gender/pronouns: still hating everything

[azurelunatic]

It's useful for me to know that anything that smacks of Other People Dictating Things still makes me explode.

Even when it's not meant to do that.

So there's a love meme; one of the things about this love meme that's meant to be helpful is pronoun listing. And I've got pronouns posted in my profile.

The thing is, it turns out (and I've amended my profile a bit, though it's always said that people who actually know me, and I'm thinking for example that zarhooie would ACTUALLY KNOW ME, (and I have picked her as an example given that she's my braintwin and all ♥ not because she's done anything that warrants calling out) should use pronouns appropriate to how they know me) that at least in part, I view gender on the internet as a privacy thing. (And that was a fun exercise in nested sentence structure, like unto my teenage emails with boojum; the gender topic BRINGS IT ALL BACK.)

Therefore, I am *simultaneously*:
- preferring that people who know me with a level of emotional intimacy to have been allowed through my various defensive layers be allowed to use individual pronouns, including binary gendered ones, in public
- not wanting to explicitly out myself in a prominent place as someone who ought to receive discrimination as a woman
- flailing angrily over the idea that people who know me with great emotional intimacy and are therefore allowed to use appropriate binary gendered pronouns might mistake instructions meant for people who don't know me from the next Lunatic as an indirect communication that They Are Doing It Wrong
- and then there *still are* situations where plural/gender-neutral pronouns are the most appropriate ones.

GENDER IS HARD AND I HATE IT.

Comments

[jjhunter]

Thank you again for getting in touch, and for the thoughtful followup conversation; as I wrote previously, I definitely have some work to do re: how to better model / moderate pronoun etiquette for the next time I host such a meme.

Anyway, I'm very much looking forward to revisiting this post with further thoughts this weekend after I've had some more time to let stuff percolate. In the meantime, a question for you: would you be comfortable with this post being added to the meme's recommended readings post?

(Part of me thinks everyone should read it & your comment here, especially

I feel like a heel for saying this, but I could give a rat's ass about the anxiety of strangers upon assigning gendered pronouns to me. In fact, if someone does not know me personally but wishes to pronoun me, I want them to feel a moment of fearful confusion. For, in that moment, they may have comprehended my gender.

because it is awesome.)

[azurelunatic]

I would be comfortable with that.

I'm glad you liked that bit; I felt I'd stumbled onto something crucial when I caught that thought in mid-flight.

[jjhunter]

\o/ Added!

I felt I'd stumbled onto something crucial when I caught that thought in mid-flight.

It reads like the best kind of poetry to me - the kind that bypasses all defenses and catalyzes the heart.

[azurelunatic]

And copied over from that conversation as well:

My gender, like ogres, onions, and parfaits, has layers; people who don't know me using feminine pronouns basically does not bother me; anything, no matter how well-meant, that smacks of enforcing any pronoun on my behalf to people who are close to me is not acceptable. (I have no problems with enforcing pronouns on my own as appropriate, but "appropriate" is so *incredibly slippery* that any rule I write down is likely to be wrong within the month and specifically wrong for any fine-grained situation; I trust the judgment of the people close to me to either get it right, or that it's safe to assume good intent.)