"GENDER INCLUSIVE" LANGUAGE

[JasonParticipant 282]

For my part, I simply look at objective (read: biological) vs subjective (read: “perceived”) gender. “Objective” gender has to do with chromosomes; XX or XY, in addition to the, very rare, “third” gender, or intersex. Subjective or perceived gender has to do with how people view themselves. For instance, a biological man (XY) who views himself as a female, or a biological woman (XX) who views herself as androgynous. I go for the biological gender as the default, but if a specific individual wishes to identify as another, then I will respect that choice – but only if they inform me of it. I refuse to accept having committed any “fault” or “caused offence” because I end up calling someone who looks to me like a man “he” when the person in fact identifies as androgynous and prefers some other term; if they haven’t informed me of that choice, then I have done nothing “wrong”. Furthermore, if I decide to refer to them as their biological gender then I also commit no fault as in doing so I refer to their actual gender instead of their own subjectively identified gender. The objective gender takes precedence. Now, confusion and error may of course occur when a person’s objective and subjective gender both match, say, XX-chromosomes along with self-identification as a female, but through some trick of genetics the person physically looks very much like a male until you inspect the genitals, but again, it then remains up to that person to inform people of the reality of the situation; one cannot expect others to defer to your issues without their awareness of said issues. You can’t go through life refusing to cook food that includes dairy products because you may or may not one day run into someone lactose-intolerant and also too stupid to inform you of said intolerance beforehand (of course, you may refuse to use dairy products for other reasons, but let’s leave that aside).

Just my view on the whole thing.

There lies serenity in Chaos. Seek ye the eye of the hurricane.

[avillaxParticipant 280]

This is something I can’t blame women for, but it is very annoying and confusing since I work as a translator. It is said that a few centuries ago English was introducing a neutral person but those plans never stayed.

[Author]

Posts