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> All I'm asking for is to be able to call someone who looks like a girl and acts like a girl a girl, and vice versa. And if they're deeply uncomfortable with
by mlyle 4y ago
> All I'm asking for is to be able to call someone who looks like a girl and acts like a girl a girl, and vice versa.
And if they're deeply uncomfortable with this, and would prefer you remember to use "they", you're not harmed and should defer.
You may have to take a little extra effort to tell someone "They present as female but prefer 'they'" at some point. It's a little bit of cognitive load, but the kind of courtesy we can extend even to vague acquaintances.
And, you know-- if you screw up in good faith, they should be understanding. Of course, there's enough people screwing it up on purpose to be hostile for political and ideological reasons that it's harder for people in this situation to discern whether it's really good faith.
- lmm 4y ago> And if they're deeply uncomfortable with this, and would prefer you remember to use "they", you're not harmed and should defer. And what if I'm just as deeply uncomfortable with saying what they want me to say? Are we now a dictatorship of the most fragile?
- mlyle 4y agoSorry, if someone doesn't like being called "she", and you really want to call that person "she" -- that's on you. You have other choices, after all.
- lmm 4y agoMy other choice is to lie, to willfully mislead whoever I'm talking to (probably a friend). Again, people might not like being called rich or privileged or out of touch, but we would never dream of saying this means you shouldn't call them that.
- mlyle 4y agoNo-- most people understand how pronouns work now (and the rest are rapidly coming up to speed). It's only people who are deliberately insistent on misunderstanding that are mislead. Just like the people mislead by 'decimate'.
- lmm 4y agoNo, absent other context everyone will understand female to mean having typical female characteristics, almost by definition. Calling someone who is unlike a female in most ways "she" is deceptive even if you consider it "correct", in the same way as making a tomato dish and calling it a fruit salad.
- mlyle 4y ago> No, absent other context everyone will understand female to mean having typical female characteristics, almost by definition. As we've talked about a whole bunch in this thread, language can-- and does-- evolve. The pronoun thing isn't fixed within extant human cultures. Our language can evolve as mores do. And, yes, people are occasionally confused by various kinds of new usage, but overall people keep up.
- lmm 4y agoThere's no "keeping up" with an unnatural category. It's like the "international except Taiwan" example I gave earlier - the language is forced and artificial and always will be, because it doesn't reflect the underlying reality that these people would be in the other group if you put the boundary in the natural place.
- mlyle 4y ago> It's like the "international except Taiwan" example I gave earlier - the language is forced and artificial and always will be, because it doesn't reflect the underlying reality that these people would be in the other group if you put the boundary in the natural place. If this were true, then we wouldn't have all the examples of languages and cultures that don't put it in that "natural place".
- lmm 4y ago> If this were true, then we wouldn't have all the examples of languages and cultures that don't put it in that "natural place". What languages and cultures would those be? (The example usually given is "two spirit", but (as has been more widely reported recently) that was largely a fabrication)