TL;DR - why do we need so many terms? can we all not use just a simplified pronoun system (as explained below, or if someone else comes up with something better), and can we stop adding a sexual preferences as a part of gender, as that is something too personal in my opinion?
I primarily want to understand how it relates to a person's identity.
Before starting, let me partially introduce myself. I am a male, and If I get my terms correctly, I am possibly Aero Ace. I am (possibly) coming of a privilige that my percieved gender identity is same as that of what I accept myself to be. Also, I have not read any literature or watched much content about this stuff. I am not asking anything about why would someone have a "different gender". I just want to understand how it relates to you as a being.
And before going ahead, I am not sure gender is the best word or not. If it is not, please correct me. And I am sorry in advance in case I say stupid or bizzare or straght wrong stuff. Please forgive me if possible.
Also I am quite ramble-y, so reading and understanding what I write may be hard, or non-sensical, so pardon me for that too.
My first question is, why do we have so many terms? I know the answer is somewhat obvious, that everyone has there own preferences, and it may not align with someone else, so to identify themselves, they would get a different label. (kinda like names, if everyone had same names, it would cause confusion) But I also want to ask, Is using a label not somewhat alienating?
Try to understand my perspective, I have almost never mentioned my gender to anyone. Possibly it is because my "attire" says it. Or maybe it is because I am not a very social person, or the fact that I have never had a "personal" conversation with some other person. My general conversational idea is how it goes with siblings - slightly informal, a lot of stupid slander, and jokey stuff, and the actual stuff. If someone comes to me, and mentions there gender, I kinda do not know how to process it. because as I understand, 1 part of gender ideentity is what "orientation" (sorry if it is a bad way to put it, but I want to mean how they dress, or how they want to adressed as) and another is sexual preferences. I understand that If I know there gender, I can atleast address them as they prefer (also I do not know how to do it in general. I am an old school guy, I use they/them/their for people older than me (as a form of honorification), with small children (it is somewhat amusing, and also children like it when they get respeect) and whenever I do not know what gender a person is, or how does that gender prefered to be addressed). But this gave me the thought, that why do we not use the same pronouns for everyone (for example they/them), or maybe 2 pairs, one for formal, one informal, or 1 more pair, for singular and plural. Why do pronouns have to depend on gender?
The second part is sexual prefernces. I do not know much about sex or sexual preferences. I am a young adult, and have not had to know about this for any person that I have met yet. I have never had the interest to know about this for someone, neither have I retained this information. I understand that if you are looking out for partner/s, then you would have to share this, so we would have to use some words for it. But why do we have to keep this as a part of gender. As in, why would I want to share this information with my governments (who do census), or for my visa applications. Should this not just be something personal?
I understand that one reason to have some words for it is inclusivity. If, for example, we want some group to better assimilate with society, and we want to do some "positive discrimination" (I do not know if this is appropriate wording or not, what I mean is for example, reservations, or some other kind of actions to integrate some people in society), then we would need some terms to make rules with. And that makes sense, but then again I feel that revealing your preferences is a bit too revealing. Am I overblowing this? I also understand that completely ditching the sexual part from gender might not be possible today. It would probably require a more accepting society. For example, in most places, gay marriage is still illegal. I do not know why laws have to have laws defining marriage (it may have something to do with subsidies going for marriages, or definitions of families/spouse being used by insurance companies or any other banking system, where your spouse also gets certain benefits/rights), or gay adoption is illegal, but can we not make something like - any reasonable person/s can adopt anyone (where reasonable part is just to maybe seculde criminals, or people with prior histories of child related offences, or if they are not financially stable - but all this is very separate discussion)
If a person tells me their gender, how should I react/respond to it? Is my current line of actions appropriate (just address them with their preferd pronouns, and if I do not know that, use they/them; completely ignore the sexual part of it)
Another thing that I want to ask is, why do some groups use different acronyms? I remeber hearing about this the first time, and the word used was LGBT. Then I heard LGBTQ, then LGBTQIA+, and today I heard LGBTQ2. I presume that since more people are getting aware, and they are trying to express themselves, they need some newer words, and hence the acronym would keep on evolving, if so, is it not a endless exercise? Am I being insensitive If I use one over other (for quite some time, I have been sticking with lgbtqia+, in hope that + means extensions, as in, others, so hopefully it is less excluding than others, but if that is not the case, please correct me.)
edit - moved my summary to the top as tl;dr
I see it like colours, there is an infinite amount of colours, but it makes sense to have a name for the common ones.
Yeah, no.
For that we already have names, they're called "names". I have no problem with someone wanting a different pronoun, I have no problem with even a single pronoun for anyone not wanting to fit in the him/her, but all the types wanting a special pronoun njust for them to me is just an attention seeker wanting to feel special.
If you want a (semi) unique word to refer to you, THEN THAT WOULD BE YOUR NAME. I would just refer to you by your name, that's how languages work.
The entire "but MEMEME needs a special pronoun" is friggin annoying and the behavior has pushed a lot of people into the right. Yes, this having me as the source, but the amount of people I've seen hating on the special pronouns and getting more right wing really made this a topic that doesn't do what you think it does. I think it's harmful.
Please, can you just be like everyone else with your pronouns? If we have three sets, say, him, her, and xer for those not wanting to be lumped in with guys and girls... We'd be fine, most people would be fine with this. No more "I want my special snowflake pronoun to be special and awesome" please pretty please.
I do think neopronouns can be confusing, but it takes literally no effort to use it.
If you really must not use it you can just use singular they, or the person's name.
Maybe I'm out of the loop, but what are neopronoums?
I do know the classic she, he. And the new gender neutral "they". Are there more that are starting to be used recently that I don't know about?
It is an incredibly niche part of the gender nonconformity movement in that some nonbinary individuals don't want to use the neutral "they", and instead want unique pronouns such as "xi/xir" or some such.
I personally don't agree with it. I'll just continue to use the singular "they", as it is gender neutral and works independently of where the individual being referred to sits on the gender spectrum, or use their name, as it is already the unique designation to refer to the specific individual.
those people are going to hate no matter what. pronouns aren't driving them mad, they're already nutbags.
Nah
People get influenced all the time to change their opinions and attitudes
I think that the pronouns thing from a few years back did a lot of damage and pushed a lot of people to more right wing ideas. It's stupid, of course, it's an annoyance at best, but it has helpt right wing talking heads to have easy material to lure unsuspecting viewers in
lol, where do you see this? I see the conservatives sticking to their stupidity through thick and thin. and even when the leopards eat their faces, they're aghast that the leopards shouldn't be eating THEIR faces.
'did a lot of damage' - no it didn't. it upset people who were already upset about gays getting to live in society, get married and not have their heads bashed in by chuds every week.
Nah, get fucked with that. haters gonna hate. they aren't going to wake up one day and turn to hate suddenly, because someone used a pronoun.
These fucks were assholes already.
I think the problem is that people don't want to be just "other". Because that's what "xer" is.
I am cis and straight, so I don't have full comprehension of what it feels like not to conform to the norm, but even I understand that if we have only one other pronoun, like "xer", it's just saying "the one that isn't the norm", and it doesn't matter if you make it sound like one of the other "normal" pronouns. That doesn't normalize it. It just silently, yet officially and publicly reaffirms its abnormal quality.
We have to realize that there's obviously a floating spectrum here, and people don't fall into predefined buckets sometimes. Some do, but some don't.
The human brain is built and evolved into a categorization machine. What is edible, what isn't. What is attractive, what isn't. What is safe, what isn't. Black and white, good and evil. We want it simple, and we get confused, afraid, and angry when it isn't simple. This is something we must recognize about ourselves, and really work hard to go against if we want to evolve our way of thinking.
This is clearly evident in the way you express yourself here.
Your anger and fear of the complicated shines through much brighter than you might think. I think it's time you sat down and had a big, long thinking about who you want to be and what you really want to say.
Much love to you, and thank you for opening yourself up.
I honestly haven't seen that in years. And even if it was everywhere, does it honestly matter what they prefer to go by? I mean, it's honestly just a pronoun