I'm generally against gendered pronouns for the reasons given here, and I don't have a strong internal gender identity as I described in /IsaacKing/if-i-start-identifying-as-a-woman-w. As such, I've been thinking about asking people to use gender neutral pronouns for me.
Unfortunately, my social environment is extremely toxic about any sort of culture war issues. As an example, I once got involved in an argument with a co-worker about the circustances under which misgendering should be considered harrassment. Despite being on the "more situations are harrassment" side of the argument, the same side as all the angry social justice people, I was accused of being transphobic (no evidence provided of course, just a vague claim that I had been transphobic somewhere in the thread), and reported to my employer over this.
As another example, I once attempted to discuss the foundational left-wing belief that black people are poorer and fall prey to drug abuse more often as a result of this systemic disadvantage. Despite being one of the core tennents of social justice ideology, apparently me believing those exact same things and linking to studies backing them up made me a Nazi.
The group of people within my social circle with whom I find myself in conflict with most often are trans people and others in that culture. I'm not sure why this is, since I'm strongly trans-supportive and often find myself correcting the misgendering of people around me, deleting transmisic comments on my social media pages, etc. My best guess is that there's a pro-trans bias among people making hiring decisions in my profession, leading incompetent trans people (and vocally trans-supportive cis people) to have a much easier time getting promoted, and therefore my criticisms of incompetent coworkers end up disproportionally falling on them. And they're used to everyone else walking on eggshells around them, which means that they never learned emotional maturity and react poorly to critisicm. Also, I tend to be alone in any resulting drama-storms since no one else wants to speak out publically in support of me, so I'm seen as an easy target to pick on.
If you want a more concrete example of what I tend to experience, you can see some representitive drama here.
As a result of this background, I suspect that if I come out within my social circle, I'll be accused of "trying to participate in the literal genocide of trans people by invalidating their experience", or some other nonsense excuse to attack me.
I'll resolve this market subjectivly to some percentage from 0 to 100, based on things like:
Do several people who don't like me make angry Facebook/Twitter posts about it?
Do most people start using my new pronouns in discussions about me?
Does my coming out result in decreased hiring prospects for me?
Do I get added to the Discord server that's ostensibly for trans and gender nonconfirming people in my community?
Do people from the "silent majority" of reasonable people in my community privately reach out to tell me that this was a bad move and I should have kept it hidden?
Since this is so subjective, I won't bet.
Obviously, I'm taking a bit of a risk mentioning this on a non-anonymous Manifold account that links to my other social media profile pages. Few enough of my community members use Manifold that I think it'll probably be fine, but I'd appreciate people here not sharing this anywhere else.
I don't care what pronouns people use for me on Manifold for the time being.
Related questions
Can you clarify how you're intending to come out? Is it going to involve using that particular essay by Douglas Hofstadter? Is it going to be as a simple explanation of your lack of gender identification and preference for gender neutral terms, or will you describe it as a social experiment of any sort?
(also, are you open to social feedback on the nature of the representative drama you linked to?)
@Sinclair Yeah, some of my better friends suggested I find a more supportive community, and recommended Manifold as a better environment for me to spend my free time in.
@Sinclair By not accusing people of literal genocide unless they literally commit genocide, we are setting new standards for human decency.
@MartinRandall It's a literal genocide of people who overuse the phrase "literal genocide", though!
@MartinRandall Lol. I'd count that as going well, since it seems I'm being at least somewhat accepted rather than excluded. I probably wouldn't feel very welcome in the server considering that it's filled with people who hate me, but I'd at least appreciate the effort made towards genuine inclusiveness.
Your comments remind me of https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2015/01/28/cis-by-default/, do you feel like this describes you?
@Conflux I really wonder what gender dysphoria feels like. Is it just for example being male sex then wanting to be the female sex since you want to do things that fit female gender roles, like being a home maker, being sexually submissive, acting more cute, etc? Comparable to how I'm not a billionaire but I want to be a billionaire so I can live the billionaire lifestyle. Or is it something fundamentally different? If anyone has any analogies to illustrate that would be helpful.
Honestly—at the risk of pissing off any trans folks reading this market—if you don't feel like you have a strong internal sense of "gender identity" then it's probably easiest to just go with the flow of the standard/default gender identity you were assigned at birth. Give yourself some time to grow into it and/or define what specifically it means to you, and don't feel like you have to abandon it just because other people define it differently.
Also if that Facebook thread is any indication of your IRL friends you should try to branch out and meet new people so you can quietly leave all the nasty ones behind.
@levifinkelstein I found this example online:
Gender is a lot like a pair of shoes. If you have on a good, comfortable, well fitting pair, you don't notice it or think about it. As you walk around you aren't constantly thinking about your shoes and the comfort, it's just there and fine and normal and it doesn't concern you one single bit. It's almost hard to notice because if they feel fine it seems to silly and unimportant to spend energy thinking about it.
But if your shoes are too small and tight or there is a rock in them it's all you can think about. Every step is annoying and miserable and you don't want to do anything else until you fix this damned rock. Doing anything else seems crazy until your shoes stop hurting you.
"The group of people within my social circle with whom I find myself in conflict with most often are trans people and others in that culture. I'm not sure why this is, since I'm strongly trans-supportive and often find myself correcting the misgendering of people around me, deleting transmisic comments on my social media pages, etc. My best guess is that there's a pro-trans bias among people making hiring decisions in my profession, leading incompetent trans people (and vocally trans-supportive cis people) to have a much easier time getting promoted, and therefore my criticisms of incompetent coworkers end up disproportionally falling on them. And they're used to everyone else walking on eggshells around them, which means that they never learned emotional maturity and react poorly to critisicm. Also, I tend to be alone in any resulting drama-storms since no one else wants to speak out publically in support of me, so I'm seen as an easy target to pick on."
I've independently had the exact same issues with trans-people in the communities I've been in and independently had the exact same "walking on eggshells" thesis.
@ScottLawrence Depends on why they're doing it. If it's because they have a general disagreement with using neutral pronouns, I might try to convince them otherwise, but I won't care all that much. If it's because they don't like me in particular, that would bother me.