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

[syntaxofthings]

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.

Best. Quote. Ever. While I am technically a woman, and I haven't thought about it as much as other people have, I really appreciate those [admittedly few] times on the Internet when someone mistakes me for male. Because, dammit, my gender is not as important as my ideas and my personality and what I add to the conversation. Sometimes I don't even feel like my gender is me. So I go along with female because male doesn't feel more accurate and gender-neutral would just be hard to get used to and I am just confused about it all. I'd rather everyone else hang out in that confusion, too.

Ohhhh, this:

- not wanting to explicitly out myself in a prominent place as someone who ought to receive discrimination as a woman

Another reason that I dislike gender on the internet (actually, and in person, too) is because of all the baggage that comes with being female! I'm into doing things with my hair and makeup. Therefore I must be like every other woman and also into babies and pastels and cute things, right? Ha. No. I really enjoy dressing up very femininely and then discussing why Star Trek: The Next Generation is so great with the guys. It's just - STEREOTYPES. Because of gender! They do not work! And make me less inclined to want to identify as $gender.

Totally went on about this. Wow.

[untonuggan]

^^ This.