7 ms·

> The trouble I'm having with social changes, expectations, per person pronouns, and other things is that managing all of these interactions can be a crushing a

by paulgb 6y ago

> The trouble I'm having with social changes, expectations, per person pronouns, and other things is that managing all of these interactions can be a crushing amount of cognitive load. Are per-person pronouns really such a big deal to manage? I've known more people who have changed their name in marriage than changed their pronouns.

blueflow 6y ago
"changing your pronouns" has a link to "tying your identity to how you are being referenced" (i claim this from observation). Using the wrong pronoun is such much more likely to be seen as a personal attack than using your pre-marriage name.
- paulgb 6y ago
  Have you seen anyone personally take offense, or just high-profile cases? I've definitely seen a few of the latter (e.g. Jordan Peterson) but the common denominator there seems to be antagonistically refusing to use pronouns or doing so to make the point that you reject them, which is different from an honest mistake.
  - PopeDotNinja 6y ago
    Before understood more about gender identity, yes. I think it's likely more that I was speaking to a person when they were low on patience for reasons that had little to do with me. But it's amazing how vividly remember upsetting the person, and how afraid I can be at times at doing it again.
  - technothrasher 6y ago
    Have you seen anyone personally take offense As a parent of a teenage child, I see it reasonably often between teens and "boomers". Teens absolutely use offense of misused pronouns as a weapon against older folks. But in fairness, older folks also refuse to use preferred pronouns as a weapon back. But, of course, this is all typical generational strife, and the pronouns are mostly an irrelevant detail to the actual hostility.
    - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
      The actual hostility is key. So many social and cultural interactions are covers for hostility of various kinds that attempting to sanitise a relatively small subset is bound to fail. Hostility runs on a spectrum from over-reaction caused by previous trauma to outright aggressive narcissism and sociopathy. Unfortunately we don't have the social sophistication to reliably identify and call out hostility, or to accurately parse the difference between conscious ill intent, unconscious hostility and ill intent, over-sensitivity, personality disorder issues, criminal issues, and other forms of power play.
  - blueflow 6y ago
    Yes, i left Open Source projects because referring to co-contributors is such a minefield. I don't wish to work with self-identified transgender people due to this anymore. They take everything so personal even if its not about them. And just for saying this, same people will accuse me of hating trans people and rejecting their right to exist. But you know what - people with successful HRT who also pass don't exhibit this behavior. They also don't self-identify as trans.
    - joshuamorton 6y ago
      > They also don't self-identify as trans. A lot of them do. > They take everything so personal even if its not about them. Is this an actual experience? I've worked with/interacted with quite a few queer people. And I've misgendered people on more than one occasion. Nothing a "shit sorry" hasn't been able to fix. This forces me to wonder why our experiences are so different. Do the queer people I work with have different norms than yours? Do I have some level of legitimacy among them that you don't? Or is there something else at play?
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - blueflow 6y ago
        Assuming you are from the US (im not) and work at Google, i guess its that your ideas about the LGBT community might come from people who actively participate in identity politics. If they do, they have interest in not passing and constantly outing themselves to demonstrate their minority status, because this is what they think makes their voice 'valid'. If you go trans because you suffer from gender dysphoria, your 'fix' is to become accepted as the gender you identify as. To achieve it, you do HRT and a surgery (if you suffer from bottom dysphoria), and you present yourself as the gender you identify as, NOT as trans. This goes so far that these people correct you if you call them trans - they are a "Man" or a "Woman" now. If these people pass, they also pass as cis and are thus not easily recognizable as having undergone transition. I'm active in a fan community of an Anime that features dissociation, so it accidentally attracts people with gender dysphoria. I had affairs with some people from this community and, this way, also got into the gay/trans community, which has an significant overlap. This is how i learned that identity politics is not representative of queer people. Heck, even the CSD/gay pride with the rainbow flags isn't representative of the gay community - many sexually deviant people just want to live a normal life and not be associated with pants where your butt cheeks peek out. I'm one of them.
PopeDotNinja 6y ago
I can't always remember what a person's name either. No one gives me crap for asking what their name is. I don't feel like asking what someone's pronouns are is a safe question yet. I'm more concerned about getting crap from someone who only thinks there should only pronouns for their notion of binary genders. For now I just use "they/them" for any given person if I'm not sure, because it's safer than asking in many cases.
dahfizz 6y ago
It's also not a big deal to accidentally get someone's last name wrong. There is way more social pressure around knowing and always using the correct pronoun for everyone you know.
- Kye 6y ago
  Most of the people I know are LGBTQ with a large contingent of nonbinary people and trans people. The common theme when people bring this up from the other side is it's nice when people get it right on their own, but it hurts more when people assume wrong and then double down. Using the wrong one can activate a low-level fear response for people trying to "pass" on the binary, but it's easily quelled by generally being kind. The fact that you're concerned about being wrong tells me you aren't the kind of person they worry about. Conventions wouldn't hand out pronoun stickers and pins if the widespread expectation was that people would just know. Most of the social pressure you perceive comes from well-meaning cisgender allies trying to use their privilege to mold the world into something a little safer. Sometimes they go overboard. Have you ever seen a cisgender person try to argue with a nonbinary or binary trans person about their own identity not realizing they're talking to a person they're arguing about? It's surreal. They mean well.
  - dahfizz 6y ago
    I agree that some good will can go a long way. It's also surprisingly easy to just not use pronouns at all. I was friends with a couple of trans people on college, and I would always either directly address them as "you", or use their name where I would normally say "he/she". It's not a big deal, I just hate that there is a subroutine in the back of my brain shouting "Don't say the wrong word! Don't say the wrong word!". I think that's the cognitive load OP was talking about.

by paulgb 6y ago

blueflow 6y ago

"changing your pronouns" has a link to "tying your identity to how you are being referenced" (i claim this from observation). Using the wrong pronoun is such much more likely to be seen as a personal attack than using your pre-marriage name.

paulgb 6y ago
Have you seen anyone personally take offense, or just high-profile cases? I've definitely seen a few of the latter (e.g. Jordan Peterson) but the common denominator there seems to be antagonistically refusing to use pronouns or doing so to make the point that you reject them, which is different from an honest mistake.
- PopeDotNinja 6y ago
  Before understood more about gender identity, yes. I think it's likely more that I was speaking to a person when they were low on patience for reasons that had little to do with me. But it's amazing how vividly remember upsetting the person, and how afraid I can be at times at doing it again.
- technothrasher 6y ago
  Have you seen anyone personally take offense As a parent of a teenage child, I see it reasonably often between teens and "boomers". Teens absolutely use offense of misused pronouns as a weapon against older folks. But in fairness, older folks also refuse to use preferred pronouns as a weapon back. But, of course, this is all typical generational strife, and the pronouns are mostly an irrelevant detail to the actual hostility.
  - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
    The actual hostility is key. So many social and cultural interactions are covers for hostility of various kinds that attempting to sanitise a relatively small subset is bound to fail. Hostility runs on a spectrum from over-reaction caused by previous trauma to outright aggressive narcissism and sociopathy. Unfortunately we don't have the social sophistication to reliably identify and call out hostility, or to accurately parse the difference between conscious ill intent, unconscious hostility and ill intent, over-sensitivity, personality disorder issues, criminal issues, and other forms of power play.
- blueflow 6y ago
  Yes, i left Open Source projects because referring to co-contributors is such a minefield. I don't wish to work with self-identified transgender people due to this anymore. They take everything so personal even if its not about them. And just for saying this, same people will accuse me of hating trans people and rejecting their right to exist. But you know what - people with successful HRT who also pass don't exhibit this behavior. They also don't self-identify as trans.
  - joshuamorton 6y ago
    > They also don't self-identify as trans. A lot of them do. > They take everything so personal even if its not about them. Is this an actual experience? I've worked with/interacted with quite a few queer people. And I've misgendered people on more than one occasion. Nothing a "shit sorry" hasn't been able to fix. This forces me to wonder why our experiences are so different. Do the queer people I work with have different norms than yours? Do I have some level of legitimacy among them that you don't? Or is there something else at play?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - blueflow 6y ago
      Assuming you are from the US (im not) and work at Google, i guess its that your ideas about the LGBT community might come from people who actively participate in identity politics. If they do, they have interest in not passing and constantly outing themselves to demonstrate their minority status, because this is what they think makes their voice 'valid'. If you go trans because you suffer from gender dysphoria, your 'fix' is to become accepted as the gender you identify as. To achieve it, you do HRT and a surgery (if you suffer from bottom dysphoria), and you present yourself as the gender you identify as, NOT as trans. This goes so far that these people correct you if you call them trans - they are a "Man" or a "Woman" now. If these people pass, they also pass as cis and are thus not easily recognizable as having undergone transition. I'm active in a fan community of an Anime that features dissociation, so it accidentally attracts people with gender dysphoria. I had affairs with some people from this community and, this way, also got into the gay/trans community, which has an significant overlap. This is how i learned that identity politics is not representative of queer people. Heck, even the CSD/gay pride with the rainbow flags isn't representative of the gay community - many sexually deviant people just want to live a normal life and not be associated with pants where your butt cheeks peek out. I'm one of them.

PopeDotNinja 6y ago

I can't always remember what a person's name either. No one gives me crap for asking what their name is. I don't feel like asking what someone's pronouns are is a safe question yet. I'm more concerned about getting crap from someone who only thinks there should only pronouns for their notion of binary genders. For now I just use "they/them" for any given person if I'm not sure, because it's safer than asking in many cases.

dahfizz 6y ago

It's also not a big deal to accidentally get someone's last name wrong. There is way more social pressure around knowing and always using the correct pronoun for everyone you know.

Kye 6y ago
Most of the people I know are LGBTQ with a large contingent of nonbinary people and trans people. The common theme when people bring this up from the other side is it's nice when people get it right on their own, but it hurts more when people assume wrong and then double down. Using the wrong one can activate a low-level fear response for people trying to "pass" on the binary, but it's easily quelled by generally being kind. The fact that you're concerned about being wrong tells me you aren't the kind of person they worry about. Conventions wouldn't hand out pronoun stickers and pins if the widespread expectation was that people would just know. Most of the social pressure you perceive comes from well-meaning cisgender allies trying to use their privilege to mold the world into something a little safer. Sometimes they go overboard. Have you ever seen a cisgender person try to argue with a nonbinary or binary trans person about their own identity not realizing they're talking to a person they're arguing about? It's surreal. They mean well.
- dahfizz 6y ago
  I agree that some good will can go a long way. It's also surprisingly easy to just not use pronouns at all. I was friends with a couple of trans people on college, and I would always either directly address them as "you", or use their name where I would normally say "he/she". It's not a big deal, I just hate that there is a subroutine in the back of my brain shouting "Don't say the wrong word! Don't say the wrong word!". I think that's the cognitive load OP was talking about.