Jack Monroe on being non-gender binary

Did Laurie Penny also 'come out' as something? I dont know if I imagined that.

Yes I think the 'dead naming' thing is weird. I understand getting upset if someone purposely calls you the wrong name and pronoun after you've asked them not to/told them the correct name etc, but the complete denial that any other name was ever used or that you were born a different sex, well that's bizarre.

I know someone who came to the UK in 1956 from Hungary (Hungarian does not have pronouns)

He still sometimes gets pronouns wrong when he speaks in English. He can be happily talking away for 10 minutes before it dawns on me that "he" is actually his sister.

I think anyone who really worries about what other people call them and spends a long time navel gazing about how they appear to others doesn't have enough to do. Fgs there's some real tragedy going on in the world without having to worry about whether you've offended someone who has deliberately taken a convoluted and antagonistic stand about their own gender.

Actually, come to think of it, it is happening a bit already in that I have seen transactivists claim Cathy Brennan must be a man because she is a lesbian and has short hair etc. I am now pondering whether they are doing it just to piss her off or whether they really believe it at some level.

Thinking some more about that, Wheresmyburrito, I suppose I could imagine it happening a few years down the line if the current trend towards gender identity being related to acceptance of gender stereotypes continues to grow. So if it was a normal thing for people to start saying 'Oh, the Countess must be a man because she wears DMs and has short hair and is good with computers.' And yes, that would piss me off massively and I would feel erased by it. But my problem would be with the world view that led to that, and I would consider it to do with the people who believed it being wronger than a wrong thing on wrongness day rather than them being bigoted. I think the current trend to using the word 'bigoted' to mean 'someone whose worldview I disagree with' is really problematic.

I'm not male so it would be odd for someone to start calling me "he". I'd think they were odd but it wouldn't particularly bother me.

I am female.
Trying to answer your question honestly - it would probably be mostly '?????' if someone who had met me called me he because I don't know of a set of beliefs that would lead to that happening, so I'd want to know what on earth they were thinking that led to it. When I have been assumed to be male by people who haven't met me, on the basis that IRL I am Dr Fitzdotterel, that grates a hell of a lot less than people calling me Mrs DH'sName.
If someone called me 'he' in order to deliberately piss me off then of course I would be upset, just as a trans person understandably is when people use their previous name for malicious reasons.

I didn't mean that it's trivial, Countess, I don't think I explained it very well tbh. I just don't think it's comparable.

Countess so going by that logic would you be happy for people to refer to you as "he"? (If you're female that is.)

To me, accepting and using someone's preferred pronouns is a matter of common decency and respect. It's not like it's hard.

If someone started calling me "he" I'd think they were a bit off. If I corrected them that it should be "she" and they disregarded that, I'd think that they didn't care for respecting me and wouldn't particularly want to associate with them further. Why should it be any different for transgender people?

WindyMillers, yes, I have seen that happen too.

And I also smell a massive rat at the idea that women just have to suck up being called by their husband's name (even when that means total erasure of identity, as in Mr and Mrs Fred Smith) because it's trivial, but that deadnaming trans people makes you a bigot.

I agree that sometimes it is done to be deliberately hurtful towards the trans person, and of course that is cruel. But the idea that the situations are in no way comparable seems to me to have a lot to do with a history in which women's feeling are considered unimportant. If it was only women who transitioned I don't believe for a moment that 'deadnaming' would be considered as unacceptable as it is.

I said demanding. How people want to live their own lives is up to them. How they want other people to respond to them is not up to them. If a couple wanted me to validate their BDSM relationship by referring to their partner as "your master/mistress" rather than husband or wife, I would not do it.

Whether I would use particular pronouns on request would depend on my relationship with the person in question but in general, I would not. Pretending something is true which is not is not good for society. In fact it is positively Orwellian.

IME, being a non-binary woman is often a way of avoiding some of the more vitriolic abuse spewed by the most misogynistic trans activists at 'afabs' online.

Being a non-binary man often means you're a straight 'cis' man in real life but want to slag off women with impunity online, and so hide behind 'bbbut I'm non binary! I'm wearing eyeliner in my profile picture! So if I want to call you a cunt it's totes not abusive, it's punching up!'

I think the idea that you can control what pronouns people use when talking about you (when you're not even present in the conversation) is all kinds of wrong, actually.
Like Flora I fundamentally disagree with the idea that gender identity is more important than sex (or than a different model of gender in which it is socially ascribed rather than a matter of individual will). To assume everyone else must buy into the same philosophical model as you about gender/sex is unreasonable. 'Pronouns=identified gender' is not a universal law, it is a function of a particular theory about sex and gender that is currently becoming the dominant one in neoliberal western culture, and we are allowed to dissent from that theory.

Seriously Flora? You'd find someone asking you to use "they" rather than "she" or "he" disrespectful? Have I understood that correctly?

I think demanding people use words that represent views they don't hold is disrespectful.

I do consider people assuming I have taken someone else's last name to be a threat to my identity, as that would:

a. mean my children have a different last name to me.
b. have implications about my attitudes to marriage.
c. remove cultural information about my geographical roots which are in my last name.
d. disassociate me from my career where I use my last name.

They is not always a plural. I don't see the issue. Example:

Person A: My friend is about to arrive.
Person B: Are they coming on the bus?

Language changes. We'll get used to it. It isn't a big change. I like 'they.' I hope lots of people start to use it for themselves, regardless of their gender.

Actually, Obsidian, the singular "they" has been accepted within English language for quite some time.

See: motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/singular-they-and-the-many-reasons-why-its-correct/
www.dailywritingtips.com/is-“they”-acceptable-as-a-singular-pronoun/
www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/gender-neutral-pronouns-when-they-doesnt-identify-as-either-male-or-female/2014/10/27/41965f5e-5ac0-11e4-b812-38518ae74c67_story.html

I don't think there's anything wrong with slipping up from time to time - we're all human after all - but the respectful thing to do is try.

Because they and their are grammatically incorrect when used to refer to an individual. Language doesn't work that way - you can't coopt a word and declare that it means something new and expect people to start using it that way. Individual pronouns are he and her. It's incredibly difficult to change them completely to plural pronouns like they and them because that's not the meaning they are ascribed in our brains. We might be able to
Do it when concentrating really hard but she/he will slip back in.

I don't know, you'd have to ask them that. I imagine it's a very nuanced, personal thing and that for some people it's not as simple as going one way or another.

But why does that dysphoria equate to being non-binary rather than binary?

(of course it's offensive, but no more so than calling a woman by her husband's surname when she hasn't actually changed her name)

I really don't think the two are comparable, actually. I've had people assume I've taken my husband's name and it's annoying but it's a blip, it's pretty easy to brush off. It doesn't pose any threat to my actual identity.

But purposefully using the former name of a transgender person undermines their identity in a big way. It's basically saying "I've heard what you said but I don't give a fuck, my right to use that name is more important than having respect for your feelings".

Why exactly do you have such a problem with it?

Countess I'd absolutely agree, and I think it's incredibly offensive to Jack to assume that their being non-binary only correlates to them not wanting to subscribe to feminine stereotypes. I'm pretty sure I don't fulfil feminine stereotypes but I've never experienced dysphoria and wanted to bind my chest or have top surgery.

As for people having problems with using "they/them/their" pronouns, well... Why? What is your problem with it exactly? It baffles me that you can't just show basic decency without making such a song and dance about it