Why I Don't Care About Gender Pronouns

I Am Transgender And I Don't Care About Gender Pronouns

I'm a transwoman and I don't actually care if people use masculine pronouns when referring to me. Why? To put it simply:

I refuse to have my happiness depend upon the opinions and/or actions of others.

To be frank, it's not something I had even thought about until the recent media hype about it. The concept had never occurred to me until people started making a big deal about it in the last couple years. It's a non-issue for me. Why should I care if someone refers to me in the masculine (or as "it," like some people do more maliciously)? My overall philosophy is that my happiness is not dependent upon the actions of others and, as such, this "misgendering" simply was never a concern of mine.

Happiness In Simplicity

Most aspects of life are out of our control, but one thing that is definitely within our scope of control is choosing what to invest our mental resources in. When I was young, my mother often told me, "don't give others free rent in your head." In other words, don't let the behavior of others occupy your faculties and mental resources. I know who and what I am and I don't need others to validate what I already know about myself. Which means, "I don't care what you think." One of my father's favorite quotes is, "Opinions are like assholes: Everyone's got one" ("and it's probably pretty shitty," is what I like to add on to it).

I feel that, the simpler my life is, the happier I am. I try to minimize the number of stressors I have in my life. The more you try to control things, the more anxiety and stress you will have. So, I stick to concerning myself with the things that I can control. For everything else, the best I can do is to lead by example and hope others eventually do the right thing. As such, the minds of others are well outside the scope of my control. If am measuring my own self-worth and personal sense of accomplishment by the appraisal and opinions of others, I tether my own potential for happiness to the uncontrollable minds of others and circumstance. Doing this means that my happiness is less and less under my control and more and more subject to the whims of others. So, yeah. I don't care what you think.

The Misgendering Sensation

Misgendering is currently a hot subject that is all over the news.[1,2,3]

A Scenario To Consider

A cis-woman is in line at a grocery store check-stand with her groceries. She has a buzzed haircut and is dressed rather plainly in cargo shorts and a loose-fitting t-shirt. When she steps up to the checker, the checker is looking down at her groceries and says, "good evening, sir. Would you like to pay for paper bags for your groceries, today?" Let's say that the checker is a woman, too, but she was obviously busy focusing on the groceries and didn't look closely at the customer. In her peripheral view, the checker saw short, buzzed hair and plain, androgynous-looking clothes and assumed the customer was a man. Is the customer offended by this "misgendering?"

The odds are that the answer is "no" for most cis-women. If you ask a cis-woman to elaborate, she will likely say something like, "why should I take offense to that? People make mistakes." A cis-woman has been a woman all her life. She doesn't need a stranger to validate this fact. Well, the same should go for a transwoman. A transwoman has been a woman all her life, too, but she just had or has male reproductive organs.

When this whole misgendering sensation started to bloom, I was thinking, "what the heck is this all about?" Thanks to all the Internet and news sensation, my own coworkers are mortified when they accidentally refer to me in the masculine sense and will apologize profusely. I tell them, "it's ok. It's not a big deal. Don't worry about it." They respond with statements like, "no. That's my bad. I should know better. I care." My coworkers care more about using proper gender pronouns when referring to me than I do. It's nice that they care, but it has never been a thing for me to be offended by people "misgendering" me. I'm not an easy person to offend, in general, but I couldn't even imagine possibly being offended by misgendering.

Back when I was not public about being trans, when I had long hair but dressed masculinely, people would refer to me in the feminine, then look at me more closely, turn red in the face with embarrassment and apologize. Likewise, cis people are misgendered all the time and you won't hear them complaining about it.

What it comes down to is this: If you are at peace with who you are as a person, you should not need others to validate who you are. If who you are as a person depends on the appraisal of others, you will never feel whole and under control of your own life. Why? Because, as mentioned earlier, "opinions are like assholes."

Malicious Misgendering

Now that there are a lot of transgender people in the news and the transgender topic is brought up in television shows, movies and general popular culture pretty regularly, there has been a growing movement within right-wing circles to speak out against us and openly oppose the transgender community. People like Steven Crowder, Milo Yiannopoulos and Gavin McInnes have positioned themselves as leaders in the movement to oppose and/or deny the transgender community. OK. Congratulations to them 👏. I've long had a stance in opposition to right-wing, brutish, posturing and thuggish behavior, myself. You know what? They probably don't care about my position either and I seriously doubt it keeps them up at night. And guess what, we probably agree with each other on that. I don't care about them, their followers and what they think of me, and the feeling is probably mutual for them.

Actually, I kind of wonder about Steven Crowder. He spends a little too much time and energy making videos about us and tweeting about us. Perhaps we do keep him up at night. All that stress is on him. He's letting us take up "free rent" in his own head.

I have right-wing friends. They respect me. I don't try to control their thoughts or speech and they don't try to control mine. This means that we know there are topics we will disagree on, but we can respect each other and, when necessary, agree to disagree. And we can discuss and debate issues we have opposing stances on with total civility. You know what my right-wing friends think about the opinions of Crowder, Yiannopoulos and McInnes on the subject of the trans community? They think they're wrong. Why? Because they know me and, as mentioned earlier, I try to lead by example. Initially they think that I am uniquely easy-going "for a trans person." Why "uniquely?" They don't know many trans people, so all they really have to go on is what the Internet and news outlets tell them. And the Internet and news outlets are flooded with all the noise about misgendering and are basically saying "be careful and walk on eggshells around transgender people. They're fragile." I have to tell my conservative friends, "we're not all like that. Very few of my own trans friends care about people using proper gender pronouns." So, they learn from my example and realize that Crowder, Yiannopoulos, McInnes, Fox News and Breitbart and the like are wrong. If I had reacted negatively to their slips and quips, though, I would have firmly reinforced what these bad actors are saying about us.

So there are strangers out there, or even family members, who don't like you for who you are. So what? You can't control their minds. Even if you could regulate their speech (which would contradict the First Amendment), you still wouldn't change their minds. If you did regulate speech, they'd rebel even more aggressively. Guess what? You probably won't ever get them to accept you or like you. What's wrong with that? They're not worth your energy and mental faculties. Why not instead focus on the people whom you can have a positive impact on? And don't try to force them to change, either. That just puts people on the defensive. Lead by example.

Lead By Example

Unless you're being asked to speak, give a presentation or a talk, etc, most people are not receptive to dictation and volunteered advice. Being pushy, obstinate or even bullying someone into understanding your perspective is just going to put people on the defensive and will likely push people the in the opposite direction you want them to go. And people who actively dislike you, for whatever reason, might not ever be able to put themselves in your shoes. Trying to convert the opposition is a waste of energy unless you have an in. Instead, focus your attention on the fence riders and those with an open mind or those who seem to be indifferent and then lead them by example.

I choose to respect people. I give everyone equal respect. If someone intentionally mistreats me, I cut my losses and stop associating with them. I don't get angry, I don't brood on it, I don't seek out revenge, I don't try to change their minds. They made a choice to mistreat me and, as such, have proven to me that they're a toxic person, so I then just politely step out of the situation and leave them to their own anger and toxicity. Most people who will actively mistreat you, like some of the trans community's louder opponents, they're unhappy people who are looking for a fight. When you try to change their minds, they feed on that confrontation because it gives them the opportunity to sling more insults (or worse) at you to further hurt you and better allows the situation to escalate (potentially to violence). You can pretty safely assume that you will not be able to "fix" them and you will be the one to walk away hurt. The reality is that, a person who will devote that much energy to going out of their way to hurt strangers is an unhappy person with an axe to grind. Very likely you're not their only target. They are probably looking for marginalized people who are easy targets to take out their problems on. They probably suffered greatly through their childhood and didn't have the fortune of learning how to heal from that and didn't learn how to have a positive, healthy lifestyle through into adulthood. They are the definition of toxic and, further engaging with them will only bring more toxicity into your own life. This will tether your own personal happiness to their toxicity, which is an element that is not under your control and will thus remove your personal happiness from your own control.

So, I give equal respect to others and I stay away from the toxic people. People who are disapproving of the trans community yet are not hostile to us, when they are treated with respect by me and I don't react negatively to their misgendering of me and their gender faux-pas, they learn that I am not what the media has depicted transgender people to be. They learn that I am an individual, that I am not hypersensitive and not easily offended. They learn that my happiness is independent of the opinions of others and they learn, "hey these trans people aren't so bad after all." The media has had a lot of fun capitalizing on certain community members' sensitivity to social missteps, popularizing the subject of misgendering. Your average right-winger thinks we're all a bunch of hypersensitive, hyperventilating snowflakes. Even many on the left believe this. Then they meet me and are blindsided, saying things like, "are you real?"

Screenshot of the thread that spawned this blog post

This is one example, but many times throughout my life publicly as identifying as a woman, people have been pleasantly surprised at how laid back I am about my gender.

Are you real? Wow, I'm so glad to hear you say that. One of my kids is mentally disabled and his vocabulary is not plentiful so the words he knows is all he knows. He engages with his eyes, so misgendering is a real possibility for him. He's also vulnerable to injustice.

— chantelg4 (@chantelg4) May 9, 2018

The win/win here, is that I have less stress because I am not worrying about what others think about me, and people who meet me who were uncertain or uncomfortable with transgender people will learn that we're not some special "other" to be treated differently and we're instead very normal. If I reacted negatively, I'd be stressed out and they'd only get to see the "bad" side of me which would reflect poorly on the overall community and would reinforce what the media sensationalizes about us.

This Is Not A Pass

If you're reading this and you're not a member of the transgender community, I am not trying to give you a pass. If you actually consider yourself decent person, you should care about treating others with equal respect upon initially meeting them. You might think it's too hard to guess at a person's gender in many cases. Well, if that really is the case for you, you can either ask after a person's name first or just avoid gender pronouns entirely. I am sure you've run into androgynous people over the years. How did you handle it then?

So, no this is not a pass. It's me saying that, it makes no sense and I would never take offense to it and have never considered this an issue and had not even thought of it until the media sensationalized it. Why do I need someone else to validate my gender for me? It's me saying that my self-worth is not measured against the opinions and actions of others. It is also an attempt to show other members of my community that personal power, independence and happiness must first come from within.

Thank You For Your Support

For those of you who have gone out of your way to try to be understanding of the transgender community and who make an effort to not misgender us ...

💜💜💜 THANK YOU! 💜💜💜

We're Just Like Everyone Else

The media -- and people who don't know many transgender individuals -- treat us like we're something special. The media tends to single us out, either by depicting us as fragile and needing special treatment, or by constructing a narrative that there's something wrong with us and that we're asking for special treatment. Similarly, advocates of ours warn people to be extra nice to us and not to offend us while outspoken critics and opponents of our community tend to frame the community as one plagued by mental health problems a community that is asking for special treatment. All the transgender community wants and needs is just to be like any other community, with the same rights. As such, we fight the sensationalism in the media and take the power away from our critics by showing the world that we're just like everyone else. The more people see of us just living our lives like normal everyday people and not reacting to social slights that non-transgender people don't react to, the more people will stop looking at us like we're something "abnormal" to them.

I don't need or want special treatment. Being transgendered does not define me, it is simply a single trait of my overall being. Like most people, I am many things: I'm a technologist, I've owned and own businesses, I own a home and car, I have travelled around the world, I have many nerdy hobbies and pursuits, I have many non-trans friends of various ethnicities and political & spiritual leanings, etc. Transgender people are business owners, managers & directors, sales people, marketers, bankers, bar tenders & waitstaff, match makers, executives & C-level officers, board members, sex workers, exotic dancers, courier drivers, doctors, homemakers, decorators, physical therapists, etc. Like everyone else, some transgender people have psychological problems, some have physical disabilities, some have chronic health issues, some are fit and run marathons and compete in sports and martial arts, some are competitive marks(wo)men & archers, some are competitive gamers and musicians. We're community leaders and organizers, volunteers, political activists and Washington lobbyists. We're omnivores, vegetarians and vegans. We're Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, Agnostic, Atheist, etc. We're cat people, dog people, bird people and animal people in general. We have the same ups and downs, successes and failures as everyone else.

Right now, there's too much media sensationalism around us. Combined with some of the community exhibiting hypersensitivity around subjects like misgendering, we're a community in the spotlight for being different when all we want is to just live our lives like everyone else. I don't go out of my way to augment our current status as being "other" in the eyes of most cis-gender people. On the contrary, I just live my life like I always have: By being me and not reacting to all kinds of things that I have no control over. This allows me to live life like the normal person that I am without my happiness being tethered to the opinions of others. If the vast majority of us can do the same, we'll find our community being more widely accepted. Why? Because we're not really that different than everyone else is, we just had a bad luck-of-the-draw when it came to which reproductive organs became dominant during fetal development. And, the less often we react to things that cis-gender people never react to, the more the broader cis-gender community will come to see us as being "normal." The more the average non-transgender person sees us as being one of them, the weaker Crowder, Yiannopoulos, McInnes and our other self-appointed adversaries will be.