The problem, as I see it, is that other minorities have history and consensus. "Black history month" is a recounting of hundreds of years of overlooked contributions and suffering of a recognized minority. If you're Jewish you've got thousands of years of history and folklore. If you're homosexual you can go back to the ancient Greeks and beyond. You are this, not that, you are this, and that. The LGBT community has to be an umbrella of inclusiveness of everyone who isn't into straight sex with their original genitals. The LGB part? That shit's sorted. Everything else? That's your perspective, and I thank you for it, and I guarantee that if I assume the next trans person I meet shares it I'm fucked. Because everyone who's active in the community has an opinion and there isn't a lot of folklore or tradition to lean on. My wife welcomed and was sought out by the LGBT community in Los Angeles; she helped a lot of same-sex couples have babies. In Seattle she's in with a couple-three prominent LGBT educators and we ran the webpage through the Decoder Ring so that we used completely bias-free language. And I know what passes in LA wouldn't pass in Seattle, and I know what passes in Seattle doesn't pass in LA, and I know that the experience of an outsider attempting to reconcile everyone's chosen pronouns and acronyms is to be a punching bag for getting it wrong always. We got some paperwork that used "LGBTQQIAAP!" and I had to ask what the "!" meant. I was informed it referred to two-spirit individuals (but not third gender. Then I had to ask what two-spirit individuals were. Then I was told that two-spirit individuals are Native Americans who fulfill a third gender role in life or in certain ceremonial capacities. I said "oh, you mean bardaches" because fuckin' hell we studied Navajo gender fluidity in 8th grade because mine was a progressive school. You'd think I said "you mean faggots." No bonus points whatsoever for being familiar with Navajo culture as it pertains to transgender individuals. Because I'd used the term my teacher taught me 20 years ago in an attempt to be diverse, I was an unalloyed racist homophobe all of a sudden. I honestly believe that the homophobes have an easier time dealing with transgender issues because they just grit their teeth and pretend transgender people are sick and can therefore be disregarded. Those of us who try to get the terminology right are the ones who get lambasted for trying because if you can brow-beat someone into agreeing with your interpretation you've made it stronger than your rivals'. I put a social worker through grad school about 20 years ago. She got tested on transgender vs. transsexual... after being informed that whatever their preconceptions were, they were wrong by default because they weren't transgendered. Now? Now Facebook has 51 gender options. It's one thing to correctly address A or B. It's quite another when the alphabet doesn't contain your options. And I know not everyone insists on that much granularity, but if you assume that not everyone insists on that much granularity... ...you're a bigot. Especially if you're a straight white male.i like using GSM (for gender and sexual minorities) because it seems like nobody could have a problem with it, and the letter-adding politics of LGBT-etc (aka legbutts) is something to be avoided given that it's one of the things that every two-bit culture warrior brings up to talk about how shit we are - i have no problems with anybody using any kind of acronym or whatever because i'm not an asshole, and like i said, water off the back or whatever bullshit i actually did say
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