Can you hear and do you care and
Can't you see we must be free to
Teach your children what you believe in.
Make a world that we can live in. |
For those who don't find any meaning within, I'm adding the graphic at the left, entitled
Rai and Jiri, at Lungha.
The entire Tamarian phrase, you may recall is Rai and Jiri at Lungha. Rai of Lowani. Lowani under two moons. Jiri of Ubaya. Ubaya of crossed roads. At Lungha. Lungha, her sky grey.
The entire Metaphoria collection is here.
The following was originally written in June of 2006.
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.
What a crock of shit for a child to be taught. Names hurt. Words kill.
Why do people hate/fear gender-variant people? The human brain seeks to classify. I had a huge disagreement with someone here once upon a time who claimed a relationship between that fact and the claim that everyone prejudges. I have no disagreement about the fact that everyone seeks to classify. When people encounter a person whose gender is in their minds indeterminate, there is a mental hesitation. A moment. How long a moment? I can't tell you that, because I am on this side of the hyperplane that divides us. But people hesitate. In that instant there are crucial decisions made...not all of them conscious...many of them not innocuous. In that pause the world which gender-variant people live is constructed.
This categorical imperative demands satisfaction. Male? Man or not? If not man, then woman. But if also not woman? Reboot. What are the words to be used to classify? All human beings are either men or women. This person is not a man or a woman. Therefore... What pronouns do I use to describe this incident?
Not Man and not Woman? Then what words? The words come from some of the dimmer recesses of childhood fear. We know. Everyone snickers about the hermaphrodites. About the he/shes. About the she-males. About us. Our ears hear and our eyes see the word "nigger" when we encounter those terms.
He/she/it? Whatever! Whatever? We become things. If not man and not woman, then not human being. What ever. What? Not who. We are excommunicated from the species. We are not of the body, Landru. Are we "it"?
He/she/it? Indeed. What is the 3rd-person singular personal pronoun for a human being of indeterminate gender? In the past few days I ran a little experiment. In Gender Workshop I used the line
I will use "gender" to refer to an individual's personal view of hermself.
Nobody questioned it. I assume that most readers interpreted that as a typo. It was not. In
tvb's excellent diary
Who are you and what do your genitals look like? a comment I made generated the following interaction. I will supply commentary as the conversation progresses, which is unfair to the person I had the dialog with, so I have removed the name, which is not important. The dialog is what is important.
Robyn: transpeople, collectively but if you want to know how to address any particular transperson, ask hir.
Respondent: No to the pronoun mangling. Okay. Acceptance of a group of people is just fine, and expected. But NOT wholesale mangling of the English language to suit one's self-image. Anytime someone does so with that "hir" nonsense, I remind them that they're just as incorrect as if they were transposing your and you're, or using "ain't". Daniel Webster would shake his head.
I am in a quandry, then What do I get to use to refer to a person, a human being, whose gender is indeterminate, specifically an unidentified transperson. The dialog continued.
Robyn: I do believe that as a transperson refering to other transpeople, I have the right to use whatever I like. You may not like it, but you have no right to tell me I cannot do it. The whole issue in the first place is the inability of the English language to have an acknowledgement of our existence. What is the 3rd person personal pronoun for a human being of indeterminate gender? I'm waiting.
Respondent: You can say 'ain't' too. Nobody says you CAN'T say it. It's just not correct in terms of the established rules of the language, that's all.
But the language has no rule for this situation. To speak of a transperson in the 3
rd-person singular, I will have to violate a rule. We can't have that. So best not to speak of transpeople at all. Or avoid using the third person singular. I did have a response, inadequate though it may be:
Robyn: In gender discourse, it is our jargon just like mathematics has a jargon. We get to create words and define them as we see fit and necessary. Your view of "correctness" is irrelevant in either situation.
The truth of it is that I can communicate with all of you. I have taught myself how to do so. It has not been easy, is not easy, will never be easy to avoid third-person singular personal pronouns, but I do it as much as possible, only using them in rare situations in order to make you all happy. I have had to adapt to your world in this matter. I know if I am successful only if you don't notice.