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[Great Order]

Land of the free*

*Terms and conditions apply

This worries me, even though I don't live in the US. As the saying goes, the US sneezes and the world catches a cold. On top of that, I live in the UK which has a bizarre love of seeing what the US does and copying it, but they somehow make it worse.

EDIT: Of course, there's also the other big issue.

Not only would something like this set a precedent, there's LGBTQ people in Texas at this moment as we speak. While banning the books isn't going to have an enormous direct impact on their lives, the implications are there: You're in our sights, and we're more than willing to destroy you.

I'm something of a pacifist as standard, and stuff like this makes me wonder "Would this get any better if someone just offed these motherfuckers?"

Not the best thing to be thinking, and I know it wouldn't because there's a reason these people get into office. Some sort of campaign to improve the public's perception is needed, but that's not something I'd have any idea how to do other than being a member of the group and being a good person.

[alway]

Yeah there's far more to it there. There's at least one bill which effectively bans hrt for all trans people. War game out likely scenarios there, and things are really bleak. I was one of those folks in Texas, up til a month and a half ago, when I moved 2000 miles away. The proper solution is to GTFO. It's too late to count on anything changing for the better there in the near or medium term future. Parents with trans kids were trying to flee a couple years back, before they criminalized trans kids; or so I heard from local trans folks working with groups that worked with trans parents. As of 9 months ago, every trans person I know there was moving out of state or attempting to do so.

[Vector]

I guess that I'm a they/them now. In real life, not just internet imagination land. Neat huh?

Well, I asked my closest family to please update their usage of pronouns in regard to me, and they said sure.
And I got a little praise which doesn't feel entirely earned, if I'm being honest. It's just a simple thing.

Congratulations on your gender!!

(Yet once you start gravitating towards "xir"-type constructions, you have to acknowledge that you're going beyond a planned ambiguity and are now possibly trying to actively ellicit a reaction amongst the less enlightened/flexible. Or attempting some form of transhumanism. - I don't say you can't, of course. And maybe if the choice is particularly distinctive then perhaps it'll be more memorable, even for me. Yay!)

Honestly, I think about changing to one of the other neutral pronoun sets like ey/em/eir sometimes because "they" is coming to mean "unknown -- could be cis male or female, even!" and specifically because of that, I think I've become a lot fucking easier to misgender. People use "they" to refer to cisgender people whose pronouns they actually do know, or as a catch-all pronoun for trans people in general to say "this person is trans and I don't want to misgender them so I'll just use they instead of figuring out what their pronouns actually are."

I'm affirming something that, to me, is described as "balanced" or "both and neither," not "dunno, take a guess."

[Starver]

I think I've mentioned Ann Leckie's books, before. Maybe not this thread, but I'm not checking back.

The generallly gender-agnostic SF universe of her Ancilliary novels has the main (focal) civilisation default to "she/her" for everyone. You know it s not an Amazon Civilisation (or parthenogenic, or LevGuinian but off-page, etc) just not a social distinction.

In co-universe book Provenance, the world(s) of a civilisation on fringe of the above Empire go for "e/er" (I think) until the person chooses to qualify either way. Self-selecting, as is their decision to 'come of age', or at least that's how it works with the protagonist and er contemporaries (seemingly without biological presumption), but I'm trying to remember if part of that was class-privilege.

It seems that other societies in the galaxy (further? I'm can't recall how far away the real non-human aliens of the series come from) may have different standards... Probably there's an "Earth vanilla" protocol out there but, without making it the issue of the writing, I think it'd be just mentioned in passing (like how the Ancillary concerned at one point says how she purposely does not wear gloves, to pose as an outsider for tactical reasons), letting the reader just settle into the gender-blindness as much as they do the idea of death-of-personality AI-controlled 'bio-drones'.


Anyway, I say fill your boots. I was just thinking about those who would feel self-righteously afronted. Who I don't think should be pandered to, so let 'em be...

[Iris]

Go everyone who has figured out their identities a little more!

Nothing new with me except dying inside a little whenever I'm reminded that I'm a girl on the internet only, and being annoyed whenever people misgender me there despite putting my pronouns on my bio. Like, would it really be so hard to check? Or ask? Or even default to "they" instead of "he"? Is "Persephone" not a feminine enough username for you guys?

It doesn't even bother me that much, it's just the principle of the thing.

[Great Order]

After over two months of hormones, I think I'm developing boobage.

Mentioned the whole left nipple being sore, still is (A bit like a bruise in terms of feel), but I'm pretty sure I can feel something a little more solid under it now.

And I can confirm, something hath happened. Got a bud.

[Iris]

I have just seen a clip of a prominent American political commentator calling for "eradicating trangenderism from public life entirely" and I am both incredibly angry and wondering if anyone in the audience realized that he was effectively calling for genocide.

[Great Order]

I suspect they're aware. A disturbing number of people are fine with it so long as they're genociding the right people.

[MaxTheFox]

I think I've mentioned Ann Leckie's books, before. Maybe not this thread, but I'm not checking back.

The generallly gender-agnostic SF universe of her Ancilliary novels has the main (focal) civilisation default to "she/her" for everyone. You know it s not an Amazon Civilisation (or parthenogenic, or LevGuinian but off-page, etc) just not a social distinction.

In co-universe book Provenance, the world(s) of a civilisation on fringe of the above Empire go for "e/er" (I think) until the person chooses to qualify either way. Self-selecting, as is their decision to 'come of age', or at least that's how it works with the protagonist and er contemporaries (seemingly without biological presumption), but I'm trying to remember if part of that was class-privilege.

It seems that other societies in the galaxy (further? I'm can't recall how far away the real non-human aliens of the series come from) may have different standards... Probably there's an "Earth vanilla" protocol out there but, without making it the issue of the writing, I think it'd be just mentioned in passing (like how the Ancillary concerned at one point says how she purposely does not wear gloves, to pose as an outsider for tactical reasons), letting the reader just settle into the gender-blindness as much as they do the idea of death-of-personality AI-controlled 'bio-drones'.


Anyway, I say fill your boots. I was just thinking about those who would feel self-righteously afronted. Who I don't think should be pandered to, so let 'em be...

In my (basically post-bigotry) setting, they/them is standard. Neopronouns didn't catch on in the wider population. Sure there's ambiguity but it's usually obvious what you mean from the context and that's what matters in language. I think this is the most plausible situation, language is reluctant to that kind of change for better or for worse. And hey that covers everyone, even one of those alien species with 4 biological sexes and 16 "default" genders.

[KittyTac]

wrong thread

[scriver]

I dislike that Sweden's media has really latched on to our version of "xe/xir", which sees basically no use in the general populace (I'm not even sure they're used in the LGBTQ community, but that just might be that I'm not enough in it) while the neutral pronouns we have, including both the direct cognate of they/them and other possible choices, barely sees any use at all just because they're not "hip" enough.

And while I acknowledge I'm selection biased by being Swedish and limited in my interactions with English, but I'm pretty sure our they/them equivalent was more currently used than the English tongue's was too.

But you know me I get too emotional over language and semantics

[MaxTheFox]

It's just unnecessary imo. Of course let people identify with whatever pronouns but why complicate things by making an "official" separate singular neutral pronoun?

[Egan_BW]

I'd be more enthusiastic about them if I saw a set I wanted to pronounce rather than ones which break the drivebelt in my brain when my eyes run over them. A nice "they" is a lot more pleasing to my inner voice. Maybe a nice loanword would feel better to me?

[voliol]

I dislike that Sweden's media has really latched on to our version of "xe/xir", which sees basically no use in the general populace (I'm not even sure they're used in the LGBTQ community, but that just might be that I'm not enough in it) while the neutral pronouns we have, including both the direct cognate of they/them and other possible choices, barely sees any use at all just because they're not "hip" enough.

And while I acknowledge I'm selection biased by being Swedish and limited in my interactions with English, but I'm pretty sure our they/them equivalent was more currently used than the English tongue's was too.

But you know me I get too emotional over language and semantics

I haven't heard of the "they/them" equivalent ("de/dem/dom") being used, though admittedly I know few Swedish enbies. It seems odd to me in Swedish since we usually are strict with the singular/plural (unlike English, which does it all the time with "you"), though I suppose it might both a positive and negative that it doesn't conflict with an "singular person, unknown gender" pronoun like "they" does in English (and the "xe/xir" "hen does).
 
Granted, I view "hen" mostly as a literal construct; really practical to avoid the "han eller hon"-s ("he or she"-s) of formal text, but impractical when spoken. This is partially because it doesn't mesh well with dialectically omitting half of the "h"-es at the start of the pronouns. If "han" becomes "an", and "hon" "on", then "hen" collides with the "en" I overuse to avoid "man"¹. I find it's usually not to difficult to either call the person by name, shuffle around the word order, or use some lazy construction like "männskan" instead.
Seeing how popular hen is when written though, maybe future generations will come to think of it as a natural word (i.e. not intentionally constructed during their lifetime), and bring it to spoken language without it being too stifled.

¹"Man/en" is a pronoun pair referring to a general person, used in cases where "one" or "you" would be used in English. "Man" is literally... "man" in English, so avoiding it is a speech quirk found among feminists. It's far from universal but not personal either.

[Starver]

[...] since we usually are strict with the singular/plural (unlike English, which does it all the time with "you"),

Well, "you" is of course originally the plural, but we rarely use "ye", these days. And the rest. Plus 'tis likely most times usest thou it, thy intention really be že article, I tells thee!

((Yeah, I think I shoehorned at least one of those onto the wrong foot. It's been too long since I knew for certain, and various contemporary dialects have retained different things differently as well...))