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Gender neutrality, Why so much backlash?
- Thread starter NewDust
- Start date
Jaaaaaaaa! Dames en heren, elke dag! Toet-toet!
Finale Fireworker
Member
This is what I've noticed: there exists a very big population of human beings who simultaneously respect people outside the gender binary, support challenging the gender binary, but also enjoy elements of the gender binary and don't want it to go away.
I know a lot of people who:
-Are strong transgender allies
-Denounce gender expectations as a mandatory quota
-Do not feel constrained by their gender expectations
-Encourage the normalization of gender-neutral attributes
They also:
-Really like hallmarks of their own gender and partake in them frequently (girls in pink, guys who love to grill, women who love to bake, guys who love sports)
-Have cisgendered sexualities that don't require individual departure from norms
-Are able to pick and choose their progressive battles because they don't often impact them directly
This creates a population of progressives who want people outside the gender binary to feel comfortable and welcome but not if it comes with the erasure of their own identities.
Honestly, I think the train announcement situation is ultimately a good thing because it opens up a conversation about something very nuanced that requires multiple perspective to parse but over something that is largely inconsequential. So we can have a serious conversation while it's still about something non-threatening and hopefully come to a better conclusion about what people want before it's over something serious.
I know a lot of people who:
-Are strong transgender allies
-Denounce gender expectations as a mandatory quota
-Do not feel constrained by their gender expectations
-Encourage the normalization of gender-neutral attributes
They also:
-Really like hallmarks of their own gender and partake in them frequently (girls in pink, guys who love to grill, women who love to bake, guys who love sports)
-Have cisgendered sexualities that don't require individual departure from norms
-Are able to pick and choose their progressive battles because they don't often impact them directly
This creates a population of progressives who want people outside the gender binary to feel comfortable and welcome but not if it comes with the erasure of their own identities.
Honestly, I think the train announcement situation is ultimately a good thing because it opens up a conversation about something very nuanced that requires multiple perspective to parse but over something that is largely inconsequential. So we can have a serious conversation while it's still about something non-threatening and hopefully come to a better conclusion about what people want before it's over something serious.
They're being supportive and respectful of others lifestyles but they identify strongly with their gender. What's wrong with that?
They don't have to erase their whole lifestyle over this. Of fucking course they're not on board for that.
Vermillion
Banned
Change is a reminder that we're all dying each day, and time doesn't care about us.
ReplacementPelican
Member
Oh yeah, I think that's largely what it comes down to for a lot of us. The thing is this, to me, is not really a 'line in the sand.' Its completely inconsequential to my life, well-being, thoughts, feelings, whatever else. Now, when something has literally no effect on me and I've been told, by those involved, that they'd quite like this then its fine by me. I don't feel like I'm kowtowing to somebody - or some agenda - by just letting an organisation do something that they think is nice.
Well, in a general sense, you may have a point. In the sense of 'passengers' I believe this would be largely inclusive of almost everyone on a train.
Snarky(HEART)
Banned
It's difficult to explain, but basically I can be both at once, and know in my mind, that in that moment, I am both. I also have times when I am mostly one or the other. In romance with girls I'm usually male, with guys usually female. I'm also usually more female in my own room.
On a day to day, I'm blessed with a feminine look, so if I go all out I can reasonably pass. So days I present as female most I present as male. You can call me him, her, he, she, them, they I don't care. I have friends that only know me as male, some that know me as only female and some that know me as both.
it's not so much censoring suffixes as it is giving people a way to make lagnuage more inclusive. when talking about latin american people, or culture, or anything, some people like to use latin@ (cuz it can be read as latina/latino), and lately it's shifted to become latinx. it's not censorship, it's inclusivity.
Finale Fireworker
Member
I'm saying that this conversation will hopefully help skittish allies realize that the removal of "ladies and gentleman" does not mean the end of their gender identity as they know it. Maybe I wasn't clear.
While, at the same time, this opens up an examination of what is actually important to minority populations and whether this kind of change truly makes them more comfortable.
There are probably more Catalan speakers in England than there are people for whom male/female doesn't work. We don't put street signs in Catalan.
At some point you just have to accept that the minority is too small to justify change an entire culture or language.
Finale Fireworker
Member
I thought it was the "good morning" part because, culturally, that's not an appropriate greeting in the UK?
TwEE-N-Toast
Banned
It's not hard to figure out. People's identities, culture and entire lives are tied to their genders.
Snarky❤;245005056 said:
Thanks, that helped me understand a bit better what it's like! Do you or would you maintain a single gender identity at the workplace? I would imagine this could be a bit complicated in most workplaces if you have clients who you work with on at least a semi-regular basis.
With respect to the thread, I think one of the reasons this matter has been made so problematic in the Netherlands is that a lot of people here, while recognizing that people are free to be whoever they wish to be, have not fully internalized this ideal and still prefer more traditional societal constructs. Studies performed here have shown time and time again that people are not even comfortable seeing men holding hands--let alone kissing--in public. At the same time, interest groups want progress to be made quickly, but any kind of progress toward social inclusivity is highly fragile, especially when it pertains to issues of normative nature. Per definition, the status quo is what it is because the majority of people or at least the most vocal people benefit from it. A radical change in norms requires mass social revolution, which is unlikely to take place for gender-neutrality issues since there are relatively few people who have an active desire for change. As such, slow, steady, and invisible wins the race, I believe. It's wholly unsurprising that the act of announcing this policy change had the effect of polarizing opinions rather than bringing them together when the foundation for inclusion has not yet fully solidified among the general public. It also is not really conducive that people on both sides of this debate are relatively uncompromising in their stance. This is part of a wider problem, I think, of social conservativeness clashing with the contemporary culture that constantly satisfies people's desire for instant gratification--though this is a subject for a different topic I suppose.
Actually, we don't know this because there's no reliable way to get an accurate picture of the entirety of the non-binary population without first educating the entire population on what that means and how one would identify as such.
After all, the number of people identifying as any of the letters of the gender-sexual minority alphabet only increases over time, thanks in large part to better dissemination of information allowing people to self-identify as such. We can't look at survey results that say "1% of the population identifies as non-binary" without also putting those results into question because of a severe lack of education on the subject in the general population.
That's on top of societal oppression against non-binary individuals that heavily discourages anyone from identifying as such (see: fragile & toxic masculinity). We literally can't know the true numbers until people are as free to be non-binary (and trans, for that matter) as they are to be cis. And obviously, judging by the reaction such people get everywhere on the planet to this day, we are nowhere near that being the case.
Edit: I should also say that there is something inherently skeevy about conflating one's gender identity with something as transient as what language one speaks. I can do something about the latter by putting in the effort to learn; the former is tied up with very core parts of my identity and are much more difficult (not to mention undesirable) to change. Regardless of the actual numbers involved, these are very different situations that are not equivalent.
I personally would be fine with getting rid of the ladies and gentlemen part, because at least in English it has unpleasant class and cultural meanings to me. I.E, all the baggage on women throughout history with society expecting you to "act like a lady".
But you do you Europe, not like the US really follows any standards these days, and our train system is pretty bad overall.
But you do you Europe, not like the US really follows any standards these days, and our train system is pretty bad overall.
It's not pandering, it's science. The research clearly chows that gender is societal and on a spectrum. Just because your laguage/society is insufficient to describe or accommodate everyone doesn't give a you a pass. It's wrong, no matter how many people are cis
evilromero
Member
A little off topic but when someone says "honest question" it usually means we're about to get a thinly veiled dose of some biased ideology that's not really interested in the question being "honestly" answered. More of a loaded question that's purpose is to setup confrontation. So in that regard it's disingenuous and dishonest in its premise. But in another way it's also very revealing about the person asking the question.
Foxy the Fox
Member
Didn't knew it was happening in Italian too.
In Spanish some people is using the "x" where the male/female letter gets in
"Hello everyone"
"Hola a todos"
"Hola a todxs"
Is pretty disgusting because "todos" include literally everyone, there is no need for that x.
I guess some people take issue that the male pronoun is the universal to refer to everyone.
As an aside it's pretty funny to me that in my language (Italian) cunt is slang for cool or hot. Insults are generally based around male genitalia.
Commanche Raisin Toast
Member
They blow it out of proportion too, acting like it's against the law to not use a certain pronoun. Usually they end up revealing their racism/homo/xenophobia etc when extrapolating on that.
"You mean if do something as harmless as call my waitress sugar tits I get thrown in jail???" No you don't, but also, why would you think it's okay to call women that? Etc.
Baron_Calamity
Member
Because "hey everyone" is rude on itself.
EdibleKnife
Member
That relates a bit to the idea of "equality feeling like oppression". If you see things from the eyes of the majority and worship the status quo, all you know about is how gain is achieved through taking, and forcing and persecuting people. It's like people's minds are clouded by the idea that equality can only come by way of crushing and oppressing the people who've been in the majority as though minorities are getting revenge from the centuries of mistreatment when all minorities are asking is for slightly more consideration, empathy, and self-awareness/reflection on the part of the majority and mainstream society. They act like saying or doing something racist, sexist, bigoted, or offensive, in general, is a death sentence when the reality is it's simply something that should be learned from and corrected in the future for the sake of the marginalized.
sobaka770
Banned
What percentage of people are actually transgender and are confused by current norms? Probably less than 1% (I saw 0.3% number somewhere). The rest happily fall within their gender consignments. That's clearly not a normal case, like black movement or feminism, or even gay rights.
You see when the number of people in a minority we attempt to accommodate, who we great are oppressed and whom we hear about on a daily basis is below the poverty level, no wonder you have misunderstandings and hatred.
I don't care that people don't say ladies and gentlemen anymore in public transport. That's a very minor change. I care that the whole transgender thing is always on the front page and it's getting a disproportionate amount of support and attention compared to things like global warming, wars, poverty, famine etc.
Moreover I take issue with someone born as a boy/girl not being raised as one or creating a society of gender variety. If they are truly transgender and take issue with upbringing - fine, but until then binary gender is more than enough for a vast majority of people.
EdibleKnife
Member
What exactly are the statistics for this? And how exactly do you square the fact that even if transgender news "always" gets the front page, somehow transgender equality is still ways off to the point that the murder of trans individuals isn't sated and the president can flippantly ban them from the US military? If trans people don't have equality, shouldn't their oppression and ways to ease it still be news? Is it somehow impossible to care about and devote efforts to trans rights alongside literally every other problem in the world? I mean, people could pair away things like Hollywood news, business & industry news, tech news, and local news to fit in everything you stress matters more but you chose to single out news about one of the most vulnerable sections of the populace as somehow the reason other issues are being drowned out.
How does the removal of these gender specific terms open up a conversation about anything? If you were completely unaware of these issues, the removal of "ladies and gentlemen" does literally nothing to make somebody think, "oh maybe there is more to the world than ladies and gentlemen".
If the argument is to reduce instances of gender separation this seems frankly like a meaningless way to go about this. Again, I'm having difficulty understanding how neutral language makes things more inclusive. The only thing this would accomplish is to not offend somebody who doesn't identify as either a lady or gentlemen - and while it's important to not make people feel excluded, the public restrooms almost certainly are gender separated. They may even say Men's Women's
So because we're not doing it all at once, we shouldn't even bother at all?
I'm not on board with that suggestion. And I do appreciate small steps like this, however insignificant they might be (and, indeed, the fact that it's so insignificant to the greater population is exactly why it's possible to do it in the first place).
yanipheonu
Member
The only real insight I can provide is that people seems to care A LOT about gender, and the human compulsion to have nothing break one's conception of the world is particularly strong here. It ain't easy, to say the least.
Myke Greywolf
Ambassador of Goodwill
I'm afraid that this kind of language-related shift will begin to carve a rift between latin language and germanic language based societies. Societies and languages are closely tied together, and latin languages do not have any easy solutions for this issue, since almost every noun, article and adjective is gendered, and the notions of sex and gender are intertwined even in the language itself. Evolution in language is obtained not by decree, but by a consensus of the acknowledgment of new needs by a large majority of the speakers. Since the changes needed are so radical and major for such a minority of situations, I don't think such consensus will be able to be achieved within the next few centuries or so.
I may be wrong, but I feel that this imbalance is less pronounced in germanic languages, and even if consensus may be hard to achieve, if it indeed comes, it will occur much earlier than in latin language societies. This may end up with the anglo-american sphere looking down at the latin sphere as socially retrograde, without knowledge of the aspects that condition their outlook on this subject.
I may be wrong, but I feel that this imbalance is less pronounced in germanic languages, and even if consensus may be hard to achieve, if it indeed comes, it will occur much earlier than in latin language societies. This may end up with the anglo-american sphere looking down at the latin sphere as socially retrograde, without knowledge of the aspects that condition their outlook on this subject.
Aztechnology
Member
I think in large part the resistance I see (Amongst people I know) it comes less from the people's decisions in their gender and more from the annoyance of pronouns and other asks about changing norms. Ze, zir and Xi kind of thing. Then mixed with deeper rooted fear of change and confusion/frustration.
Personally I really don't care. But I'm not going to go around addressing people as Ze, sir, xi or any other strange new standard people present. I see no issue with standard non sex identifying messages like Citizens (or with religion happy holidays) etc. But don't ask people to change their long established vocabulary on identification, it just won't work right now. He/she. If people identify as a male or female instead of their birth sex that will work. Asking people to go beyond that currently is just a bit too much I think.
Personally I really don't care. But I'm not going to go around addressing people as Ze, sir, xi or any other strange new standard people present. I see no issue with standard non sex identifying messages like Citizens (or with religion happy holidays) etc. But don't ask people to change their long established vocabulary on identification, it just won't work right now. He/she. If people identify as a male or female instead of their birth sex that will work. Asking people to go beyond that currently is just a bit too much I think.
I didn't say anything like that. I am not opposed to incremental change. I'm arguing that this change is meaningless. It is noticeable only if you are outright told it was done and why it was done.
EdibleKnife
Member
It's meaningless to you and from your perspectives. There's already a post by a trans/non-binary poster on this topic that mentions how they notice things that seem insignificant to the culture at large but mean something to them. When you're outside the gender status quo and live in a world where nearly everything is an accommodation to the gender binary including language, of course you're going to take note when something changes to include you. The perspective of a person who lives that way is entirely different, which is why you see it as a meaningless effort.
My comment began by responding to somebody saying that this will open up dialogue on the subject which I still disagree with...and yes we are having a dialogue but a 4 page neogaf thread isn't really what I think they're talking about.
I suppose this is a testing ground to slowly introduce more gender neutral terms in more government documents - which I'm for.
The Fatal Englishman
Member
This is really a misleading characterisation of what your sources demonstrate. In essence, all that appears to have been shown is that there may be tangible differences between the brain and genetic structure of males and females and some people may display elements of both. Societal influences don't really come into it.
.3% of 7 billion is 21 million people. Not enough to matter to you?
I'm not intrinsically opposed to the change, but I can understand why some wouldn't want it. Decrying "Ladies and Gentlemen" as trans exclusionary is tantamount to saying "Hey you guys" is sexist.
It's such a milquetoast microaggression (which are immeasurably subjective in and of themselves) that to feel offended by it and to make that offense known seems excessively trangressive and standoffish, and the proper course to counter someone who is trangressive and standoffish is to stubbornly spite them.
It's such a milquetoast microaggression (which are immeasurably subjective in and of themselves) that to feel offended by it and to make that offense known seems excessively trangressive and standoffish, and the proper course to counter someone who is trangressive and standoffish is to stubbornly spite them.
EdibleKnife
Member
The OP is the one who posted the information about the issue and the reason they posted it from their perspective is because it's already become a conversation and a dialogue beyond Neogaf. Particularly if this is a change made in places beyond the Netherlands including the US, then there's no way that the country that popularized the "war on Christmas" and the "co-opting of the rainbow from God" doesn't make it a nation spanning issue.
You missed the part where there's a difference in brain structure within trans people too which is the important part; the idea that biologically there is a precedent for a spectrum of gender and gender expression among people which is the reason I posted the article in response to asking for research regarding a gender spectrum.
Prophaniti
Banned
Wait, What? What privilege? The privilege of being called ladies or gentleman?
Crimson_Echidna
Banned
Because you get the "I just tell it like it is" assholes who equate the idea of being accommodating to others as "censorship" and they shouldn't have inconvenience themselves by not saying what they want to.
Prophaniti
Banned
No... .3% of America is trans.
96,900,000 people. In a country of 323 million.
They do have a point that it receives a lot of attention for being such a small amount of the population at large.
EdibleKnife
Member
The privilege of having your gender acknowledged as default/"natural" and not constantly being reminded about your gender being considered invalid by mainstream society.
Because they are the victims of an intense amount of oppression and violence from the majority.
Prophaniti
Banned
I don't know enough about this. So the only real offense is if you don't identify as having a gender at all then right? Not about being a man or a woman?
Edit: Didn't see that part you added.
I understand that. It's still a lot of coverage. I was mostly just trying to correct the numbers.
Bolivar687
Banned
Cognitive dissonance and ignorance.
EdibleKnife
Member
I should have typed "gender or lack of" in my post. People keep using "offensive" and "triggered" in this topic when the better word is that it's more an uncomfortable or off-putting thing to be subject too. There were no marches in the streets or threats toward politicians to change "ladies and gentlemen" but simple phone calls and letters. If you are in fact gender neutral or non-binary it would indeed be off-putting. But there are also people who consider themselves genderfluid (identity where gender varies over time) who also don't like being reminded of societies stringent adherence to a gender binary.
The OP cited literally nobody. No articles. No government announcement. No random forum posters. And even if there were a source, my argument is that merely making some announcement that you would look into this would do more to bring conversation than the actual change they have implemented which would go largely unnoticed and unexplained without somebody pointing it out. As far as I can tell, people are mad about the explanation - not that they heard the new announcement and got enraged.
Also, you are responding to a poster that began by saying he grew up in an environment that taught him to be offended by the abundance of Christmas talk and decoration and later realized how dumb it is to be mad about something like that. Let people celebrate their holiday. I don't have to shit on it just cause it doesn't involve me. And somebody wishing me Merry Christmas shouldn't be an offense. I don't even understand your comment. It's not like anti-Christmas people won any war on Christmas. It's still a national holiday and celebrated loudly and proudly throughout the US. The only change that came about that I've noticed was people getting mad at how early the holiday kept starting.