there are plenty of cultures with traditions of third-gender people, but they're mostly the ones that got killed off or pushed to the side - there's an interesting connection between siberian shamanism and third-gender people, for example you were unlucky there to stumble into the separate clusterfuck of "man, natives are kind of pissed about the whole misrepresentation and genocide thing and don't like their shit being called by european names" - "bardache" is an old french word for the "bottom" in a gay relationship and it seems to be eventually derived from an arabic word for "slave" there's a language that i'm really interested in in the canadian northwest that i knew as "slavey" or "slave" with or without an acute accent on the e - turns out the name literally comes from "esclave", or slave in french, which is a calque from cree - that's the problem with asking the wrong locals what everything is called, because the cree were like "we enslave these people, so we call them slaves" and now essentially all the academic writing about these people uses that name too they prefer "Dene" - fun fact: lots do, including Navajo - "Diné", right? i appreciate the fact that you're still trying to sort stuff out - despite that, i find it hard to pat you (or anyone) on the back too hard for the effort
You need to. Everybody needs to. Privileged and unempathetic, I know. But let's work from the assumption that in a free society that values diversity, you're 100% entitled to recognition and acceptance. I am obligated by the bounds of common courtesy to use your pronouns of choice without comment or complaint. If you sneeze, the polite thing is to say "bless you" or "gesundheit" or something similar. And in response, the polite thing is to say "thank you." The LGBT community is in no mood to say "thank you." I totally understand why and I empathize with the viewpoint. It's a pain in the ass to be gender-nonconforming and there's a whole bunch of gender-conforming people actively making it worse. But without social acknowledgement of the efforts made at acceptance, cis people will avoid situations where they're required to be uncomfortable. "Thanks for putting in the effort" is manners. Integrating GSM members into the broader community requires effort - by both sides, for sure. But it ain't a GSM society and things will go better if us assholes in the majority are allowed a few warm fuzzies every now and then rather than knowing our every interaction is subject to a secret eyeroll and venting somewhere on the internet.i appreciate the fact that you're still trying to sort stuff out - despite that, i find it hard to pat you (or anyone) on the back too hard for the effort