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breakerofhalos · 1 year ago

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On it/its Pronouns, Gender, and Becoming

This is mostly for the cishets, but it may be helpful to someone out there, so I’m sharing it anyway.

I've been getting some questions about my pronouns, so I thought I'd give a small explainer for MY reasons for using the pronouns "it/its". To clarify: these are MY reasons for using those pronouns. Trans people have a variety of reasons for choosing the pronouns they choose and can, and often do, shift, add, or discontinue the use of certain pronouns along the course of their lives as their understanding of their own genders changes.

Here's the shortest, most key point of the explanation. I use "it/its" because it gives me gender euphoria. It *feels* right when people use them to refer to me. That's completely subjective and that's fine, gender and pronouns don't have to have any deeper reasoning behind them besides making you feel seen and affirming your self-perception.

Now, being who I am, I've put a lot more thought into this. You don't have to follow any of the other arguments here, they're pretty specialized concepts that have been the source of debate and discussion in the trans community. Trans people in general think much more deeply about gender as a concept, their gender, gendered language, and what is signified by gender than cis people. That is only natural given the amount of thought that has to go in to deciding to defy the normative system of gender assignment.

So to repeat, if this sounds overly academic, arcane, or like hair-splitting to you, that's expected and normal. All you need to know is that using a given set of pronouns is what someone likes, and then you use those pronouns. It can be that simple. If you'd like to know more, read on, and I'll try to keep this coherent.

First layer: Slur reclamation

For a trans person to adopt "it/its" pronouns is to reclaim a subtle slur that has been levied at trans people for a good while. By choosing that, one takes away the power of the bigot in a small way. Not every trans person agrees about this, so it's one of the bigger stumbling blocks for allies. Don't use it/its unless someone asks, but if they do, this is often part of it. It is for me.

Second layer: Neopronouns

"It/its" are considered to be part of what are known as "neopronouns", newer pronouns being used to represent a variety of experiences with gender, including gender non-conformity. Singular "they/them" is NOT a neopronoun, having been in use for centuries, including in Shakespeare. Examples of neopronouns include: xe/xem/xer, ze/zer/zem, fae/faer, and ey,em. No one knows if any of these will gain widespread traction, come to represent gender archetypes that are distinct third or more genders, or what. It's still very new, and forecasting things like that is impossible. Again, as in all things pronouns, if someone asks, respect that.

Third Layer: Xenogenders

Ok, so this is where things start getting more philosophical and theoretical. Beyond slur reclamation, and beyond trying out neopronouns as a way to denote a non-binary gender in general, there's xenogenders.

This one is really not on mainstream radar at all basically, and in trans community it's controversial. The basic idea is that a xenogender person identifies with something *other* than human as a gender. It's a really broad umbrella. Now, this is where a lot of people get lost because they're familiar with a certain set of societally accepted genders (yes, non-binary has varying levels of acceptance, but it's in the general social schema now).

Here's the thing, people have been arguing about *what* gender *is* for literal millennia. The ancient Greeks argued about it, Ancient Egyptians have Hatshepsut, the Sumerians had a trans priestesshood of Inanna, Scythians had early HRT and transition. There's a lot of ideas and nuance and discussion across philosophy (trying to come up with a coherent, universally applicable approach and definition) and anthropology (how have humans experienced gender and lived it through time?), but NOT medicine. Medicine and science are not able to discuss gender because first, they're dealing with questions of observable biological phenomena and gender is on the level of an abstract concept. Sex is biology, gender is society. Second, biologically observing sex is vastly complicated on its own.

Anyway, there's a few major theories of gender that I have a basic knowledge of:

The Gonadal Model: this is what people who say that gender is "what you have in your pants" follow. It's a pretty bad model. First, unless you're extremely close with someone, you have no idea what's in their pants. You generally assume that based on other characteristics about their appearance and behavior. Second, gonadal expression is unreliable, even if you attempt to verify it. Intersex people exist, in greater quantities than redheads. Some have genitalia that does not fit into a "standard" model. Some do, but don't have those secondary, outwardly visible characteristics that one would "expect". And some appear to fit into a "standard" category while having invisible chromosomal abnormalities that they, their doctors, and other people might never know about. Seriously. A person can have XY chromosomes and develop a female biological expression and never realize that their chromosomes are otherwise. Almost no one ever actually tests their chromosomes.

Performativity Theory: this is the idea that gender is the mix between what one person "performs" as their gender and what others around them categorize them as. Which gendered signals does a person send? Do they have long hair, makeup, are shorter, and have a specific vocal pitch? That is read as woman. Tall, hairy, deeper vocal pitch, and aggressive? That gets read as a man. Passing trans women would then *be* women. Butch women might be read as masculine to the point of being called men in some situations. Feminine gay men might read as more feminine than masculine, or be accepted as "one of the girls". The idea here being that society should be more open to accepting trans people as the gender they claim because there's an attempt to fit into those roles and signals. Basically "You are what you signal, regardless of the skill at signaling." It's more expansive, but has limits.

Self ID Model: a person is what they say they are. This is the only model that includes all cis people in the gender they claim, and does not exclude any cis people. Conveniently, it also includes all trans people. Now, this opens up to the classic "slippery slope" of trans identity: "If people are what they say they are, what if someone says that they're an animal/alien/attack helicopter? This says they are, when they clearly aren't!" Yes. Yes it does. Unsubscribe to the idea of gender as an emergent self-schema, and gender as play. Gender is what a person understands themselves to be, and that emerges over the course of their life as they experience, learn, and experiment. It's the best way I have found to talk about how I, and others describe experiencing things.

I grew up without knowledge of trans-ness, and therefore couldn't understand myself as trans. I always felt uncomfortable, or inadequate in fitting into masculinity. Once I understood more, I put names to feelings, and developed the conceptual vocabulary to understand myself. My gender emerged. It continues to emerge. Even cis people change their relationship with the social standards of their gender and what it means to them over their lives. It might not end up as far from start as trans journeys is all.

So, finally getting down to trying to put my gender into words. I do not identify as fully *human*. I've experienced an alienation from society and humanity as whole for most of my life. I want to be seen as *femme*, or having feminine traits and presentation. To be "female shaped". I also want to transgress expectations, being bald and not wearing a wig is one aspect of this. I see myself as succubian, a gender identity describing wanting to embody feminine seductiveness and sexuality, to the point of hyperromanticism or hypersexuality. Many succubians come to this as a result of sexual trauma, but it's not required. I also want to be see as a witch. In the old, scary, but also capable and caring for those considered part of the community. It's not easy to explain fully, it's easier to express in fiction and metaphor. This is my attempt to get there with the *shortest* amount of explanation and theory lol. I think it is a grounded perspective, based in gender theory, logic, and lived experience. People can disagree, just be polite about it.

Fourth Layer: Not A Person

Not A Person is a term in use among some of the trans community, it is VERY niche within a niche. Again, this means different things depending on who is saying it, and _when_ they say it. What I mean is very much informed by this essay: https://voidgoddess.org/emptyspaces/notaperson/

The basic idea is that as a society, we do not think of ourselves as hurting people. We care about people. We're dealing with problems, like immigration, houselessness, mental health, and "LGBT Grooming". This lets us abstract away the harm to people by removing their status as a Person. So fuck it, I'm not going to try to gain the conditional respect that is clearly inconsistent and used to split society into People, and Unpeople. I'll take that Unpeople label and wear it with pride, expressing solidarity with all the other wretched and oppressed. I never liked society's constraints anyway.

It's a conscious rejection of social approval in favor of radical empathy and individual expression. I'm Not a Person, I'm so much more.

Obviously this is controversial, and not any kind of prescriptive rule for living, but it's a reminder of where I stand, and with who. Right now, I could put my old clothes on, and aside from already having made changes to my ID, pass as a white cishet man. I could easily boymode and use that perception to access social privilege. Every day, I wake up, and choose to express who I am, even if it makes the world a much more dangerous place. I accept that danger, and my otherness, and wear it as armor. I use it/its pronouns as part of that, and as a way to make people uncomfortable in order to give them cause to examine that discomfort and do a little bit more thinking than they otherwise planned on that day. Hopefully it helps them grow.

#pronouns #gender #transfem #transgender #neopronouns #xenogender #empty spaces

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