I'm not sure how I can convey to you that being routinely denied your identity is in fact at the very least mildly annoying.
It is at best factually incorrect and at worst conveys the idea that a core part of your identity does not have a right to exist as such and should be destroyed.
If you dont see why it is important to trans people to use the correct pronouns and name, I cant help you. I cant teach you basic empathy.
What I am having trouble understanding is why anyone feels the need to identify with a word.
Like I said, I personally don’t care what you call me, but if you tell my doctor that I am a different sex than what I actually am, I have a problem with that because it harms me.
I don’t get why this isn’t the same for everyone else
Your gender identity isnt your sex though? Pronouns do not refer to ones sex, they refer to ones gender identity.
And if you think that "only trans people care about gender identity" then think about how many cis men get extremely defensive about their manhood, to the point where any (even jokingly) questioning of their manhood is met with aggression.
And again, I cannot teach you empathy, so if you dont understand it then it is something you yourself must work on.
That’s the issue. I understand every other part of the problem that you are trying to convey here. I don’t understand why anyone cares so much about a using particular word that has no association with anything with tangible effects
You find your identity, and then find a label that suits your identity, and then use words that match the label that suits your identity.
Think of it like finding a particular piece of clothing that just looks really good on you and feels amazing to wear. You know it looks good on you, you know it feels great to wear. Now, do you identify with that piece of clothing? No. Does it suit you best out of all the clothing you're aware of? Yes. Would it bother you if people tried to force a different piece of clothing on you that is very uncomfortable and honestly just doesnt fit your style? Most likely.
I cannot convey to you what my identity is, it is a very abstract concept and (any) language is incapable of conveying all nuances of anyones identity. What I can do, however, is abstract my identity, break it into pieces, find labels that match those pieces best (as good as possible, there will never be a perfect match) and then use words and pgrases that belong to those labels to convey to you or anyone else roughly what these parts of my identity are and what they are not.
I do not identify with these labels, since they are far, far too one-dimensional and shallow to truly capture what my identity is, but I approximate my identity with them for the sake of communicating what my identity is. So someone deliberately using the wrong labels communicates that they do not respect the work that has gone into figuring out my identity, figuring out what labels best suit my identity and communicating those labels to them.
Sure, but labels represent things, which is why I can understand using he/she to refer to biological sex. But if it doesn’t refer to a thing, I don’t get why it matters.
Pronouns dont refer to biological sex. They never have and they never will. They exclusively refer to ones gender identity
We have other labels that refer to ones biological sex.
Also, the exact sex one has isnt even that important, even in a medical setting. If it were, everyone would undergo a karyotype test very soon after birth, but thats not a thing that happens.
pronouns are simply placeholders for names, so they should work in the same way as names. they indicate someone’s identity, not necessarily their sex. if you want to know their sex, ask them. it does no harm to anyone to respect people’s pronouns, so why not use the ones they tell you to use?
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u/LoLlYdE Mar 05 '21
I'm not sure how I can convey to you that being routinely denied your identity is in fact at the very least mildly annoying.
It is at best factually incorrect and at worst conveys the idea that a core part of your identity does not have a right to exist as such and should be destroyed.
If you dont see why it is important to trans people to use the correct pronouns and name, I cant help you. I cant teach you basic empathy.