Quote:
Originally Posted by JiggyMac
The issue with Trans is that
1) It's not always clear.
2) You're asking someone to change their natural language usage - almost through no fault of their own.
3) And her final point is - you're actually making more difficult to interact with trans people. Because if they're afraid of legal action for accidentally using the wrong pronoun, they're better of not bothering.
And yes, in victim based society, where you incentivize people to claim this status....legally, then of course you're going to get abuses of the system.
You don't have to conscientiously work at not calling a judge "spawny-eyed parrot-faced wazzock". You do have to conscientiously work to call a she a "they" (the example used in the video). Just listen to the lawyer in the Theryn video - "How to ask about pronouns" and "You must do this because it's the law".
1) So what? I've used this comparison before, but no one's addressed it:
Nobody's name is readily apparent. You could look at me and guess my name isn't Kwai Chang Caine, but no one's getting it right if they guess all day. But I do expect certain people in certain contexts to refer to me by name or some other acceptable term rather than another set of terms (like spawny-eyed parrot-faced wazzock). Adding that I prefer "he" in to the mix isn't much of a complication when it comes to people.
2) I grew up in what we locally refer to as "God's own country", more widely known as Yorkshire. In my part of the world, we refer to people as "love" or "duck". Generally, it's used by older people to younger, but frequently not. It's also used across genders i.e. a man might call another man "duck" or "love". While it's more associated with Lancastrians, you also occasionally hear "cock" (as in cockerel) as a term of affection among friends. Now, you can imagine as I grew older and visited places far and wide, that calling men "love" or "cock" would get a mixture of reactions. I had men confused, and a couple of women thinking I was being patronising. Saying "'Ay up, duck" as a greeting was not well understood. Now, if I move to America and my boss says "Don't call the customers cock, they don't like that", he is forcing me to change my "natural language". Is that bad? If women think I'm being a condescending arse for calling them "love" all the time, do I just plough through it? It seems a lot better to understand that language is contextual, and speak appropriately. You with me, cock?
3) Is actually a somewhat valid concern. But my counter is that in my above borderline tl;dr ramble, isn't it really easy to figure out how I'm supposed to adjust my language? I mean, once someone's told me their name a few times I usually get it. It can make interactions really awkward when you forget someone's name, but we figure it out largely without lawsuits.
Edit: I really don't have to work hard to use "they". It's a conversation I've had with older people about how common it was to use male pronouns as neutrals in a lot of contexts. My generation uses "they" as a neutral without any confusion. And I
do, or at least have, had to work really hard in previous work not to call customers "wazzock".
Last edited by Bladesman87; 08-07-2017 at 05:23 PM.