I wanted to take a little detour from the norm and ask for your opinions on something this week.
A family member of mine recently became non-gendered. And while I’m generally happy to comply with an individual’s preferred pronouns, a part of me has always found this concept confusing. The individuals I have met generally say something like “I don’t feel like I’m male/female.” When I think about my own experience, I can’t say that I’ve ever felt female either, though I undoubtedly am.
I know we have school courses devoted to gender studies and we speak a lot about respecting someone by utilizing their preferred pronouns. We view it as offensive to directly ignore someone’s request for different pronouns and rightly so. However, if someone ever referred to me as “he” the reason I would find that offensive is because I don’t believe I look like a man.
The more I think about it, the more I understand that my own pronouns have very little to do with me specifically, they have to do with how the world sees me and what my body can do (biologically designed to gestate babies or not). I’m happy being referred to as female as I believe that’s how I appear in the world.
For me, this external sense of pronoun is simple, essentially you are what you look like. But, if I start digging into whether or not I feel female, I just wind up confused. What does it mean to be female, what does it feel like? How can we know? It seems that much of my “female” specific experience is also due to my appearance and/or biology. If I decided to declare myself male, I doubt that I would experience the world any differently unless I took drastic measures to change my appearance.
So, while I’m happy to respect people by utilizing their preferred pronoun, I wonder if it really helps them in the end. It must be terribly confusing to not know something as seemingly simple as your own gender. I would guess that amnesiacs actually have an easier time because they at least feel at home in their own body.
My sympathies to all those feeling this confusion; it must be challenging. My question is: Does the change in pronoun help, or does it make you feel more alien? As this is not my experience, it’s hard to relate, so if anyone reading this has some insight to help the rest of us understand, please share your experience.
Thanks for reading and considering these concepts. I know they can be challenging.
I wish you a wonderful week.
~ Alexis
Lexis is Alexis Rae Baker. She writes from her home in Olympia. Got a question about life, relationships, spirit? Visit her at lexisrae.com or write to Lexis at Lexis@theJOLTnews.com
7 comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here
Honestyandrealityguy
Touchy subject. I understand that greater than 99% of people have to make the adjustment. However, I do believe people can "choose".
Monday, June 6, 2022 Report this
AugieH
I and many may have to agree to disagree. I'm "old school," born in 1949. For me ...
XY = Male = "him" & "he" & "his"
XX = Female = "her" & "she" & "hers"
Period.
Anyone who disagrees can tie themselves into whatever semantic, PC, and/or gender self-identification knots he/she desires,. Knock yourself out! But don't expect me to play along, thanks!
Tuesday, June 7, 2022 Report this
JasonS
Hello, Alexis. Thanks for bringing this subject up to Jolt readers. Much of the confusion we as a society are having with this issue stems from the fact that many of us use the words "***" and "gender" interchangeably, which of course is a mistake. The word "gender" traditionally denoted the accompanying traits, characteristics and clothing which a given society associated with a particular *** (for instance, the fact that wearing dresses was gender-normative only for females and not for males), but it wasn't biologically determined in the sense that they remained the same ***; nowadays, folks tend to conflate the two words or simply drop the word "***" from consideration at all.
For those who prefer to adopt the gender-normative aspects of the opposite ***, that's certainly their choice, but unless they commit to the extensive surgery and hormone treatments required, then of course it does not change their ***. As such, I think it would be much simpler (and arguably healthier) for everyone involved to use the biologically-accurate pronouns to identify oneself both in public and in private.
Folks from Marlene Dietrich to David Bowie frequently adopted the clothing and mannerisms of the opposite gender without feeling a need to be identified as the opposite ***, and it seems to me they were able to live healthily and present themselves how they wanted to do so without causing an existential headache for themselves or anyone else by juggling pronouns.
Tuesday, June 7, 2022 Report this
JasonS
It appears that your site censors a certain three-letter word spelled with the letters "S""E""X" based on the asterisks showing up in my post above. I didn't realize your paper was so prim and proper, LOL!
Tuesday, June 7, 2022 Report this
Honestyandrealityguy
So 99.3% of people need to make the .7% feel better, regardless of their religion, beliefs, etc. I support the LGBTQ community. 13 of my 14 gay/lesbian friends have told me it was their "choice". Regardless.
Wednesday, June 8, 2022 Report this
WayTooOld
I identify as the gender I was assigned at birth, female. To the best of my knowledge I have XX chromosomes. I have met two people in my life with XXY chromosomes - or at least two people who have trusted me with that information, I may have met more. Division into male and female is not as straightforward as it seems. Some people can be demonstrated to fit into neither XX nor XY. So there’s that. If you have three *** chromosomes, should you ignore one to fit in? Which one? Search “inter***” if you want to read about people’s experience with that.
There is so much to address in what you have written here. I would like to take up one thing that you stated. “ If I decided to declare myself male, I doubt that I would experience the world any differently unless I took drastic measures to change my appearance. “ so, you don’t know whether you would or wouldn’t. There’s a way to find out. I’d like to challenge you to try that and see if you experience the world any differently. I would encourage wearing clothing generally associated with males, so that you also experience how the world around you changes based on how it perceives you. It might be different than how you experience things in female garb. You also stated that you have not felt female. If you spend a day in the other shoes, you might be able to find some of what being female feels like when you get back into the shoes you are comfortable in, so to speak. Continuing the metaphor, you may find that you have gendered bunions you never realized were there. I really hope that you take a day, or several, and try it. And that if you do, you write about it here. I would be fascinated to read it.
Like you, I have never precisely questioned or felt uncomfortable with being female. I am not particularly uncomfortable to be mistaken for male, either. However, having worked primarily in male-dominated industries including construction, I have more frequently than you can imagine wished to be mistaken for merely a PERSON. Oh, to be told, “You do nice work“! Instead of, “You do nice work for a girl“. But that is a little off-topic, I think.
Wednesday, June 8, 2022 Report this
Claire
XX = FEMALE
XY = MALE
FACT!
Friday, June 10, 2022 Report this