Conversational Thoughts on Genders (and such!)

I wrote the original iteration of this document in longform in 2018, as response to the expressed confusion of a trusted friend - concerning a topic with which I was increasingly well acquainted.

Shortly thereafter, I reformatted and added context, and shared in hardcopy with my housemates, to support their developing model of my nascent queerness.

It got a new introduction, and some small clarifications! As always - it's creative commons, skimmable, hyperlinked, and questions / comments / and bugfixes welcome!

Infra

TL;DR

concepts discussed as "sex" and "gender" are complicated, and have always been complicated.
nonbinary humans are not novel - there's a strong historical precedent for individuals not readily classed as "male" or "female" -
if one accidentally misgender another, it's best to simply say the proper pronouns, and move on!
the use of the proper pronouns is important, to convey one is kind / not an enemy, and to ensure one's meaning is understood.

Humans - as social animals - value a shared cultural context. When someone - isolated by their privilege or circumstance - finds themselves connecting with a culture that they do not understand, the experience can be trying, and there is cause for "friction". Modern societal norms, manifested - at their worst - in "weekend-social-justice-warrior" / "loudly politically correct" culture - can bring to mind an illusion of walking on eggshells. This illusion gains strength in contexts where books are judged by their cover (snap judgements and passing conversations) - and one party presents akin to an oppressing class.

I'm personally old enough to remember a time before "they/them" was a valid singular pronoun according to "the dictionary" - and just because it's "in the dictionary" - does not mean it is in your neighbor's dictionary.

The conversation in question stemmed from misidentifying a nonbinary individual as a "girl" - and the subsequent metadiscussion of the implications of conflating "that girl" and "they."

For posterity's sake, my original opening read approximately:

"Gonna directly address pronouns first, given that I largely concur with your assessment that walking on eggshells sucks and culture loses something of value should we collectively lose the ability to engage with concepts that with which we disagree.

So, two points of identity politics / pronouns / adjectives I called out:

the use of a diminutive to refer to an adult

the use of the a binary pronoun to refer to someone who's opted out.

I'm going to attempt to fold them into a single point - about respecting personal identity - and argue in favor of the cultivation of mindfulness in conversation.

On Genders, pronouns, and a multiplicity thereof

Modern and historic models of gender are informed by a diverse set of psychological, social, and biological characteristics, including the set of...

genetics (in humans, typically determined by the 23rd chromosomes - typically "XX" or "XY" but with several - other - known - variants - confounding - this - model )
sex organ morphology (typically strongly correlated with genetics)
endocrinology - in humans, this is typically the ratio of testosterone to estrogens - everyone has some of each and it's often correlated with genetics, but not always.
societal expectations (often derived from endocrinology, but communicated by externalities like wardrobe / ornamentation, and shaped by culture)
associated performative behavior (set of actions chosen to facilitate or indicate an adherence to a gender categorization)

One could use these traits to sort individuals into

two categories {man, woman} (as per ~mid twentieth century America)
three categories {child, man, woman} or {man, woman, x}
four {man, woman, boy, girl}
five {m / w / b / g / x} or more, pending one’s interests, desire for precision, etc.
an arbitrary number, reflecting the fact that each individual has a unique model for both gender and their gender identity, and expression of secondary sex characteristics is mediated by an astonishingly complex array of genes

Many cultures throughout history have expanded their model beyond two genders, with examples (in no particular order) including...

Furthermore, many cultures do explicitly reflect a boy-girl-man-woman divide often by using diminutives, ie list of linguistic tacts acting as a diminutive, or utilizing third-gender words to refer to children, with only mature adults receiving binary genders.

With these examples, extending models to multiple genders should be understood to be a reasonable hypothesis, albeit perhaps an unusual one. With the enumeration of aspects of gender, and cultures with genders that exceed a mid-century western binary, the primary arguments around misgendering and the use of words with nebulously pejorative implications can follow.

To be brief, I'll assert that the use of diminutives - ie "girl" to describe an adult female, or "boy" to describe an adult male - is a form of misgendering similar to using "girl" to describe an adult man, or "boy" to describe an adult woman. By my estimate, the later is approximately 1.707x as bad.

M W
B G

Even if English seldom makes a distinction in gender between adults and children - consider... the small overlap between the cultural roles of a male child and an adult male, the differences in physical characteristics between a young morphologically / genetically female child and an adult woman, or the little in common endocrinologically between a juvenile or (sexually mature / pubescent) adult.

Both dictionary definitions of the words "boy" and "girl" indicate that their use, especially when applied to adults, is "sometimes offensive" or "often offensive" - canonically establishing a level of ambiguity of intent on the part of the speaker that does not lead to optimal communication. The deconstruction of the offensiveness of these terms predicated upon the aforementioned model of gender is moderately de novo, and continued below.

Predicated upon the aforementioned set of things that I understand to comprise an accurate model of gender, some individuals have, with a model of both themselves and the societal context at hand, elected to identify in a capacity that refutes or operates outside of the roughly bimodal distribution common to western culture.

In such a model, perhaps the use of "boy" or "girl" to refer to someone adhering to neither binary gender is moderately less ambiguously offensive than using it to refer to an adult who identifies as the opposite gender, but nevertheless calls into question the intellectual rigor and desire for clear and unambiguous communication of the speaker.

MXW
B G

On proper pronouns.

But first, a purposal of how to handle using the wrong pronouns.

Say the right pronoun. ????
Move on.

To expand upon this tactic - let it suffice to be said that anyone who has elected to use pronouns different from those assigned at birth is well acquainted with the phenomena of being misgendered in conversation, casual or otherwise. It is highly likely that such individuals have vastly more pressing concerns than raising a fuss in context, relaying the occurrence to mutual friends, or chewing the speaker out in private. The biggest concerns at hand are likely to be deciding whether or not the speaker is...

Saying the right pronouns is certain to assure them, and anyone around, that the speaker is human, not terrible, and plausibly self aware. You may make a one word appology, afterwards, if you feel like it. That's it. Don't make a big deal out of it. Everyone makes mistakes, the trick is to learn from said mistakes, and endeavor not to repeat them. This same approach may be well applied to other cases of momentary confusion of identifying information, perhaps mispronunciation of a given name, briefly confusing them for an individual of similar appearance, or forgetting how they take their coffee.

The social value of utilizing proper identifiers.

When engaging in conversation, in contexts formal or not, typical goals might include

to communicate clearly
to set other parties at ease, and
to represent oneself and ones position well.

These same approaches apply equally as well over drinks at a bar as in a formal meeting with individuals of vastly different socioeconomic power. There are a wide number of underlying motivations one might choose to engage in conversation, but regardless of the underlying reason, it is typically undesirable to communicate in an ambiguous manner, use language which puts individuals on guard, or misrepresenting ones position on pertinent facts.

With this context in mind, common tactics present themselves - modeling other parties in conversation (empathy), gaining information to update those models (showing interest, asking questions), and using said models to assist in framing the speaker's position (albeit typically in a persuasive context.)

A model of a third party typically begins with a name - a proper noun useful to specifically refer to an individual, and in fact, this handle is often the first piece of information exchanged upon initiation of conversation. In most languages, proper nouns are (by virtue of address space) much longer than is convenient to use in context, for example, in sentences which refer to a subject more than once. To this effect, pronouns (from latin: prō ("instead of") + nōmen ("name")) are commonly utilized instead of the subject's full name. Pronouns, for the purposes of specificity in segmented social contexts, are commonly gendered, likely to effectively reduce the search space in which they must be resolved (at least by a bit or two.) By utilizing pronouns other than the most specific possible, confusion is introduced.

By willfully utilizing pronouns other than those chosen by the subject, and refusing to correct the mistake, an individual is communicating that they refuse to acknowledge an individual's self-determined identity, possibly leading the subject to conclude the speaker is operating from a place of malice. This is likely to raise impede further communication and encourage the subject to proceed in a more guarded manner.

By refusing to adhere to the commonly expected model of the shared language, in which the pronouns used are gendered according to the subject to which they refer, the speaker is indicating the position is of less significance than the effort required to track the extra bit or two of state required to facilitate consistent gender models for the participants in the conversation at hand.

In this manner, using pronouns other than those selected by the subject to which they refer serves to induce unnecessary ambiguity, instill doubt and concern in (at the very least) the subject misgendered, and dilute the perceived value of the speaker's topic of discussion. Under this model of the purpose of pronouns and the possibility space of conversational goals, using incorrect pronouns can be understood to have a cost to the speaker's ability to achieve their goals, as well as bring into question the speaker's value of the subject.

The moral value of utilizing correct identifiers.

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Summary

To directly respond to an assertion:

If someone takes offense at the pronoun that is used to refer to them, that's a character flaw on their part.

I agree. Folks who chose to use pronouns that may be non-obvious, yet take offense at innocent or initial errors in pronoun use, suffer from a character flaw. As best I can tell, such people are in the minority.

To review the points:

human gender is messy, determined by multiple static and dynamic aspects of an individual, at least in part self determined, and inaccurately captured by a binary model
human gender is subject to change, ie as one undergoes puberty, both their own model of their gender, and their culture's model of their gender, change and evolve
human language uses gendered pronouns to narrow the possibility space of the subject to aid in clear and concise communication
there is value in accurately representing the gender an individual has chosen for themselves, both to facilitate communication, and to reflect an understanding of the subject's identity

Academic discussions of (gender-neutral) pronouns in the English language

There's much more to be said on the topic, as both linguistics and gender are arbitrarily complicated topics. For further reading, consider the following...

i-infra/genders-n-such.md