that makes them feel as the gender they were not assigned at birth. They have may look like one gender, but feel like the other one: gender dysphoria [1].
These people might be fighting more for solving this issue than for getting rid of the gender roles. Some would actually transition to the other sex for this, though I would expect trans people to also be more familiar (and sensitive?) to these gender identity questions, since they had to think about them.
Would gender dysphoria be less of an issue in a society that would not have such gender-assigned roles? Open question for me.
Now, it would be best if a trans people could directly speak about this, because this stuff is mostly theoretical for me, I haven't experienced it first-hand.
Your understanding is largely right, though I'd expand "look like one gender" to "be perceived and treated as one gender". I regularly confuse the hell out of people with my obviously feminine name and appearance and very deep voice.
> Would gender dysphoria be less of an issue in a society that would not have such gender-assigned roles? Open question for me.
Depends on the person, I think. Many trans people still would. I probably would've just shaved a bunch of body hair off and started wearing skirts and been done with it.
As for pronouns, "he" is just another sound people use to refer to other people. It has no inherent meaning beyond what we ascribe to it. I don't use it because society does ascribe a lot of meaning to it that doesn't apply to me - the same sort of feeling a man would get from being called "she". If genders weren't so much of a thing in society, I can't imagine myself caring nearly as much, though maybe in that world we'd all use the same pronoun anyway.
But there's a whole spectrum of trans people - in the same way you don't really grok dysphoria, I don't really grok e.g. genital dysphoria, so I can't and don't intend to speak for anyone else here.
I have a random question and I really mean no offence by it, I just want to get the opinion of a transexual person on something I have wondered. I know this question is out of left field. My apologies for asking but you are the only trans identifying person in the thread and are answering questions. Please feel very much in your rights to ignore me, I really do mean no offence with the question. I will not take your answer as representative of trans people as a whole.
Do you think people can be trans racial? Should society be accepting of it? For example a white person identify as black and shade their skin to pass? Why or why not?
Again feel free to ignore me, I'm not going to argue with your response I'm just curious about your perspective as you have a very different life experience than me. I am not trans anything its just a random thing I have pondered occasionally and wanted to get a trans persons opinion. I know its a loaded question so again feel free to ignore me.
I take no offense to respectfully asked questions, just as a general principle.
I have no idea, though. I've never considered that before, or even heard of it. It's hard for me to comprehend why anyone would care what race they are, but also holds up the hands of a very obviously white person
I see no reason to not let people do whatever makes them happy, though, even if I don't understand it. That's all I ask of other people for gender, no reason I shouldn't extend that courtesy to other people.
In English, "they" has two main purposes: Theoreticals where sex doesn't matter, and as a gentle nudge to the person you're talking to that you don't really know the person you're talking about. That second one is completely lost when you just use "they" for everyone.
Though I haven't felt the need for this so far, nothing comparable in French, annoying to have to stop to say the equivalent of "he or she, btw?". I guess we could use iel now. Still sounds new and weird to most people but it might become familiar at some point.
I've seen people using -@ as a suffix in Spanish to cover both the -a and -o forms of gendered words. I have no idea how it's pronounced, and it's probably comically inconvenient in actual use, but I have to admit it looks mildly clever.
