A better term than “Male to Female” is Maab trans* (Male Assigned At Birth) or DMAB trans* (Designated Male at Birth). On their own, neither M/FAAB nor DM/FAB indicate a trans* person, but MtF and FtM have been criticized because it indicates that genitals are important to gender identity. Another reason that M/FaaB and DM/FaB are more widely used by the trans* community is because both terms include non-binary trans* people AND intersex people. (Trans* with an asterisk also indicates that you’re dealing with the trans* umbrella, not just transgender people.)
Personally i think Maab etc is appropriate more for when you don’t know what would go at the end of MtBLAH etc, otherwise use the term appropriate. I know i prefer MtF, but then again whatever terminology the person referred to prefers is the correct one xD
There is never a good idea to self identify with anyone else than yourself. Each and every case of human personality/sexuality/philosophy/religion/politics is uniquely different. I feel by appropriating a generic term for any of them, you “lose” part of yourself and what makes you you, and stand the risk of letting your personal feeling and thoughts being automatically decided for you just because the group you choose to identify with have taken a collective stance towards an issue. But just because you may have a lot of common with a certain group of people, doesn’t mean that you now suddenly ARE those people. I think too much focus today has been put on the whole “self identifying” thing, as in identifying with someone else. It is a good thing to identify yourself, of course, but look at it more as a catch-all phrase that partly describes you, and be aware that others may have entirely different opinions on what that phrase or word actually MEANS.
And neither religion, politics or sexuality are that imporant. The important things are how you treat yourself, how you treat others, and that you know what you like and don’t like.
@NightRaven … Except those aren’t the only things that matter. What about how others treat you. Or how you want to be treated. Or what you want people to know about you when entering into a dialogue or relationship.
Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world where every human sees every other human as a blank slate with no labels attached. More often than not, somebody is going to look at you an assume something about your gender, sexuality, race, identity.
You are right that no label is perfect, and some people may choose not to self-identify with one label or another or any labels at all. And that is fine, and I respect that choice! But because a thing is unimportant to one person does not mean it is unimportant to others…
Indeed. As long as nothing is said with malice I’m pretty forgiving if people don’t know what I prefer. I personally find MtF to be easy to use and comprehend.
That is kind of how I’ve viewed everything my whole life. The words are not necessarily the most important thing. The way those words are said has always been much more important to me. The slang/meanings of words are always changing but you can almost always tell if the feeling behind something is judgemental/rude/just plain mean, regardless of what they actually said.
I usually just use “trans,” if that level of classification is necessary- or if I really have to be specific I say transwoman. For day-to-day I just say I’m a woman. ‘Cause I am one.
Well, Genital Are important for gender identity. I mean, if it weren’t, Trans wouldn’t desire to change them in the first place. Genital are important for gender identity because many trans actually desire to modify them so that the gender of their genital fit the gender of their brain. It’s kind of a big issue.
Not really. I know at least one individual who identifies as a female, yet entirely happy with her male genitalia. I’m lead to understand that such a thing is not entirely uncommon. Identity itself is not just about your physical self. You can be ambivalent about it or even prefer the form that is opposite to your gender identity. Hence the comment that starts this branch of discussion.
On the other hand, there are Trans who will kill themselves for not being born with the right set of genital. Seriously, the Trans Community is the one with one of the highest ratio of suicide (tough it’s also due to rejection by the family/community, but also caused by the feeling of body inadequacy).
So saying the gender of the genital is not important is far from being true for everyone.
Of course. But it’s not a contradiction with the above. Nobody said that genitals are never a factor. Just that a label which implies that they always are is misleading. So long as we accept the fact that there are exceptions either way, presented argument against MtF label follows.
Though, I would argue that any label is going to have such problems, but that’s a separate discussion. As somebody said earlier, whatever label an individual uses to self-identify, I’m happy with that.
As a non-op trans woman, I can definitely agree with K^2’s statements. Genital importance varies wildly in our community, from those who absolutely cannot stand the anatomy they were born with to people like me, who are totally fine with it, and had other issues with the sex they were assigned at birth.
Also, for the record, “trans” is an adjective (usually modifying man/woman/person or similar), not a noun. Referring to us as “a trans” or just “trans” in a manner such as in “…there are trans who…” is incorrect and potentially very offensive, depending on who you’re dealing with, because it is dehumanizing. We are trans women and trans men, along with the many shades of nonbinary trans people, not transwomen, transmen, or transpeople.
^ “trans people” seems rather redundant, as we are all people. Hence why ‘trans’ is winning out in common parlance.
Not quite an adjective, really. Mostly because ‘trans’ isn’t a proper word in English, but slang – shorthand for that matter. Since it doesn’t have long-established parameters fencing it in, people tend to use it as they -think- is appropriate.
Funny thing though – the more it gets used a certain way, the more accepted it becomes by the general speaking public, which in turn may eventually lead to it becoming a official word fitting the perception most hold of it.
This is how a shorthand adjective can in time become a proper noun. It’s not there yet officially, but as far as most people are concerned, it is already there.
TL;DR: In common parlance “trans” = (newly formed) noun , “transgendered” = adjective.
1) “Not quite an adjective, really. Mostly because ‘trans’ isn’t a proper word in English, but slang – shorthand for that matter.”
Whether or not something is slang has no bearing on its usable syntax.
“Trans” is short for “transgender” (not “transgendered” by the way – it’s not a verb), which if you look it up in most any dictionary, turns out to be an adjective, not a noun. As a shortened version of the word, it shares the same syntactical significance and should thus be (and most commonly is) used as an adjective.
2) Yes, that is an explanation of how slang is incorporated into the “official” language pool, but you should listen to your own explanation. I don’t know where you got the idea that those are the “common parlance” terms – any dictionary (including urban dictionary – a slang hub) will show you the adjective definition of “trans” as a shortening of “transgender”.
3) You’re missing the main point here.
Syntactical significance, slang evolving into “official language,” and all else aside…
Calling someone “a trans” is offensive and is often used in a derogatory context. The poster before you clearly pointed this out, but you ignored their primary argument. The word “fag” is also a shorthand noun that has been accepted into common use. Does that mean it’s okay to use it regularly to refer to gay people? Nope! Because it’s offensive. Just because something is syntactically significant doesn’t mean you should use it.
There really is no hard and fast rule regarding the gender you identify as and the type of plumbing you keep between your legs, though many people in all sides of the Gender Identity Clusterfuck™ do try to assign rules! Take me, for example. Physically male, by preference bisexual, and by mentality somewhere between androgynous and hermaphroditic. I don’t know if that makes me generic genderqueer, or just strange, since all my “gender variances” are strictly internal.
I don’t think I have a mental gender either. I like girls and I’m physically male, and that’s always been my definition of straight male, but if that’s not accurate, I might as well be a lesbian woman. And if you believe in re-incarnation, who can say how many times I might have been and will be again female?
Since there are no real futa irl, I’ve pretty much just went with ‘pansexual’ and called it a day. As for ‘internal gender variance’ – it’s a clusterfuck of rainbows, kittens, explosions and blood in there.
It all mixes into a hot gooey mess that is my psyche.
To clarify: I’d be most attracted to futa, then women, then a very few select men. I’m not saying I’d be a futa… though… now that I mention it… excuse me, my penis is calling.
Also: “real […] irl” is redundant. Mah bad, it’s late.
just chiming in a couple days late to say that actually, whether or not genitals are important depends on the trans* person. I’m trans* and have no issue with my genitals. A dear friend of mine is trans* and as deep issues with dysphoria. It varies from person to person.
As a transman, I disagree that FtM/MtF are used solely to refer to genitalia. Personally, I would say “female to male” would refer to my life experiences and what I “lived as”. Whether I like it or not (obviously I don’t) I have experiences of living and being viewed as female, and that has been a large influence in shaping who I am.
But I’m more or less the opposite of “active in the trans* community”, so that’s just my thoughts.
Choosing to go by a female alias doesn’t necessarily tell us that they suffer from gender dysphoria or what their gender identity is, however, so I’m not assuming one thing or another about J. Brown the Second Child just yet.
Yup! My fiance was given it a year ago, and at the time I believe it was quite new. It’s mostly used for the internet and to fuel his Angry Birds obsession- amusingly, I don’t think we’ve ever actually read a book on it.
The lack of alt text is a downer, but at least I can read stuff as he works or studies.
Better, but as someone who’s been exposed to (…okay, this is gonna sound awkward but I’m low on both sugar and caffiene) this sorta thing for probably 15 years now, I can’t say I’ve ever heard any of those terms you use, so they might take a little more time to catch on.
For now, MtF / FtM is a reasonable descriptor is it not? It describes both their birth assignment and/or naturally expressed phenotype, and their mental gender / surgically and artificial-hormonally target/acquired phenotype in one easily written and understood package.
That said, I’m still confused here. Either we’re dealing with, ahem, a MaaB sibling who still fronts up as a male “Joshua” to their parents, but is actually Jocelyne in private/on the quiet – which I think is more likely* – or FaaB who was originally named Jocelyne but now passes for male, as “Josh”, full time.
* Clues: Parents and presumably Joyce also “don’t know very much”, and call “him” Josh, and accept the presented male (if still a touch effeminate – enough to trip Ethan’s gaydar) outlook without protest; and the site that s/he texted to Ethan – in preference to saying it out loud in front of Joyce – bears a generally female name…
Since Joyce mentioned she was the only girl in one comic or the other, I’m’a go with ‘a MaaB sibling who still fronts up as a male “Joshua” to their parents, but is actually Jocelyne in private/on the quiet’ too
well, it’s important to not feel like one term is superior to another, especially if that superiority is based in length of time of use of said term. we’re always coming up with better descriptors, we humans, and it’s typically the people who those labels affect that decide, and that get to decide, not cisgendered people like myself! of course I do not know how you identify, but I am always trying to keep up on the kindest terminology out there to have as few barriers of communication between myself and those around me, in general!
You know, I’m sympathetic to LGBTQ/”Alphabet Soup” issues, but maybe inventing and teaching a complicated new glossary of artificial PC vocabulary isn’t the best way to earn mainstream support.
Support shouldn’t have to be “earned.” People should be treated like people, regardless of their preferred lexicon. Heck, even if a group consists entirely of total jerks, they should still be treated like people, and that’s way worse than having a complex set of terminology to describe, as accurately as possible, one’s identity.
There’s a reason certain parts of the queer community use “ally” disparagingly.
If your criteria for granting people basic human rights is that they bend over backwards to make your life easier, then I can’t bring myself to care about what you think.
It’s not about bending over backwards to do anything. The main reason for most prejudices is a lack of understanding. If you’re introducing so many terms and phrases that it seems like trying to read an advanced coding textbook and even trans* people often get lost, you’re not fostering understanding. By making it much harder to understand, you’re making it harder for the prejudice to die.
I never understood the need for fifteen different phrases. I am a man. I am also transsexual. If I ever need to explain this to someone (which seldom happens because it’s not their business), I call myself “a transsexual man”. People can identify with whatever label fits them, but if you want people to understand and accept aspects of you, you have to communicate in a way they can understand.
If your criteria for effective communication is accusing anyone that fails to perfectly digest your confusing, constantly changing, and inconsistent lexicon of terms as being homophobic, then I can’t bring myself to care about what you think either, Toad. But I’ll continue to try to make the world a better place despite your efforts to make it worse.
My point was not that the trans* lexicon, such as it is, is a shining example of effective communication. My point was that one ought not use effective communication as the metric by which to measure how many human rights are deserved. Refusing to support a minority group because they use confusing words is a pretty shitty example of “making the world a better place.”
You are arguing against a point I didn’t make, TPRJones. I never said that people who don’t perfectly use the language considered currently appropriate are homophobic or transphobic. I did say that refusing to support the cause of gay/queer/trans rights because they use too many acronyms, or are annoying sometimes, or whatever, is awful.
If you think a human rights cause is just, then you should support it. (At least passively; I don’t demand that anyone go out and protest for every single cause they theoretically support.) If every single member of some group was a total jerk, and they were being denied human rights, I’d still support them. That people think being confusing is a reasonable rationale for denying people rights is pretty disgusting.
And just as equally you are arguing against a point I didn’t make, Toad. I never said that people who are unwilling to use effective communication don’t deserve human rights and equality under the law. I did say that if you throw a raging hissy fit every time someone doesn’t use exactly the right term you have chosen for yourself rather than attempt to actually communicate with them about these things they don’t understand, then you aren’t going to be changing anyone’s minds that way.
@TPRJones: Then you are arguing against a point I didn’t make. If you read the post of mine you initially responded to, you will see that I was objecting to people holding their “ally” status hostage over minority groups behaving the way they think they should. If you don’t disagree with me on that point, then why did you throw a “hissy fit” over a point I didn’t make? Remember, you responded disparagingly to me in the first place, not the other way around.
Actually I was defending stevecharb’s point that winning support by attacking someone for failing to understand complex and relatively arbitrary terminology is not a practical expectation. Neither he nor I said that it was therefor valid to treat people as less than human, that was your assumption that you added – rather insultingly, I might add – to the conversation.
Clearly this is getting us nowhere. I give up. You go ahead and keep shitting on everyone around you and hoping that might make them change their minds. Good luck with that.
There’s a lot of words for trans people. There’s also a lot of words for angry people. There are a lot of words for happy people. Communicating well means learning a large vocabulary, period.
@TPRJones: stevecharb’s original post said nothing about anyone being attacked; it was specifically about “inventing and teaching” a bunch of terms. Your initial response to my criticism was sarcasm. You quickly escalated to claiming that I was actively trying to make the world a worse place, throwing a hissy fit, and shitting on everyone around me. I fail to see how that makes me the one who’s being insulting. (Or, for that matter, the one behaving as you claimed I was.)
I said that it was not acceptable to treat people as less than human for describing themselves in a complex manner. I did not even say that stevecharb said that it was acceptable. When you angrily disagreed with my post, I assumed you therefore disagreed with the contents of that post, and responded accordingly.
If your ‘support’ is unable to include the learning of a few terms, it may be a good idea to re-evaluate the value you think those communities should assign to it.
Its not a few terms though. Its an inconsistent ever changing dictionary of terms, some of which are preferred by some while others are seen as offensive by the same community. I can deal with individual people, but I can’t deal with the trans ‘community’ because I can’t get through their layers of terminology. Even my transsexual friends have problems with what the term of the week is, and the ‘community’ can apparently get pretty caustic about it even with trans* people.
I call people whatever they identify as, provided they stay within the boundaries of english (xie is stupid). I do not care what is in their pants, unless its of burning importance to them that I know, and then I usually tell them Id rather not have known.
That’s a fine complaint. The terminology is inconsistent and confusing. That’s an issue that should be addressed. Denying a group your support because its members can’t agree on what they want to be called is pretty atrocious. People aren’t taking umbrage with someone saying “your usage of terms is confusing;” the problem is that people hold their “ally” status hostage over it. Phrases like “you’re making it really hard for me to support you right now!” and “if you want me to support you, you should just make it less confusing for me” are all too common. Being confused is acceptable; no one denies that the lexicon has gotten a bit confusing. Denying a group of people fundamental human rights because they all describe themselves with different acronyms is pretty messed up.
“….the problem is that people hold their “ally” status hostage over it.” You’ve spelled out something which has often bothered me about these arguments without me quite being able to put my finger on it. Thanks! (And actually, most LGBTQ etc people I know seem pretty tolerant of well-intentioned fumblings with the terminology. Though that could just be low expectations.)
“Phrases like “you’re making it really hard for me to support you right now!” and “if you want me to support you, you should just make it less confusing for me” are all too common”
Well, that’s just people being assholes. Tell them to stop being assholes.
Look, it doesn’t matter who a person is, they deserve equal rights under the law and the opportunity to pursue their own life goals as best they can. If someone will not support the rights of even their worst and most hated enemy, then they have failed at freedom and clearly don’t understand the basic responsibilities of being a citizen. Or maybe they are just douche-nozzles. That’s also possible.
All that having been said, all too many times I’ve seen some poor schmuck who doesn’t understand LGBTQ issues but is trying to be supportive being viciously attacked because he used the wrong pronoun. If he’s not a douche he’s not going to then “withdraw support” because he would know that even assholes deserve equality. But he’s less likely to actively go out of his way to champion the cause than he was before.
Some people in the trenches of this war need to realize that attacking everyone indiscriminately when they don’t use the proper gender passwords of the week doesn’t make things better.
Sure, TPRJones, I’ll agree with you on those points. I was writing about the assholes who like to imagine they’re paragons of tolerance while demanding that queer people do XYZ thing in order for them to be willing to support them. I suspect you read my criticism of those people as a criticism of genuinely well-meaning but confused allies.
TRPJones has it dead on.
Toad, you’re missing the fundamental problem, which is that yes, it’s one thing if someone says “hey, I prefer you call me ____” but it’s total complete asshattery to blow up at people who make an assumption that would be valid 97% of the time when you haven’t even told them in the first place. Being part of a minority group does not, last time I checked, confer powers of telepathic projection (if it does, mine must’ve got lost in the mail, the jerks), so it’s really illogical to expect other people to know every nuance of our existence.
@Ash: I agree with everything in your post except the part where you implied that I ever disagreed with anything you just said. Honest mistakes are just that, honest mistakes, and should be treated as such. Demanding that queer people stick to the terms that straight people prefer to make it easier on “allies” is what I was taking exception to in my posts.
Oh, and I’m going to assume that you have no objection to “google” being used as a term for “internet search,” so why is “xe” any different? Language changes. Some language is intentionally invented. Some of it occurs “organically.” None of it is passed down from like, mischievous river spirits or something.
It’s no hardship to you to call someone “xe” instead of “it,” if they specifically ask you to, so why not?
“xe”? I’m sorry, but there’s new English terms and then there’s faux-Mandarin. Language can only be organic, otherwise people won’t use it. You can’t actually impose a set of terms onto others –
because only they have the power to use them or not.
A word that only a handful know of is slang and therefore unimportant. If people use it enough it MIGHT become an official term, sure, but that’s unlikely to happen if you construct something that is not pleasing to the ear of a speaker of sed language – in this case English.
In other words “xe” sounds stupid, therefore it will not gain large acceptance, hence it will not be an effective tool of communication.
It can be a masturbatory aid if you so choose, but I was of the strange impression you’d rather want to confer an idea, not just hear words you like more.
I *don’t* think that’s what people are saying, though. It’s not that we’re unwilling to learn. It’s that we’re often taught a set of terms, and then when we use those terms down the road, we’re suddenly hit in the face with “Don’t say that like that! It’s offensive!” Some people are flexible and mature enough not to be upset when someone comes at them like that, but most people would be understandably upset if they were trying to be non-offensive and someone said “You are being offensive” when they were using the words that they were taught to say.
A learning moment can be handled much better than infodumping a new set of rules onto an unsuspecting person. Like, “You know, Male to Female *did* used to be the broadly-accepted term, but since then, a lot of us have been switching over to ‘male assigned at birth’ because of x y z reasons. But a lot of transpersons use different descriptors based on what they feel comfortable with!”
You might not be saying that, but some people do and are. Lots of “allies” base their support on whether or not queer people are nice to them, and use it as some sort of perverse bribe. “If you behave well, I’ll help you get human rights.” That is a separate issue from language being confusing.
And if you think it’s upsetting to be told that something you said is hurtful, just imagine how it feels to constantly be on the receiving end of that, along with constant misgendering, intentional or not, and with a few blatantly hurtful slurs thrown in now and again. Cis folk are the majority. We have it better than trans* folk, in this instance, no matter how confused we might be. (And before anyone says anything, that doesn’t mean that any given cis person is better-off than any given trans* person, just that, all else being equal, being cisgender confers a certain level of privilege.)
Actually, behaving well SHOULD be the basis on which you get ANY ‘rights’ (socially, not legally – though personally I’d run with legally as well, but suppose too few would qualify then to actually
form a country).
As a matter of fact, the worse of a person you are to others, the worse you DESERVE to be treated in turn. That’s got nothing to do with any self-identification, that’s just basic common sense.
What you just sed reeks of self-importance.
See, the really funny thing here is you got ME to act in a less-then-hospitable manner when I’m usually the one to def end queers/trans/etc, but in this case you don’t seem like the kind of person that I’d find amiable, therefore I won’t act friendly to you.
The problems you mentioned seem to be more caused by sed people being unlikeable, rather then them belonging to any minority.
The terminology keeps changing, though, and there are a couple dozen different competing ideas of how to describe people whose bodies don’t match their souls, all of which seem to have emerged in the past decade or so. Some are so bizarre, they’re barely recognizable as English. If I use the “wrong” one, I’ll be treated like a jerk.
I always make a good effort to be equally kind and respectful to people regardless of who or what they are, even when I have to go out of my comfort zone, and I stand up to those who condemn or mock people because they are different. I do this not for praise, nor for necessity; I do it because it is right.
I will persist in doing the right thing even if you call me a jerk for using a word that was politically correct within five years ago (doesn’t mean you should).
But good luck convincing Joe Sixpack to turn his prejudices around with this strategy.
I’d vehemently argue that anyone calling someone else a jerk for not using the word they want you to use has something stuck up his arse somethin’ fierce (note: as long as it’s not obviously
a slur).
Also, overly PC-ish terms are bullshit. Feel free to use them in your own community if you like, but don’t shove them down other peoples throats.
Weather I use ‘trans’, ‘xe’, ‘MAAB’ etc should make no difference if I’m sharing a beer with you.
Likewise, if I’m punching you in the dick, me using the term you like more won’t make your dick any less punched.
The “standard” terms simply do not describe trans* people. It’s not that trans* people want to make you learn new phrases for the hell of it – its that, to describe themselves, they have had to discover and develop new phrases. To think that they are artificial and “PC” is like saying to someone who is Hispanic or Asian “so, are you black or white? Cos those are the only races.”
Only… Hispanic and Asian ARE arbitrary and PC terms, and ALSO simplifies things to the point of uselessness. There are [large number] different Hispanic countries all over the world, just as there are [even larger number] Asian countries. These people have very little in common, other than a shared cultural/racial heritage at an arbitrary point in time. (Arbitrary, in that if you count from the beginning, we are all the same race as are the amoebas ) . Ultimately terms are meaningless, it is what you put in them that gives them meaning. I would say details and anecdotes are more useful in communicating than new terminology.
“a shared cultural/racial heritage” – there you go, that’s why it’s not quite a worthless term.
Also I’d add “general geographical region of origin” to
why the terms are actually useful.
I’d rather call someone ‘Japanese’ over ‘Asian’, as it confers more information – but if I only have visual data on them, I can make some usually valid assumptions if the context doesn’t contradict such.
I agree with you up to a point. But I learnt the names of 150 pokemon when I was 7, and the three trans people I’ve talked to were totally fine with asking what pronouns to use, just like the tumblr posts said.
Oh god what did I start. Okay first off MtF here, second off basically I said that Maab Faab are in my opinion better for when you don’t know what the person identifies as but that what ever they want to be called is the correct term.
FtM here, I agree with Night Raven, terms get way too political and don’t actually mean anything once they get to the point they have. If you want a technical argument, you don’t know what someone was assigned at birth unless you have their birth certificate, so, major flaw right there. Just call someone what they present as. If you get it wrong, and they tell you, then correct yourself in the future. The terms __t___ and __aab, they’re only necessary in a specifically trans context, as in, they convey information about the person’s gender identity and sexual construction, and really only mean anything if you’re talking about health concerns or social/legal questions in a situation specifically regarding transgender issues.
See, I’m fortunate enough to have an understanding family, and I’ve been around my share of bigots, but the single biggest problem I had to (and still have to) overcome regarding my trans identity is this bullshit about labels and political correctness. I have been told I’m not trans enough, I’ve been told I’m not allowed to talk about certain things, or share my experience, or that my identity put other people down, when in reality, it’s the PC crusaders who put everyone else down and try to make everyone conform to their idea of transgender identity. Hardcore Christians have said I’m abnormal, but it’s LGBT activists who send me death threats.
I’ve been pretty much living in reddit’s LGBT (mostly T) groups for a half a year now – for the obvious reason someone would start hanging out on T related forums – and MtF and FtM are by far the most common terms used by people to describe themselves. The community there uses trans and trans* as general nouns for themselves and the community as a whole with no one there seeing such use as offensive or dehumanizing. MAAB/FAAB come out a bit, but I’ve never once heard anyone use DMAB/DFAB, and I haven’t seen anyone in the community indicate that MtF or FtM has any connotation of reducing someone’s identity to their genitals, or dividing trans* people into categories of “need to change their plumbing” vs “OK with original equipment”.
Is the reddit transgender community very different from the rest of the transgender community? I live in a small community without much face-to-face contact, so online is pretty much all the exposure I’ve had so far.
I mean, I don’t like the term FtM b/c I feel like it implies that at some point I was female, and I know a few trans people who feel the same. But that’s not everybody, so if someone identifies with that than they should absolutely feel free to use it. The term itself is not bad, some people just have reasons not to use it.
Tumblr community generally uses dmab/dfab, and there i never heard maab/faab. And FtM and MtF are falling out of practice because they are too binary I think, that’s all.
I mean, generally people just use ‘she/her’/’he/him’/’they/them’ to indicate gender, dmab/dfab is just for when it’s relevant to the discussion at hand.
Oh, and dmab/dfab or maab/faab are better when FtM/MtF when you actually want to include cis people with it. Like ‘dfab people get inferior health care compared to dmab people’.
… MtF and “not gay”… so totally into Ethan? Oh yeah. Now Ethan’s *really* confused. Nice thing about being pansexual: not giving a shit about the inward / outward gender of a potential lover. Nice thing about being married: not giving a shit about anybody else’s anything.
Ethan is currently into her, obviously. We have no way of knowing
A) If she intends to physically transition, or to what extent
B) If Ethan would continue to feel attraction to her if she did
Assuming either piece of information would be pretty presumptuous.
There’s also a matter of whether or not Ethan is attracted to bodies or people. There are cisgendered gay men who would date a trans*woman and there are cisgendered gay men who would not, but would gladly date a trans*man. It depends, person-to-person, on how much of their attraction is based on romantic attraction and how much is based on physical attraction. Some people have a different sexual orientation to their romantic orientation, and some do not. Some people are largely driven by romantic attraction and some are largely driven by sexual attraction. The next step largely depends on who Ethan is in this equation.
Transgendered people actually have a pretty high quota of gays (meaning their choice of partner in relation to their chosen gender): “trans” is not really about who you can accept as a partner, but who you can accept as yourself. And if you have come to reject the reproductive organs you have been stuck with at birth, it gets harder to embrace them in a partner. A non-trans person starts with a less loaded relationship to the complementary body type.
Thanks for saying this, being trans does have a way of making any minor bisexual leanings… less minor. I would probably identify as straight if I had been born with male genitalia- I still have a strong preference for the ladies, but between revulsion for what I was born with, the fact that I could never make love to a lady in a way that would feel “right” to me, and my fascination for the genitalia I wasn’t born with… ladies, sadly, end up for little more than ogling.
(I was lucky enough to fall for an androgynous male-bodied a-gendered sweetie so WHO CARES.)
The two trans ladies I’ve known both had bisexual tendencies, but identified as lesbian.
It’s an intriguing blend of two very separate parts of a person’s identity coming into contact, and it fascinates me.
Frustratingly enough, my own sexuality is ridiculously compartmentalized – technically, you could say I’m bi, but that doesn’t quite cover it. I have different ways of being attracted to different genders based on what gender I am at the moment. So basically, I’m stuck feeling dysphoric half the time, and probably will have a very unsatisfying love/sex life.
I am attracted to someone who’s personality is not being fixated on being too princessy, meaning he/she is setting not expectations to me to become his/her prince charming (e.g. providing flowers, financial provider on dates, me doing all the surprise for him/her, me doing all the masculine labor without him/her trying, expects me not to feel under-appreciated cause I’m a guy). I prefer the relationship to be a mutual effort (I want to have a romantic surprise as well), and guys mostly are the ones that are able to do so. I am yet waiting for a girl that can get along with my personality.
Gender/sexuality truly is a individual thing. That’s probably why there are so many individual terms trying to lump people together. I personally identify as a straight male, but I am in a polyamourus relationship with two women and another straight man, so that means I don’t exactly fit in the traditional sexuality roles either. It is wonderful that we are becoming more inclusive as a whole to all this individual identities and feelings.
I’m male, but it seems I act/think/feel as a mix of both traditional male and female roles.
I COMPLETELY get the ‘I want to have a romantic surprise as well’ part – I’ve shocked all my girlfriends when I told them that I would LOVE to be given flowers.
Only one of them actually did so, but that is one of the happiest memories I have. Also one of the most erotic ones I have.
Though a comment was left there stating that one random comic before that has alttext now, so binge at your own risk. Also shortpacked got alttext at the same time, just so you know.
Without the hovertext I would have thought that Joshua was actually just running out of his sister’s sight (what with Joyce sounding like a good truncated version of Jocelyn.) I wonder if that sounds as dumb as I think it sounds.
I’ve been going through the archive assembling a timeline of events. I wish I’d known to look for stray hovertext before I got through the first week and a half of DoA-time.
You know, are you being serious about this or a joke?
Because I’m into anthro characters, draw them etc. My parents, my husbands parents and a good portion of our friends and family know my husband and I are furry (the rest it hasn’t come up).
They don’t care – they know it isn’t all costumes and sex.
I’ve been into anthro characters since I was little and going to church and drew them then as well. No one thought that was odd or weird even as I got older.
I was serious that I thought Jocelyne was possibly furry. I figured Willis would make her some sexual minority or queer. Especially with the “I’m not actually gay” line.
I’m gonna’ say that it is, as long as there is a sexual aspect to it. Any kink/fetish puts one in the “sexual minority” category in my book, though obviously being gay, trans, asexual, etc. will have a larger influence on one’s life. Having, say, a foot fetish would put someone in the sexual minority (since the majority of people DON’T get aroused by feet) but it will be less “important” (bad word, but can’t think of a better alternative right now) than being trans, for example, since the former is easily kept secret (except from one’s sexual partners, of course) and only impacts one’s sex life, not one’s life outside of the bedroom. Does that make sense?
But being furry isn’t necessarily sexual – it isn’t a kink/fetish.
Fursuit sex – yes
But in that sense so is cosplay sex.
Any kink in furry can be placed in a kink under normal terms too. Using your foot fetish example – just they use paw fetish.
As for drawn porn, well – people have been aroused by it since dawn of time. Even antho styled porn has been found dating back quite a bit – before furries were even around. I think it was Egyptian?
You would probably be surprised how accepted anthro characters as a whole are.
As I said they have been around for ages. Also, most people forget about the bad MTV and NCIS episodes long as you don’t point them out all the time.
My parents thought the NCIS episodes were hilarious, but know I draw anthro characters and know I hang out in the furry community (since I was 19 mind you they have known). My husband is a furry as well.
Stereotypes are not as bad as you may think if you just talk to people.
Fursuits are even allowed in public in a lot of places people enjoy the players.
Granted I think if you use the suit for personal purposes you need to swap the bodies out but…you know most furries even agree with that.
I’m queer myself, no one in my family cares. Coming out as anything depends a lot on your context. What’s fine and acceptable to some people is a heinously deviant transgression to others. (I’m guessing this one wouldn’t be all sunshine and rainbows to Jocelyn’s folks)
Not always, some people don’t understand about referring to a person as their preferred gender.
Or, what could be worse, is she thinks it can be cured like what she’s trying to do with Ethan and assumes her brother’s just going though a phase or something.
That’s deep, and terrifying. I don’t want to think about that.
But, this is Joyce we’re talking about here. I think, given how kind she is, if she knew she’d say sister… At least in private to spare Jocelyne’s feelings if she didn’t want to be pushed into open so fast.
Jocelyne’s probably keeping it a secret from Joyce because she loves her, and knows with everything else going on in her life (college, finding herself, and now having a gay boyfriend) she doesn’t want to strain her emotionally or mentally any more than already going on.
If her sister is still representing herself as a he to most of the world, than Joyce may be respecting her privacy. I’ve been friends with a gal who hasn’t come out yet or made the switch. So I always refer to her as he unless it’s a private conversation to protect her.
That being said, I tend to suspect that Joyce has no idea. I doubt Jocelyne would have felt okay confiding in her prior to this. But with her world views expanding in college…maybe that conversation will happen soon.
I’m friends with… an individual who has made a decision to NEVER transition. (For several reasons.) Instead, they treat the male they’ve learned to present and live as, and the female they wish they could live as, as two different people.
Confused yet? “He” has a bisexual girlfriend, who is friends with “her”. The girlfriend said she would support their transition but only as a friend, because she “fell in love with the man, not the woman.”
You start laying on the layers of hiding and pretence and this shit can get mind boggling.
“He” definitely takes the loss of his girlfriend into account, but “he” also feels that other factors are large enough to stop it ever happening. “His” family, health, age, career are all factors that make “him” feel he can never be “her” full time.
It’s still incredibly sad though. They’re how I learned what gender dysphoria was, what it meant, and set the foundations for my own “coming out” three years later.
There’s also force of habit. I knew a friend of mine for a year before finding out they were trans, so for a while I had trouble remembering to use the correct pronouns.
I’m guessing no. Given her earlier reactions to the gay thing, there’s no way she would’ve been able to handle it before college. She might take better to it nowadays, but I’m assuming that’s a process we’ll have to see ourselves sometime in the future.
Sorry, disregard my post above. I posted before I let my admittedly narrow mind expand to consider all the possibilities, and was thinking that Joshua was a female transvestite passing as male.
Nope, I think he means what he says. I think he thought that Jocelyn was a drag king, basically. Why he thought that her parents would be okay with that, and refer to her by a “drag name”, I’m unsure, but that was what his impression sounded like to me.
I think Joyce may end up surprising us if/when she does find out, considering the strides she’s already made… I’m imagining Joyce being excited to have a sister instead of the house full of brothers she thought she had.
I think it might have been more “If I don’t actually register this domain, then someone else will buy it up and fill it with porn and/or viruses” than anything else.
Not all trans* people have the same experiences though. Your trans* friend might not want to date straight dudes, but we have no evidence that Jocelyn doesn’t want xir male sex characteristics, nor that xe wouldn’t consider dating gay dudes. Sexuality is way complex.
‘Xe’ and similar invented pronouns should really only be used in reference to people who request those pronouns be used in reference to them. “The broadest terms” possible would be singular they.
I agree with Ae. I’m gender-neutral/fluid, and I have never liked the ‘xe’ ‘zhi’ and so on pronouns that people keep throwing around. If others want to use them, fantastic for them, but please don’t use them to refer to me. ‘They’ is a much more acceptable answer, but I’d err on the side of caution and ask the person (or the character’s creator) what pronouns to use. I actually request people use male pronouns for me, but don’t get upset if they mess up.
Except that then grammatical prescriptivists would get mad at me. The theoretical purpose of “invented” GN pronouns is to act as unabiguously singular pronouns that can be used to describe any individual, regardless of gender identity. Large segments of the queer community prefer that GN pronouns be used for those whose preferred pronouns are unknown. Others, like you, don’t like them. So please don’t act like your solution is the only correct one. I never claimed that anyone was wrong for using “she” or “they,” because it is a matter of such debate, even within the trans* community. I merely defended my use of GN pronouns, which is consistent with much of current queer theory.
(And of course, I would never use pronouns you have specifically requested not be used.)
Rule of thumb for transsexual people, I think, is to not date people who want to date you BECAUSE of the gender you were assigned at birth. Everyone is different, sure, and some people will feel differently, but that’s a damn good rule for most transsexuals.
Can’t comment on any other trans* people though.
A wild gender-neutral neologism appeared!
Toad used “Xe”
It’s not very effective…
😉
Don’t worry about it, dude. I think we can for now assume “she / her”, and if it turns out later to be incorrect, make our embarrassed apologies and correct as necessary.
After all, using the made-up terms is fairly presumptive in of itself and imho about as discriminatory and dehumanising as using “it” (as I say – just my own opinion :P), when we do already have “they” and “their” to refer to a person whose gender we don’t know or who may be either, without resorting to objectifying or sci-fi’ing them.
Well, he liked Josh. That attraction is likely to remain at least until Josh transitions more, but yeah, kinda realized it was actually a doomed proposition either way.
Unfortunately for the ship, Joshua identifies as a woman and Ethan is only attracted to men. If ever she decides to transition, that would could major issues.
One of my mom’s soap operas had a story where a lesbian was attracted to a man who identified as a woman (except as his rock star persona). And this wasn’t the one with the vampire rock star and guy being possessed by a demon to become a cloaked Punisher who went after rapists and other sexual abusers.
I’m still holding out for Joyce to figure out that she neither can nor should save Ethan from his gayness by marrying him, and for Ethan to figure out a pretend romance that lets him think he doesn’t have to deal with his sexuality isn’t very healthy for either of them. Once all that is sorted out, they should be busy thanking everyone who in any way tried to ruin their relationship.
Well either way, Joyce/Ethan is an unhealthy relationship. Ethan is gay and Joyce is a girl. It’s doomed right from the start. Joshua might identify as female, but unless she decides to transition to female, she’s got a physically male body that Ethan is attracted to. Sure, that relationship would also have plenty of complications, but at least Ethan won’t have to hide his sexuality to make it work.
Putting aside the fact that Ethan is currently dating Joyce… There’s nothing wrong, or even uncommon, with a person being attracted to another person despite sexual orientation of either party. Which is to say, a heterosexual person can still get the hots for a specific same-gendered person, even though this isn’t typically true for them. It also does *not* make them bisexual.
Also, there’s the whole sexual vs emotional vs intellectual attraction issue, where you need to determine what kind of attraction it is before you even decide if gender (external or internal) is a factor. Humans, they’re so complicated — and so busy trying to simplify things past the point of clarity 🙂
Sexuality is often more complex than that. People can be attracted primarily on the basis of physical sex, on the basis of gender, or on something else entirely (e.g. for some people the most relevant trait is dominance/submissiveness.) And emotional attraction or physical attraction are separate things.
Ethan seems to be physically attracted to male-bodied people, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he were biromantic.
For Ethan to date Jocelyn because he identifies her as male, despite the fact she identifies as female and is attracted to him in a heterosexual way (so to speak) would be an enormously selfish dick move. And I don’t think Jocelyn would put up with it anyway.
Okay, not true at all. Sexuality is very wibbly-wobbly. You can be extremely gay and STILL fall in love with a trans*. I know two married people, where they were considered homosexual until one partner came out to everyone as trans*. Both persons involved are still extremely committed to each other even since one of them is working on transitioning to female.
So do not tell me that gay men cannot love a trans* woman, because i just proved you wrong. 😛
beege wasn’t saying it’s impossible. They’re saying if Ethan went into the relationship basically viewing Joc as male, then that would be awful and everyone would be even madder at him than we already are.
I agree with you, although Raibean isn’t entirely wrong either. It’s great that your friends stayed together, but it probably wasn’t easy for them to go through the transition. Just as it was probably really hard for the trans* person to come out to her partner (knowing what challenges they’d have to face).
But really, I don’t think we should punch fairies in the face. It’s not nice. Plus, if you wanna make it hurt, it’s better to surprise pussy-punch someone, according to the latest Machete…
….See, it’s not that gay people can’t love trans people. I’m a lesbian with a trans wife. But I’m not attracted to her ‘because she’s a dude’, and she is actively transitioning to a body I like better (An incidental benefit to her getting to feel better about her body, I assure you). Ethan seemed to zero in on the physical side with Jocelyn. A physical side that, in all probability, Jocelyn wants to bury with a hatchet.
By saying “xe”, you’re defeating the purpose of your otherwise transphilic statement. Jocelyn identifies as female, therefore call her “she”. “Xe” is implying that she is neither male nor female.
… No. Gender-neutral pronouns are gender-neutral. They do not indicate a gender. That does not mean that they indicate no gender. It is acceptable to refer to any person with gender-neutral pronouns, regardless of their gender identity. That is actually the point of those words: you can refer to people without specifying a gender or lack thereof. Jocelyne has not specified PPPs, and therefore I am erring on the side of caution, since I cannot ask xir directly.
I did read the hovertext, but identifying as female and using female pronouns do not necessarily go together. There’s a reason so many queer groups start meetings by asking everyone for their PPPs. Some trans*women prefer gender-neutral pronouns.
But some don’t. What if by “playing it safe” you’re also being offensive. By that logic I don’t really care. It is MUCH too much work to worry about offending people all the time.
That is… uh. I’ve never actually hear of anyone who does that…? I mean, I don’t deny they exist, but it seems infinitely more likely that she uses feminine pronouns.
And in any case, not everyone likes xe/xir. Some people use ‘they’. Some use ‘ze’ and ‘hir’. I am sure there is at least one person out there who prefers ‘it’. You can’t know, and arbitrarily using one incredibly uncommon set of pronouns to refer to someone who clearly identifies as female seems… well, kind of presumptuous, tbh.
To add onto what Yotamoe said (if I may), while I understand the positive intent of more recently created gender-neutral pronouns, terms like “xe,” “ey” and so forth, such terms aren’t universally endorsed in GSM communities, and still carry the broader connotation of being *specifically* associated with issues surrounding said communities.
If you don’t know how someone who is trans* feels about such terms (and, again, there isn’t universal agreement), by casually dropping them into conversation about said person, you may actually be doing more to draw unwanted attention to their trans* status than if you’d even just used singular “they” (which already has a long history of use for people when referring to cis-persons in similar gender neutral contexts).
It is also more likely that any given person is straight and cisgendered than otherwise, but presuming that EVERYONE belongs to the majority would be highly problematic. As soon as Jocelyne or Willis weigh in on what pronouns are appropriate, I’ll happily switch to those.
The distinction between various gender-neutral pronouns is largely irrelevant as well. “It” is frowned upon because it typically refers to non-persons, but “xe” “ze” and “hir” are interchangeable, given that they are all invented to fill the same niche and none are really more widely accepted than the others in common usage. “They” is another bucket of issues, since it brings the plural/singular debate with it.
(And as for having not heard of someone identifying as XYZ, you clearly don’t spend much time on tumblr. Hang out there and you’ll end up with more combinations of identities than you’d ever thought possible!)
@Sgore: First off, thanks for introducing me to the term GSM; that’s one I somehow hadn’t heard before! Secondly, I agree that referring to someone who isn’t out with gender-neutral pronouns in mixed company would be ill-advised. However, everyone here is aware of Jocelyne’s trans* status, and it is the topic of conversation du jour, so calling attention to it isn’t a problem.
@A-A-A-Albi: Because in current usage, it is standard to use “they” as a plural. I am sympathetic to the cause of the singular they, however, and won’t say it’s wrong. There is a good deal of debate around the most appropriate gender-neutral pronouns, but that is really a separate issue.
Not in the variety of English I speak (in, well, England). Much like multi-use pronouns in other languages such as German (“Sie” can be “she” or “they (plural)”, IIRC), it can be either; it’s a nonspecific personal pronoun that cares not for gender or number, and thus is just fine so long as your subject is OK with it. I tend to use it as a nongendered singular pronoun quite a lot when e.g. writing technical instructions or the like.
How is it irrelevant? Pronouns are a very personal thing to people with gender identity issues. No matter what, there will be the possibility of making someone feel bad, even using gender neutral pronouns. Hell, my gender identity is certainly atypical, and I would hate to be called any of the gender neutral pronouns that currently exist in our language (including they).
Before Willis actually came out and told us she was female, there were two very big indicators that this was the case. It just seems odd to me that you would favor one set of pronouns over the countless others, even when all the evidence pointed to the very particular set you specifically avoided.
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that pronouns are irrelevant. I just meant that with regards to this particular discussion, it didn’t matter which GN pronoun I used, since they are roughly interchangable and I had no way of knowing which Jocelyne could possibly prefer. That is, given that I was using GN pronouns, which one I used was irrelevant in this particular case.
I personally like xe more than ze or hir, simply as personal preference. My usage of it was not intended to be a rejection of any others. I was “favoring” xe by necessity–I had the choice between either picking one to “favor” or being inconsistent, which seems even worse to me.
I have explained my choice to use GN pronouns repeatedly, and am not interested in defending it further, given that it is now irrelevant. Please reread my other posts if you are still confused about my position. I am acting in concordance with the consensus among the queer circles I frequent.
It is true that some people do identify as gender-neutral or nongendered, but gender-neutral pronouns do not exclusively refer to them. They specifically and intentionally do not indicate a gender or lack thereof. Furthermore, I do NOT know xir PPPs. I know that xe thinks of xirself as Joyce’s sister (or at least, so Willis would indicate) but that does not mean xe would want to be referred to by female pronouns.
I am actually supportive of the use of “they” as a singular gender-neutral pronoun, but that’s really beside the point.
“It is also more likely that any given person is straight and cisgendered than otherwise, but presuming that EVERYONE belongs to the majority would be highly problematic. ”
When, exactly, did we decide as a society that using the most likely option until told otherwise is the same thing as “presuming that someone belongs to the majority”?
Using “she” now is certainly no worse than using “he” yesterday, so you’ve really got no room to argue.
Gender-neutral pronouns are typically for people of indeterminate gender; generally for reasons of anonymity, but sometimes for not falling on the binary at all. Jocelyn’s a woman, not a random person of indeterminate gender. Use it smartly, please.
Posting here simply to point out how the avatars on the previous run of comments make a very nice rainbow sequence with their background / hair / clothing colours.
Does Ethan’s mom suffer from some variety of depression or melancholy? No other parent in these strips has looked as consistently miserable or visibly burdened as she has. Her nastiness be put aside for one moment, something is rotten in the house of Siegel.
That would be a very odd thing for a Jewish person to worry over – despite our reputation as chronic worriers. 🙂
“Some people look at these teachings and deduce that Jews try to ‘earn our way into Heaven’…unlike some religions, Judaism is not focused on the question of how to get into heaven. Judaism is focused on life and how to live it.”
Since this is a Willis comic, that seems like a very workable theory. Seriously, what percentage of people are heterosexual and not gender confused in any way in the Willis-verse? I’m thinking it has to be less than 5%. =P
Let’s see… off the top of my head (and of course, without knowing anything about the private thoughts of these characters):
Joe, Danny, Dorothy, Amber and Walky all appear to possess gender identities in line with their biological sex, and also to be heterosexual. Pretty sure that already puts us above 1 in 20, so… yeah.
having a realistic number of gender/sexual minorities in media comes across has having an IMPOSSIBLY INFINITE number of them given how used people are to not seeing them at all
it might be she blames herself for ethan’s deviation from the norm, in the sense that she didn’t do the parent thing right or something. like if she’d been better at being a mother he wouldn’t have “turned gay.” (because some people think that’s a thing you can do on purpose)
i mean, she definitely rolled a critical failure on the whole mom thing, but not for that reason.
oooor maybe she’s one of those people just absolutely determined to be miserable, and if she isn’t happy then NO ONE IS HAPPY.
oh, they didn’t miss the spot check, they just REALLY wanted a son (another son? i forget where joz ((joss? how the heck do you abbreviate jocelyne :L )) falls in the brown child order of ascension) and raised her as a dude under the philosophy that anything is possible if you just BELIEVE hard enough, and the real her that “josh” has been hiding from her parents/family is that she, ya know, noticed at some point.
Xe is “really” a she. Gender != physical sex. Joshua/Jocelyne presumably has male genetalia, but was not necessarily “born in the wrong body” any more than people with acne they don’t like are born in the wrong body. Trans* folks only have the one body, and it’s theirs, regardless of what aspects of it they do or do not like.
Can we not use ‘xe’? Or ‘ze’? Firstly, it is presumptuous to use a pronoun a person has not themselves endorsed. Secondly (on purely personal level), I can’ stand them. English is in desperate need of neutral, non-plural pronouns, but simply making them on and trying to stuff them into the language isn’t going to work. They look out of place: true gender-neutral pronouns that work will emerge only when English etymology and orthography are taken into account. English’s strength has always been tis ability to change, absorb, and mutate into something (usually) stronger. Imposed adjustments are too L’Académie Française for my tastes.
English has gender-neutral singular pronouns: “they”, “their”. It’s been standard usage for hundreds of years. Like it or not, that’s what the natural evolution of the language has given us, and trying to displace it by imposing artificial substitutes is doomed to failure.
Especially since no one can agree on which made-up bullshit pronouns to use instead.
Well I had to use *some* pronoun, and Jocelyne, being fictional, couldn’t really weigh in to let me know which she “endorsed.” As soon as Willis said she preferred female pronouns, I switched.
Your personal preferences are largely irrelevant. There are plenty of trans* prescriptivists who hate the singular they. Plenty hate any “invented” GN pronouns but they. The queer circles I frequent endorse the use of xe, and so that’s what I use. Won’t say you’re wrong to use the singular they, and I’ve even used it myself, but it’s also presumptuous to tell someone not to use a term preferred by large sections of the trans* community.
My (admittedly basic) understanding of the procedures involved are that MtF surgery can make a very reasonable facsimile of a natural born female body. As in, the parts work and you could even keep it a secret from people you have sex with if you wanted. Meanwhile FtM as medical advancement stands now isn’t there yet. They can make you something that sort of looks like a dick, but it doesn’t work and you’ve butchered your junk to make it. Which could be bad if they ever come up with a process that actually does work.
I would be cool with anyone else telling me that synopsis is out of date.
If you get on T, your, uh… wow, this is awkward. Basically, it’s possible for a certain… part to become large enough to be used in, uh… sex. Not always, but it’s possible.
At least she is actually in a difficult position related to her identity, unlike a certain other webcomic where there is a trans character who is completely indistinguishable from the other female characters except for those two comics where she told her secret to somebody.
i dunno, considering how instantly-protective her twin brother was upon learning that she came out to marten, i’d say there was definitely the unfortunately usual “people being horrible to other people” in her background. i’m super happy for claire that she has friends that are so accepting now. kudos to mr jacques for such a chill cast of characters.
Yeah. It’s nicer than nice to have some representation where the character isn’t entirely defined by her gender identity – and ESPECIALLY nice to have her not entirely defined by ANGST over it.
(Also, Clinton isn’t Claire’s twin – he’s several years younger than her. Yeah, he’s protective of his ELDER sibling. It’s an interesting relationship.)
oops, that’s right. apologies for the brain fart. guess at some point my mind went from “close familial resemblance, might as well be twins” to “they are actually twins”.
true. I always feel awkward talking about how things are for transsexuals because i’m only talking from my perspective and have no idea if it applies in a similar way for the guys. But it’s also really awkward to always add a disclaimer telling that it’s only a MtF experience i’m talking about
Part of the reason for this (historically, back when all stories about trans people were massively offensive) is the same as why you still see more gay guys in media than gay ladies – more interest in “men’s” stories, even if those stories were basically super offensive “lady was a dude!” Mostly the people who wrote those stories didn’t see trans women as women, but hyper deviant gay men a la the transphobic writings of J. Michael Bailey. Obviously not the case here or in many of the modern stories, thankfully.
This is the Willis Commentariat. Open-minded and accepting. In this case, Toad, there is no choice but to revel in the delicious irony of your comment’s Grav-conflict!
Exactly. I’m actually uh, very bountiful but by god, I’m a man. I don’t need a penis or a flat chest to prove it, and you better use the male pronoun for me.
Well, that’s a complex issue. Some gay men will date trans* men and some won’t, and some will date trans* women and some won’t. It’s really a very personal and individualized choice. Given that xe is male-bodied, Ethan might still be into xir. On the other hand, identifying as female might be a deal-breaker.
Last I checked, a man dating a lady was straight – not gay. Doesn’t matter if they are transexual or not.
My husband is pansexual when it comes to love, but straight when it comes to sexual attraction. Meaning he isn’t gay, but straight even if he dated a MtF because he wouldn’t date a FtM.
I’m Pansexual and Asexual – I don’t care what gender when it comes to love, but I’m not sexual attracted to males, females, or hermaphradites.
Granted I could be confused, but since I was told this by an actual transexual maybe it is wrong? Maybe they all see things differently?
Everyone sees sexuality differently. Guess it is up to Willis to let us know if Ethan still likes Jocelyne, but I don’t see that happening considering Jocelyne will be fully female eventually if all goes well.
Toad is right though. It’s complicated. Being gay doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily date transmen just as lesbians won’t necessarily date transwomen. And some gay men actually will date transwomen and some lesbians will date transmen.
That’d make you panromantic and asexual, I believe.
Also “Last I checked, a man dating a lady was straight – not gay. Doesn’t matter if they are transexual or not.” is inaccurate. They could be bi or pan or asexual or anything, really, except specifically homosexual or homoromantic.
‘S fine. I personally am heteromantic asexual, which made me very confused and conflicted until someone pointed out that romantic and sexual love were separate spectrums. I wish I could remember who it was so I could thank them for not feeling so lost anymore.
Ugh tell me about it. When I found out that me not being sexual attracted to people and not liking sex was NORMAL and had a name OMG – was so relieved.
I think sexual identity is a big part of who we are as a species – and really it becomes stressful not knowing.
I urge you to reread my post. Your personal anecdotes aren’t relevant to the topic at hand, so I’ll skip them. But the point remains, there are lots of men who identify as gay that would still date/not date trans-men or trans-women. Sexual/romantic attraction is not exclusively limited to gender, and everyone draws lines in different places. Ethan has not indicated his feelings on the matter.
“Jocelyne will be fully female eventually if all goes well.”
Erm, nope. We do not know if Jocelyne intends to physically transition or not. Not all trans* people want or intend to physically transition. Many are perfectly happy to have the body they have, while still identifying as whatever gender.
That was exactly my point. All trans* people are different. You made a hard generalization: Ethan, as a gay man, would not date a trans* woman. I disagreed, since some gay men would and some wouldn’t, and some trans* people would be okay with it and some wouldn’t.
Don’t you mean panromantic? In terms of your and your husband’s romantic attraction. It sounds like it, considering you both are “pansexual in terms of love” but not sexually. You can’t be both pansexual and asexual, but you can be a panromantic asexual, just sayin’. (Sorry if this came across as too didactic…)
Anyway, it’s super cool to meet another ace! I’m an aromantic asexual, myself. 🙂
Yeah I didn’t hear of panromantic until today and I’m glad I did. Wack’d pointed it out to me.
It did confuse me before today as well. So thank you on that.
I’ve seen more and more of those that identify as asexual around. As I said above it is normal and I’m glad I’m not just odd. –Though odd is relatively speaking when it comes to me XD.
I feel like I’ve been meeting more and more asexuals too! For National Coming Out Day, the LGBTQIA club hosted a T-shirt making event for people to declare their sexualities on and I found out that quite a few people I knew IRL were asexual, which I found pleasantly surprising.
Mine has mostly be online, I’m not a very outgoing person unfortunately. Though I’m sure there are communities down where I live despite the rest of my state being hick ville USA XD.
I think you’re forgetting the Kinsey scale of sexuality. Speaking as someone who is bi-sexual- things aren’t one thing or another. I’m bi-sexual in technical terms-but only just. I date more men than I do women, and I prefer relationships with men- less drama. But I’m attracted to both. Nothing is simple.
…Or maybe you’re just making generalizations based on gender that don’t actually have anything to do with sexual preference.
If you like guys more than girls, that’s fine. Do realize that your reasoning is based on stereotypes (and probably confirmation bias and/or bad luck with women).
my relationships are between me, my partner, and if I choose, a qualified therapist. I don’t remember asking anyone to pass judgement on what I find to be attractive in a mate. Realize that when you comment on someone else’s sexuality, and what they find attractive so freely and with such easy judgement it can be damaging even with the best of intentions. You do not know the past that they went through to get where they are. *tone: kind*
Nobody was commenting on your sexuality, as far as I can tell. The statement that raised some eyebrows was you saying that dating men was “less drama” than dating women. While that may be your personal experience, it does come off as a bit gender-essentialist, as though you’re saying that dating men is inherently less drama than dating women. Which is silly, because as we all know, the amount of drama a person causes has very little to do with what gender they are! 🙂
As someone who is technically not on the Kinsey scale, that thing can go fuck itself, but only after it figures what number one ascribes to being attracted to bar graphs.
I mean, it’s a very rough tool, but can still be useful in some cases. For instance, “bisexual” is very broad, but I can say that I’m a “Kinsey 2” and people who know what that is have a pretty good sense of how I identify. It’s easier than laying out some huge diagram of my complicated sexual preferences, but still provides more detail than I could otherwise quickly provide.
If you don’t mind me asking, in what way are you not on the Kinsey scale? I assume ace, which is sort of a special case, but you might also identify as something else?
I think I mentioned being asexual further up–well, actually “gray asexual” I guess, given that I get sexual attraction the way most people get the hiccups. But I’m also heteromantic, and lemme tell you that confused the fuck out of me for a long time because hey, I want a relationship, I must also want sex, right? And having the only real divisions I was aware of come from that fucking chart (heh) did not help.
I’ve heard ace described as i (i.e. sqrt(-1)) on the Kinsey scale. Other complex numbers can be used to describe variations thereof. This does not help with the simplicity thing, however.
@Kerry: No, 0 is “exclusively heterosexual” (that is, straight).
@Wack’d: Yeah, I’ve seen Ace listed as X, typically. But regardless, the Kinsey scale is a way of categorizing types of sexual attraction. So if you don’t experience sexual attraction (or in your case, rarely), then it would make sense that you wouldn’t be on the chart, right?
That said, it is outdated and unscientific and pretty useless for anything but “this is what flavor of bisexual I am!”
You make a good point- but again, the Kinsey scale is a good rough starting point for sexual attraction. I does assume a desire for sexual relationships, which many don’t have.
Hopefully this comes across the way I intend, but why would a lack of sexual attraction be on a chart detailing types of sexual attraction? Like, if I made a chart of a bunch of types of food, arranged from sweetest to sourest, it wouldn’t make sense for non-food things to be on the chart at all, right?
@Toad – I don’t know, I think asexual does count as a sexual orientation, and it does make sense to me to include it in something that describes/labels people’s sexual orientations.
But then, I think we also need a scale to be a shorthand for people who aren’t quite male or female, or are both, or whatever, and for what trans* identities people are attracted to, and I understand there IS a scale though not very widely used for how polyamorous/monogamous you are.
Labels suck when others pin them on you as a way to reinforce their power, but DAMN can they be handy when you’re trying to explain your sexual/romantic preferences.
@Leah: Oh yeah, it’s definitely a sexual orientation, but I don’t know that the Kinsey scale, at least in its modern usage, is used to describe all orientations (though that may have been Kinsey’s original intent). I think that instead of being a scale of orientations, it’s a scale of types of attraction. And thus, “no attraction” wouldn’t be on the chart.
And yeah, I’m all for people having as many tools for self-description as possible. Language is how we understand concepts; if you don’t have words to describe yourself, how are you ever going to understand yourself?
“considering Jocelyne will be fully female eventually if all goes well.”
not all transgender people undergo surgery or even want to! she is “fully female” because she identifies as such. don’t make assumptions about anyone’s relationship with their body, please.
As I’m not transgender myself and still learning the language needed – I apologize for my flub. When I say Fully Female I mean able to come out as female – not surgery.
And it is my bad on that. As I said – still learning.
Your terms would be panromantic/asexual and heterosexual. If we’re going to go there about proper terms, sexual=/=romantic attraction. I’m pansexual/demiromantic, for example.
Wouldn’t the inverse of demisexual be… NOT being sexually attracted to people with whom a strong bond is formed? Maybe being sexually attracted only to people with whom a strong bond ISN’T formed?
I guess what I’m saying is, romance isn’t the opposite of sex, is it?
No, I’m sexually attracted to a lot of people, but I’m only emotionally/romantically attracted to them after a bond has been formed. I tend to crush on a lot of my friends because of this.
Assuming you mean that Jocelyn’s in the same boat as you, I just wanted to wish you the best of luck. I’m still on my own walk down that road, and it’s a hard road to keep on sometimes, but every step of the way makes me happier I’m on it.
It’s tough, it’s gonna get tougher, but it gets better. Someone told me that when I was still early on and I’ve been thinking about that lately. It really does.
Yeah. I’m both really happy and sad to see this crop up in the story. Its really amazing how fearless Willis is in his story execution. Its a rough topic to skirt on. But, knowing that road Jocelyn is on, when she does reappear it might just lead to some really sad story lines.. Its great having someone in DOA to identify with, but being torn a way from em so soon and knowing rough times are headed her way? I can only give a solemn ‘Dammit Willis.’
Also side note: I love how he renamed all the tags Joshua->Jocelyn. It was really sweet and respectful.
Okay, got a question, hope I don’t come off as insensitive or rude, but I’m honestly not sure what the best way to phrase this is.
When Josh says he’s not gay, did he mean “I’m into guys but I identify as female, so I consider that being straight”? Or did he mean “I’m into girls, but even though I identify as female I am biologically male, so that doesn’t count as gay”?
Unless Willis answers this himself, everyone else who answers you will be answering off of speculation. My own thought is that Joshua seemed attracted to him, and identifies as female, so therefore not gay.
Even though she did seem to be attracted to Ethan, there is nothing that indicates Jocelyne is straight. And with transgender people you really shouldn’t assume their preference.
It could mean either. But a thing me and my friend talked about is that, even if he IS into guys, he wouldn’t want to be with Ethan, because Ethan likes boys, something Jocelyn doesn’t associate with. Regardless of the attraction, the features Ethan would be attracted to are features Jocelynn would want to be getting rid of.
Not necessarily. Ethan is attracted to a cute, smart, nerdy writer with big blue eyes and (presumably) a dick. Jocelyn certainly doesn’t want to get rid of any but the last of those, and not necessarily even then. There are lots of trans* folks who are perfectly happy with the body they have, and do not want to alter their genetalia in any way. “Gay” and “straight”, in their typical definitions, do not take into account any possible differences between sex and gender. Therefore, Ethan could be into “persons who identify as male” or “persons who have male sex characteristics.” We have no way of knowing which he is. It is also possible that he could be “gay with an exception.” Saying that people at either end of the Kinsey scale are attracted to people solely based on their gender is a pretty flawed oversimplification.
The only thing that we know in canon about Jo is that she identifies as “Jocelyn”. We couldn’t even say for certain that she identifies as female at this point except for Willis’s hover-text. Making any other assumptions at this time–and scolding other posters for it–is more than just a little presumptuous.
Looking back on Saturday’s comic. Joce is smiling when she says “not actually gay”, then is abrubtly disappointed when she realizes Ethan IS gay. Despite the situation with Joyce, she was still attracted to him and thinking about hooking up with Ethan as a straight couple, up until Ethan tipped his hand.
Considering the “not *actually* gay” comment, I’m assuming she’s into guys but identifies as a straight woman. I wouldn’t be surprised if she realized she was into men before she realized she identified as female and thought she was gay for a while–certainly sheltered me knew more about homosexuality than I knew about trans* folks when I was younger.
I don’t know. I’m a lesbian and I’ve only recently came to terms with the word “gay”. I don’t self-identify as gay; it sounds so “masculine” (for lack of a better word).
The gender-reversed version of this situation happened to a friend of mine.
She’s a lesbian and had a short fling with a Female-to-male transexual. It was short lived.
At university I had a male friend who was gay and often dressed like a woman. The last time I saw him he was dating a woman, who was gay and often dressed like a man.
It was a beautiful symmetry that made almost no sense.
Well, unfortunately, I’ve seen people claim that transgender/sexual means that you’re rejecting the body/life god gave you and that’s a sin.
There’s a really toxic woman on the board I’m on, she ‘prayed the gay away’ and she was explaining how she won’t let her kids know her husband’s sister (cousin?) because she’s trans and she feels that by respecting the trans relative’s identity she’s harming her by keeping her from god.
Yeah. I felt sorry for her in the beginning, because holy shit self hate. But then she started talking about how if her toddlers started showing any ‘same sex attraction struggles’ she’d put a stop to it, and things like forcing them to play with gender appropriate toys if they acted too masculine or feminine.
Also, the nasty nasty things she said about the relative.
Now I just wish she’d wise up before she has an affair with a soccer mom and things go really bad.
Which brings to mind something I read a while back about the behavior of male dogs who are fixed prior to sexual maturity vs. after. The ones who have already sexually matured still hump things.
Yes and “asexual” is a sexual orientation meaning that a person does not experience sexual attraction. And yet many of them have perfectly functioning genitals.
That’s not what I was saying. My reasoning was that if you do not have sex organs (ovaries/testes), sex steroids cannot be produced, meaning you cannot feel the effects of them.
I was corrected above that you can if you’ve already gone through puberty, which sounded reasonable, as a person’s brain would likely have already been sufficiently altered by the chemicals to make a difference.
Yes.
Their logic behind this is that Homosexuality is a sin and treated as a crime, but the Ayatollah accept the idea that a man may be born inside a woman’s body (or the reverse), and so they allow such people to get an operation.
The consequence is that some homosexuals/lesbians are forced to have their sex changed in order to avoid being jailed or beaten.
The state actually promote sex change! If you are a guy and loves another guy, you are a sinner and a criminal in the state’s eyes, but if you turns into a girl, problem solved!
Weird world …
Can I get nit-picky and say “woman, not female”? At least in sociology and other social sciences, we use “woman/man” for gender (identity/expression/social part) and “male/female” for sex (biology)
Well, I’ve never seen it that way. In every context I’ve seen, female is used for both. So is woman. And as a transwoman myself, I’m not uninformed about the topic. We probably need to be more specific, but really, gender/sex is the only situation where the words are clearly separate, and even then there’s a lot of overlap. And honestly, while it’s nice to be recognized, it’s not necessary to overhaul the entire language for this. I mean, how often do we really need to identify the sex, and not the gender of a person? Only when we’re discussing a transgender person, and only when we want to highlight their transgender status. And I know many of us would rather not do that. We want to be seen as women, female, girls, whatever. Many of us don’t like to be reminded that we were born into the wrong body.
Yes, you can. I personally hate the way “female” has displaced the word “woman” in conversation. You can have a “female” cat, squirrel, or hamster. Only humans can be “women.”
Exactly. Male and female (among other terms) refer to sex. Man and woman (among other terms) refer to gender. But for some reason, it’s become common to refer to women as females in contexts where men are being called by gender terms (men, guys, bros, etc.).
Jocelyne? Is that even a real name? C’mon Joshua, couldn’t you think of something more original? Like Susan, or Alice, or maybe Laquisha if you were going in that direction…
This isn’t even close to true – I’m trans myself and have met something on the order of a thousand others who are, and I could count on one hand the number whose names resemble their give names. Most trans folk, at least that I know, want to distance themselves from their old identity as much as possible.
James to Siubhan (Scottish Gaelic version of ‘Joan’, also used to translate ‘Judith’) for me. (I also tend to use my mother’s maiden name with Siubhan, just for the sake of euphony…it matches badly with my legal last name.)
I went with Jessie because technically, that was the name my parents wanted me to have to begin with… Or rather, Jesse. I was Josh, became Jess.
I’m … not really going anywhere with this.
Quite the opposite, in fact. Most trans folk choose names that are very different from their birth names. (I know one who chose one that allowed her to keep her nickname, though the two names are entirely unrelated, save for sharing a single syllable. But other than her, nooooope.)
I picked something completely different. The only thing in common is that my parents picked it. (which i’m really grateful that could happen. Also really grateful they don’t have terrible taste in names)
Claire!
*ehem*
I’m not sure what came first and how it exactly happened.
I think i’ve always had some connection to this name, and i think my parents had a few names picked out when i was born and then just chose according to my birth sex.
Some time after deciding that i have to transition some day i asked my mother what names they had thought about and what name they would have chosen if i had been a girl. There were a few options (a few terrible ones) but the one i have now was their favorite, i think.
When i did start transitioning years later i talked with them about it to confirm and we all agreed on the name.
oh to clarify. My parents took a long time to become supportive (it wasn’t fun the first time i came out. That’s right, i came out twice to them. That’s how much they were in denial), but once i started transitioning they’ve been with me every single step of the way.
According to Wolfram alpha, it is currently the 92nd most common baby name in the US, and the 599th most populous name in the US. Approximately 1 in every 3054 people in the US are named Jocelyn.
Also, it’s my mother’s aunt’s name, so if I were a cartoon, I’d have probably had an eyebrow fly off my face when I read you imply it’s not a real name. (‘Joc’ is the nickname – pronounced the same as Joss.)
Okay, I apologize for my comment. It was kind of rude. It’s just that I seriously have never heard that name before. Learn something new every day I guess.
There are also a lot of non-gender pronouns accepted by the LGTB community that are all listed on the wiki page for gender-neutral pronouns, like Ze and Hir.
I feel the need to point out that it’s equally disrespectful to refer to a trans* person who identifies as a man or woman with gender-neutral pronouns. That’s denying their gender in another manner.
As a transwoman myself, I want to concur with Daphnaie. I do not want to be referred to as “xe”. Especially since that will get you so many strange looks. While it would be nice to have gender-neutral pronouns in English, it’s not gonna happen anytime soon. And language rarely changes by such artificial means. Besides, singular “they” works fine. And it’s not wrong. Shakespeare used it.
In that case, I would certainly not refer to you with gender-neutral pronouns. If I know how someone would prefer to be referred to as, I will always refer to them that way.
However, IN GENERAL, when one doesn’t know a person’s PPPs, it is appropriate to use gender-neutral ones. Not specifying a gender isn’t the same as specifying no gender. In this case, I do not yet know Jocelyne’s preferred pronouns, and so I am choosing to err on the side of caution.
(And I do actually agree that “they” should be an accepted singular gender-neutral pronoun.)
Except that it’s not accepted. Lots of people use it, but also lots of people don’t like it. You can’t say that something is the only correct way to say something if your elementary school English teacher would tell you it’s wrong.
(Now, I still think it is acceptable, as long as you don’t insist that all alternatives are wrong.)
That’s… not really relevant? I’m not saying we should use what the majority of people use; I’m just saying that you can’t say that XYZ is the only acceptable term if there are a bunch of people that don’t like it.
Note that I never said anyone else had to use xe, just defended my own use of it.
The exact same thing could be said about “xe/hir” – lots of people use it, but lots of people don’t like it. Your elementary school English teacher would also tell you it’s wrong.
Yes grammar essentialists will argue that singular “they” is incorrect, but they’re flat-out wrong.
I think a bigger problem is that most people of indeterminate gender who haven’t specified their pronouns tend to be trans people. And speaking as a trans person, it really sucks to be othered like that. Many trans people have spoken here saying it hurts them to have “xe/hir” directed towards them, and it’s really important to listen to that if you’re trying to help trans people. I know your circle might say differently, so feel free to continue using xe/hir among your circle of people you know prefer it – but don’t try to extend that out to other people if you don’t know that they’re okay with it.
In my experience, if someone appears to have a binary identification and there are clues that they have a binary identification, it’s generally best to go with that. If you’re a trans person trying your hardest to pass and you still get referred to arbitrarily by gender-neutral pronouns, it makes you feel singled out as a trans person rather than affirmed as your actual gender, and only serves to remind you how you’re not male/female-enough.
I guess you can just never refer to them at all… there’s not really that many instances that you have to call someone their name to their face in casual conversation. I have been really good friends with people who’s names I can’t remember or that they never told me.
This. I’m horrible at remembering names, unless they are names from some game. I cannot remember how many times I chatted daily with someone for weeks without knowing or remembering their names, and the issue never pops up.
This is, again, difficult due to the fact that we don’t know what Jocelyn wants. Xe presents as male to everyone (as far as we know) besides Ethan. We cannot assume xe would want to be referred to by female pronouns. When in doubt, gender-neutral is the way to go.
… Say, does this mean Ethan can now admit to his family that he found her attractive? (I’m still unsure about the protocol when it comes with trans people. I get that you rifer to them by their preferred gender, but I don’t have the subtle stuff down yet (well, I don’t have the subtle stuff when interacting with other people in general down, but this is something where I think there’s a lot less room for error))
But for what it’s worth Pat friggin’ Robertson is okay with trans people–the same dude who, just six days ago, said that low-carb diets were a sin against God and thinks gay folks transfer their gayness via blood with spiked rings. It’s possible Ethan’s folks are similarly accepting.
It’s possible that Naomi is fine with transpeople, but even if she is, I think Ethan being attracted to a transwoman who is currently presenting as male would not reassure her that Ethan is not gay.
(And obviously Ethan shouldn’t tell her anyway, unless Jocelyne gives him permission, and I can’t imagine why she would. Too much risk of it getting back to her parents.)
Why do you keep using the fabricated gender-neutral pronouns “xe” and “xir?” They don’t really apply to Jocelyne. You should use feminine-gendered pronouns for her, shouldn’t you?
I agree with your point about using she/her (because through both the hovertext and the email we have evidence that Jocelyne identifies as female) but why the use of the word ‘fabricated’? How else do you think words are made?
Words evolve, like organisms. What you’re saying is the equivalent of saying that evolution is creationism because animals didn’t just come out of nowhere.
We wouldn’t be having this conversation about the words “Muggle”, “Gallifrey”, “toke”, “spliff”, “skag”, “juju”, “due backs”, “bundie”, “slodge”, “slurg”, “yoot”, or “zorros”. A lot of these last ones were 1950s slang and according to Etymonline, have either questionable origins or are simply not listed. Language has ALWAYS been invented. Even if we take two affixes and stick them together for a new word, that’s not language EVOLVING. It’s language being created.
The difference between those words and gender-neutral pronouns is that the former do not challenge an entire society’s basic assumptions about what they view as essential.
It’s also sort of like the difference between a meme and a forced meme – those words caught on*. There’s any number of reasons why the gender-neutral pronouns that have been proposed have not. It might be because of a general lack of awareness, it might be because people don’t want to have to keep track of more than four kinds of pronoun (he, she, they, it), or it might simply be because they sound unnatural to a majority of English speakers**.
*At least, I’ll take your word that they caught on. I’ve never heard of like, a third of those.
**I’m not actually certain of this, but seeing as most people don’t use them, I’m inclined to think it does have an impact.
Gender-neutral pronouns apply to everybody. That’s… exactly the point. They’re gender-neutral. Jocelyne has not indicated a pronoun preference, and therefore I am erring on the side of caution.
“Yet Toad’s argument remains : “by using a gender-neutral pronoun one cannot mis-gender anyone. Because it isn’t assigning any gender to start with”.”
And that argument fails unless you use them by default with everyone It’s othering. The message is “cis people get normal pronouns, trans people’s pronouns are negotiable”. I can count on one hand the number of people who used any pronoun-set other than he/him/etc to refer to the person they understood to be called Joshua yesterday… or I could if there was a standard hand-sign for “zero”, anyway.
@Random: Your argument is entirely correct, and I make an effort to always use a person’s preferred pronouns, whatever they may be, if I know them. The issue arises when a person’s gender identity, for whatever reason, is in question. Until Willis weighed in, I wasn’t sure how Jocelyne identified, and so I used a neutral pronoun. Now I refer to her as “her,” since I know that she is a woman. Jocelyne was a woman yesterday, but we had no way of knowing that, and therefore used the potentially harmful “he.” Upon realizing that I had previously been in error, I switched to what I understand to be the least harmful alternative, and then switched again once I learned what she preferred.
Well, based on what we know, I’d say would prefer to be referred to as female but accepting to be referred to as male do to not actually being out yet. (Well, to her family, I think she has a circle of friends she’s out to, as well as the fact she’s using a female name for publishing her works.)
Also, is it out of the closest for trans people as well, or do they come out of another thing?
That Jocelyne prefers female pronouns is a reasonable guess. However, if I’ve learned one thing from queer groups, it’s that guessing at people’s identities is a very dangerous and potentially harmful thing.
You really need to get a more realistic look at politeness in referring to people. It is forgivable when meeting a stranger to refer to them by the wrong gender if you don’t know any better, but it is NEVER a good thing to refer to them as an ‘it’. I wouldn’t want my cat or dog to be referred to as an it much less myself.
If you really don’t want to offend someone by using the wrong pronoun then skip using a pronoun at all. Use words such as “y’all” or “person” or “you” which do not have a gender context in the English language. That’s safer than making a guess to gender preferrences, but avoids making that person think they are a disgusting sludge monster in your eyes.
I feel as if you mayhap been attempting to respond to me, as I brought up “it” as a potential pronoun. If this is the case, let me just address it now:
I am not advocating that people should refer to ANYBODY as “it” unless they themselves ask to be. Again, I doubt it is at all common, but there has to be at least one person out there who prefers those pronouns (maybe otherkin who identify as inanimate objects?). The point is that misgendering happens, and it’s not always malicious in intent. Honestly, the onus is kind of on the person in question to specify which pronouns they would like to be referred to as.
Dun Dun DUN!
Wait, what?
She’s MtF
A better term than “Male to Female” is Maab trans* (Male Assigned At Birth) or DMAB trans* (Designated Male at Birth). On their own, neither M/FAAB nor DM/FAB indicate a trans* person, but MtF and FtM have been criticized because it indicates that genitals are important to gender identity. Another reason that M/FaaB and DM/FaB are more widely used by the trans* community is because both terms include non-binary trans* people AND intersex people. (Trans* with an asterisk also indicates that you’re dealing with the trans* umbrella, not just transgender people.)
Personally i think Maab etc is appropriate more for when you don’t know what would go at the end of MtBLAH etc, otherwise use the term appropriate. I know i prefer MtF, but then again whatever terminology the person referred to prefers is the correct one xD
I think it’S too late in the night for me to be able to follow what you’re saying @.@
I’m transgendered and I can’t follow all this terminology, time of day be damned.
I just heard: “A better term than “[human]” is [human] ([homo sapian]) or [human] ([homo sapian])….”
Please don’t do that… people who self-identify do it for a reason…
There is never a good idea to self identify with anyone else than yourself. Each and every case of human personality/sexuality/philosophy/religion/politics is uniquely different. I feel by appropriating a generic term for any of them, you “lose” part of yourself and what makes you you, and stand the risk of letting your personal feeling and thoughts being automatically decided for you just because the group you choose to identify with have taken a collective stance towards an issue. But just because you may have a lot of common with a certain group of people, doesn’t mean that you now suddenly ARE those people. I think too much focus today has been put on the whole “self identifying” thing, as in identifying with someone else. It is a good thing to identify yourself, of course, but look at it more as a catch-all phrase that partly describes you, and be aware that others may have entirely different opinions on what that phrase or word actually MEANS.
And neither religion, politics or sexuality are that imporant. The important things are how you treat yourself, how you treat others, and that you know what you like and don’t like.
@NightRaven … Except those aren’t the only things that matter. What about how others treat you. Or how you want to be treated. Or what you want people to know about you when entering into a dialogue or relationship.
Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world where every human sees every other human as a blank slate with no labels attached. More often than not, somebody is going to look at you an assume something about your gender, sexuality, race, identity.
You are right that no label is perfect, and some people may choose not to self-identify with one label or another or any labels at all. And that is fine, and I respect that choice! But because a thing is unimportant to one person does not mean it is unimportant to others…
Never describe things. Being able to communicate is EVIL.
oh good. I thought i was the only on… No actually i’m pretty aware that we’re all confused about all the terminology people keep making for us
Indeed. As long as nothing is said with malice I’m pretty forgiving if people don’t know what I prefer. I personally find MtF to be easy to use and comprehend.
That is kind of how I’ve viewed everything my whole life. The words are not necessarily the most important thing. The way those words are said has always been much more important to me. The slang/meanings of words are always changing but you can almost always tell if the feeling behind something is judgemental/rude/just plain mean, regardless of what they actually said.
Indeed, intent over vocabulary.
Many of us prefer “transwoman” for Maab and “transman” for Faab since it has slightly less association with our biological sex.
“I want to be FAABulous, but all I am is MAABulous”
Yeah, “transwoman” is the term my friend uses to refer to herself.
I usually just use “trans,” if that level of classification is necessary- or if I really have to be specific I say transwoman. For day-to-day I just say I’m a woman. ‘Cause I am one.
Kinda old, but maybe you’ll see this…
You look like Galasso to me.
Galasso could be a woman. Galasso doesn’t really understand gender.
i really just want to make a saab joke right here
Sedan Assigned At Birth
^Victory
Swedish Assigned At Birth
transwoman is what I use, until I find an appropriate name to use 😛
I prefer AMAB (“assigned male …”) to MAAB just because it’s clearer when you pronounce it.
Sounds like the MOBA vs ARTS debate. Eventually MOBA won because it just sounds better to most. Language sometimes goes the path of least resistance.
Well, Genital Are important for gender identity. I mean, if it weren’t, Trans wouldn’t desire to change them in the first place. Genital are important for gender identity because many trans actually desire to modify them so that the gender of their genital fit the gender of their brain. It’s kind of a big issue.
Not really. I know at least one individual who identifies as a female, yet entirely happy with her male genitalia. I’m lead to understand that such a thing is not entirely uncommon. Identity itself is not just about your physical self. You can be ambivalent about it or even prefer the form that is opposite to your gender identity. Hence the comment that starts this branch of discussion.
On the other hand, there are Trans who will kill themselves for not being born with the right set of genital. Seriously, the Trans Community is the one with one of the highest ratio of suicide (tough it’s also due to rejection by the family/community, but also caused by the feeling of body inadequacy).
So saying the gender of the genital is not important is far from being true for everyone.
Of course. But it’s not a contradiction with the above. Nobody said that genitals are never a factor. Just that a label which implies that they always are is misleading. So long as we accept the fact that there are exceptions either way, presented argument against MtF label follows.
Though, I would argue that any label is going to have such problems, but that’s a separate discussion. As somebody said earlier, whatever label an individual uses to self-identify, I’m happy with that.
As a non-op trans woman, I can definitely agree with K^2’s statements. Genital importance varies wildly in our community, from those who absolutely cannot stand the anatomy they were born with to people like me, who are totally fine with it, and had other issues with the sex they were assigned at birth.
Also, for the record, “trans” is an adjective (usually modifying man/woman/person or similar), not a noun. Referring to us as “a trans” or just “trans” in a manner such as in “…there are trans who…” is incorrect and potentially very offensive, depending on who you’re dealing with, because it is dehumanizing. We are trans women and trans men, along with the many shades of nonbinary trans people, not transwomen, transmen, or transpeople.
^ “trans people” seems rather redundant, as we are all people. Hence why ‘trans’ is winning out in common parlance.
Not quite an adjective, really. Mostly because ‘trans’ isn’t a proper word in English, but slang – shorthand for that matter. Since it doesn’t have long-established parameters fencing it in, people tend to use it as they -think- is appropriate.
Funny thing though – the more it gets used a certain way, the more accepted it becomes by the general speaking public, which in turn may eventually lead to it becoming a official word fitting the perception most hold of it.
This is how a shorthand adjective can in time become a proper noun. It’s not there yet officially, but as far as most people are concerned, it is already there.
TL;DR: In common parlance “trans” = (newly formed) noun , “transgendered” = adjective.
@DarkVeghetta
1) “Not quite an adjective, really. Mostly because ‘trans’ isn’t a proper word in English, but slang – shorthand for that matter.”
Whether or not something is slang has no bearing on its usable syntax.
“Trans” is short for “transgender” (not “transgendered” by the way – it’s not a verb), which if you look it up in most any dictionary, turns out to be an adjective, not a noun. As a shortened version of the word, it shares the same syntactical significance and should thus be (and most commonly is) used as an adjective.
2) Yes, that is an explanation of how slang is incorporated into the “official” language pool, but you should listen to your own explanation. I don’t know where you got the idea that those are the “common parlance” terms – any dictionary (including urban dictionary – a slang hub) will show you the adjective definition of “trans” as a shortening of “transgender”.
3) You’re missing the main point here.
Syntactical significance, slang evolving into “official language,” and all else aside…
Calling someone “a trans” is offensive and is often used in a derogatory context. The poster before you clearly pointed this out, but you ignored their primary argument. The word “fag” is also a shorthand noun that has been accepted into common use. Does that mean it’s okay to use it regularly to refer to gay people? Nope! Because it’s offensive. Just because something is syntactically significant doesn’t mean you should use it.
There really is no hard and fast rule regarding the gender you identify as and the type of plumbing you keep between your legs, though many people in all sides of the Gender Identity Clusterfuck™ do try to assign rules! Take me, for example. Physically male, by preference bisexual, and by mentality somewhere between androgynous and hermaphroditic. I don’t know if that makes me generic genderqueer, or just strange, since all my “gender variances” are strictly internal.
I don’t think I have a mental gender either. I like girls and I’m physically male, and that’s always been my definition of straight male, but if that’s not accurate, I might as well be a lesbian woman. And if you believe in re-incarnation, who can say how many times I might have been and will be again female?
Where did you get a Spider Jerusalem Gravatar?
Since there are no real futa irl, I’ve pretty much just went with ‘pansexual’ and called it a day. As for ‘internal gender variance’ – it’s a clusterfuck of rainbows, kittens, explosions and blood in there.
It all mixes into a hot gooey mess that is my psyche.
To clarify: I’d be most attracted to futa, then women, then a very few select men. I’m not saying I’d be a futa… though… now that I mention it… excuse me, my penis is calling.
Also: “real […] irl” is redundant. Mah bad, it’s late.
just chiming in a couple days late to say that actually, whether or not genitals are important depends on the trans* person. I’m trans* and have no issue with my genitals. A dear friend of mine is trans* and as deep issues with dysphoria. It varies from person to person.
As a transman, I disagree that FtM/MtF are used solely to refer to genitalia. Personally, I would say “female to male” would refer to my life experiences and what I “lived as”. Whether I like it or not (obviously I don’t) I have experiences of living and being viewed as female, and that has been a large influence in shaping who I am.
But I’m more or less the opposite of “active in the trans* community”, so that’s just my thoughts.
Choosing to go by a female alias doesn’t necessarily tell us that they suffer from gender dysphoria or what their gender identity is, however, so I’m not assuming one thing or another about J. Brown the Second Child just yet.
…And then I hopped on the laptop to check the alt text. Damn Kindle not letting me see it!
can someone PLEASE explain what the hell is going on and who is joceylin? is that joyce’s full name or something?
The character that we were introduced to as Joshua, Joyce’s brother, identifies as a female, Jocelyne.
Y-You can read Webcomics on a kindle? But what about the colors?
And I feel your pain brother, my smartphone also hates alt-text ;-;
Probably one of the fancy full-color ones.
Yup! My fiance was given it a year ago, and at the time I believe it was quite new. It’s mostly used for the internet and to fuel his Angry Birds obsession- amusingly, I don’t think we’ve ever actually read a book on it.
The lack of alt text is a downer, but at least I can read stuff as he works or studies.
Better, but as someone who’s been exposed to (…okay, this is gonna sound awkward but I’m low on both sugar and caffiene) this sorta thing for probably 15 years now, I can’t say I’ve ever heard any of those terms you use, so they might take a little more time to catch on.
For now, MtF / FtM is a reasonable descriptor is it not? It describes both their birth assignment and/or naturally expressed phenotype, and their mental gender / surgically and artificial-hormonally target/acquired phenotype in one easily written and understood package.
That said, I’m still confused here. Either we’re dealing with, ahem, a MaaB sibling who still fronts up as a male “Joshua” to their parents, but is actually Jocelyne in private/on the quiet – which I think is more likely* – or FaaB who was originally named Jocelyne but now passes for male, as “Josh”, full time.
* Clues: Parents and presumably Joyce also “don’t know very much”, and call “him” Josh, and accept the presented male (if still a touch effeminate – enough to trip Ethan’s gaydar) outlook without protest; and the site that s/he texted to Ethan – in preference to saying it out loud in front of Joyce – bears a generally female name…
Since Joyce mentioned she was the only girl in one comic or the other, I’m’a go with ‘a MaaB sibling who still fronts up as a male “Joshua” to their parents, but is actually Jocelyne in private/on the quiet’ too
well, it’s important to not feel like one term is superior to another, especially if that superiority is based in length of time of use of said term. we’re always coming up with better descriptors, we humans, and it’s typically the people who those labels affect that decide, and that get to decide, not cisgendered people like myself! of course I do not know how you identify, but I am always trying to keep up on the kindest terminology out there to have as few barriers of communication between myself and those around me, in general!
@tahrey Also MtF/FtM is shorter then MAAB/FAAB. Hence more pleasing to use in general. Rolls off the keyboard/tongue better too.
You know, I’m sympathetic to LGBTQ/”Alphabet Soup” issues, but maybe inventing and teaching a complicated new glossary of artificial PC vocabulary isn’t the best way to earn mainstream support.
Support shouldn’t have to be “earned.” People should be treated like people, regardless of their preferred lexicon. Heck, even if a group consists entirely of total jerks, they should still be treated like people, and that’s way worse than having a complex set of terminology to describe, as accurately as possible, one’s identity.
There’s a reason certain parts of the queer community use “ally” disparagingly.
Right, and no one should be racist and there should be no wars.
But that’s not the world we live in. It isn’t about should or shouldn’t, it’s about what will be most effective in making the world a better place.
If your criteria for granting people basic human rights is that they bend over backwards to make your life easier, then I can’t bring myself to care about what you think.
^
Not going out of your way to fail at communication =/= bending over backwards to make someone else’s life easier.
Using accurate terminology to describe yourself =/= failing at communication.
It’s not about bending over backwards to do anything. The main reason for most prejudices is a lack of understanding. If you’re introducing so many terms and phrases that it seems like trying to read an advanced coding textbook and even trans* people often get lost, you’re not fostering understanding. By making it much harder to understand, you’re making it harder for the prejudice to die.
I never understood the need for fifteen different phrases. I am a man. I am also transsexual. If I ever need to explain this to someone (which seldom happens because it’s not their business), I call myself “a transsexual man”. People can identify with whatever label fits them, but if you want people to understand and accept aspects of you, you have to communicate in a way they can understand.
If your criteria for effective communication is accusing anyone that fails to perfectly digest your confusing, constantly changing, and inconsistent lexicon of terms as being homophobic, then I can’t bring myself to care about what you think either, Toad. But I’ll continue to try to make the world a better place despite your efforts to make it worse.
In this case it’s more that they not bend over backwards to be a pain in the ass.
My point was not that the trans* lexicon, such as it is, is a shining example of effective communication. My point was that one ought not use effective communication as the metric by which to measure how many human rights are deserved. Refusing to support a minority group because they use confusing words is a pretty shitty example of “making the world a better place.”
You are arguing against a point I didn’t make, TPRJones. I never said that people who don’t perfectly use the language considered currently appropriate are homophobic or transphobic. I did say that refusing to support the cause of gay/queer/trans rights because they use too many acronyms, or are annoying sometimes, or whatever, is awful.
If you think a human rights cause is just, then you should support it. (At least passively; I don’t demand that anyone go out and protest for every single cause they theoretically support.) If every single member of some group was a total jerk, and they were being denied human rights, I’d still support them. That people think being confusing is a reasonable rationale for denying people rights is pretty disgusting.
@sd: People are people, even if they are a pain in the ass, and therefore deserve your support.
And just as equally you are arguing against a point I didn’t make, Toad. I never said that people who are unwilling to use effective communication don’t deserve human rights and equality under the law. I did say that if you throw a raging hissy fit every time someone doesn’t use exactly the right term you have chosen for yourself rather than attempt to actually communicate with them about these things they don’t understand, then you aren’t going to be changing anyone’s minds that way.
@TPRJones: Then you are arguing against a point I didn’t make. If you read the post of mine you initially responded to, you will see that I was objecting to people holding their “ally” status hostage over minority groups behaving the way they think they should. If you don’t disagree with me on that point, then why did you throw a “hissy fit” over a point I didn’t make? Remember, you responded disparagingly to me in the first place, not the other way around.
Actually I was defending stevecharb’s point that winning support by attacking someone for failing to understand complex and relatively arbitrary terminology is not a practical expectation. Neither he nor I said that it was therefor valid to treat people as less than human, that was your assumption that you added – rather insultingly, I might add – to the conversation.
Clearly this is getting us nowhere. I give up. You go ahead and keep shitting on everyone around you and hoping that might make them change their minds. Good luck with that.
There’s a lot of words for trans people. There’s also a lot of words for angry people. There are a lot of words for happy people. Communicating well means learning a large vocabulary, period.
@TPRJones: stevecharb’s original post said nothing about anyone being attacked; it was specifically about “inventing and teaching” a bunch of terms. Your initial response to my criticism was sarcasm. You quickly escalated to claiming that I was actively trying to make the world a worse place, throwing a hissy fit, and shitting on everyone around me. I fail to see how that makes me the one who’s being insulting. (Or, for that matter, the one behaving as you claimed I was.)
I said that it was not acceptable to treat people as less than human for describing themselves in a complex manner. I did not even say that stevecharb said that it was acceptable. When you angrily disagreed with my post, I assumed you therefore disagreed with the contents of that post, and responded accordingly.
If your ‘support’ is unable to include the learning of a few terms, it may be a good idea to re-evaluate the value you think those communities should assign to it.
Ding ding ding! Freemage gets it.
Its not a few terms though. Its an inconsistent ever changing dictionary of terms, some of which are preferred by some while others are seen as offensive by the same community. I can deal with individual people, but I can’t deal with the trans ‘community’ because I can’t get through their layers of terminology. Even my transsexual friends have problems with what the term of the week is, and the ‘community’ can apparently get pretty caustic about it even with trans* people.
I call people whatever they identify as, provided they stay within the boundaries of english (xie is stupid). I do not care what is in their pants, unless its of burning importance to them that I know, and then I usually tell them Id rather not have known.
That’s a fine complaint. The terminology is inconsistent and confusing. That’s an issue that should be addressed. Denying a group your support because its members can’t agree on what they want to be called is pretty atrocious. People aren’t taking umbrage with someone saying “your usage of terms is confusing;” the problem is that people hold their “ally” status hostage over it. Phrases like “you’re making it really hard for me to support you right now!” and “if you want me to support you, you should just make it less confusing for me” are all too common. Being confused is acceptable; no one denies that the lexicon has gotten a bit confusing. Denying a group of people fundamental human rights because they all describe themselves with different acronyms is pretty messed up.
“….the problem is that people hold their “ally” status hostage over it.” You’ve spelled out something which has often bothered me about these arguments without me quite being able to put my finger on it. Thanks! (And actually, most LGBTQ etc people I know seem pretty tolerant of well-intentioned fumblings with the terminology. Though that could just be low expectations.)
“Phrases like “you’re making it really hard for me to support you right now!” and “if you want me to support you, you should just make it less confusing for me” are all too common”
Well, that’s just people being assholes. Tell them to stop being assholes.
Look, it doesn’t matter who a person is, they deserve equal rights under the law and the opportunity to pursue their own life goals as best they can. If someone will not support the rights of even their worst and most hated enemy, then they have failed at freedom and clearly don’t understand the basic responsibilities of being a citizen. Or maybe they are just douche-nozzles. That’s also possible.
All that having been said, all too many times I’ve seen some poor schmuck who doesn’t understand LGBTQ issues but is trying to be supportive being viciously attacked because he used the wrong pronoun. If he’s not a douche he’s not going to then “withdraw support” because he would know that even assholes deserve equality. But he’s less likely to actively go out of his way to champion the cause than he was before.
Some people in the trenches of this war need to realize that attacking everyone indiscriminately when they don’t use the proper gender passwords of the week doesn’t make things better.
Sure, TPRJones, I’ll agree with you on those points. I was writing about the assholes who like to imagine they’re paragons of tolerance while demanding that queer people do XYZ thing in order for them to be willing to support them. I suspect you read my criticism of those people as a criticism of genuinely well-meaning but confused allies.
TRPJones has it dead on.
Toad, you’re missing the fundamental problem, which is that yes, it’s one thing if someone says “hey, I prefer you call me ____” but it’s total complete asshattery to blow up at people who make an assumption that would be valid 97% of the time when you haven’t even told them in the first place. Being part of a minority group does not, last time I checked, confer powers of telepathic projection (if it does, mine must’ve got lost in the mail, the jerks), so it’s really illogical to expect other people to know every nuance of our existence.
@Ash: I agree with everything in your post except the part where you implied that I ever disagreed with anything you just said. Honest mistakes are just that, honest mistakes, and should be treated as such. Demanding that queer people stick to the terms that straight people prefer to make it easier on “allies” is what I was taking exception to in my posts.
Oh, and I’m going to assume that you have no objection to “google” being used as a term for “internet search,” so why is “xe” any different? Language changes. Some language is intentionally invented. Some of it occurs “organically.” None of it is passed down from like, mischievous river spirits or something.
It’s no hardship to you to call someone “xe” instead of “it,” if they specifically ask you to, so why not?
“xe”? I’m sorry, but there’s new English terms and then there’s faux-Mandarin. Language can only be organic, otherwise people won’t use it. You can’t actually impose a set of terms onto others –
because only they have the power to use them or not.
A word that only a handful know of is slang and therefore unimportant. If people use it enough it MIGHT become an official term, sure, but that’s unlikely to happen if you construct something that is not pleasing to the ear of a speaker of sed language – in this case English.
In other words “xe” sounds stupid, therefore it will not gain large acceptance, hence it will not be an effective tool of communication.
It can be a masturbatory aid if you so choose, but I was of the strange impression you’d rather want to confer an idea, not just hear words you like more.
I *don’t* think that’s what people are saying, though. It’s not that we’re unwilling to learn. It’s that we’re often taught a set of terms, and then when we use those terms down the road, we’re suddenly hit in the face with “Don’t say that like that! It’s offensive!” Some people are flexible and mature enough not to be upset when someone comes at them like that, but most people would be understandably upset if they were trying to be non-offensive and someone said “You are being offensive” when they were using the words that they were taught to say.
A learning moment can be handled much better than infodumping a new set of rules onto an unsuspecting person. Like, “You know, Male to Female *did* used to be the broadly-accepted term, but since then, a lot of us have been switching over to ‘male assigned at birth’ because of x y z reasons. But a lot of transpersons use different descriptors based on what they feel comfortable with!”
You might not be saying that, but some people do and are. Lots of “allies” base their support on whether or not queer people are nice to them, and use it as some sort of perverse bribe. “If you behave well, I’ll help you get human rights.” That is a separate issue from language being confusing.
And if you think it’s upsetting to be told that something you said is hurtful, just imagine how it feels to constantly be on the receiving end of that, along with constant misgendering, intentional or not, and with a few blatantly hurtful slurs thrown in now and again. Cis folk are the majority. We have it better than trans* folk, in this instance, no matter how confused we might be. (And before anyone says anything, that doesn’t mean that any given cis person is better-off than any given trans* person, just that, all else being equal, being cisgender confers a certain level of privilege.)
Actually, behaving well SHOULD be the basis on which you get ANY ‘rights’ (socially, not legally – though personally I’d run with legally as well, but suppose too few would qualify then to actually
form a country).
As a matter of fact, the worse of a person you are to others, the worse you DESERVE to be treated in turn. That’s got nothing to do with any self-identification, that’s just basic common sense.
What you just sed reeks of self-importance.
See, the really funny thing here is you got ME to act in a less-then-hospitable manner when I’m usually the one to def end queers/trans/etc, but in this case you don’t seem like the kind of person that I’d find amiable, therefore I won’t act friendly to you.
The problems you mentioned seem to be more caused by sed people being unlikeable, rather then them belonging to any minority.
The terminology keeps changing, though, and there are a couple dozen different competing ideas of how to describe people whose bodies don’t match their souls, all of which seem to have emerged in the past decade or so. Some are so bizarre, they’re barely recognizable as English. If I use the “wrong” one, I’ll be treated like a jerk.
I always make a good effort to be equally kind and respectful to people regardless of who or what they are, even when I have to go out of my comfort zone, and I stand up to those who condemn or mock people because they are different. I do this not for praise, nor for necessity; I do it because it is right.
I will persist in doing the right thing even if you call me a jerk for using a word that was politically correct within five years ago (doesn’t mean you should).
But good luck convincing Joe Sixpack to turn his prejudices around with this strategy.
I’d vehemently argue that anyone calling someone else a jerk for not using the word they want you to use has something stuck up his arse somethin’ fierce (note: as long as it’s not obviously
a slur).
Also, overly PC-ish terms are bullshit. Feel free to use them in your own community if you like, but don’t shove them down other peoples throats.
Weather I use ‘trans’, ‘xe’, ‘MAAB’ etc should make no difference if I’m sharing a beer with you.
Likewise, if I’m punching you in the dick, me using the term you like more won’t make your dick any less punched.
The “standard” terms simply do not describe trans* people. It’s not that trans* people want to make you learn new phrases for the hell of it – its that, to describe themselves, they have had to discover and develop new phrases. To think that they are artificial and “PC” is like saying to someone who is Hispanic or Asian “so, are you black or white? Cos those are the only races.”
Only… Hispanic and Asian ARE arbitrary and PC terms, and ALSO simplifies things to the point of uselessness. There are [large number] different Hispanic countries all over the world, just as there are [even larger number] Asian countries. These people have very little in common, other than a shared cultural/racial heritage at an arbitrary point in time. (Arbitrary, in that if you count from the beginning, we are all the same race as are the amoebas ) . Ultimately terms are meaningless, it is what you put in them that gives them meaning. I would say details and anecdotes are more useful in communicating than new terminology.
“a shared cultural/racial heritage” – there you go, that’s why it’s not quite a worthless term.
Also I’d add “general geographical region of origin” to
why the terms are actually useful.
I’d rather call someone ‘Japanese’ over ‘Asian’, as it confers more information – but if I only have visual data on them, I can make some usually valid assumptions if the context doesn’t contradict such.
RE: Too many words stops mainstream support;
I agree with you up to a point. But I learnt the names of 150 pokemon when I was 7, and the three trans people I’ve talked to were totally fine with asking what pronouns to use, just like the tumblr posts said.
I’m IN that soup, and I agree full-heartedly. Confusing labels are confusing.
Oh god what did I start. Okay first off MtF here, second off basically I said that Maab Faab are in my opinion better for when you don’t know what the person identifies as but that what ever they want to be called is the correct term.
FtM here, I agree with Night Raven, terms get way too political and don’t actually mean anything once they get to the point they have. If you want a technical argument, you don’t know what someone was assigned at birth unless you have their birth certificate, so, major flaw right there. Just call someone what they present as. If you get it wrong, and they tell you, then correct yourself in the future. The terms __t___ and __aab, they’re only necessary in a specifically trans context, as in, they convey information about the person’s gender identity and sexual construction, and really only mean anything if you’re talking about health concerns or social/legal questions in a situation specifically regarding transgender issues.
See, I’m fortunate enough to have an understanding family, and I’ve been around my share of bigots, but the single biggest problem I had to (and still have to) overcome regarding my trans identity is this bullshit about labels and political correctness. I have been told I’m not trans enough, I’ve been told I’m not allowed to talk about certain things, or share my experience, or that my identity put other people down, when in reality, it’s the PC crusaders who put everyone else down and try to make everyone conform to their idea of transgender identity. Hardcore Christians have said I’m abnormal, but it’s LGBT activists who send me death threats.
uhhhh… dyslexic head spinning……
Coming in a little late here, but…
I’ve been pretty much living in reddit’s LGBT (mostly T) groups for a half a year now – for the obvious reason someone would start hanging out on T related forums – and MtF and FtM are by far the most common terms used by people to describe themselves. The community there uses trans and trans* as general nouns for themselves and the community as a whole with no one there seeing such use as offensive or dehumanizing. MAAB/FAAB come out a bit, but I’ve never once heard anyone use DMAB/DFAB, and I haven’t seen anyone in the community indicate that MtF or FtM has any connotation of reducing someone’s identity to their genitals, or dividing trans* people into categories of “need to change their plumbing” vs “OK with original equipment”.
Is the reddit transgender community very different from the rest of the transgender community? I live in a small community without much face-to-face contact, so online is pretty much all the exposure I’ve had so far.
I mean, I don’t like the term FtM b/c I feel like it implies that at some point I was female, and I know a few trans people who feel the same. But that’s not everybody, so if someone identifies with that than they should absolutely feel free to use it. The term itself is not bad, some people just have reasons not to use it.
Tumblr community generally uses dmab/dfab, and there i never heard maab/faab. And FtM and MtF are falling out of practice because they are too binary I think, that’s all.
I mean, generally people just use ‘she/her’/’he/him’/’they/them’ to indicate gender, dmab/dfab is just for when it’s relevant to the discussion at hand.
Oh, and dmab/dfab or maab/faab are better when FtM/MtF when you actually want to include cis people with it. Like ‘dfab people get inferior health care compared to dmab people’.
And that’s what we queers call “alphabet soup”.
… MtF and “not gay”… so totally into Ethan? Oh yeah. Now Ethan’s *really* confused. Nice thing about being pansexual: not giving a shit about the inward / outward gender of a potential lover. Nice thing about being married: not giving a shit about anybody else’s anything.
He isn’t gay. SHE is Trans.
When Josh said “I’m not gay”… I thought it was something really small…
And if she’s a straight woman that would explain why she seemed flirty with Ethan.
But Ethan wouldn’t fell attracted to her if her body was female. She probably know that.
Ethan is currently into her, obviously. We have no way of knowing
A) If she intends to physically transition, or to what extent
B) If Ethan would continue to feel attraction to her if she did
Assuming either piece of information would be pretty presumptuous.
There’s also a matter of whether or not Ethan is attracted to bodies or people. There are cisgendered gay men who would date a trans*woman and there are cisgendered gay men who would not, but would gladly date a trans*man. It depends, person-to-person, on how much of their attraction is based on romantic attraction and how much is based on physical attraction. Some people have a different sexual orientation to their romantic orientation, and some do not. Some people are largely driven by romantic attraction and some are largely driven by sexual attraction. The next step largely depends on who Ethan is in this equation.
Considering Ethan couldn’t get attracted to his former best friend, I’d say he’s more in the physical over romantic side of things.
Transgendered people actually have a pretty high quota of gays (meaning their choice of partner in relation to their chosen gender): “trans” is not really about who you can accept as a partner, but who you can accept as yourself. And if you have come to reject the reproductive organs you have been stuck with at birth, it gets harder to embrace them in a partner. A non-trans person starts with a less loaded relationship to the complementary body type.
Thanks for saying this, being trans does have a way of making any minor bisexual leanings… less minor. I would probably identify as straight if I had been born with male genitalia- I still have a strong preference for the ladies, but between revulsion for what I was born with, the fact that I could never make love to a lady in a way that would feel “right” to me, and my fascination for the genitalia I wasn’t born with… ladies, sadly, end up for little more than ogling.
(I was lucky enough to fall for an androgynous male-bodied a-gendered sweetie so WHO CARES.)
The two trans ladies I’ve known both had bisexual tendencies, but identified as lesbian.
It’s an intriguing blend of two very separate parts of a person’s identity coming into contact, and it fascinates me.
Bigender here, and IKTF.
Frustratingly enough, my own sexuality is ridiculously compartmentalized – technically, you could say I’m bi, but that doesn’t quite cover it. I have different ways of being attracted to different genders based on what gender I am at the moment. So basically, I’m stuck feeling dysphoric half the time, and probably will have a very unsatisfying love/sex life.
I’m bigender, physically male and straight/lesbian.
Gender identity and sexuality are complicated things. Trying to cover them with umbrella terms is stupid.
omfg, you are the only other bigender person I have ever met!
Good to know I’m not alone here. c:
(also totz, you prolly missed it yesterday, but what ever happened to the d&mm episode and synopsis list?)
Shit! A lot of stuff’s been going on in my life (breakup, losing a cat to cancer, new kittens, family drama, etc.) that I forgot about it!
It’s partially done. I need to get back on it.
Thanks for reminding me! Sorry it fell by the wayside.
Also: *bigender high-five!*
No, it’s cool! I’m glad you’ll be working on it again. :’B
/bi-five yo
Gay here, but not really.
I am attracted to someone who’s personality is not being fixated on being too princessy, meaning he/she is setting not expectations to me to become his/her prince charming (e.g. providing flowers, financial provider on dates, me doing all the surprise for him/her, me doing all the masculine labor without him/her trying, expects me not to feel under-appreciated cause I’m a guy). I prefer the relationship to be a mutual effort (I want to have a romantic surprise as well), and guys mostly are the ones that are able to do so. I am yet waiting for a girl that can get along with my personality.
Physical attraction, for me, comes secondary.
God, I hate too much taxonomies.
sorry, *not setting expectations
Gender/sexuality truly is a individual thing. That’s probably why there are so many individual terms trying to lump people together. I personally identify as a straight male, but I am in a polyamourus relationship with two women and another straight man, so that means I don’t exactly fit in the traditional sexuality roles either. It is wonderful that we are becoming more inclusive as a whole to all this individual identities and feelings.
…and with that, “Can you tell me where to find your writing?”, BayoWolf? 😀
I’m male, but it seems I act/think/feel as a mix of both traditional male and female roles.
I COMPLETELY get the ‘I want to have a romantic surprise as well’ part – I’ve shocked all my girlfriends when I told them that I would LOVE to be given flowers.
Only one of them actually did so, but that is one of the happiest memories I have. Also one of the most erotic ones I have.
I totally missed this. I just figured he knew Ethan was on the pull and sent over Joyces site as a hint to the boy dating his sister.
Wat
Is he actually a she, still presenting as male to her parents?
Okay, just saw the hover text. I’m dumb.
There’s hover text to these?! Frak, back to page one
Actually it starts sometime around Book two. Don’t remember when.
First occurance of alttext: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/02-guess-whos-coming-to-galassos/scoot/
Though a comment was left there stating that one random comic before that has alttext now, so binge at your own risk. Also shortpacked got alttext at the same time, just so you know.
Without the hovertext I would have thought that Joshua was actually just running out of his sister’s sight (what with Joyce sounding like a good truncated version of Jocelyn.) I wonder if that sounds as dumb as I think it sounds.
Dumb, I don’t know. But spelling ‘site’ as ‘sight’ sure makes it confusing.
I actually found the one with the extra alt text. I forgot which strip it was for, though.
I’ve been going through the archive assembling a timeline of events. I wish I’d known to look for stray hovertext before I got through the first week and a half of DoA-time.
Her sister IS adorable.
Hi, accessing through a mobile device here.
What exactly does this alt-text say?
“joyce’s sister is adorable”
Yea i m really confused
For future reference to all mobile users:
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20100404045906105
Thank you!
iOS users =/= all mobile users
IT’S OVER NINE THOU…. oh wait, wrong question.
Thought so.
High Five!
This was my first guess! (My second was furry.)
Admittedly, I only had 2 internet dollars ridding on that (and another 2 for otter fursona).
You know, are you being serious about this or a joke?
Because I’m into anthro characters, draw them etc. My parents, my husbands parents and a good portion of our friends and family know my husband and I are furry (the rest it hasn’t come up).
They don’t care – they know it isn’t all costumes and sex.
I’ve been into anthro characters since I was little and going to church and drew them then as well. No one thought that was odd or weird even as I got older.
Dunno, just thought I’d ask.
I was serious that I thought Jocelyne was possibly furry. I figured Willis would make her some sexual minority or queer. Especially with the “I’m not actually gay” line.
are you saying being a furry counts as a sexually minority????
That is why I wanted to know if they were serious.
Being furry is nothing like coming out as different sexually.
Probably to their fundie parents it would be.
I’m gonna’ say that it is, as long as there is a sexual aspect to it. Any kink/fetish puts one in the “sexual minority” category in my book, though obviously being gay, trans, asexual, etc. will have a larger influence on one’s life. Having, say, a foot fetish would put someone in the sexual minority (since the majority of people DON’T get aroused by feet) but it will be less “important” (bad word, but can’t think of a better alternative right now) than being trans, for example, since the former is easily kept secret (except from one’s sexual partners, of course) and only impacts one’s sex life, not one’s life outside of the bedroom. Does that make sense?
But being furry isn’t necessarily sexual – it isn’t a kink/fetish.
Fursuit sex – yes
But in that sense so is cosplay sex.
Any kink in furry can be placed in a kink under normal terms too. Using your foot fetish example – just they use paw fetish.
As for drawn porn, well – people have been aroused by it since dawn of time. Even antho styled porn has been found dating back quite a bit – before furries were even around. I think it was Egyptian?
This is true. However, given the context, I believe EvergreenFir was using “furry” in the sexual sense.
To some extent, yes. It’s not the same, but it is definitely not accepted by mainstream.
And yes, I do know the difference between asexual and sexual furries.
You would probably be surprised how accepted anthro characters as a whole are.
As I said they have been around for ages. Also, most people forget about the bad MTV and NCIS episodes long as you don’t point them out all the time.
My parents thought the NCIS episodes were hilarious, but know I draw anthro characters and know I hang out in the furry community (since I was 19 mind you they have known). My husband is a furry as well.
Stereotypes are not as bad as you may think if you just talk to people.
Fursuits are even allowed in public in a lot of places people enjoy the players.
Granted I think if you use the suit for personal purposes you need to swap the bodies out but…you know most furries even agree with that.
I’m queer myself, no one in my family cares. Coming out as anything depends a lot on your context. What’s fine and acceptable to some people is a heinously deviant transgression to others. (I’m guessing this one wouldn’t be all sunshine and rainbows to Jocelyn’s folks)
Considering they were trying to make their daughter stop being friends with an atheist, I think this is way beyond what they want to deal with.
I called it right around the time I heard the phrase “not allowed to be my real self” (paraphrased).
I didn’t and… Wow, I feel like I should have.
Well. Didn’t see that coming.
Same. Wonder if Joyce knows or not?
Since she referred to him as her “brother”, I’d give it a probable “no”.
Not always, some people don’t understand about referring to a person as their preferred gender.
Or, what could be worse, is she thinks it can be cured like what she’s trying to do with Ethan and assumes her brother’s just going though a phase or something.
That’s deep, and terrifying. I don’t want to think about that.
But, this is Joyce we’re talking about here. I think, given how kind she is, if she knew she’d say sister… At least in private to spare Jocelyne’s feelings if she didn’t want to be pushed into open so fast.
Jocelyne’s probably keeping it a secret from Joyce because she loves her, and knows with everything else going on in her life (college, finding herself, and now having a gay boyfriend) she doesn’t want to strain her emotionally or mentally any more than already going on.
If her sister is still representing herself as a he to most of the world, than Joyce may be respecting her privacy. I’ve been friends with a gal who hasn’t come out yet or made the switch. So I always refer to her as he unless it’s a private conversation to protect her.
That being said, I tend to suspect that Joyce has no idea. I doubt Jocelyne would have felt okay confiding in her prior to this. But with her world views expanding in college…maybe that conversation will happen soon.
I’m friends with… an individual who has made a decision to NEVER transition. (For several reasons.) Instead, they treat the male they’ve learned to present and live as, and the female they wish they could live as, as two different people.
Confused yet? “He” has a bisexual girlfriend, who is friends with “her”. The girlfriend said she would support their transition but only as a friend, because she “fell in love with the man, not the woman.”
You start laying on the layers of hiding and pretence and this shit can get mind boggling.
That’s sad though, unless “he” doesn’t feel like he’s just complying to “his” girlfriend.
“He” definitely takes the loss of his girlfriend into account, but “he” also feels that other factors are large enough to stop it ever happening. “His” family, health, age, career are all factors that make “him” feel he can never be “her” full time.
It’s still incredibly sad though. They’re how I learned what gender dysphoria was, what it meant, and set the foundations for my own “coming out” three years later.
I know this is late, and probably no one will ever seen this, but this is exactly why I go for pansexual people.
Agree. Jocelyn is still presenting as male to her whole family. She’ll have to come out eventually, but that’s not a family in which it’ll be easy.
There’s also force of habit. I knew a friend of mine for a year before finding out they were trans, so for a while I had trouble remembering to use the correct pronouns.
You’re kidding right.
I’m guessing no. Given her earlier reactions to the gay thing, there’s no way she would’ve been able to handle it before college. She might take better to it nowadays, but I’m assuming that’s a process we’ll have to see ourselves sometime in the future.
‘Course she doesn’t. It would have blown her mind, and her bro- her sister wouldn’t want to put her through that.
Joyce knows. There is no way she could not know.
Why she is still maintaining the charade, though, is anybody’s guess.
Joyce likes her delusions, they’re warm and comforting
Sorry, disregard my post above. I posted before I let my admittedly narrow mind expand to consider all the possibilities, and was thinking that Joshua was a female transvestite passing as male.
I’m sorry what now?
You just don’t have a single gram of patience for anyone who doesn’t already fully understand this stuff, do you?
Er, I don’t think that means what you think that means…
Someone not understanding the distinctions between gender identities? INCONCEIVABLE!
Nope, I think he means what he says. I think he thought that Jocelyn was a drag king, basically. Why he thought that her parents would be okay with that, and refer to her by a “drag name”, I’m unsure, but that was what his impression sounded like to me.
I think Joyce may end up surprising us if/when she does find out, considering the strides she’s already made… I’m imagining Joyce being excited to have a sister instead of the house full of brothers she thought she had.
OH SHIT
i said the exact same thing
Oh.
Well, that was awesome.
…oh
Called it.
Jocelyne? Oh…..
jocelynejbrown.com redirects to dumbingofage.com
All links lead to Willis.
example: http://www.google.com
WILLISCRAFT!
I smell hyperlinks!
Oh no. IT BEGINS.
it’s cute and awesome when Willis spent money to get this joke going!
I think it might have been more “If I don’t actually register this domain, then someone else will buy it up and fill it with porn and/or viruses” than anything else.
But it could have been some nice, contextual DoA porn. Not your normal R34 garbage.
Huh. I tried and got redirected to “ww35.jocelyn…” Which turned out to be one of those placeholder search screens. I feel let down.
And I see I misspelled Jocelyne. Go me!
NOT actually gay.
But if she’s a chick, then…
Ethan! You still have a chance!
Yeah, but she doesn’t date enormous assholes. And also you can’t date her for the reason I can’t date MY trans friend.
Why can’t you date your trans friend?
Xe’s a fictional character, presumably.
Because I’m not gay. And he’s a guy now. And if I touch his boobs it’ll just make him frustrated cuz he does not want them.
Not all trans* people have the same experiences though. Your trans* friend might not want to date straight dudes, but we have no evidence that Jocelyn doesn’t want xir male sex characteristics, nor that xe wouldn’t consider dating gay dudes. Sexuality is way complex.
True, I’m just presenting issues “In my personal experience”
Fair enough!
Why are you using gender-neutral pronouns? She’s a girl, yo. Willis used “sister” in the hovertext.
I’m erring on the side of caution. Gender-neutral is gender-neutral. Until xe specifies xir PPPs, I’ll keep on using the broadest terms I can.
‘Xe’ and similar invented pronouns should really only be used in reference to people who request those pronouns be used in reference to them. “The broadest terms” possible would be singular they.
I identify as gender-neutral and ‘xe’ has always made me feel like a Martian.
I agree with Ae. I’m gender-neutral/fluid, and I have never liked the ‘xe’ ‘zhi’ and so on pronouns that people keep throwing around. If others want to use them, fantastic for them, but please don’t use them to refer to me. ‘They’ is a much more acceptable answer, but I’d err on the side of caution and ask the person (or the character’s creator) what pronouns to use. I actually request people use male pronouns for me, but don’t get upset if they mess up.
Except that then grammatical prescriptivists would get mad at me. The theoretical purpose of “invented” GN pronouns is to act as unabiguously singular pronouns that can be used to describe any individual, regardless of gender identity. Large segments of the queer community prefer that GN pronouns be used for those whose preferred pronouns are unknown. Others, like you, don’t like them. So please don’t act like your solution is the only correct one. I never claimed that anyone was wrong for using “she” or “they,” because it is a matter of such debate, even within the trans* community. I merely defended my use of GN pronouns, which is consistent with much of current queer theory.
(And of course, I would never use pronouns you have specifically requested not be used.)
Rule of thumb for transsexual people, I think, is to not date people who want to date you BECAUSE of the gender you were assigned at birth. Everyone is different, sure, and some people will feel differently, but that’s a damn good rule for most transsexuals.
Can’t comment on any other trans* people though.
A wild gender-neutral neologism appeared!
Toad used “Xe”
It’s not very effective…
😉
Don’t worry about it, dude. I think we can for now assume “she / her”, and if it turns out later to be incorrect, make our embarrassed apologies and correct as necessary.
After all, using the made-up terms is fairly presumptive in of itself and imho about as discriminatory and dehumanising as using “it” (as I say – just my own opinion :P), when we do already have “they” and “their” to refer to a person whose gender we don’t know or who may be either, without resorting to objectifying or sci-fi’ing them.
I keep imagining Xe from the Untitled! webcomic.
But Ethan doesn’t like girls do.
do what
do not have a penis, obviouisly.
Well, he liked Josh. That attraction is likely to remain at least until Josh transitions more, but yeah, kinda realized it was actually a doomed proposition either way.
Not necessarily, Jocelyn might want to keep her penis, and Ethan might not mind date Transwoman. There are many variables.
*though. I meant though.
Actually…that’s true. Since she did seem attracted.
Unfortunately for the ship, Joshua identifies as a woman and Ethan is only attracted to men. If ever she decides to transition, that would could major issues.
One of my mom’s soap operas had a story where a lesbian was attracted to a man who identified as a woman (except as his rock star persona). And this wasn’t the one with the vampire rock star and guy being possessed by a demon to become a cloaked Punisher who went after rapists and other sexual abusers.
Soap operas are weird
I KNOW RIGHT?! I don’t know why more people don’t embrace the lunacy!
Because you have to wade through a lot of boring to get to the good stuff.
Unfortunately for the ship, Jocelyne’s *sister* is already dating Ethan! Why does everyone act like she’ll just throw Joyce over like that???
“Sorry, sis! It was love at first sight. Your feelings aren’t *that* hurt, are they?” NOT.
THANK YOU.
I’m still holding out for Joyce to figure out that she neither can nor should save Ethan from his gayness by marrying him, and for Ethan to figure out a pretend romance that lets him think he doesn’t have to deal with his sexuality isn’t very healthy for either of them. Once all that is sorted out, they should be busy thanking everyone who in any way tried to ruin their relationship.
Well either way, Joyce/Ethan is an unhealthy relationship. Ethan is gay and Joyce is a girl. It’s doomed right from the start. Joshua might identify as female, but unless she decides to transition to female, she’s got a physically male body that Ethan is attracted to. Sure, that relationship would also have plenty of complications, but at least Ethan won’t have to hide his sexuality to make it work.
Putting aside the fact that Ethan is currently dating Joyce… There’s nothing wrong, or even uncommon, with a person being attracted to another person despite sexual orientation of either party. Which is to say, a heterosexual person can still get the hots for a specific same-gendered person, even though this isn’t typically true for them. It also does *not* make them bisexual.
Also, there’s the whole sexual vs emotional vs intellectual attraction issue, where you need to determine what kind of attraction it is before you even decide if gender (external or internal) is a factor. Humans, they’re so complicated — and so busy trying to simplify things past the point of clarity 🙂
Sexuality is often more complex than that. People can be attracted primarily on the basis of physical sex, on the basis of gender, or on something else entirely (e.g. for some people the most relevant trait is dominance/submissiveness.) And emotional attraction or physical attraction are separate things.
Ethan seems to be physically attracted to male-bodied people, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he were biromantic.
For Ethan to date Jocelyn because he identifies her as male, despite the fact she identifies as female and is attracted to him in a heterosexual way (so to speak) would be an enormously selfish dick move. And I don’t think Jocelyn would put up with it anyway.
I don’t think it would be selfish. At least not anymore than any relationship.
It would just be plain fucked-up.
And those are plenty welcome in Willis’ comics! Aha!
Seriously though, I realized the pairing concept was broken once I thought about the loop for more than two seconds.
Yeah, the kind of fucke-up stuff you’d expect from a David Willis comic. But I get the feeling that Jocelyn isn’t up to it.
I think Jocelyne’s writing *is* up to it.
I agree. Labels can really mess you up if you find out about your gender identity after you’re already in a relationship, too.
Remember, kids, whenever you see the Misgender Fairy, punch her in the face.
Ironically, the Misgender Fairy identifies as male. XD
*Crossdressing* male. His name is Lola.
How is Coulson’s car involved in all of this??
Did it go to Tahiti as well and cause all this??
(It’s a magical place)
Okay, not true at all. Sexuality is very wibbly-wobbly. You can be extremely gay and STILL fall in love with a trans*. I know two married people, where they were considered homosexual until one partner came out to everyone as trans*. Both persons involved are still extremely committed to each other even since one of them is working on transitioning to female.
So do not tell me that gay men cannot love a trans* woman, because i just proved you wrong. 😛
beege wasn’t saying it’s impossible. They’re saying if Ethan went into the relationship basically viewing Joc as male, then that would be awful and everyone would be even madder at him than we already are.
I agree with you, although Raibean isn’t entirely wrong either. It’s great that your friends stayed together, but it probably wasn’t easy for them to go through the transition. Just as it was probably really hard for the trans* person to come out to her partner (knowing what challenges they’d have to face).
But really, I don’t think we should punch fairies in the face. It’s not nice. Plus, if you wanna make it hurt, it’s better to surprise pussy-punch someone, according to the latest Machete…
….See, it’s not that gay people can’t love trans people. I’m a lesbian with a trans wife. But I’m not attracted to her ‘because she’s a dude’, and she is actively transitioning to a body I like better (An incidental benefit to her getting to feel better about her body, I assure you). Ethan seemed to zero in on the physical side with Jocelyn. A physical side that, in all probability, Jocelyn wants to bury with a hatchet.
Those might not be his reasons though. I’m gay and I’m with a transwoman. I’m attracted to her because I love her, not her male body parts.
Well that explains a lot.
Protip: The website just brings you back to Dumbing of Age.
Looks like the people who guessed Trans were right.
woot woot!
Oh man, she’s trans*. No wonder she was so afraid of her parents finding out that their favorite “son” had her own secrets.
Indeed.
Well played Gravicon
I was going to say.
No way…
DON’T TELL ME I CALLED IT TWICE!!!!
I FRIGGIN’ CALLED IT TWICE!!!
Did you ever say he was a trans?
Yes, like…on 3 seperate occassions.
Granted they’re pretty spread out.
The first documented case of Yotomoe calling it was in Gutenberg, on August 25th at 6:14 AM. Only one witness survived.
That witness? Yotomoe.
However some critics point out that he may not have had all that faith in his predictions, citing certain recent evidence.
BUT WHAT WAS THE YEAR?!
Afraid I missed those. When did they happen?
You can’t be “a” trans. Xe is a transgender person.
By saying “xe”, you’re defeating the purpose of your otherwise transphilic statement. Jocelyn identifies as female, therefore call her “she”. “Xe” is implying that she is neither male nor female.
… No. Gender-neutral pronouns are gender-neutral. They do not indicate a gender. That does not mean that they indicate no gender. It is acceptable to refer to any person with gender-neutral pronouns, regardless of their gender identity. That is actually the point of those words: you can refer to people without specifying a gender or lack thereof. Jocelyne has not specified PPPs, and therefore I am erring on the side of caution, since I cannot ask xir directly.
already responded to this above, but did you read the hovertext
I did read the hovertext, but identifying as female and using female pronouns do not necessarily go together. There’s a reason so many queer groups start meetings by asking everyone for their PPPs. Some trans*women prefer gender-neutral pronouns.
But some don’t. What if by “playing it safe” you’re also being offensive. By that logic I don’t really care. It is MUCH too much work to worry about offending people all the time.
That is… uh. I’ve never actually hear of anyone who does that…? I mean, I don’t deny they exist, but it seems infinitely more likely that she uses feminine pronouns.
And in any case, not everyone likes xe/xir. Some people use ‘they’. Some use ‘ze’ and ‘hir’. I am sure there is at least one person out there who prefers ‘it’. You can’t know, and arbitrarily using one incredibly uncommon set of pronouns to refer to someone who clearly identifies as female seems… well, kind of presumptuous, tbh.
To add onto what Yotamoe said (if I may), while I understand the positive intent of more recently created gender-neutral pronouns, terms like “xe,” “ey” and so forth, such terms aren’t universally endorsed in GSM communities, and still carry the broader connotation of being *specifically* associated with issues surrounding said communities.
If you don’t know how someone who is trans* feels about such terms (and, again, there isn’t universal agreement), by casually dropping them into conversation about said person, you may actually be doing more to draw unwanted attention to their trans* status than if you’d even just used singular “they” (which already has a long history of use for people when referring to cis-persons in similar gender neutral contexts).
It is also more likely that any given person is straight and cisgendered than otherwise, but presuming that EVERYONE belongs to the majority would be highly problematic. As soon as Jocelyne or Willis weigh in on what pronouns are appropriate, I’ll happily switch to those.
The distinction between various gender-neutral pronouns is largely irrelevant as well. “It” is frowned upon because it typically refers to non-persons, but “xe” “ze” and “hir” are interchangeable, given that they are all invented to fill the same niche and none are really more widely accepted than the others in common usage. “They” is another bucket of issues, since it brings the plural/singular debate with it.
(And as for having not heard of someone identifying as XYZ, you clearly don’t spend much time on tumblr. Hang out there and you’ll end up with more combinations of identities than you’d ever thought possible!)
Jocelyne identifies as female.
@Sgore: First off, thanks for introducing me to the term GSM; that’s one I somehow hadn’t heard before! Secondly, I agree that referring to someone who isn’t out with gender-neutral pronouns in mixed company would be ill-advised. However, everyone here is aware of Jocelyne’s trans* status, and it is the topic of conversation du jour, so calling attention to it isn’t a problem.
@David Willis: I’ll assume that includes using female she/her pronouns then? Thanks for weighing in.
She/her it is from here on out then!
So why can’t you use “they”?
@A-A-A-Albi, because it’s insensitive/offensive to grammar nazis.
@A-A-A-Albi: Because in current usage, it is standard to use “they” as a plural. I am sympathetic to the cause of the singular they, however, and won’t say it’s wrong. There is a good deal of debate around the most appropriate gender-neutral pronouns, but that is really a separate issue.
Not in the variety of English I speak (in, well, England). Much like multi-use pronouns in other languages such as German (“Sie” can be “she” or “they (plural)”, IIRC), it can be either; it’s a nonspecific personal pronoun that cares not for gender or number, and thus is just fine so long as your subject is OK with it. I tend to use it as a nongendered singular pronoun quite a lot when e.g. writing technical instructions or the like.
Also, my head hurts.
🙂
How about I take the path of “I don’t care”? Call yourself what you want, but don’t expect me to do the same.
How is it irrelevant? Pronouns are a very personal thing to people with gender identity issues. No matter what, there will be the possibility of making someone feel bad, even using gender neutral pronouns. Hell, my gender identity is certainly atypical, and I would hate to be called any of the gender neutral pronouns that currently exist in our language (including they).
Before Willis actually came out and told us she was female, there were two very big indicators that this was the case. It just seems odd to me that you would favor one set of pronouns over the countless others, even when all the evidence pointed to the very particular set you specifically avoided.
Also, thanks for clearing it up, Willis.
responded to the wrong person, oopsie
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that pronouns are irrelevant. I just meant that with regards to this particular discussion, it didn’t matter which GN pronoun I used, since they are roughly interchangable and I had no way of knowing which Jocelyne could possibly prefer. That is, given that I was using GN pronouns, which one I used was irrelevant in this particular case.
I personally like xe more than ze or hir, simply as personal preference. My usage of it was not intended to be a rejection of any others. I was “favoring” xe by necessity–I had the choice between either picking one to “favor” or being inconsistent, which seems even worse to me.
I have explained my choice to use GN pronouns repeatedly, and am not interested in defending it further, given that it is now irrelevant. Please reread my other posts if you are still confused about my position. I am acting in concordance with the consensus among the queer circles I frequent.
“Gender-neutral” is a gender identity. Using “xe” when you already know the person’s preferred pronouns (in this case, she/her) is misgendering them.
Also, they/them is actually a singular pronoun that does not imply gender identity. Even Shakespeare used it.
It is true that some people do identify as gender-neutral or nongendered, but gender-neutral pronouns do not exclusively refer to them. They specifically and intentionally do not indicate a gender or lack thereof. Furthermore, I do NOT know xir PPPs. I know that xe thinks of xirself as Joyce’s sister (or at least, so Willis would indicate) but that does not mean xe would want to be referred to by female pronouns.
I am actually supportive of the use of “they” as a singular gender-neutral pronoun, but that’s really beside the point.
“It is also more likely that any given person is straight and cisgendered than otherwise, but presuming that EVERYONE belongs to the majority would be highly problematic. ”
When, exactly, did we decide as a society that using the most likely option until told otherwise is the same thing as “presuming that someone belongs to the majority”?
Using “she” now is certainly no worse than using “he” yesterday, so you’ve really got no room to argue.
Gender-neutral pronouns are typically for people of indeterminate gender; generally for reasons of anonymity, but sometimes for not falling on the binary at all. Jocelyn’s a woman, not a random person of indeterminate gender. Use it smartly, please.
As a complete aside, two identical Joe gravatars discussing transgender issues is incredibly amusing.
Thought the same thing!
He Did, good call Yotomoe. 🙂
Good job. Call it three times and you win a prize.
Call it three times while looking in a mirror and then turn off the lights.
OK, THIS is where you start firebombing the survivors
I hope this track record doesn’t have implications for the accuracy of your Dinafaz horror.
Not even Willis would do that to us.
Now you’ve called down the WillisThunder…
Yer a wizard Yotomoe
It’s witchcraft, isn’t it?
You did too!
You missed a perfect chance to say “Someone pick up that phone because I called it!”
You had a chance Yoto… You had a chance…
You had the chance on a punchline, Morningstar. You had the chance…
Hmmm..
(just to break the “oh” ice) 🙂
Wait… Josh identifies as a girl???
Of course.
Yeah, Plasma — I was also surprised, despite all the folks who guessed this yesterday. (D’oh!)
Monday morning quarterbacks.
I knew it. … Alright, I was kinda thinking it from the not exactly feeling bi would be too obvious. Still, enough to fill my need to feel smart. XD
Posting here simply to point out how the avatars on the previous run of comments make a very nice rainbow sequence with their background / hair / clothing colours.
…finishing with mine, in a fetching black / white / transparent / pale pink combination.
OH MY GOD yesssss I didn’t think he would be a she but I am not disappointed at all!
That’s a curveball if I ever saw one.
Does Ethan’s mom suffer from some variety of depression or melancholy? No other parent in these strips has looked as consistently miserable or visibly burdened as she has. Her nastiness be put aside for one moment, something is rotten in the house of Siegel.
Ethan’s dick isn’t currently in a female so she’s not happy.
She’s probably just pissy because she hasn’t gotten laid since nine months before Ethan was born.
Do we know that Ethan has no siblings? They could be substantially younger than he is; it’s not uncommon in some Jewish families.
Fear that your loved ones won’t get into Heaven can present huge amounts of stress.
That would be a very odd thing for a Jewish person to worry over – despite our reputation as chronic worriers. 🙂
“Some people look at these teachings and deduce that Jews try to ‘earn our way into Heaven’…unlike some religions, Judaism is not focused on the question of how to get into heaven. Judaism is focused on life and how to live it.”
Source: http://www.jewfaq.org/olamhaba.htm
My theory is she is gay and refuses to accept it.
Naomi and Saul are both gay. It is the Siegal legacy.
oh god no not THAT person
Since this is a Willis comic, that seems like a very workable theory. Seriously, what percentage of people are heterosexual and not gender confused in any way in the Willis-verse? I’m thinking it has to be less than 5%. =P
Let’s see… off the top of my head (and of course, without knowing anything about the private thoughts of these characters):
Joe, Danny, Dorothy, Amber and Walky all appear to possess gender identities in line with their biological sex, and also to be heterosexual. Pretty sure that already puts us above 1 in 20, so… yeah.
As much as we like to joke about it, most of Willis’ characters are straight and cis.
having a realistic number of gender/sexual minorities in media comes across has having an IMPOSSIBLY INFINITE number of them given how used people are to not seeing them at all
it might be she blames herself for ethan’s deviation from the norm, in the sense that she didn’t do the parent thing right or something. like if she’d been better at being a mother he wouldn’t have “turned gay.” (because some people think that’s a thing you can do on purpose)
i mean, she definitely rolled a critical failure on the whole mom thing, but not for that reason.
oooor maybe she’s one of those people just absolutely determined to be miserable, and if she isn’t happy then NO ONE IS HAPPY.
So basically she’s Livia Soprano
Criminy! You brought it all back to me:
“What makes you think you’re so special?”
“My Johnny was a Saint.”
“I wish the Lord would take me now.”
Lather, rinse, repeat.
You forgot “OH POOR YOU”
She may not have an actual mental illness – she could, in fact, be a miserable person.
Or, she could be perfectly happy, and just have Resting bongo Face. (Something I suffer from myself.)
Yeah, well, hate really sucks the life out of you
Haha all those guesses yesterday were right!
I’m just as surprised as you are, actually.
Well, except for that one guy who guessed that Joshua is a cyborg ninja.
There’s no evidence he isn’t one.
There’s no evidence she isn’t one.
Right, sorry. Gonna be hard to drop that habit.
No, that was my failure at tone. No worries. 🙂
Well, it’s not really easy to read tones on a text.
No, it’s not — that’s why the fault’s mine.
Yeek — that came off dickish. Sorry — imagine that was said with a squeal of delight at this turn, not a comment on your comment. 🙂
Happy birthday to me! And either Joshua is person who felt like he’s born in the wrong body or…he is really a she.
Parents missed a spot check when she was born. So did the doctors. It happens.
Or she took a dip in a hot spring where a dude drowned in it when she was a kid..or something.
Ranma?
oh, they didn’t miss the spot check, they just REALLY wanted a son (another son? i forget where joz ((joss? how the heck do you abbreviate jocelyne :L )) falls in the brown child order of ascension) and raised her as a dude under the philosophy that anything is possible if you just BELIEVE hard enough, and the real her that “josh” has been hiding from her parents/family is that she, ya know, noticed at some point.
Xe is “really” a she. Gender != physical sex. Joshua/Jocelyne presumably has male genetalia, but was not necessarily “born in the wrong body” any more than people with acne they don’t like are born in the wrong body. Trans* folks only have the one body, and it’s theirs, regardless of what aspects of it they do or do not like.
Can we not use ‘xe’? Or ‘ze’? Firstly, it is presumptuous to use a pronoun a person has not themselves endorsed. Secondly (on purely personal level), I can’ stand them. English is in desperate need of neutral, non-plural pronouns, but simply making them on and trying to stuff them into the language isn’t going to work. They look out of place: true gender-neutral pronouns that work will emerge only when English etymology and orthography are taken into account. English’s strength has always been tis ability to change, absorb, and mutate into something (usually) stronger. Imposed adjustments are too L’Académie Française for my tastes.
English has gender-neutral singular pronouns: “they”, “their”. It’s been standard usage for hundreds of years. Like it or not, that’s what the natural evolution of the language has given us, and trying to displace it by imposing artificial substitutes is doomed to failure.
Especially since no one can agree on which made-up bullshit pronouns to use instead.
Plus Willis said in comments somewhere above this that Jocelyn identifies as female so ‘she’ and all its variants is appropriate.
Well I had to use *some* pronoun, and Jocelyne, being fictional, couldn’t really weigh in to let me know which she “endorsed.” As soon as Willis said she preferred female pronouns, I switched.
Your personal preferences are largely irrelevant. There are plenty of trans* prescriptivists who hate the singular they. Plenty hate any “invented” GN pronouns but they. The queer circles I frequent endorse the use of xe, and so that’s what I use. Won’t say you’re wrong to use the singular they, and I’ve even used it myself, but it’s also presumptuous to tell someone not to use a term preferred by large sections of the trans* community.
Guys, it’s not that Joshua/Jocelyne is a woman at the moment.
He’s trans, ya’ll. MTF (Male to Female)
Which kind of makes me sad. You see a lot of MTF, but I rarely ever see FTM.
I think thats do to the surgery, I think MtF is much cheaper than FtM.
It’s easier to make a hole than a pole. (sorry)
damnit ninja’d
It’s cheaper to dig a hole than to build a pole
you get a cookie if you place that reference
My (admittedly basic) understanding of the procedures involved are that MtF surgery can make a very reasonable facsimile of a natural born female body. As in, the parts work and you could even keep it a secret from people you have sex with if you wanted. Meanwhile FtM as medical advancement stands now isn’t there yet. They can make you something that sort of looks like a dick, but it doesn’t work and you’ve butchered your junk to make it. Which could be bad if they ever come up with a process that actually does work.
I would be cool with anyone else telling me that synopsis is out of date.
If you get on T, your, uh… wow, this is awkward. Basically, it’s possible for a certain… part to become large enough to be used in, uh… sex. Not always, but it’s possible.
(Psst… The word you’re looking for is “clitoris”.)
I am a child, I cannot say such things.
frick, wrong email
Oh hell, my other email is Roz.
That is perfect and wonderful.
please don’t equate identifying as transgender with the desire or ability to undergo surgery
what lee said
At least she is actually in a difficult position related to her identity, unlike a certain other webcomic where there is a trans character who is completely indistinguishable from the other female characters except for those two comics where she told her secret to somebody.
i dunno, considering how instantly-protective her twin brother was upon learning that she came out to marten, i’d say there was definitely the unfortunately usual “people being horrible to other people” in her background. i’m super happy for claire that she has friends that are so accepting now. kudos to mr jacques for such a chill cast of characters.
Yeah. It’s nicer than nice to have some representation where the character isn’t entirely defined by her gender identity – and ESPECIALLY nice to have her not entirely defined by ANGST over it.
(Also, Clinton isn’t Claire’s twin – he’s several years younger than her. Yeah, he’s protective of his ELDER sibling. It’s an interesting relationship.)
oops, that’s right. apologies for the brain fart. guess at some point my mind went from “close familial resemblance, might as well be twins” to “they are actually twins”.
At one point I was convinced they were cousins, so…
true. I always feel awkward talking about how things are for transsexuals because i’m only talking from my perspective and have no idea if it applies in a similar way for the guys. But it’s also really awkward to always add a disclaimer telling that it’s only a MtF experience i’m talking about
what i mean is that i have absolutely no idea how things are for FtMs and i’d like to know more about them.
Part of the reason for this (historically, back when all stories about trans people were massively offensive) is the same as why you still see more gay guys in media than gay ladies – more interest in “men’s” stories, even if those stories were basically super offensive “lady was a dude!” Mostly the people who wrote those stories didn’t see trans women as women, but hyper deviant gay men a la the transphobic writings of J. Michael Bailey. Obviously not the case here or in many of the modern stories, thankfully.
So then… she is a woman at this moment.
I am distressed by what this Gravatar has done to that comment.
We are all distressed by it, Toad.
You are saying one thing, but your gravatar is saying another.
(my gravatar, on the other hand, is right there with me)
This is the Willis Commentariat. Open-minded and accepting. In this case, Toad, there is no choice but to revel in the delicious irony of your comment’s Grav-conflict!
No, this is the perfect gravatar for this comment.
It’s probably extremely inappropriate, but I find your gravatar hilariously funny and appropriate.
No. She’s trans. Sex doesn’t matter. Gender is all that counts. Not having transitioned yet doesn’t make her any less a woman.
Exactly. I’m actually uh, very bountiful but by god, I’m a man. I don’t need a penis or a flat chest to prove it, and you better use the male pronoun for me.
This is delightful!
Yeah someone called it. Nicely played, though. Think Joyce knows? (Nope)
Lots of people called this one I think…
There’s a difference between knowledge and comprehension.
Ok so Ethan DOES still have a chance!
No, he doesn’t – he doesn’t like women.
Well, that’s a complex issue. Some gay men will date trans* men and some won’t, and some will date trans* women and some won’t. It’s really a very personal and individualized choice. Given that xe is male-bodied, Ethan might still be into xir. On the other hand, identifying as female might be a deal-breaker.
Last I checked, a man dating a lady was straight – not gay. Doesn’t matter if they are transexual or not.
My husband is pansexual when it comes to love, but straight when it comes to sexual attraction. Meaning he isn’t gay, but straight even if he dated a MtF because he wouldn’t date a FtM.
I’m Pansexual and Asexual – I don’t care what gender when it comes to love, but I’m not sexual attracted to males, females, or hermaphradites.
Granted I could be confused, but since I was told this by an actual transexual maybe it is wrong? Maybe they all see things differently?
Everyone sees sexuality differently. Guess it is up to Willis to let us know if Ethan still likes Jocelyne, but I don’t see that happening considering Jocelyne will be fully female eventually if all goes well.
Toad is right though. It’s complicated. Being gay doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily date transmen just as lesbians won’t necessarily date transwomen. And some gay men actually will date transwomen and some lesbians will date transmen.
That’d make you panromantic and asexual, I believe.
Also “Last I checked, a man dating a lady was straight – not gay. Doesn’t matter if they are transexual or not.” is inaccurate. They could be bi or pan or asexual or anything, really, except specifically homosexual or homoromantic.
Panromantic. Thanks for that – I’ve just been told I was pansexual – which is odd because, yeah asexual.
And as I said below I wasn’t thinking on that first sentence – forgot the pan, bi, asexual etc in that list. Which is really bad on me sorry.
‘S fine. I personally am heteromantic asexual, which made me very confused and conflicted until someone pointed out that romantic and sexual love were separate spectrums. I wish I could remember who it was so I could thank them for not feeling so lost anymore.
Ugh tell me about it. When I found out that me not being sexual attracted to people and not liking sex was NORMAL and had a name OMG – was so relieved.
I think sexual identity is a big part of who we are as a species – and really it becomes stressful not knowing.
“Last I checked, a man dating a lady was straight ”
…or bi or pan????
Yeah I meant that. Left it out.
Sorry about that.
I urge you to reread my post. Your personal anecdotes aren’t relevant to the topic at hand, so I’ll skip them. But the point remains, there are lots of men who identify as gay that would still date/not date trans-men or trans-women. Sexual/romantic attraction is not exclusively limited to gender, and everyone draws lines in different places. Ethan has not indicated his feelings on the matter.
“Jocelyne will be fully female eventually if all goes well.”
Erm, nope. We do not know if Jocelyne intends to physically transition or not. Not all trans* people want or intend to physically transition. Many are perfectly happy to have the body they have, while still identifying as whatever gender.
Everyone transexual is different. I’m going to say that and leave it at that. Painting a broad brush is bad on both of us.
My trans friend said one thing, you know another. Neither of use are right or wrong.
That was exactly my point. All trans* people are different. You made a hard generalization: Ethan, as a gay man, would not date a trans* woman. I disagreed, since some gay men would and some wouldn’t, and some trans* people would be okay with it and some wouldn’t.
My bad, I think I misread your initial post then. Even when I reread it. Sorry about that, and thanks for clarifying.
I guess I brought up my own thing because I was trying to convey the point personally. *shrug*
Great thing about being human is we are all different :).
It would be awfully boring if we weren’t! 🙂
Don’t you mean panromantic? In terms of your and your husband’s romantic attraction. It sounds like it, considering you both are “pansexual in terms of love” but not sexually. You can’t be both pansexual and asexual, but you can be a panromantic asexual, just sayin’. (Sorry if this came across as too didactic…)
Anyway, it’s super cool to meet another ace! I’m an aromantic asexual, myself. 🙂
Whoops, just saw that Wack’d already pointed that out. Sorry to repeat a post. 🙁
Yeah I didn’t hear of panromantic until today and I’m glad I did. Wack’d pointed it out to me.
It did confuse me before today as well. So thank you on that.
I’ve seen more and more of those that identify as asexual around. As I said above it is normal and I’m glad I’m not just odd. –Though odd is relatively speaking when it comes to me XD.
I feel like I’ve been meeting more and more asexuals too! For National Coming Out Day, the LGBTQIA club hosted a T-shirt making event for people to declare their sexualities on and I found out that quite a few people I knew IRL were asexual, which I found pleasantly surprising.
Mine has mostly be online, I’m not a very outgoing person unfortunately. Though I’m sure there are communities down where I live despite the rest of my state being hick ville USA XD.
I think you’re forgetting the Kinsey scale of sexuality. Speaking as someone who is bi-sexual- things aren’t one thing or another. I’m bi-sexual in technical terms-but only just. I date more men than I do women, and I prefer relationships with men- less drama. But I’m attracted to both. Nothing is simple.
….less drama. really.
okay then…
It’s my personal sexual preference. Really gonna judge me on that?
So, less drama turns you on?
…Or maybe you’re just making generalizations based on gender that don’t actually have anything to do with sexual preference.
If you like guys more than girls, that’s fine. Do realize that your reasoning is based on stereotypes (and probably confirmation bias and/or bad luck with women).
my relationships are between me, my partner, and if I choose, a qualified therapist. I don’t remember asking anyone to pass judgement on what I find to be attractive in a mate. Realize that when you comment on someone else’s sexuality, and what they find attractive so freely and with such easy judgement it can be damaging even with the best of intentions. You do not know the past that they went through to get where they are. *tone: kind*
Nobody was commenting on your sexuality, as far as I can tell. The statement that raised some eyebrows was you saying that dating men was “less drama” than dating women. While that may be your personal experience, it does come off as a bit gender-essentialist, as though you’re saying that dating men is inherently less drama than dating women. Which is silly, because as we all know, the amount of drama a person causes has very little to do with what gender they are! 🙂
As someone who is technically not on the Kinsey scale, that thing can go fuck itself, but only after it figures what number one ascribes to being attracted to bar graphs.
I mean, it’s a very rough tool, but can still be useful in some cases. For instance, “bisexual” is very broad, but I can say that I’m a “Kinsey 2” and people who know what that is have a pretty good sense of how I identify. It’s easier than laying out some huge diagram of my complicated sexual preferences, but still provides more detail than I could otherwise quickly provide.
If you don’t mind me asking, in what way are you not on the Kinsey scale? I assume ace, which is sort of a special case, but you might also identify as something else?
I think I mentioned being asexual further up–well, actually “gray asexual” I guess, given that I get sexual attraction the way most people get the hiccups. But I’m also heteromantic, and lemme tell you that confused the fuck out of me for a long time because hey, I want a relationship, I must also want sex, right? And having the only real divisions I was aware of come from that fucking chart (heh) did not help.
I think aces are 0s on Kinsey.
I’ve been told it’s an X. I dunno. I never found evidence of either.
I’ve heard ace described as i (i.e. sqrt(-1)) on the Kinsey scale. Other complex numbers can be used to describe variations thereof. This does not help with the simplicity thing, however.
@Kerry: No, 0 is “exclusively heterosexual” (that is, straight).
@Wack’d: Yeah, I’ve seen Ace listed as X, typically. But regardless, the Kinsey scale is a way of categorizing types of sexual attraction. So if you don’t experience sexual attraction (or in your case, rarely), then it would make sense that you wouldn’t be on the chart, right?
That said, it is outdated and unscientific and pretty useless for anything but “this is what flavor of bisexual I am!”
oh pft, you’re right, sorry
You make a good point- but again, the Kinsey scale is a good rough starting point for sexual attraction. I does assume a desire for sexual relationships, which many don’t have.
It’s a pretty terrible starting point if people are incapable of starting at it!
Hopefully this comes across the way I intend, but why would a lack of sexual attraction be on a chart detailing types of sexual attraction? Like, if I made a chart of a bunch of types of food, arranged from sweetest to sourest, it wouldn’t make sense for non-food things to be on the chart at all, right?
@Toad – I don’t know, I think asexual does count as a sexual orientation, and it does make sense to me to include it in something that describes/labels people’s sexual orientations.
But then, I think we also need a scale to be a shorthand for people who aren’t quite male or female, or are both, or whatever, and for what trans* identities people are attracted to, and I understand there IS a scale though not very widely used for how polyamorous/monogamous you are.
Labels suck when others pin them on you as a way to reinforce their power, but DAMN can they be handy when you’re trying to explain your sexual/romantic preferences.
@Leah: Oh yeah, it’s definitely a sexual orientation, but I don’t know that the Kinsey scale, at least in its modern usage, is used to describe all orientations (though that may have been Kinsey’s original intent). I think that instead of being a scale of orientations, it’s a scale of types of attraction. And thus, “no attraction” wouldn’t be on the chart.
And yeah, I’m all for people having as many tools for self-description as possible. Language is how we understand concepts; if you don’t have words to describe yourself, how are you ever going to understand yourself?
*Wheels out the still duct taped Faz, Kinsey scale glued to his forehead*
Was waiting to use this…
+1
“considering Jocelyne will be fully female eventually if all goes well.”
not all transgender people undergo surgery or even want to! she is “fully female” because she identifies as such. don’t make assumptions about anyone’s relationship with their body, please.
As I’m not transgender myself and still learning the language needed – I apologize for my flub. When I say Fully Female I mean able to come out as female – not surgery.
And it is my bad on that. As I said – still learning.
yes yup yes
Nobody else thinks that’s absurd?
No???
Like, I can’t even figure out what you might think is absurd about that?
Your terms would be panromantic/asexual and heterosexual. If we’re going to go there about proper terms, sexual=/=romantic attraction. I’m pansexual/demiromantic, for example.
Hold up, what’s demiromantic? Is it just the inverse of demisexual?
Wouldn’t the inverse of demisexual be… NOT being sexually attracted to people with whom a strong bond is formed? Maybe being sexually attracted only to people with whom a strong bond ISN’T formed?
I guess what I’m saying is, romance isn’t the opposite of sex, is it?
No, I’m sexually attracted to a lot of people, but I’m only emotionally/romantically attracted to them after a bond has been formed. I tend to crush on a lot of my friends because of this.
I… I thought most people didn’t get romantic feelings until a strong bond was formed? Is that not most people? Do I need a new label?
Sometimes I think I need to have cards printed up explaining my whole “deal”.
I’m a gay man who’s been with a transwoman for close to 3 years now. We’re all different :3
Willis swerves it again….and it’s better that any of Russo’s swerve.
“It’s me, Ethan! It was me all along, Ethan!”
“Oh, son of a bongo!”
The reveal is that Joshua is God. Go ahead. Try his URL.
Haha, clever. Also, that means I totally called it! 😀
Well played, Willis. Well played.
And just when the scene seemed to be over!
Huh. He’s further ahead what I’m dealing with but. Wow. I just wonder how well you’ll portray this..
Assuming you mean that Jocelyn’s in the same boat as you, I just wanted to wish you the best of luck. I’m still on my own walk down that road, and it’s a hard road to keep on sometimes, but every step of the way makes me happier I’m on it.
It’s tough, it’s gonna get tougher, but it gets better. Someone told me that when I was still early on and I’ve been thinking about that lately. It really does.
Yeah. I’m both really happy and sad to see this crop up in the story. Its really amazing how fearless Willis is in his story execution. Its a rough topic to skirt on. But, knowing that road Jocelyn is on, when she does reappear it might just lead to some really sad story lines.. Its great having someone in DOA to identify with, but being torn a way from em so soon and knowing rough times are headed her way? I can only give a solemn ‘Dammit Willis.’
Also side note: I love how he renamed all the tags Joshua->Jocelyn. It was really sweet and respectful.
“Its a rough topic to skirt on”
Heh.
But yeah, so far Willis has been respectful and Jocelyne has been well-written, it’s… odd? Uncommon, at least.
Damn, there’s a lot of us here.
Best of luck to the both of you.
Well there goes my ship I guess. Also that is cool, I hope Jocelyne appears more
Okay, got a question, hope I don’t come off as insensitive or rude, but I’m honestly not sure what the best way to phrase this is.
When Josh says he’s not gay, did he mean “I’m into guys but I identify as female, so I consider that being straight”? Or did he mean “I’m into girls, but even though I identify as female I am biologically male, so that doesn’t count as gay”?
Almost certainly the first one. The second would be kind of weird.
There’s a person I’ve met through mutual friends who is FTM and is gay, so it happens.
Probably the former.
Unless Willis answers this himself, everyone else who answers you will be answering off of speculation. My own thought is that Joshua seemed attracted to him, and identifies as female, so therefore not gay.
She is probably a straight trans-woman. Her sex may not be the same as her gender, but she’s a she, and she’s not ”not really a she”.
Even though she did seem to be attracted to Ethan, there is nothing that indicates Jocelyne is straight. And with transgender people you really shouldn’t assume their preference.
It could mean either. But a thing me and my friend talked about is that, even if he IS into guys, he wouldn’t want to be with Ethan, because Ethan likes boys, something Jocelyn doesn’t associate with. Regardless of the attraction, the features Ethan would be attracted to are features Jocelynn would want to be getting rid of.
Not necessarily. Ethan is attracted to a cute, smart, nerdy writer with big blue eyes and (presumably) a dick. Jocelyn certainly doesn’t want to get rid of any but the last of those, and not necessarily even then. There are lots of trans* folks who are perfectly happy with the body they have, and do not want to alter their genetalia in any way. “Gay” and “straight”, in their typical definitions, do not take into account any possible differences between sex and gender. Therefore, Ethan could be into “persons who identify as male” or “persons who have male sex characteristics.” We have no way of knowing which he is. It is also possible that he could be “gay with an exception.” Saying that people at either end of the Kinsey scale are attracted to people solely based on their gender is a pretty flawed oversimplification.
Okay, everyone. This.
The only thing that we know in canon about Jo is that she identifies as “Jocelyn”. We couldn’t even say for certain that she identifies as female at this point except for Willis’s hover-text. Making any other assumptions at this time–and scolding other posters for it–is more than just a little presumptuous.
Thanks, Thor. That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to say.
Looking back on Saturday’s comic. Joce is smiling when she says “not actually gay”, then is abrubtly disappointed when she realizes Ethan IS gay. Despite the situation with Joyce, she was still attracted to him and thinking about hooking up with Ethan as a straight couple, up until Ethan tipped his hand.
Mmmmm I think she was way more pissed/serious about a self-aware gay man dating her brother.
Sister. Dammit. Still getting the pronouns figured out.
Given that said sister is Joyce whose gender was never in question in the first place, I’d say you’re actually getting the pronouns figured back in.
Damn, you’re right. Looking back on all the Joc strips with an all new perspective.
Almost certainly that she likes guys, because she’s a woman.
“She likes guys because she’s a woman”? You know that’s not causality right? That’s a joke?
She could be asexual or a lesbian for all we know, and her being a woman doesn’t mean she likes guys. It really, really doesn’t.
Actually, we do know she’s straight (Willis said it down below), but yeah, dumb assumption.
I don’t understand you use he even when both your examples have Jocelyn identifying as a woman.
Pronoun trouble.
This is why in real life I call literally everyone I know “dude”.
I’d work on that if I were you…
I call everyone dude too, be they male or female. My best friend is a woman and I call her dude all the time.
If someone asks me not to however I stop.
I consider it good practice if I ever reincarnate as a prinny, dood.
I just want to go ahead and tell you that I find you really overly combative on the subject of pronouns.
Dude.
Considering the “not *actually* gay” comment, I’m assuming she’s into guys but identifies as a straight woman. I wouldn’t be surprised if she realized she was into men before she realized she identified as female and thought she was gay for a while–certainly sheltered me knew more about homosexuality than I knew about trans* folks when I was younger.
I don’t know. I’m a lesbian and I’ve only recently came to terms with the word “gay”. I don’t self-identify as gay; it sounds so “masculine” (for lack of a better word).
Or maybe Jocelyne is multisexual or asexual.
So Joyce is finally going to get that sister she wanted. It’s just going to be in the least ideal situation possible.
This has happened to me as well, Ethan. You’re not alone.
You realize Willis is going to enshrine this in his tumblr now so he can throw it at people who claim he’s being far fetched.
Yay, I’m a primary source!
That must mean you are not realistic!
The gender-reversed version of this situation happened to a friend of mine.
She’s a lesbian and had a short fling with a Female-to-male transexual. It was short lived.
So basically reality is as messed up as fiction.
At university I had a male friend who was gay and often dressed like a woman. The last time I saw him he was dating a woman, who was gay and often dressed like a man.
It was a beautiful symmetry that made almost no sense.
That is odd but also cool at the same time!
Confirmed: The world is indeed an place filled with wonderful and strange things.
Woah, that’s fascinating.
Wow!! Good job, Willis!
No wonder Jocelyn doesn’t want her parents to know anything. OMG. Can you just imagine what they would act like?
I don’t think the Bible, either the Christian or the Tanach, even addresses transexuality. They might not have a scripture to stand on.
That never stops them from judging you, unfortunately 🙁
Well, unfortunately, I’ve seen people claim that transgender/sexual means that you’re rejecting the body/life god gave you and that’s a sin.
There’s a really toxic woman on the board I’m on, she ‘prayed the gay away’ and she was explaining how she won’t let her kids know her husband’s sister (cousin?) because she’s trans and she feels that by respecting the trans relative’s identity she’s harming her by keeping her from god.
It was horrid.
That’s terrible.
All the same, I do feel sorry for that woman. That has to be a terrible state to be in, what with the denial and the brainwashing.
Yeah. I felt sorry for her in the beginning, because holy shit self hate. But then she started talking about how if her toddlers started showing any ‘same sex attraction struggles’ she’d put a stop to it, and things like forcing them to play with gender appropriate toys if they acted too masculine or feminine.
Also, the nasty nasty things she said about the relative.
Now I just wish she’d wise up before she has an affair with a soccer mom and things go really bad.
It doesn’t, but everything is evil, remember?
Except evil people who are devout. They’re just misguided.
Sarcasm? Cuz if not, then boy, do I have some things to say there, lol
Pretty sure that was sarcasm.
Oddly, the New Testament actually sort of does address trans people. Matthew 19 mentions eunuchs in the context of marriage law.
I don’t know if eunuchs would qualify as trans. Maybe more “forced asexuality?” But I could be wrong.
Trans* umbrella!
Also, not asexuality. Asexuality is attraction, not action!
Kinda impossible to be sexually attracted to someone if you don’t have any sex organs.
You’d be surprised.
OMG, who is that adorable gravatar?
Eunuchs who are castrated after puberty can be sexually attracted to someone they just can’t do anything about it.
Okay, well, thank you, now I can stop fantasizing about lopping this fucking (heh) thing off.
Really? I suppose that makes sense.
Which brings to mind something I read a while back about the behavior of male dogs who are fixed prior to sexual maturity vs. after. The ones who have already sexually matured still hump things.
Yeah my dog did that when we waited to long to have him nuetered
(Nutered? Nootored? How the hell do you spell that)
Neutered!
Well, they can do something about it, just not all the same things men with intact genitals can.
If you think -sexual refers solely to genitals, you should return to 1800s botany where you belong and study the bisexual plants
Sex steroids are produced in the ovaries/testes.
Yes and “asexual” is a sexual orientation meaning that a person does not experience sexual attraction. And yet many of them have perfectly functioning genitals.
That’s not what I was saying. My reasoning was that if you do not have sex organs (ovaries/testes), sex steroids cannot be produced, meaning you cannot feel the effects of them.
I was corrected above that you can if you’ve already gone through puberty, which sounded reasonable, as a person’s brain would likely have already been sufficiently altered by the chemicals to make a difference.
I know in Iran the state will actually fund sex change operations because the Koran doesn’t say anything about it.
Wait a country run by religious fundamentalists allows sex change operations?
Yes.
Their logic behind this is that Homosexuality is a sin and treated as a crime, but the Ayatollah accept the idea that a man may be born inside a woman’s body (or the reverse), and so they allow such people to get an operation.
The consequence is that some homosexuals/lesbians are forced to have their sex changed in order to avoid being jailed or beaten.
Excuse me my brain shut-down trying to process that.
Good, because I’m pretty sure having your brain shut down is exactly what needs to happen for that to make sense.
Woah.
The state actually promote sex change! If you are a guy and loves another guy, you are a sinner and a criminal in the state’s eyes, but if you turns into a girl, problem solved!
Weird world …
Is it safe to say that Joshua is Pyro?
Yup.
Flamingly yes?
Oh god, the sarcastic face your gravatar is making is just perfect.
I kinda think (s)he’s a girl that likes other girls. Otherwise I feel like his/her reaction to Ethan would have been a little different.
I think she’s a girl that likes guys. She identifies as female. If she were into girls she would identify as gay.
Can I get nit-picky and say “woman, not female”? At least in sociology and other social sciences, we use “woman/man” for gender (identity/expression/social part) and “male/female” for sex (biology)
Well, I’ve never seen it that way. In every context I’ve seen, female is used for both. So is woman. And as a transwoman myself, I’m not uninformed about the topic. We probably need to be more specific, but really, gender/sex is the only situation where the words are clearly separate, and even then there’s a lot of overlap. And honestly, while it’s nice to be recognized, it’s not necessary to overhaul the entire language for this. I mean, how often do we really need to identify the sex, and not the gender of a person? Only when we’re discussing a transgender person, and only when we want to highlight their transgender status. And I know many of us would rather not do that. We want to be seen as women, female, girls, whatever. Many of us don’t like to be reminded that we were born into the wrong body.
This. Why the freak does it matter what parts you have to anyone but your doctor or partner?
Some humans are more Freudian than others. To me you are a mortal.
yeah , but people just thinks im weird when i call everyone mortal, like i have some Zeus delyrium
Yes, you can. I personally hate the way “female” has displaced the word “woman” in conversation. You can have a “female” cat, squirrel, or hamster. Only humans can be “women.”
Well, you also don’t get “man” cats either. Man and Woman in general have strange semantics when you think about it.
Exactly. Male and female (among other terms) refer to sex. Man and woman (among other terms) refer to gender. But for some reason, it’s become common to refer to women as females in contexts where men are being called by gender terms (men, guys, bros, etc.).
Yep, that’s semantic drift for you.
But you do get Manbat.
Also, everyone (in this thread at least) has been using the term “girl”, not “female”. They haven’t really even been saying “woman”.
That’s a whole different problem.
WHAT
Jocelyne? Is that even a real name? C’mon Joshua, couldn’t you think of something more original? Like Susan, or Alice, or maybe Laquisha if you were going in that direction…
Most people who are trans go for a name that’s similar to their own, usually starting with the same letter. Richard to Rachel, for example.
This isn’t even close to true – I’m trans myself and have met something on the order of a thousand others who are, and I could count on one hand the number whose names resemble their give names. Most trans folk, at least that I know, want to distance themselves from their old identity as much as possible.
(Nathan -> Rachel for me)
I think maybe we should not go about generalizing stuff like this. Some do, some don’t, and probably for lots of different reasons. That simple.
My friend went from Mackenzie to Lucas.
I still believe that it’s because Mother 3 is her favorite game.
James to Siubhan (Scottish Gaelic version of ‘Joan’, also used to translate ‘Judith’) for me. (I also tend to use my mother’s maiden name with Siubhan, just for the sake of euphony…it matches badly with my legal last name.)
Of the people I’ve known and known of, most picked an unrelated name, but not a huge majority.
Personally, I went with a feminized version of my middle name. Clayton Eugene -> Caitlin Jean.
it happens in movies so it must be true
*similar to their birth name
I went with Jessie because technically, that was the name my parents wanted me to have to begin with… Or rather, Jesse. I was Josh, became Jess.
I’m … not really going anywhere with this.
My sibling is genderqueer and still prefers their original name.
I went with my middle name, pronounced the french way. That way I can use it for shipping packages and such, since it’s on my ID.
I just prefer to spell it ‘John’ online so no one gets confused.
Quite the opposite, in fact. Most trans folk choose names that are very different from their birth names. (I know one who chose one that allowed her to keep her nickname, though the two names are entirely unrelated, save for sharing a single syllable. But other than her, nooooope.)
I picked something completely different. The only thing in common is that my parents picked it. (which i’m really grateful that could happen. Also really grateful they don’t have terrible taste in names)
How do you mean your parents picked it? After you began transitioning, they came up with a name for you? (If so, that’s pretty awesome.)
Claire!
*ehem*
I’m not sure what came first and how it exactly happened.
I think i’ve always had some connection to this name, and i think my parents had a few names picked out when i was born and then just chose according to my birth sex.
Some time after deciding that i have to transition some day i asked my mother what names they had thought about and what name they would have chosen if i had been a girl. There were a few options (a few terrible ones) but the one i have now was their favorite, i think.
When i did start transitioning years later i talked with them about it to confirm and we all agreed on the name.
oh to clarify. My parents took a long time to become supportive (it wasn’t fun the first time i came out. That’s right, i came out twice to them. That’s how much they were in denial), but once i started transitioning they’ve been with me every single step of the way.
Oh, man, ouch. But I’m glad they came around, eventually. ^_^
Jocelyne is a name…A pretty common one actually.
Really? I’ve never heard it. Like, ever. There are probably people with that name, but still.
I was hanging out with a lady by the name of Jocelyn just last night.
I know two women named Jocelyn. (Spelled slightly different than Willis’s, but same name.)
According to Wolfram alpha, it is currently the 92nd most common baby name in the US, and the 599th most populous name in the US. Approximately 1 in every 3054 people in the US are named Jocelyn.
One very famous one…
Also, it’s my mother’s aunt’s name, so if I were a cartoon, I’d have probably had an eyebrow fly off my face when I read you imply it’s not a real name. (‘Joc’ is the nickname – pronounced the same as Joss.)
Why are you using Joshua though
This is the most amusing “Willis this is so far from realistic” comment I’ve seen in a while. It’s a not uncommon name.
hm… i’m billie now. Nothing against mike but he is not one of the characters I associate with myself.
My niece’s name is Jocelyne you jerk!
The Mike gravatar made that so much better than it probably was.
Hahaha my mom’s name is Jocelyne actually
Okay, I apologize for my comment. It was kind of rude. It’s just that I seriously have never heard that name before. Learn something new every day I guess.
Oh, awesome! Jocelyne’s a nice name, too. I hope Joyce reacts well to discovering she has a sister.
Considering how similar it is to “Joyce”, perhaps this is her way of paying her sister a compliment.
By the way, what is a proper pronoun for a MTF?
She, Her
There are also a lot of non-gender pronouns accepted by the LGTB community that are all listed on the wiki page for gender-neutral pronouns, like Ze and Hir.
I feel the need to point out that it’s equally disrespectful to refer to a trans* person who identifies as a man or woman with gender-neutral pronouns. That’s denying their gender in another manner.
So the answer is, as norj said, she or her.
As a transwoman myself, I want to concur with Daphnaie. I do not want to be referred to as “xe”. Especially since that will get you so many strange looks. While it would be nice to have gender-neutral pronouns in English, it’s not gonna happen anytime soon. And language rarely changes by such artificial means. Besides, singular “they” works fine. And it’s not wrong. Shakespeare used it.
My sib uses they/them. 🙂
In that case, I would certainly not refer to you with gender-neutral pronouns. If I know how someone would prefer to be referred to as, I will always refer to them that way.
However, IN GENERAL, when one doesn’t know a person’s PPPs, it is appropriate to use gender-neutral ones. Not specifying a gender isn’t the same as specifying no gender. In this case, I do not yet know Jocelyne’s preferred pronouns, and so I am choosing to err on the side of caution.
(And I do actually agree that “they” should be an accepted singular gender-neutral pronoun.)
“They” is the accepted singular gender-neutral pronoun.
Oops, left out the closing tag after the “is”. I didn’t mean to be quite that emphatic.
Except that it’s not accepted. Lots of people use it, but also lots of people don’t like it. You can’t say that something is the only correct way to say something if your elementary school English teacher would tell you it’s wrong.
(Now, I still think it is acceptable, as long as you don’t insist that all alternatives are wrong.)
Even less people accept xe/xir. Your argument makes no sense.
That’s… not really relevant? I’m not saying we should use what the majority of people use; I’m just saying that you can’t say that XYZ is the only acceptable term if there are a bunch of people that don’t like it.
Note that I never said anyone else had to use xe, just defended my own use of it.
The exact same thing could be said about “xe/hir” – lots of people use it, but lots of people don’t like it. Your elementary school English teacher would also tell you it’s wrong.
Yes grammar essentialists will argue that singular “they” is incorrect, but they’re flat-out wrong.
I think a bigger problem is that most people of indeterminate gender who haven’t specified their pronouns tend to be trans people. And speaking as a trans person, it really sucks to be othered like that. Many trans people have spoken here saying it hurts them to have “xe/hir” directed towards them, and it’s really important to listen to that if you’re trying to help trans people. I know your circle might say differently, so feel free to continue using xe/hir among your circle of people you know prefer it – but don’t try to extend that out to other people if you don’t know that they’re okay with it.
In my experience, if someone appears to have a binary identification and there are clues that they have a binary identification, it’s generally best to go with that. If you’re a trans person trying your hardest to pass and you still get referred to arbitrarily by gender-neutral pronouns, it makes you feel singled out as a trans person rather than affirmed as your actual gender, and only serves to remind you how you’re not male/female-enough.
i feel the same way about pronouns.
How do you even pronounce “xe” and “xir” and all those other gender-neutral pronouns?
Assuming that was a genuine question:
Xe/Ze: “zee” (like “he” but with a z at the beginning)
Xir/Zir: “zer” (like “her” but with a z at the beginning)
Hir: “heer” (like “hear” or “here”)
I swear this wasn’t here when I pressed reply. 😛
it was a genuine question. Thank you
“zee” and “zurr,” at least that’s how I’ve always pronounced them.
She, MTF are female so you should refer to them as such.
If you want to be respectful refer to anyone in the manner they desire.
So, if the person wants me to refer to said person as cuddlebuns, I should do that?
Yep.
Only if you want to be respectful.
I don’t think I’d want to be respectful to someone who insisted on me referring to them as “cuddlebuns”.
I guess you can just never refer to them at all… there’s not really that many instances that you have to call someone their name to their face in casual conversation. I have been really good friends with people who’s names I can’t remember or that they never told me.
This. I’m horrible at remembering names, unless they are names from some game. I cannot remember how many times I chatted daily with someone for weeks without knowing or remembering their names, and the issue never pops up.
Note that you should refer to people by their preferred pronouns regardless of whether or not they can hear you.
Why shouldn’t you?
This is, again, difficult due to the fact that we don’t know what Jocelyn wants. Xe presents as male to everyone (as far as we know) besides Ethan. We cannot assume xe would want to be referred to by female pronouns. When in doubt, gender-neutral is the way to go.
Ask the trans person in question, since it may vary with how out they are. Then go with what they say.
… Say, does this mean Ethan can now admit to his family that he found her attractive? (I’m still unsure about the protocol when it comes with trans people. I get that you rifer to them by their preferred gender, but I don’t have the subtle stuff down yet (well, I don’t have the subtle stuff when interacting with other people in general down, but this is something where I think there’s a lot less room for error))
This is pretty tough, since xe isn’t out to… anyone, really, besides Ethan. Yay for gender-neutral pronouns!
In that case Ethan really shouldn’t say anything.
But for what it’s worth Pat friggin’ Robertson is okay with trans people–the same dude who, just six days ago, said that low-carb diets were a sin against God and thinks gay folks transfer their gayness via blood with spiked rings. It’s possible Ethan’s folks are similarly accepting.
…I never thought I’d be in the position of hoping anyone is as good a person as Pat Robertson. This is supremely weird.
It’s possible that Naomi is fine with transpeople, but even if she is, I think Ethan being attracted to a transwoman who is currently presenting as male would not reassure her that Ethan is not gay.
(And obviously Ethan shouldn’t tell her anyway, unless Jocelyne gives him permission, and I can’t imagine why she would. Too much risk of it getting back to her parents.)
He could just be really vague about it: “Hey, Mom, the other day I found a girl I was attracted to.”
“Oh, and, uh, she’s the sister of the girl I’m already dating.”
Naomi: Ethan…you go in there right now and have a threesome!
Why do you keep using the fabricated gender-neutral pronouns “xe” and “xir?” They don’t really apply to Jocelyne. You should use feminine-gendered pronouns for her, shouldn’t you?
I agree with your point about using she/her (because through both the hovertext and the email we have evidence that Jocelyne identifies as female) but why the use of the word ‘fabricated’? How else do you think words are made?
They’re fabricated in the same way Esperanto is a conlang instead of just another language.
That’s right
words are never created by people
they are handed down from the heavens on a stone tablet
Words evolve, like organisms. What you’re saying is the equivalent of saying that evolution is creationism because animals didn’t just come out of nowhere.
I think Raibean was being facetious.
In a way meant to highlight the deficiencies of my point of view.
We wouldn’t be having this conversation about the words “Muggle”, “Gallifrey”, “toke”, “spliff”, “skag”, “juju”, “due backs”, “bundie”, “slodge”, “slurg”, “yoot”, or “zorros”. A lot of these last ones were 1950s slang and according to Etymonline, have either questionable origins or are simply not listed. Language has ALWAYS been invented. Even if we take two affixes and stick them together for a new word, that’s not language EVOLVING. It’s language being created.
The difference between those words and gender-neutral pronouns is that the former do not challenge an entire society’s basic assumptions about what they view as essential.
It’s also sort of like the difference between a meme and a forced meme – those words caught on*. There’s any number of reasons why the gender-neutral pronouns that have been proposed have not. It might be because of a general lack of awareness, it might be because people don’t want to have to keep track of more than four kinds of pronoun (he, she, they, it), or it might simply be because they sound unnatural to a majority of English speakers**.
*At least, I’ll take your word that they caught on. I’ve never heard of like, a third of those.
**I’m not actually certain of this, but seeing as most people don’t use them, I’m inclined to think it does have an impact.
i keep on responding in the wrong place god what is wrong with me
Gender-neutral pronouns apply to everybody. That’s… exactly the point. They’re gender-neutral. Jocelyne has not indicated a pronoun preference, and therefore I am erring on the side of caution.
You’re being a dick. Just like the rad-fems who alter the spelling of “wymyn” and “herstory”.
????????????????????????
You’re misgendering her.
No, I’m… not gendering xir at all. I do not know what pronouns xe wants people to use, and so I am avoiding any that indicate a specific gender.
The hovertext refers to Jocelyn as a “sister”, so I think that gives a good indication of “she”
Yet Toad’s argument remains : “by using a gender-neutral pronoun one cannot mis-gender anyone. Because it isn’t assigning any gender to start with”.
And we’re also talking about a fictional character so we’re not disrepecting anyone by using the pronouns we considerto be the most appropriate.
Thanks, Leonou, that was exactly what I was trying to say.
It’s more or less a moot point now, since Willis has chimed in, but still an important conversation to have in general.
“Yet Toad’s argument remains : “by using a gender-neutral pronoun one cannot mis-gender anyone. Because it isn’t assigning any gender to start with”.”
And that argument fails unless you use them by default with everyone It’s othering. The message is “cis people get normal pronouns, trans people’s pronouns are negotiable”. I can count on one hand the number of people who used any pronoun-set other than he/him/etc to refer to the person they understood to be called Joshua yesterday… or I could if there was a standard hand-sign for “zero”, anyway.
@Random: Your argument is entirely correct, and I make an effort to always use a person’s preferred pronouns, whatever they may be, if I know them. The issue arises when a person’s gender identity, for whatever reason, is in question. Until Willis weighed in, I wasn’t sure how Jocelyne identified, and so I used a neutral pronoun. Now I refer to her as “her,” since I know that she is a woman. Jocelyne was a woman yesterday, but we had no way of knowing that, and therefore used the potentially harmful “he.” Upon realizing that I had previously been in error, I switched to what I understand to be the least harmful alternative, and then switched again once I learned what she preferred.
Well, based on what we know, I’d say would prefer to be referred to as female but accepting to be referred to as male do to not actually being out yet. (Well, to her family, I think she has a circle of friends she’s out to, as well as the fact she’s using a female name for publishing her works.)
Also, is it out of the closest for trans people as well, or do they come out of another thing?
That Jocelyne prefers female pronouns is a reasonable guess. However, if I’ve learned one thing from queer groups, it’s that guessing at people’s identities is a very dangerous and potentially harmful thing.
Yeah, I can understand why this might be a touchy subject for the people this effects. Something I shall keep in mind from now on.
You really need to get a more realistic look at politeness in referring to people. It is forgivable when meeting a stranger to refer to them by the wrong gender if you don’t know any better, but it is NEVER a good thing to refer to them as an ‘it’. I wouldn’t want my cat or dog to be referred to as an it much less myself.
If you really don’t want to offend someone by using the wrong pronoun then skip using a pronoun at all. Use words such as “y’all” or “person” or “you” which do not have a gender context in the English language. That’s safer than making a guess to gender preferrences, but avoids making that person think they are a disgusting sludge monster in your eyes.
I feel as if you mayhap been attempting to respond to me, as I brought up “it” as a potential pronoun. If this is the case, let me just address it now:
I am not advocating that people should refer to ANYBODY as “it” unless they themselves ask to be. Again, I doubt it is at all common, but there has to be at least one person out there who prefers those pronouns (maybe otherkin who identify as inanimate objects?). The point is that misgendering happens, and it’s not always malicious in intent. Honestly, the onus is kind of on the person in question to specify which pronouns they would like to be referred to as.
Is this… supposed to be in response to me? ‘Cause I never called anyone an “it”…
Does Naomi just frown perpetually? Is that just like her default expression?
Naomi hates joy and laughter.
Naomi hates.
That’s it.
She just hates.
She’s actually Mike’s biological mother, but him and Ethan were switched at birth.