I am going to be making a bunch of broad statements here about trans people according to my general experience interacting with and being one. I am putting this up here so I don't have to begin every statement with "In my experience."
Politrukk said:
Alright people,
We've had the entire tumblr/facebook/reddit/internet gender thing going for a while and people feel they should be accepted or have become more open about their newfangled gender roles.
Even if I were to accept a thing such as genderfluid-non binary-preffered pronouns they/them.
(something I recently encountered in a person)
I find it difficult to understand how I should find out that someone who has the physical aspects and aesthetic of a female (Breasts,bodily shape,wears makeup,dresses feminine)
Is gender fluid/non-binary.
Let alone accept that I should be shamed and hated for reffering to them as a "she".
I have never seen a trans person fly off the handle for a misgendering unless it is obvious, context gives a strong clue that you should be very careful about that sort of thing, or someone insists on continuing to misgender them despite repeated requests. I am sure it happens, but it is extremely rare. The reason why is because if we got mad every time we were misgendered we would have time for nothing else.
Most trans gender people I know see a misgendering by a stranger as a guiltless mistake. It is understandable that it would happen, but it does need to be corrected.
What I have seen is a person misgendering someone, they are corrected, but they wont let it go. All they have to do is say "Ok, got it." and everything is fine. But they don't do that, and instead say things like "How was I supposed to know?" and "But you look exactly like a woman, why shouldn't I call you she?" or similar.
Trans people have very little tolerance for that kind of stuff from random people. If people can't just be accepting right off the cuff they are generally not worth interacting with. Not necessarily because they are bad people, but because it just isn't worth the time and energy to teach them. Trans people generally don't go out in the world saying "Gee, I really hope I get to spend my entire day explaining the most simple concepts of gender acceptance over and over to people who repeatedly insist I am being oversensitive and unreasonable!"
Aside from that I would like to ask what you guys think of this so called they/them pronoun, to me that feels like a ridiculous way to refer to a singular person, could they not have chosen a better form for it?
Many attempts have been made to create alternate gender pronouns. Ze and hir are among the most popular of such alternate pronouns. All such attempts have been viciously mocked and attacked. They/them has proven to be the most easily accepted. It is a hell of a lot easier to get someone to call you "them" and you are far less likely to be publicly shamed for attempting to do so.
I can tell you this: Anything you ever bring up about pronouns trans people have considered in far, far greater detail.
Stuff like this absolutely drives me away from accepting these kind of people as normal.
See, this right here is a major problem. If a minor matter of language is going to drive you away from accepting trans people as normal people then you almost certainly have deeper problems, which is strongly supported by your initial statements of "the entire tumblr/facebook/reddit/internet gender thing" and "newfangled gender roles". That right there is, frankly, quite insulting and betrays ignorance on your part. That ignorance is probably bleeding through to your behavior in ways you don't understand and therefore don't prevent. It is really, really easy to detect ignorance.
When did this "torrent of slurs and shaming" come? Did you say "she" one time and immediately the person was throwing hateful slurs at you? Or was it when you kept on trying to talk to them despite them clearly not wanting to interact with you?
Honestly in this incident the person just threw off every intent of conversation because I had said "she", they did not look anything else then a she.
No person has any obligation to talk to you. Did you try to continue the interaction after they had made it clear they did not want to interact with you? If so, why?
