#like im already misgendered all the time so it doesn't Matter i guess

[s-ccaam-era-crepe]

im so infinitely stressed rn i need to get off here

[nerves-nebula]

Hey there! Sorry to bother you but I remember you specifically talking about it/its pronouns and how actually theyre not dehumanizing at all (saw lots of people with this belief and many medias that portray it as such) but sadly my dash refreshed and I havent been hable to find your posts about it.

You kind of opened a third eye for me? And I wanted to know more if you feel like explaining it again or link some of your posts

(Im sorry if this sounds rude im genuinely interested, im autistic and just writing this was pretty hard. Im gonna thank you in advance if you ll take the time to answer this, but ill understand if you dont feel like /gen)

not rude! unfortunately posts about pronouns arent one of the things i strictly catalog, so you could try looking through my #pronouns tag but there isn't much there, so there's no guarantee you'll find the specific post you're looking for.

i did likely tag a post like that with something like #queer or #trans but i have so many posts and reblogs tagged those things- I'm not sure it'd be worth your time to comb through them. I also wasnt aware any post I'd made about pronouns had been reblogged so idk if i could find whichever one might've been reblogged recently.

uuuuuhh for a quick rundown of my thoughts i guess I'd say:

using it/its pronouns is GENERALLY dehumanizing to most people because it's a way to show people that you think very little of them, that you're comparing them to something *less than human*

Of course this functions within the idea that "human" is inherently better or higher in the hierarchy than "animal" or "plant" which isn't inherently true- but that's its own post.

so you're being misgendered or de-gendered as a show of disrespect/contempt.

HOWEVER. if someone WANTS to use it/its then all of that kind of flies out the window. how is that disrespectful, it's just your actual pronouns. it can't be dehumanizing if the person in question doesn't consider it dehumanizing, or doesn't consider being non-human less dignifying, or a dozen other potential reasons that person feels comfortable with it/its.

like some of us know that our overlapping identities make us less than human to a lot of people already, so why bother trying to insist you're included in a version of humanity that CLEARLY wasn't made to fit you (we talked about this a lot in my black readings class last year, about how, like, a lot of modern concepts of what it meant to be a human were created to kind of intentionally strip black people of the "human"/"person" status.)

so like if I'm already a monster and a freak and inhuman why does it matter if I use human pronouns or not.

and there's prolly more i could say but I should get back to my homework now, hah.

[noonstate]

still getting notes from gc hellzone so: for those perhaps engaging in good faith who didn't get my original jokey point, here is a longer explaination:

the way that terfs / gc define "what is a woman" ( or, really, "what is biological sex" but unfortunately they're extremely obsessed with gatekeeping womanhood in particular so this is the avenue im using ) has shifted over time, and can shift even within a conversation: if we use the definition of sex that janice raymond laid out in "the transsexual empire" ( one of the foundational terf works ), what sex you are is based off of six characteristics: chromosomal sex, anatomical or morphological sex, genital or gonadal sex, legal sex, endocrine or hormonal sex, psychological sex.

the kicker is, most of what janice raymond listed are things that can be changed for transgender people. trans woman, say, can change: anatomical sex ( through surgery and hrt ), genital sex ( through surgery + hrt ), legal sex ( where allowed by the gov ), endocrine sex ( through hrt ), and psychological sex — well that's just gender, baby.

so by this definition, a trans woman could have 5/6 checked off that would make her biologically female, at least according to raymond's criteria. the one left over is chromosomal sex, something that doesn't itself even fall squarly into male and female, but is distributated in a spectrum where, yes, the majority of people fall into XX or XY, but also; many do not. by some estimates, there are about as many intersex people as there are redheads, and it would hardly make sense to say that redheads don't exist.

these days, it's less common to see gcs use raymond's criteria, and instead have chosen to focus in on the 1/6 that trans people cannot currently change: chromosomal sex. ( there also is a focus on gametes, which you can effectively get rid of with hrt + surgery, but that's less black + white ) so they will say, a woman is an Adult Human Female, a human born with XX chromosomes. sometimes they throw in "and a vulva / vagina / womb", sometimes they don't.

in my post above, i jokingly said that i "couldn't wait for science to discover a way to change chromosomes so that terfs would have to claim there was an innante female soul that made a woman". one, i was joking. all of you in the notes saying we could use science for better things? sure. however i'd also like to state that again, i was joking. and two: even if i was serious, science can do two things at once, you know.

so why did i make this joke? what point was i trying to get across? well, i was trying to point out the sliding scale of "what is a woman". with trans people passing and having vaginas ( no matter what gcs might think of them ), terfs have had to pick one of the few things no human being can actually percieve as the hook to hang their True Womanhood on: chromosomes. no one looks at another person and knows their chromosomes. and no, you can't "always tell" ( see: the number of people in my notes misgendering me the wrong direction even with my pronouns in bio ).

and so, my joke: if, tomorrow, science figured out a way to switch chromosomes, and every trans woman now had XX chromosomes ( also let's not forget: some of them already do ), terfs would have to pick something else. if now, all 6/6 sex characteristics were changable by trans people, terfs would just move the scale. they wouldn't say "oh, you have a vulva and a womb and estrogen and XX chromosomes, i understand that you're a woman, sorry", they would choose something else. what would that be? who can say. at a point they might say it was a god given womanliness. or a female essence. or female socialization from birth. but they wouldn't suddenly say "oh you have XX chromosomes, guess you're a woman", because this has never been about the science. gender critical / terfs do not like trans people. they are bigots. it's truly that simple.

as for all those in the notes saying "projection! don't you say you have an innate female essence / soul / etc?" personally i don't believe in a soul, nor do i believe in an 'innate essence'. i do however believe in gender and gender identity. is gender socially constructed? of course it is! but so are laws, and money, and borders, and realising that doesn't mean that you suddenly don't have to interface with them in the world. as a wise philosopher once said, "denying trans people their gender identity because 'abolish gender' is kind of like denying citizenship to immigrants because 'abolish borders'."

like it or not, trans people live in this world. i'm one of them. i'm glad to be one of them. so, to close off an absurdly long addition to a little jokey post, trans liberation now ! happy pride <3

cannot wait until we scientifically figure out how to change chromosomes or gametes and terfs have to claim that actually it’s an ✨ innate female soul ✨ that makes a woman