Honestly I love Natalie but she does this a lot. Tweets without thinking and then regrets it later.
She means well but she's by no means the judge of proper 'wokeness'
She means well but she's by no means the judge of proper 'wokeness'
In a dilemma about Natalie Wynn's tweet about pronouns
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You're kidding, right? Avoid using pronouns completely and clumsily use someone's name every time you reference them until they bring up their own preference?
No, fuck that. Use whatever pronoun seems the most fitting, and, if you're wrong, it's on the individual to mention it, after which you then use the correct one.
Fair point, yeah. Between that and just not using any pronouns period, it's easy enough, and people eventually let you know.
I don't see what the issue is with the tweet, clearly for some trans people it's dysphoric to be asked what pronouns they want used.
But I could see for Non-binary people, not using their preferred pronouns that you might not know immediately can be upsetting.
Hell, in those spaces it might be easier to instead of asking everyone what their pronouns are, but to ask people if they're comfortable to put that information forward, to start with "Hi, I'm NAME, I use PRONOUNS.".
She's being paid to make videos, not to be the infallible paragon you want.
No not kidding. Think about the situation. It's really just referring to the person in question in the singular. If they are with a group then it's fine and appropriate to refer to the group as "they". If you are unsure about the pronoun then you say "Natalie is over there" (or w/e) rather than "he/she is over there" until you know better. How is this bad? It's just a temporary thing.
Because we use pronouns constantly, and to purposely avoid using them is cumbersome and absurd. You're saying that, until Natalie is ready to tell you what Natalie prefers, then you should never use a pronoun to refer to Natalie. Instead, you have to wait for Natalie to decide that you can use something other than Natalie's name. And that's assuming Natalie is comfortable telling you. Oh, and you're also suggesting that you do this with everyone you meet.
She's talked about this topic in more detail elsewhere. The idea of Femininity while a Social Construct, is almost intrinsic to some trans people's identity. This issue is one that feminists have been grappling with for ages. One the one hand you need the idea of Woman because without out it, how do you deal with large issues of discrimination, however if we didn't have the idea of woman, or most people didn't by into it, then would there be any discrimination based on it?
In Hyperwoke space, it's not uncommon to see people who believe more along the lines of the latter than the former. The problem comes when for a lot of Trans people, the goal of Femininity is a big driving force for them. Ultimately both sides are about respecting peoples choices. I think Natalie's tweet is more about how sometimes, in an attempt to be more inclusive of trans people, communities can end up being more exclusionary to people who are trying to for the latter argument.
In Hyperwoke space, it's not uncommon to see people who believe more along the lines of the latter than the former. The problem comes when for a lot of Trans people, the goal of Femininity is a big driving force for them. Ultimately both sides are about respecting peoples choices. I think Natalie's tweet is more about how sometimes, in an attempt to be more inclusive of trans people, communities can end up being more exclusionary to people who are trying to for the latter argument.
When I get misgendered I have to do a lot of considering if it's even worth it to correct people, is it safe for me to out myself, what tone do I need to take in this situation, do I have to prepare myself for doing this over and over again with this person, am I getting myself into another boring conversation about being trans, does this person even care and will I ever see them again?
Do something to take the responsiblity off of marginalised people. Operate on the basis that you can't know someone's pronouns/gender until they tell you. The purpose of the exercise mentioned in Contra's tweets is to help normalise that idea. For her it is a bad experience because she feels it is being done for her benefit even though she has "done the work" and doesn't ever get misgendered so it's just drawing attention to her transness. But really, regardless of what the actual intent is, it's for the benefit of anyone who is trans/non-binary/gender non conforming.
This. It's exhausting, and more often than not results in my anxiety winning and I say nothing and just silently feel like butt.
I mean, there's a lot of trans people who don't follow or hold her up as an example due to truscummy things she's said.
I think her point though is that cis people don't actually do that. That is, a room full of cis people will never start with the pronoun circle. And she knows that. So clearly when that happens when she's around, there's an extremely high chance that it's because people there know she's trans. Which certainly seems like being outed.
Someone mentioned the "where are you really from" bit, and I heard that all the time in academia directed at my colleagues. Lots of (well-meaning, I'm sure) woke people looking to talk about how cool diversity is by fishing for the original heritage of visibly Asian colleagues even though they were American.
I don't know what the solution is, and Natalie isn't saying she does either (because as she notes, these things are a benefit to people).
Every now and then I hear about her saying some bullshit like this and it honestly makes me really uncomfortable with her videos being treated like gospel.
I do tend to cause faux pax in casual conversation - saying to a group of people "Hey, guys", or "Dude". I do mean it in a completely non-gendered way, it's just, well.
Obviously, it can also be easily read in a masculine way.
Me getting too relaxed and causing people hurt because of this has been a recurring issue for me.
Obviously, it can also be easily read in a masculine way.
Me getting too relaxed and causing people hurt because of this has been a recurring issue for me.
I could see it becoming really weird in places.
"Oh, Natalie was just telling me about Natalie's job" is already odd. In a longer conversation, with multiple people, stuff like possessive pronouns would really stick out.
It could work if you adept to avoid using phrases that would need pronouns, like "Natalie was just talking about work" and such.
From the looks of it in this thread only people who are unable to "pass" or nonbinary folks are worthy of consideration and everyone else can get fucked?
Somebody posted that it sounds like asking a racial minority "Where are you from?" and yeah it kind of does. They're not asking if you are from New York. It's drawing attention to your "otherness". From the sounds of it she feels that it ends up putting an asterisk on her being a woman. She's not a woman, she's a trans woman, and all that.
Somebody posted that it sounds like asking a racial minority "Where are you from?" and yeah it kind of does. They're not asking if you are from New York. It's drawing attention to your "otherness". From the sounds of it she feels that it ends up putting an asterisk on her being a woman. She's not a woman, she's a trans woman, and all that.
feels like natalie is becoming the phil fish of the online trans community. like, oh joy, the passing transwoman with the online platform is expressing a pain or insecurity again, better jump down her throat instead of acknowledging that there's never going to be an adequate one-size-fits-all approach
the left eating its own? must be a day ending in y again
the left eating its own? must be a day ending in y again
I really wish cis people would listen to trans women that aren't contrapoints when it comes to gender.
ayup
ayup
Yeah it seems inevitable when a diversity of identities are interacting that not everyone's needs can be met simultaneously in every instance.
Hopefully people will do their best to be inclusive but also those who might feel excluded should do their best to distinguish hostile intentions from benign ones.
This is where I'm at. I get that it can be a bit dysphoric for some trans people to be asked what their pronouns are, but it's a better alternative than constantly misgendering trans people who don't pass as cis or are nonbinary.
Which is exactly what she's saying:
(Obviously a joke tweet meant to be read sarcastically, she's making fun of herself)
As always, people read one tweet, jump immediately to the least charitable conclusion, and read nothing else that she wrote.
Nah, I read that. Even read sarcastically, and especially with the context of her other tweets, she's more concerned about her own slight inconvenience.
Her followup tweets especially make this clear (and also makes it sound like she wasn't being sarcastic):
It seems that she's experiencing a minor inconvenience at most. I mean, you should only have to share your pronouns once because once they know, they shouldn't need to ask and she won't be misgendered again. If she is getting this problem a lot maybe don't hang out with hyperwoke people? Hyperwoke people are the worst.
She literally says right in the tweet "I'm happy to give up having my gender assumed to help NB/non-passing trans ppl."
And there's a "but..." after. After she says that she immediately makes it about her own slight inconvenience.
It'd be something if she actually was just venting, except she said this stuff to her hundreds of thousands of followers, with there being a lot of people who treat what she says as gospel. And since this is far from the first time she's said some bullshit like this, I'm past giving her the benefit of the doubt about this stuff.
No, she says she's happy to give up her inconvenience in exchange for other people being welcome, but that she's still allowed to vent about the microaggression. For her, being forced to identify herself as trans makes her feel misgendered, outed, and dysphoric. But what she's saying is that this microaggression she experiences, while frustrating for her, is still less important than making sure nonbinary and non-passing people are not misgendered constantly. Which is true, and good.
It seems to me that there is no solution that will fit seemlessly into social situations. The one universal solution suggested (use name all the time, no pronouns) is too clumsy due to the way English is structured. Using "they" all the time is offensive to some.
So the reality is that it is going to fall somewhere in the middle, so some people will end up inconvenienced, and some will end up feeling left out/angry. This is like almost all situations where a small group is different than the majority.
The goal is to always strive to improve the situation, but we also must realize that pragmatically it will never get all of the way there due to basic clumsiness of the language we use. Unless and until the English language changes to be completely gender-neutral, this situation will never be resolved satisfactorily for either side (minority or majority). And it sounds like if it were gender-neutral, that in itself would be seem as offenaive to some.
Just my thoughts.
So the reality is that it is going to fall somewhere in the middle, so some people will end up inconvenienced, and some will end up feeling left out/angry. This is like almost all situations where a small group is different than the majority.
The goal is to always strive to improve the situation, but we also must realize that pragmatically it will never get all of the way there due to basic clumsiness of the language we use. Unless and until the English language changes to be completely gender-neutral, this situation will never be resolved satisfactorily for either side (minority or majority). And it sounds like if it were gender-neutral, that in itself would be seem as offenaive to some.
Just my thoughts.
If I was still willing to give her the benefit of the doubt I might agree with you. But I imagine if she actually felt her slight inconvenience was less important, it wouldn't be the main point of what she's saying. And with how she's presented nonbinary and trans people who don't (or don't want to) pass as cis before I'm not going to assume she has much of a high opinion of us.
They/them as singular pronouns are used in a couple of ways. It's used as a genderneutral pronoun to refer to people for who it's not certain what their gender is. So for example in gender inclusive places where people don't try to just assume someone's gender they/them will often be used as that. There are also a lot of nonbinary people (but not all of them) who use they/them as their pronouns.
Seriously, my god. There will never be one person "woke" enough for every other person. The way people are tossed aside here for saying something mildly disagreeable is so tiring.
Yeah, you can use "they" as a singular pronoun if you're not sure of or don't want to indicate the sex/gender of a person. It's been acceptable in English for a long time but it's become increasingly prominent because of people trying to avoid being offensive with regard to trans issues.
For example: Where I work, I may not know anything about a client other than that the person exists. So I might say "They need this to be done" or "We need to do that for them".
This isn't about Natalie being "woke" enough. She makes a lot of videos in which she informs people about transgender topics. A lot of people look to her work if they want to learn about this stuff. Her badly portraying a significant portion of trans people can be incredibly harmful.
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Thanks for the explanation. Is it easy to differentiate from singular/plural form within a certain context?
I suppose if you came into the conversation halfway through, it might be confusing. But if everyone knew that only one person was being talked about from the start, it shouldn't be.
I'm sorry i didn't know criticism wasn't allowed anymore. Just got to agree no matter what!
Anyway this was a bad take and she should feel bad about it.
How does this work, in say, French? I'm curious because French has no neuter gender, there is only masculine and feminine.
She did? I thought her later videos seemed to go out of the way to be inclusive after the initial controversy. Do people feel they fell short?
This thread feels like the homeless getting mad at someone living exclusively off ramen, because they have a roof over their head.
So because she passes, she can't bring up issues unique to people who pass? People are describing it as a mild inconvenience, but it's still othering. These women's attempt to be inclusive is doing the opposite and highlighting her as other. Even if it's a problem people would "love to have," it's still a problem and one worth mentioning.
Like people have said, there isn't a one size fits all solution. I'm non-binary; there's nothing for me to pass as. I'm less interested in what pronouns someone uses for me than I am in if the pronoun defines me in the user's eyes. In a situation like what Natalie describes, where other people know that I'm nb, I wouldn't want to be asked that question, because my answer, regardless of what it is, will always hold more weight than I want it to.
There are alternative solutions like OrangeNova's post
So because she passes, she can't bring up issues unique to people who pass? People are describing it as a mild inconvenience, but it's still othering. These women's attempt to be inclusive is doing the opposite and highlighting her as other. Even if it's a problem people would "love to have," it's still a problem and one worth mentioning.
Like people have said, there isn't a one size fits all solution. I'm non-binary; there's nothing for me to pass as. I'm less interested in what pronouns someone uses for me than I am in if the pronoun defines me in the user's eyes. In a situation like what Natalie describes, where other people know that I'm nb, I wouldn't want to be asked that question, because my answer, regardless of what it is, will always hold more weight than I want it to.
There are alternative solutions like OrangeNova's post
But someone has to bring up the current processes's failings first.
Bwahahahaha. No. I think we're all just blowing this up to be more than it needs to be.
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It probably doesn't, but I don't speak French so I wouldn't know. English wins once again!
I'm not sure about French, it's been a few years since I learned & actively talked it, but in German there also are only masc & fem pronouns & trying to be gender-neutral is a huge fucking pain as everything is fucking gendered. I'm nonbinary myself and use both they/them and she/her if I'm on the internet/in English speaking places, but when speaking German I exclusively use she/her for myself since I genuinely just don't know of any gender-neutral pronouns. I suppose I'm lucky enough that I'm fine with using she/her pronouns, but it honestly still hurts at times where I just want to refer to myself & other friends with non gendered pronouns & know I can't. The only "alternative" would be using it/it's, but it sounds fucking awkward & gross as it's only used for some objects & animals.
TLDR; it doesn't (at least in German) and it fucking sucks.
But at least German has a neuter gender, French doesn't have it at all. German has gender-neutral pronouns: es is singular and sie is plural. As I am not aware of the social implications, I don't know if that is actually considered a viable option though or if it's considered dehumanizing.
As a cis man who likes to read these kinds of threads to learn but generally not comment, I have to say I agree with your point, especially the quoted. It's a shame that there isn't a perfect way to fix this issue. It seems to me that if these pronoun circles don't begin until she shows up, it's outing her from the get-go. She will never feel the way she wants to, and that is not a feeling anyone should have.