Who is like God arbour wrote:I only wanted to say, that my position can hardly be called an extreme position. I’m merely differentiating between sex and gender and think that, when addressing someone, the sex is deciding for the choosing of the grammar gender.
It can be considered to be an
absolutist position. It's not especially
practical, in my opinion, and is more than a little callous. Functionally speaking, it is
practical to refer to someone with the best-fit pronoun based on how they appear to yourself (when it is a direct conversation) or to the people that you are talking to (if you are speaking in the third person). To do anything else leads to confusion.
As I noted in referring to Mark Twain's comedic essay on the German language, it seems remarkably odd that coming from a language background where a bitch (female dog) may be referred to as "he," a tom (male cat) as "she," and a young girl as "it," that you would be firmly wedded to the principle of grammatical gender reflecting internal essence at all.
But ultimately, when choosing pronouns with which to address someone, we're really simply choosing an appropriate grammatical gender. In common English usage, it makes total sense to say of a transsexual "And so she is a he," referring both to social gender and biological sex. Pronouns ultimately serve as substitutes for nouns; that's all they are, no more, no less, in English and in German. The grammatical gender of the chosen pronoun is simply one more little piece of information that helps us discern
what noun - or name - we're substituting for. Some nouns are feminine; some are masculine; some are neither; some could be either; English is a little less formal in that regard than German, but the theory is the same.
Now, let me speak for a minute on sex and gender. Whether or not there is any distinction at all between the terms in English depends on
who you are talking to. Yes,
German language does not support a distinction very well. In more old-fashioned or euphemistic English usage, "manhood" is actually a synonym for "penis," and "unmanned" refers to being physically or metaphorically castrated; in that particular tradition of the language, maleness is identified solely by the presence or absence of a penis. The language can vary, has varied in the past, and continues to vary; the standard of what makes a man or a woman is not fixed in stone.
Now let us look at Serafina’s opinion: Serafina thinks that sex is totally unimportant and only the gender is important and that a transwoman should be treated as a real woman and a transman should be treated as a real man with no exceptions.
Also an absolutist position. Although I should note that Serafina offered an exception for prison at one point.
I think it's a much more practical position. I feel she has done an absolutely terrible job arguing on behalf of it, but I will explain the modern intellectual tradition that this comes from.
Almost everything that you or I do is in one or another way
gendered. This is most apparent when you're up on a stage pretending to be someone of the opposite gender. There is a
masculine style of walking and a
feminine style of walking. There are masculine and feminine ways of
sitting, of
throwing, even of
talking - a lot of the differences are about who interrupts whom and how, not merely pitch and choice of vocabulary.
Dressing. Eating. Sleeping. Dancing. Making friends. Losing friends. Almost every social behaviour from the wearing of clothes out to how you stand next to someone is gendered. If a woman doesn't walk in the feminine style, isn't wearing a feminine haircut, and happens to be wearing gender-neutral clothes, she will get mistaken for male at a distance or from behind. It is for most people a simple matter of performance to get taken for a given gender - regardless of what their biological sex is - by most observers. (Yes, skilled observers can very often spot the subtle physical cues; yes, modern plastic surgery can do almost anything; neither really has much to do with the everyday social environment.)
The conclusion is that that gender isn't really something intrinsic. If a boy walks all girly, he's going to get
called "girly." If a girl gets down rough and tumble, she's "one of the boys." Social gender, then, is simply
performance. You then
perform male or
perform female as surely as you perform Shakespeare or perform Aristophanes.
I have quoted several dictionaries, according to which a woman or a man is not defined by their gender but by their sex. Serafina has ridiculed that as semantics, has claimed it to be untrue but has not shown that it is the other way. The only thing Serafina had to do was to show that indeed most people, when choosing a grammar gender, are contemplating the gender and not the sex of a person and that this is the usual modus operandi.
I have argued that people are always choosing the grammar gender accordingly to the from the appearance assumed sex.
How exactly are people choosing the grammar gender for an individual? Are they usually contemplating the sex or the gender? What is the usual modus operandi?
Usually, very casually on the basis of only a handful of cues - clothing, posture, haircut, and voice probably account for most of the snap judgements.
It's usually not an entirely conscious process, and it's very difficult for us to know which underlying idea is being used. People
do make mistakes, as well, but if you think you see one thing and were meant to see another, you will not often at fault.
There are people who feel both ways.
Ad populum is not a conclusive criteria to appeal to, in this event. What
is true - in my experience - is that a great many people in the population will adjust their pronoun usage according to the context and nature of the discussion.
The gender is not always the same as it appears because the person who is to be addressed could be a transvestite, a masculine woman, a feminine man or a transsexual who hasn’t come out (yet). The from the appearance assumed sex and their gender would differ in such cases. Insofar to conclude only from the appearance to the gender and address someone accordingly is not always right. A transvestite does not have to have a feminine gender only because he wears feminine clothes or a masculine gender only because she wears masculine clothes. They could claim to be insulted too when their sex is ignored in favour of what is wrongly assumed as their gender only because they are wearing clothes that are usually worn by members of the opposite sex.
I would think that most transvestites would not take too much offence to being addressed as female while dressed in drag. They may offer a correction if they feel otherwise.
A tomboy does not have to have a masculine gender and could claim to be insulted as well if she gets addressed like a boy.
The difference between a tomboy and a woman in drag as a man is actually usually quite striking. Sometimes it isn't. You address people based on best guesses regardless. Choosing to take the best guess of what they're trying to
act as is the path least likely to offend.
A nancy-boy (sorry, but I couldn’t find a better term that describes the opposite of a tomboy) does not have to have a feminine gender and could claim to be insulted as well when he gets addressed like a girl. A transgender who hasn’t come out (yet) and wants to stay inconspicuous does not want to be addressed accordingly to their gender but accordingly to their sex. To ignore that and address such a transgender accordingly to their gender could even get that transgender in trouble he wanted to avoid by staying inconspicuous.
Possibly. But it's really best to simply pick whatever pronoun or address is most successful at communicating to everybody around you who you are talking to or who you are talking about.
That means, if really the gender shall be deciding, one would have to ask each and every person what their gender is, while the sex usually is obviously.
This is not so different from what we already
do. We examine the clothing of someone, and their appearance, and ask ourselves how to address someone.
If we're not sure, we do the same thing that we do when we're talking about someone whose name we have so rudely forgotten: Work around it without actually using the uncertain words.
Serafina then claimed that transgenders are suffering when they are addressed accordingly to their sex instead of their gender.
I wondered if the most important reason Transgenders do want to be addressed accordingly to their gender is that they have experienced discrimination as transgenders or are afraid to experience discrimination if the fact that they are transgenders is disclosed. I contemplated that it could be possible that they simply do not want that everybody knows that they are transgenders and that they want to deceive everybody in believing that they have a sex as it appears because then they do not have to suffer the prejudices of those who are bigoted. And because to be addressed accordingly to their sex would disclose the fact that someone is a transgender, they would have to suffer bigotry where it occurs.
Serafina’s reply was to ask, how that is wrong. Insofar Serafina has not proven the claim that transgenders are suffering because they are addressed accordingly to their sex. Quite contrary, Serafina has, as I understand it, acknowledged that not the addressing is the real problem but the discrimination that is enabled when the fact that someone is a transgender is disclosed through the addressing accordingly to the sex. That’s what Serafina has said
here too: Not the differentiation is discrimination but it enables discrimination.
Well, then, let
me explain one reason why it hurts to be "sirred" while trying to pass in a casual social context, for
anybody, and then we can go onto the more specific case of male-to-female transsexuals. (The reasons why a female-to-male transsexual may be hurt by "ma'am" are some the same and some different, but this post will be long enough, and we've been talking about the former case rather than the latter in any event; my apologies to the feminists in the audience.)
Now, you recall what I said about gender being a performance, above? Being addressed as male while you're playing female is a little like being told your performance of gender sucks. Since one "feminine" trait, as it's seen in the here and now, is
being sexy, you could also take it as being called ugly. So when a woman gets sirred, she is likely to take that as a bad review.
Now, a trans woman will take being "sirred" badly in a casual social context for just about the same reasons as a cis woman. However, a trans woman may be referred to as male in
less casual social contexts, contexts in which her full status is known, and there the reason for being hurt is a little different.
In those cases, it hurts because a trans woman no longer identifies herself as a man. This is a painful part of her past that she's trying to put behind her, and here you are, reminding her that she used to be considered everywhere a man. She
believes she can become something new from something old; you don't believe that she's managed that. When you call her a man, you're saying that all that effort that she's put into changing her identity is meaningless.
That's a slap to the face. It's a little like having gone to school for many years and worked hard to get a degree in law, and then being told you're uneducated and a fake.
But if we now have reached the conclusion that not the differentiation and not the addressing according to one’s sex is discriminating but only enabling discrimination because it disclose the fact that someone is a transgender, the question now would have to be if it is right to keep that fact a secret to protect the transgender or if the discrimination that happens if the fact that someone is a transgender, ought to be fought.
Serafina’s opinion is that it is okay for transgenders to live their whole life with a secret.
I think that this should not be necessary and that the discrimination should be fought. In the long run, that will result in a more tolerant society where no one has to keep the fact that one is a transgender a secret.
Serafina’s answer was that transgenders do not want to be seen as transgenders and do want to live their whole life with a secret.
Serafina does not speak for all transgendered individuals. Some are quite comfortable with broadcasting their identity and making a point. I would, however, suggest that in this matter she does probably speak for the
majority of transgendered folk, who simply want to pass and live an everyday life.
Visible activists are usually a minority out of any minority. They
are necessary to force change in the larger public. However, it is far better that they are volunteers than conscripts, and holding the information to be
private rather than
public is a good thing.
A change in names
is going to be visible in public records. Older documents will show the prior name and gender assignment; any measures taken to support the complete erasure of all conflicting older identifying information could easily be abused to hide criminal history or to confound investigation of crimes. I can't see a practical legal means of enforcing true
secrecy; but neither do I see a practical need for forcing the information to be broadcast upon casual request, and the sort of law that would be needed to enforce honesty would have to be fairly intrusive. Privacy is quite reasonable.
Existing law, I should think, already covers the cases of penalties for fraudulent behaviour; in the rare case that it
matters that someone is transsexual, and they lie about it then, they would already be held responsible for any damages caused, or for criminal charges of perjury, or whatever else.
