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they [1]

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Date: 2022-11-24

This will be a short diary and weirdly the first one I’ve written in a long time. This is in response to the Colorado shooter and responding to so many responses I’ve seen here. It’s about pronouns and choices.

For the past couple years, I’ve been on a philosophical journey attempting to understand “what is transgender anyway?” spurred by a question from my niece. Im going to be completely honest here and this will make somebody angry but so be it. For years, I did not consider the term “terf” a bad thing and more or less identified with it but pretended to be more “sensitive” and “loving” about it but I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. Honestly, I was mad about (and really, still salty about) the shutting down of the Michigan Woman’s Festival (a story for some other time). Anyway, that was years ago and I was pretty well settled in my thinking.

Did I mention I’m a woman with a beard?

So my niece saw something online and asked me what I thought about transgender women and for the first time ever, I decided NOT to just say whatever came to mind, instead I decided to….go listen to some actual transgender people. First (and BEST) stop: PhilosophyTube followed by Jessie Gender, Contrapoints, Jammidodger and Ty Turner. Abigail Thorne’s discussions around social constructs and specifically how gender is and always has been a social construct REALLY changed me because…

For many decades now I’ve lived my life as if “gender expression” was made up bullshit because it actually IS made up bullshit! Also, I started to recognize something about MYSELF that I had been saying for years just not precisely and that was, I’m non-binary. Im a bearded woman, a lesbian, I really honestly am non-binary but Im also 56 years old. NO ONE IN MY ENTIRE LIFE until THIS YEAR has EVER heard me say that. Not even ME. Is it still true? Yes, no doubt about that...but also, my mom died last year, would I EVER discuss this with her? No. She was fine with me being lesbian and marrying a woman but this? No way, too complicated.

But enough about me. Over the course of the last year or so, I take it at face value if someone requests a pronoun different from what I might’ve expected. I feel like it’s just the right thing to do, treat people with a little respect.

OMG shut UP everyone saying “NO RESPECT FOR HITLER! NO RESPECT FOR DAHMER! NO RESPECT! NO! NO! NO RESPECT FOR RAPISTS AND MURDERERS AND TRUMP!!!” Well yeah...

Anyway, I think it’s hypocritical to scream our heads off about “WE MUST RESPECT PRONOUNS” and then, when the person insisting on a particular pronoun does something so horrible we turn our back on the idea. I don’t think we can have it both ways. Non-binary people CAN hate themselves so much they turn violent. Transgender people can hate themselves so much they murder transgender people. This is the way of this world and you all know it.

I really do not care how long the Colorado killer has recognized themselves as non-binary because them being (or not being) non-binary is NOT THE ISSUE. Fight the right wing who will use this to smear us, JUST LIKE THEY DO WITH “BLACK ON BLACK” CRIME (they never ever mention “white on white” crime, they never ever mention the VAST majority of pedophilia is an adult male heterosexually assaulting girls, etc).

So, no I don’t respect the Colorado killer but I respect transgender and non-binary people and out of THAT respect, I use ANYONE and EVERYONE’s preferred pronouns. It’s the right thing to do.

As for me, I am 100% ok with “she/her/they/them” for myself ;)

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