Not Blackwater.
In the first part I mentioned that the awkwardness of the xe/hir construction was a major impediment to its ability to become unmarked. This brings me to my second feeling about the word, which is that I'm not sure how I feel about efforts, like this one, to normalize "deviance."
People who fall outside of our society's norms don't have many advantages as a result of their deviations, but a major one--one that, speaking as someone with a minority sexual orientation, I fucking love--is that it gives us a leg up in recognizing those norms for what they are (i.e., societal choices rather than natural law; often, impositions by and for the benefit of power) and rejecting them. To put it simply, we're already weird--we don't have to try. And given the absolutely untenable nature of the world as it is, we have to be weird--we have to reject it. All of us.
I'm a cisgendered man, so I understand that I'm coming at this issue from a position of considerable privilege. And I certainly think that these normalizing efforts are in many ways quite noble. Transgendered people are, obviously, people. People who, like everyone else, should have the right to not be exotic if they don't want to be. Just because I feel, strongly, that the world and all of its works need to be rejected fundamentally, does not mean that I have the right to demand it of other people just because they have non-standard bodies (or whatever else non-standard someone might have). And it must be really frustrating to go through daily life not even having a pronoun that comfortably refers to you. And I am well aware that frustration is the least of transgendered people's problems as they move through this crappy society of ours.
But I know that I'm extremely grateful* for my sexuality, because that aspect of my nature has been of great help in forming my view of the world. And for much the same reason that I'm ambivalent about gay marriage (it is of course ridiculous to have legal advantages available to some of the population but not all, but I'm not eager to hitch my sexual wagon to old-timey heterosexual patriarchal property transference procedures, you know?), I'm ambivalent about xe.
*Insofar as I can be grateful of something that no one gave me.
6 comments:
I know you said it was a matter of opinino,but you seem to have expectations here:
"And given the absolutely untenable nature of the world as it is, we have to be weird--we have to reject it. All of us."
From the post: Just because I feel, strongly, that the world and all of its works need to be rejected fundamentally, does not mean that I have the right to demand it of other people
It seems like a lot to expect Jenny to read the posts the comments on, now, doesn't it?
Thanks for these posts. I've always been uncomfortable with the efforts to make these new pronouns, because of how awkwardly they sit in the language. When it comes to the simpler matter of the rejection of the standard "he", I lean towards "he or she" (or vice versa) rather than the ugly "s/he". But that's not really relevant here. And then I'm a straight white male, so my discomfort is hardly the main problem (it's also why I don't insist on my preferences).
The problem with he or she, aside from the unwieldiness, is that it assumes that everyone is one or the other which is not the case. Definitely a big improvement over the default he but still lacking.
"My discomfort is hardly the main problem" is a great way to phrase it. It's my conclusion as well. I have my problems with the usage, as I stated, but ultimately my problems with it are pretty irrelevant. It's not my decision to make. I'm happy to give input where it's welcome, though.
Incidentally your post on trust and experts was fantastic and I've been trying to formulate a response to it.
It's funny, regarding the he or she option, I had intended my sentence "But that's not really relevant here" to signal my awareness that it does not address what you're talking about in your post. It hadn't occurred to me until I thought about posting this comment that that awareness was itself a missing of the point. Because the point in part was that not everyone is one or the other. Thanks for bringing that home for me. On the other hand, I like what you say about normalizing versus maintaining that opposition or rejection. No doubt both impulses coexist uneasily in people.
Regarding my post, thank you. I look forward to your thoughts on the matter.
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