217. Let’s Make Everything About Your Gender!
– LOOK, I do NOT want to be asked about my genitals! Just call me “she” and be done with it!
– Wow, why are you making this all about you?
This is all prompted by my current attempt to get a little power back, by not assuming anyone’s gender or pronouns, and learning to call everyone “they” until they ask me to use a different pronoun. After all, you can’t guess someone’s gender correctly every time, right? It’s taking me a while to learn. It’s a lot like learning to use singular “they” for nonbinary people, but harder. You’d think it would be easier to just use one pronoun for everyone, but no, apparently not! When I get it right it’s really satisfying and I feel good, so I’m going to keep trying.
So this comic comes from a place where everyone seems to think the trans folks are making a big deal out of their genders and pronouns – but when you flip things around, it puts things into perspective a little bit and shows the power dynamics up. We’re used to our genders, and we know we’re more than just our genders, but wow do cis folks like to focus on our genders and then blame us for being weird.
Thank you lovely Patreon contributors, including Lyrania and Alex – I appreciate your support. 🙂 Also hiiii!
Hi,
woow, awesome comic 🙂
When someone asks for a specific pronoun, i will stick with it (because, yes, some people feel misgendered by „they“ although it is meant to not simply mean “this person has no gender” but rather “all genders included in one pronoun“ (i think there is a need for both of these options…)
Using “they“ as default sounds super awesome, but here i am again, having to speak German most of my life out there, where all attempts at genderneutral speech sound so awkward and bumpy that there is just no way of smoothly using them…. i wish there was one that gets used so consistently that people know what it means…
Oh man, I love the comic. It just satirises so wonderfully what should really not be a big deal.
I’ve been getting into the habit of using They as default for a while now without realising it. I’ve noticed that cis people often don’t even notice – unless it’s being used about someone who’s not cis, which is very transparent behaviour.
As a not visible genederqueer I appreciate people not assuming my pronouns. My partner who is a trans woman has had experiences where people resort to using they in order to avoid using she/her for her (that is what I was assuming was happening in this comic until I found out that the person was a cis woman). Because of this my partner chooses to use pronouns that match a person’s presentation until she knows for sure to avoid the effect of de-gendering other trans people. Of course, for me 99 out of 100 people would just assume I’m a cis woman and use she, so neither method is perfect. Of course, both of us ask as soon as possible, but that isn’t always something you are going to do for the rude person on the bus you want to complain about to your partner later.
I forgot to mention that I do use they when I don’t know a persons pronouns unless they are super duper normative and there is good reason to assume their pronouns (like a transphobic conservative Christian).
There is this awesome novel (Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie) where the protagonist was raised in a society that uses “she“ for all people and gender doesn’t seem to be a category. It depicts the protagonist travelling in binary gendered societies and being like… “i thiiink that for this one i need to use “he“ to not offend, but what were the markers for that again?!“ It’s very interesting to read.