A radical queer acquaintance said to me today (regarding seeing my friend who is visibly gender non-conforming) that he didn’t know what pronouns to use because he “looks like a lesbian.” This was our discussion:
“Sometimes I don’t know what pronouns to use with people.”
“Just ask when you meet them, ‘What pronouns do you prefer?’”
“But I don’t want to imply anything.”
“If someone gets offended by you asking them which pronouns they prefer, then they are being transphobic.”
“But I don’t want to offend anybody by asking that!”
“Why do you care about ‘offending’ people whose being offended rests entirely on their being oppressive? The fact that they are ‘offended’ by a question which at the very least is trans positive is offensive in of itself.”
I’m not sure if he got my point, but thinking about it later, I do understand where someone like him might be coming from. Meeting visibly queer trans people and apparently not knowing much about trans issues/politics, it’s not that he doesn’t want to offend cis people by accidentally implying that they are trans (which would honestly be the exact same fucking deal), but rather he doesn’t want to make someone who is trans uncomfortable by bringing to their attention that they are not passing/are visibly gender non-conforming.
Here’s the thing. I don’t admonish any person, cis or trans, for presenting along binary lines of sex and gender. If that is what they prefer or identify with then who am I to judge. However, to assume that you know what pronouns someone prefers based on these externalities is bullshit, cis-supremacist, and transphobic. Even if they are trans, it is not a trans-positive compliment to guess and win at correctly gendering someone with pronouns. Passing is a privilege, remember? Privileges only exist in relation to others being marginalized (the visibly gender-nonconforming, androgynous, and non-normative looking people of the world).
Obviously, it is impractical in a cis-supremacist society to ask people’s pronouns every time you meet someone. In safe spaces, I always ask. Outside of safe spaces, I usually (if I remember!) tell people my preferred pronouns. I hope that doing that might actually open up conversation. We have compulsory binary gendered pronouns and if we want to include non-binary and gender non-conforming people (whether that is visible or not!) we need to be ok with talking about it.
I used to feel like people were oppressing me personally when misgendering me back when I preferred to go by she/her pronouns. What I realized was that this thought process in itself was binarist and oppressive in a larger scale. I am constantly striving to learn to think differently in order to not further marginalizations. In doing so about my internalized transphobia, fatphobia, and ableism I have discovered that I really do treat myself better. There is a personal incentive for people to examine and reevaluate their internalized marginalizations and privileges!
“Grow some balls.”/”She has balls.” (Equating a “male” organ with strength, implying that being “male” makes you strong, thus being “female” or feminine makes you weak. Also, saying a womyn has “balls” to denote her bravery or strength implies that she alone couldn’t be strong, without some type of male attribute.)
“He’s a fag.”(When used in a sense to note someone’s weakness, fag may not originally sound misogynist but a lot of the world’s homophobia comes from people being hateful towards campy, more “feminine” gay men, because why would you ever want to be like a womyn? Womyn are weak, the lower class, and it is despicable to give up your manliness and choose such a thing. Womyn are weak, duh.)
“ This is my cunt. I like the word cunt because it feels right to me, kind of cozy and mysterious. The biggest mystery of my cunt is that all five of my children came into the world via this passageway. It is also deeply amazing to me the pleasure that I feel both with partners and alone. I feel blessed by a beautiful body. But I haven’t always felt so good about myself.
Years of childhood sexual abuse left me feeling dirty and ashamed of my body that would respond even when I didn’t want to. I felt separated from my private parts. If people wanted them but not the rest of me, then I would just seal my mind away from the rest of my body. I didn’t feel ownership of my vulva until my mid-twenties.
Then a few years ago I started worrying about my labia being too small. My outer lips are usually quite closed. I became paranoid about looking like a little girl. I wondered if the abuse that I survived had maimed me somehow. I didn’t have anything to compare myself to, but it seemed like the images I saw showed women with larger labia. I heard about women who wanted smaller labia and felt confused. My partner found some photos of other women for me that made me feel more comfortable with myself. He also took close up pictures of my cunt so I could really see what I looked like.
I fell in love with my body. I could still see everything that I thought of as imperfections – places I tore giving birth, a mole, my pubic hair going grey – but I could also see the beauty of my vulva. I still sometimes feel self-conscious. I am hesitant to let someone go down on me if I’m on my period or think I’m smelly, but I now publish pictures of my vulva on the internet. I hope that it helps other women to love their cunts! ”
“ I absolutely reject the premise there is anything wrong with Black people “talking white”. It is as if to vast swathes of the privileged white left and impoverished Black community diction, education and a mastery of though is somehow “white”… comrade, how wrong you are to say that after decades in academia I’m acting white. I’m being black. I’m being black everyday a cop pulls my car over for a “routine stop”, I’m being black each time I look in the mirror, and I’m damn well being black when I school young fools out of the myth our race is too ill-evolved to be both black and accomplished. ”
Elaine Brown, Secretary of the Black Panther Party, professor of sociology. (via ifury)
Gender roles and language can be dealt with in three ways (probably more, but I wanna talk about these three now):
- You can be oblivious to it. You can never question the language people have used to describe you, the roles they have put you in and the way they have taught you to talk about yourself.
- You can know that gender roles and language have power over you. That not having the words for something can stop you from finding your identity. That the words you have learned erased your identity, clinicalized it and degraded it. That language and gender roles can be cages.
- You can know that you have power over gender roles and language. That through art, through expression and through your mere existence, you can change gender roles and language. That you have the power to reclaim words, to change the meaning of words and to invent new ones. That once you know the power of language and gender roles, you can use them to start fighting back. That you can provide yourself, the people around you or the whole world with new forms of language.
Art, above all, is an amazing thing. Throughout history, single individuals have impacted on our understanding of the world through art and have left us new words, new meanings in old words, and new ways of seeing the world. But politics, science, or just existing and speaking about your life also influences language in small and big ways. Language can feel like a cage, but we can change it - it is constantly changing - and when we do, we change the world.
“there is no such thing as a ‘slut’ in my opinion.
there is such a thing as a selfish person who puts themselves in difficult situations though. if you sleep around and it hurts other people or puts you in danger then that is a problem.
so unless someone is actually hurting you or ruining your life by being ‘promiscuous’ then you shouldn’t go around preaching for them to ‘stop being a slut’.
get on with your own life and let people live theirs. i’ve said it before and i will say it a million times more.”
It’s super exciting to see people having discussions about language, and to see a wider awareness of oppressive structures embedded in the language we use.
But I’m seeing a disturbing trend and I want to talk about it, because it’s important:
There is a significant difference between making an innocent mistake—using a word without being aware of the history, or without really thinking—and systematically engaging in oppression.
If someone uses an -ist word and it’s pretty clearly a thoughtless mistake, that’s not a sign to call for that person’s blood. It’s a sign to say ‘hey, I don’t know if you were aware of this, but that word has a really problematic history, here’s some info on that.’ It’s an opportunity to let people learn from their mistakes. There’s no call for savaging people for making a mistake, ok?
And if someone uses an -ist word, it doesn’t invalidate that person’s argument or mean that you get to shut that person down for using that word. For example, I see the word ‘idiot’ used A LOT in the course of making arguments. The appearance of that word doesn’t make the underlying argument completely unsound. It just means that the person using that word has, like the rest of us, internalised harmful social attitudes and is expressing them through language.
Now. If someone is making a point of REPEATEDLY using an -ist word in full awareness of the history, by all means, bring out the big guns. If someone is not just using -ist language, but also presenting -ist ideas ‘all those women who have disabled children are IDIOTS’ then, yes, it’s time to get down to business.
But.
You are NOT allowed to use discussions about language to derail larger discussions, or to hold moratoriums on whether or not an original poster is, say, ableist. By all means, draw attention to the use of these words, but please stop weaponising the language debate as a tool for abuse. As a tool for shutting people down.
Again, and again, and again… This is so important.
This blog is about the endeavors of women. I feel there is a growing need for activism in the current political climate. I will showcase: LBGT rights, body positive imagery, pro-choice, birth control, reproductive rights, safe sex, sex positive, media literacy, news about women worldwide, gender roles, women throughout history and current badasses, feminist literature, and other general women's issues. And of course, what you can do to fight the good fight.
