“The hang-ups around pronouns have nothing to do with one’s ability to remember. We remember nicknames and all sorts of other things just fine.”
May I suggest that in 25 years you may feel a little more empathy about memory issues. Yes, I have known people who change their names or pronouns and yes, I don’t usually find this a problem to remember. The OP describes a situation of being introduced to dozens of people at once, to which I pointed out that even remembering that many names at one time is challenging, but to add another layer of data is making memory even more of an issue. Assume good intent.
I also had a different name as a child than in college. Many remembered and some slipped up. I politely remind them of my preference and we all move on. Someone tells me their preference and I readily oblige although I may forget. Age does that sometimes. My point is I never take offense when someone messes up. Compromise on both sides of the issue is what’s best in my opinion.
It’s about respect. @Hanna nailed it. Call people what they wish to be called.
On that note - I’d like to point out that the correct term is “transgender” and not “transgendered.” I made that mistake once and got a lashing for it. Some people are very sensitive about it. You can use Google to get into the why of it if you’re curious.
I worked at a job once where my boss shortened my name and I was too shy to complain. It stuck.
As far as pronouns, I can remember he or she or they, but for the ze or ne pronouns, I really struggle because I have nothing to mentally anchor them to. An old friend’s child is currently transitioning from female to male and has chosen a new first name. This young person chooses to not use pronouns at all - in place of pronouns, the new first name is used. It’s a little unwieldy at first, but there is no forgetting possible and it works remarkable well. This is what I do with people I encounter whose gender I can’t immediately discern.
@romanigypsyeyes not quite apples to apples: When you are first meeting somebody, I would say most of us make a decision on gender through visual cues. Names really have nothing to do with visual cues. Think of the many names that can represent either gender. After I meet you a couple of times I will remember you as Anne because you told me what it was and there is no other clue to indicate it should be Annie. The first time or two around meeting you I might use “his” by accident even though I know you as Anne because you visually appear male. After making that mistake a few dozen times (LOL), I would eventually stop. I do have trouble remembering names of people I seldom see. Have you ever had that uncomfortable feeling of not remembering the name of somebody who remembers working or going to school with you? Memories don’t always work well and if I can’t remember your preference, my old-fashioned brain will default to the visual clue in front of me. At which point I apologize and hope you won’t condemn and hate me.
I regularly use my son’s name when addressing my husband and vice versa (the names are somewhat similar). I regularly say “he” instead of “she” when I don’t mean this at all.
Why would speakers feel a need to share that information? I’m at orientation to learn issues of direct relevance to my student’s move-in, not to hear about the speaker’s personal life, marital status, pet ownership, or pronoun preference. The focus is supposed to be about the prospective students, not the speaker’s identity issues, gender or otherwise.
When you say you don’t believe in it, do you mean that you don’t believe a person can be honestly convinced that she is a female this week and he is a male next week? Or do you mean you don’t think we should use different pronouns this week and next week for a person with that belief?
Genderfluidity seems odd to me. But then, because my gender identity has never been different from the gender I was assigned, I also don’t have a good understanding of what part of me would be telling me I was male, if I happened to be transgender rather than cis.
Occam’s Razor firmly informs me that I have to believe transgenderism is real: People in significant numbers wouldn’t get drastic surgery and take hormones with dramatic effects if they didn’t have a strong, rock-solid belief that their body was the wrong gender and needed to be fixed. People don’t do such things on a whim. People have gender reassignment surgery, and then (mostly) they are delighted and thrilled to finally be the right gender. I can’t deny the obvious.
So, I don’t have an intuition about how it would feel like or be to be transgender, yet I am certain that transgenderism is real. I can’t dismiss genderfluidity just because I don’t have an intuition about what it would feel like.
I introduce myself as Fang Mylastname, so that people don’t mistakenly call me Fang Husbandsname or Mrs. Husbandsname when they know I’m married to my husband. Similarly, someone will let you know to call him “he,” so that you don’t mistakenly call him “she.”
@“Cardinal Fang” I do not believe gender fluidity is real. People wanting to change their sex is based on the evidence you pointed out. I guess you could say it’s “real” because the individual perceives it to be so and acts accordingly. Some people really believe they are certain animals (I know it’s true because I saw it on TV, lol) - I don’t believe they are animals but it’s very real to them. Should I then treat them like the animal they think they are? Maybe I should, I don’t know. Just saying I don’t believe one can think they are two different genders anymore than I can believe you can be a dog. The two gender fluid children I spoke of have additional emotional, learning and mental issues that cause me to question the validity of whether it is real or not.
“Why would speakers feel a need to share that information? I’m at orientation to learn issues of direct relevance to my student’s move-in, not to hear about the speaker’s personal life, marital status, pet ownership, or pronoun preference. The focus is supposed to be about the prospective students, not the speaker’s identity issues, gender or otherwise.”
One benefit is it demonstrates that the campus is accepting of LGBTQ rights and fosters a welcoming atmosphere.
A few parents have mentioned they wouldn’t/didn’t like those introductions. How would/did your children feel? After all, it is about them. The parent isn’t living on campus and attending the college. If it is a real turnoff for your child as well, perhaps that’s not the right school for them.
Cardinal, I would just call you Fang. I don’t need to know Mrs, her, or whatever. Not interested. The speaker is there to impart info, not to have any identity issues or preferences validated by me.
I try to keep this simple: it’s really not that common, most people are what they look like, and the people living the exceptions usually go out of their way to identify what they prefer. For my part I’ll give best effort so long as you do your part and forgive the honest mistakes. If you’re helpful and/or patient I’ll keep trying. (But that medallion story above, for example, would cross a line for me. The more often you’re changing or unsure the more gracious you have to be when the rest of the world has trouble keeping up. Once is easy, twice is harder but doable, twice a day has less to do with gender than deeper identity issues and I don’t feel compelled to participate in your therapy at that level of detail. That person would get a name and no pronoun from me.)
That said, we have friends who had a DD become a DS in high school, my son had a friend in his high school last year who had a very unfortunate situation that ended up with her being sent out of state to a boarding school to be “cured” (she came back still DD) and my other son’s grade school had a prominent and messy legal encounter with bathrooms, pronouns and curriculum despite being super engaged and trying to do the right thing. Which is all a long way of saying Rare is not Never and eventually most people will run into this situation at some level. If everyone acts with respect and forbearance we can get through this.
It was important to us that our kids spend their college years on a campus very supportive of the LGBTQ community. So I strongly support the orientation introductions described in the OP. To me
it’s signaling “welcome” to all students.
No, it is signalling welcome to transgender student, which is fine but almost certainly less than 1 percent of the student population. Why not signal welcome to Pell Grant students, or victims of sexual assault, or non native English speakers, all of whom are in far higher percentages, statistically, on campus? I don’t really care that much if they do it, but let’s be honest about what it is.
I’m perfectly willing to call people by whatever gender identity, pronouns, and names they prefer. Although for people who changed their gender (or their name), I may occasionally make mistakes, especially if I knew them for a long time as their prior gender.(or name). Although I’ve noticed I’m far more likely to slip up and use a prior pronoun than I am to use a prior name. Even with good intentions, for some reason getting the new pronouns right is harder for me. Maybe it’s because it’s a lot more common and customary for names to change than it is for pronouns to change.
BUT, where I do draw the line is in the use of those ridiculous made up pronouns of ze, zhe, ne, or whatever. I consider those to be absurd corruptions of the English language. Fortunately, they are doomed to failure. Remember “womyn” from the 1970s? That never caught on either.
Languages very seldom evolve by decree. You can create new nouns all the time. Just invent a new thing and you get to invent a new noun to name it. But creating a new fundamental and functional part of speech such as a pronoun cannot be dreamed up and imposed by some professor or committee. That’s not how linguistic evolution occurs.
I’m reminded of that official French committee whose job it is to think up new French words to keep the language pure from insidious contamination by English words. French speakers of course completely ignore the output of that committee and go ahead and say what they wanted to say. It’s the same with the new pronouns.
So far I seem to have gotten by by using the pronouns that go with the way the person presents. When a person is clearly trans, or transitioning, I use whatever identity they clearly wish to be. There are some people whose gender presentation seamlessly matches their gender identity. There are others for whom it is pretty obvious that transition is involved. But the intent is usually clear.
I haven’t knowingly run into anyone who is gender neutral yet. When I do, I guess I’ll have to wait until they tell me.
I knew a trans man who insisted that one should ask everyone their pronouns, in order to avoid “othering” some people. But he also expressed happiness when, instead of asking, people simply treated him as a male. He had co-workers who insisted on treating him as a female and deliberately calling him by his former female name, despite the fact that he had requested otherwise. He was in a tough situation, and hypersensitive as a result.