Hmmm tough question.
Social norms don’t quite oblige us to address each other in certain ways, I would say. Social norms give us a menu of ways to address each other, but they’re not really mandatory, apart from the military and on the job and so on.
But, even if we agree for the sake of argument that the norms are mandatory or might as well be, it doesn’t follow (and it isn’t true) that all such purported mandates are equally legitimate.
And that’s all the more the case when the purported mandate is not in fact about how we address people but about how we talk about them in the third person. In other words no, social norms don’t “oblige” us to refer to men as “she” and “her” even if the men in question have issued aggressive orders to do so.
It might be considered bullying or harassment to refer to a man as “he” when he’s ordered you not to, but guess what, it’s bullying or harassment for men to tell women to call them “she” and “her.”
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14 responses to “How to refer”
Canada bill C-16 makes it more of a Canadian import, but hey, let’s blame the “yankbrained libertarians” who have introduced no such laws. Is insulting Americans one of your precious “social obligations,” dickhead?
From what I can tell, it’s the men who are insisting they be referred to as women who are more yankbrained.
Papito, I think “yankbrained” is a derogatory term referring to us Yanks and our objectionable way of thinking.
If you’re going to appeal to “duties we have to one another,” you might consider not insisting that people accept and repeat lies and as one of them. I would say that is more fundamental than being polite to the demands of narcissists. And this forced politeness isn’t the end of it, it’s the beginning. One lie follows another, and as a result you have male sex criminals in women’s prisons. What of society’s duty to protect vulnerable women from being incarcerated with rapists?
It’s all part of the same impulse, forcing a dishonest, deceptive, and impossible self-perception onto others. Make them say “yes” to that, and everything else follows, because they’ve already swallowed the biggest lie, right up front. Your plea for pronouns can go to the back of the fucking line.
By playing the aggrieved ones, they hope to mask the rude, anti-social demands they’re making. Failure to accept and repeat the lie is worse than the lie itself. The expectation and demand for respect (or obedience, more like) is unilateral. There’s a startling, consistent asymmetry in all of this that takes as a given that women are expected to comply with these demands; the real costs to them are glossed over and ignored. We’re told that “misgendering” a trans identified male, or denying him access to women’s spaces is much, much worse than the actual danger that opportunistic predatory men pose to women. Another lie we’re supposed to swallow because whatever men want is always more important than anything women need. Just like the Australian gymnastics idiots going on about how they want “everyone” to feel welcome, included, whatever. Women are, obviously, not part of “everyone.” Their needs, comfort, and safety are beneath consideration, baubles to be given away to please men who claim to be women, who are the only ones who rate attention and concern. It’s a Saudi level of paternalistic misogyny and it’s not a good look. It’s a perverse, ideologically induced blindness that would be considered ludicrous and laughable if it wasn’t a real and continuing threat to half the population.
YNnB:
This is exactly the thing I’m constantly trying to explain to people who make the “common courtesy/decency” argument. The rude and indecent behavior doesn’t begin with the refusal to use wrong-sex language. It begins with the demand that you be complicit in a lie.
At the end of tweet 2: ‘If myself & the..’
Eoin, before dictating to us the correct terms to use in reference to others, it might be an idea to learn how to refer to yourself.
Pomposity is deadly to decent writing.
Or, as Magdalen Berns said “I’d rather be rude than a fucking liar.”
Magdalen certainly had a cathartic habit of cutting right through bullshit.
And anyway, this is just another motte & bailey.
Bailey: “You must refer to people using the terms they dictate.”
Motte: “Speech is shaped by social norms.”
@4 you always have a way with words, but this comment is excellent, thank you.
@twiliter, so “yankbrained” doesn’t mean obsessed with masturbation, then?
I thought it could mean that too, it’s not a common insult.
@guest #11
You’re welcome, and thank you.
I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve originally intended to post some short bit of snark and ended up churning out a bunch of paragraphs. So often, one implication or idea leads to another and they all start tumbling out unbidden; I do my best to turn these jumbles into something ordered and coherent. I’m happy my screeds are appreciated.