“Singular “they” and the many reasons why it’s correct” via Motivated Grammar

read the full post here

Suppose you were reading and came to the following line:
“She kept her head and kicked her shoes off, as everybody ought to do who falls into deep water in their clothes.”
Would you …
(a) continue reading, because that’s a perfectly acceptable sentence, or
(b) throw a tantrum and insist that the author is an imbecile speeding the wholesale destruction of the English language?

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’re probably answering (a). If you’re answering (b), I regret to inform you that you hate the writing of C. S. Lewis.

And if you’re the sort to answer (b), the sort of person who rages at the alleged grammatical buffoonery of your fellows, I’m sure it’s because you think you’re doing us all a favor, and that your condescending tone is justified because: first, you’re being helpful regardless of the tone you’re using; second, people only learn through negative conditioning, and so it is your duty, however unpleasant, to rub their noses in it to keep them from going on doing it; third, only a truly illiterate mouth-breather would be so moronic as to make such a mistake, and such imbeciles are below contempt and probably don’t even realize that you’re condescending to them anyway; and fourth, given the Heruclean effort you’ve put into learning the English language as impeccably as you did, it’s really only fair that you get to be a little self-satisfied and perhaps even gloat a smidge.

The only problem with this view is that all you’ve managed to learn about English is how to get your brain to release some satisfying endorphins every time you blindly regurgitate some authority figure’s unjustified assertion. You’re not helping; you’re just getting someone to pretend to agree with you long enough to shut you up. Or worse, you’re scaring people into submission to a point where they feel compelled to preface their speech with apologies for any unknown violence their words are committing against the presumed propriety of the language. Never forget, though, that language is the people’s. Your witless superstition will, by-and-large, be ignored by the speakers of the language, and the alleged impropriety will almost certainly win out in the end. Don’t mistake yourself for a brave defender of our language against the barbarians at the gates when, in truth, you’re nothing but a millennialist shouting about the end-times of the English language. Meanwhile, the world spins on, and the language flourishes, hale and hearty.

One great example of this situation is the shouting down of those who use singular they. I’ve wanted for some time to have one place to send everyone who complains about singular they, a single page that can debunk whatever junk they’re peddling against it. There’s been lots of great stuff written about why singular they is acceptable, but every time I want to smash the arguments against it, I have to waste time jumping through old Language Log posts and books and whatnot, so I figured I’d finally go about summarizing it all. Without further ado, here’s the evidence for singular they, and why you ought to stop “correcting” it.

This is a delightful read no matter who you are, and should be required reading for anyone who tries to use the argument that "singular they" is inaccurate. The full post goes on to point out 'singular they's historical usage, usage by good writers, acceptance by authorities, and a few other arguments used against this pronoun.

Personally, my view on singular they is this: As long as singular "you" is acceptable, so is singular "they". (yes, I do want to bring back thou)

Why Adoption Hurts via Yoon's Blur

Read the Full Post Here

Do you tell a widow that she is being negative, ungrateful, angry, bitter, resentful if she still tears up or struggles with grief or sorrow over the loss of her first husband even after she has happily remarried? I would hope not.

Although adoptees--similar to a widow who has happily remarried--may have gained a family, you must keep in mind that the only reason they have so-called gained a family is that they first LOST everything. And when I say everything, I mean, everything.

They have lost their original father, mother, grandparents, siblings, extended family. They have lost their language, culture, and country of origin. They have lost any connection whatsoever to their beginnings, to their identity, to the most basic elements of who they are. They have lost any knowledge of what happened and why.

I think adoption is very difficult to understand for anyone who hasn't been through it- especially transnational & transracial adoption which have their own complications and can make it obvious that you aren't "really" your adoptive parents' child/ren. This was a really good way of explaining why adoption hurts, even if you love your new family.

"We Are Human" via Resist Racism

Read the full post here

But they want a tour guide. They want to watch somebody bleed. Pain as entertainment.

“Can you share with us a time when you experienced racism and how you dealt with it?” she asks, her eyes bright in a flushed face. “What was the worse thing that ever happened to you?”

I stopped relating my experience when I realized incidents that cut me deeply became cocktail-party chatter for others. When I realized that doing so caused white people to have a sense of false familiarity with me. When I realized that they recounted my life as if it were their own, as if they owned it, as if they owned me. When I realized they did so not to make others feel my humanity, but to reinforce their belief in their own.

Picnic lunches beneath a hanging man.

[...]

And yet it didn’t really matter. I am reminded of this years later, when a white woman in an upscale department store glares and refers to two nearby children as “dirty little things.” She thinks they are mine and that I am not “controlling them properly.” I look to see two extremely clean, well-groomed, very wealthy appearing Asian children, a little girl and a little boy, who are laughing and talking to each other. I mostly hate kids and yet I can’t see anything wrong with their behavior. But I see it in her eyes.

Their reflection: Dirty. Little. Things.

I grow up to be an upstanding citizen who yanked myself up by my bootstraps. I did not waste my money on anything that I could be criticized for. No rims on the Cadillac. No car at all, for that matter. No luxury items, shitty food, second-hand clothing, no-name shoes and generic cereal and I did all the proper suffering, working long hours at lousy jobs while going to school.

So when I achieved what most people consider success, I bought the car, the clothes were new, I sometimes bought luxuries and I traveled to other countries. And I was an uppity person of color who got ahead through affirmative action and some other form of cheating because nothing I had was earned. Or deserved.

When I am flying overseas, I get stopped and questioned: How exactly is it that you have the money to travel?

I am suspected of criminal conduct simply because of where I am: A four-star hotel. A tony neighborhood. A professional conference. A business. The upscale department store. Any old store, for that matter.

I am suspected of criminal conduct simply because of who I am.

And I learn the hatred of white people who have less than I do. Who resent wealth and education and nice clothing and a beautiful home. Because somehow this is not how it is supposed to be.

Because I am not human.

Because they are not really colorblind.

Because we don’t really live in a meritocracy.

Because the content of my character has never influenced white people’s thoughts in the same way that the color of my skin does.

Because I can insist on my humanity until the cows come home, but it will mean nothing until white people discover their own.

How to be a woman

By Zyfron, see the full size: here (although- I suggest you read all of their comics)

No one gives a shit if you don't believe in gender

From shemale on livejournal.Some other points of her post:

• Trans people are not cutting-edge theories at the frontier of feminism/gender studies/whatever.
  


• Trans people are not under any more of an obligation to alter their bodies, gender identifications, or gender expressions for some higher goal than cis people are.


• If a trans person does not present/experience/identify/etc. their gender the way you want them to, it is none of your fucking business, nor does it mean you can generalize about all trans people (or subgroup of trans people) from your experiences with and observations of said trans person.

All of them are worth a read, but this one I like the most:

Nobody gives a shit that you don't believe in gender.

You don't have to believe in something for it to exist, and perhaps the fact that you don't ever think about gender speaks more to your privilege than to the way that trans people are "perpetuating norms and stereotypes" or "supporting the gender binary" or whatever.
[...]
Gender in-and-of itself isn't a bad thing, it is just a thing.

It is the forced assignment of gender to people against their identification and the inequality between members of different genders that is problematic.

(and am I the only one a bit saddened/enraged that this was posted 2 years ago and I still feel it's incredibly relevant to how people treat trans people today?)

This is What a Male-Bodied Person Looks Like

via This is What a Man Sounds Like. (highly related to this site, which I linked earlier, and suggest everyone also read.)

Male is a modifier, a word used to describe things that pertain to men. I am a man. Therefore, I, a man, have a male body, and I am a male-bodied person. My uterus, my clit, my soft chest, and my rounded hips are all part of my male body. Of course, other people have different body experiences, and I speak only for my own experience.
[...]
Often, people call me female-bodied when they’re addressing my experience of misogyny. Since I was raised as a girl, and I am a non-passing transman, I experience a lot of misogyny. I definitely got sexist street harassment when I lived in Boston. Similarly, people are likely to assume that I don’t know what I want when I go into a bike shop, or when I go dancing, that I’m a follow. Misogyny isn’t fun, but I don’t aspire to take on male privilege. That doesn’t make me a female-bodied person, although it does indicate that people perceive me that way. A more appropriate way to address my experience of sexism is to talk specifically about the experience and what’s going on, rather than to tell me what my body is like. For example, people could express their views of street harassment along with my expressed experience and analysis of being street harassed.

Another reason people try to call me a female-bodied person is in dealing with shared body experiences, like menstruation. In that case, instead of saying “women” or “female-bodied” folks could say “people who menstruate.” That avoids defining people by one biological process. It would also be important to never tell anyone about their own bodies. I experience menstruation, but I can only speak for my own experience, so I would not assume that other people experience the same thing. So, for example, I would not say, “The Diva Cup is great for women,” nor “The Diva Cup is great for female-bodied people.” I would say “The Diva Cup is great for me when I’m on my period, and it might be good for other folks.”

The third reason people assign me as female-bodied is to put me in a category of people who were socialized as girls, based on the way I act or relate to others. It’s true: I do tend to take care of friends and devalue my experiences and needs in comparison with others, at least in part because I was raised as a girl. Although the perception of my body by others led to me being raised as a girl, it is very important that no one tries to teach me about my own experiences. If I locate my learned behavior of devaluing my own thoughts and feelings, I will say those tendencies came out of the systematic devaluation I experienced from being socialized as a girl, not being “female-bodied.” So, if we’re talking about socialization, let’s talk about socialization, but let’s not blame it on bodies, and thus, injure by assigning.
Read More

Strawbreaking (via the Letter Z)

Anyone who wants to sign, comment here: http://sheisz.wordpress.com/2010/07/27/straw-breaking/.

Whereas those factions of cisgender people by sanction of state or sanction of religion, either by explicit or implicit means, or by inaction:

• have trivialized and ridiculed transgender people for the satisfaction of cisgender people,


• have majority and systematic control over our transgender narratives,


• have committed crimes of casual abuse against transgender people,


• have committed crimes of psychological warfare against transgender people,


• have sought to censure transgender people for expressing the desire to be treated with the same respect afforded cisgender people


• have sought to inspire and incite violence and maltreatment against transgender people


• have committed crimes of deprivation of liberty and crimes against humanity against transgender people


• have committed crimes of murder against transgender people, and


• have the desire of eradicating transgender people as a whole

Whereas those factions of cisgender people, nation states, organized religions, and religiously motivated groups have refused to address the above and take action to rememdy the above in a serious and timely fashion

Therefore, be it resolved that signatories or adherents to this document do solemnly declare war against those factions above and those States and organizations sanctioning and/or harboring them, and that signatories or adherents take any means necessary or desired (that would not be in themselves criminal acts) against those factions, States, and organizations with an end to the cessation of the crimes listed.

via the letter z. And, as Z went on to add:

I had to deliberately make it vague: for one reason, I don’t want the feds on me for incitement to violence, or whatever, hence the “without committing crimes” clause. The broad goal is to make those cis people who would see us exterminated know that they’re going to have a fight on their hands, and we’re not going to take it any more. I know that this is pretty much the attitude and goal of everyone who’s already in the fight, so this can be construed really as a message for cis people — we’re already engaged in the war, and cis people to know that they are the agressors in this war, and we’re fighting back and why. And it is something for me, at least, that makes it easier to deal with the news of the continued warfare against us, I suppose.

What the bible says- and doesn’t say- about Homosexuality

I'm not Christian, I don't belong to any religion, I'm not an atheist. I do like Jesus- he seemed like a great guy- but I haven't had the best experience with Christians have never been into religion and still can't get interested. But, it's a big deal to people. And I have to admit- I really appreciate and respect when people look into it this much.

http://www.soulforce.org/article/homosexuality-bible-gay-christian

We gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Christians take the Bible seriously, too. Personally, I've spent more than 50 years reading, studying, memorizing, preaching, and teaching from the sacred texts. I earned my master's and doctoral degrees at a conservative biblical seminary to better equip myself to "rightly divide the word of truth." I learned Hebrew and Greek to gain a better understanding of the original words of the biblical texts. I studied the lives and times of the biblical authors to help me know what they were saying in their day so I could better apply it to my own.

The entire thing is a good- though long- read. It covers the history of how human interpretation of scriptures has led to a great deal of bloodshed and pain throughout the years and still now, how many people don't actually know what the bible says and how humans can misinterpret it, the effect homophobia it has on, well, mostly on CLG(b) people- but it effects trans people as well, and then goes on to tackle the parts of the bible that are used to attack homosexuality. It even talks about the problems that translations have caused- including two words that no one is actually sure what a literal translation would be, but that someone decided to call "homosexual" in 1958.

From here

We make the same sort of assumptions about bodies based on sex, although I would argue that they are more insidious. Culturally it is given that people with female bodies are women and people with male bodies are men. (Remember that, culturally, intersexed people do not exist.) Even among people who accept that trans people are telling the truth and we are who we say we are, we are still described as "men in women’s bodies" or "women in men’s bodies." This language is very problematic, as it still assumes that a female body must belong to a woman and a male body must belong to a man. To see how silly this is, consider a "man in a woman’s body;" just which woman does his body belong to? It’s not a woman’s body; a man inhabits it, it belongs to a man, so it is a man’s body.

This leads to my main point. Bodies belong to their owner or owners, not to society or anyone else. And bodies belong to people; people do not belong to bodies. Thus, a person’s body is theirs to modify and interpret. Even when given the example above, people tend to huff and say, "Well fine, it’s not a woman’s body, but it’s still a female body." To me, this is still problematic. What precisely about a man’s body is female? Certainly not his brain. (Culturally we also have a problem where we don’t consider your brain a part of your body or your biology.) It’s his body, and he’s male, so I’d argue that his body is male as well.

That usually leads to another huff and, "It’s biologically female, and you’re just going to get in trouble if you deny that." This is where things get particularly sticky. There are two problems with this statement. The first is that it is none of anyone’s business what someone’s biological makeup is, except their doctor’s; and thus the insistence of cis people to constantly point that out to trans people is, at best, annoying, and at worst, intrusive.

A lot of cis people have a tendency to forget that biology is a lot more complicated than "male" or "female." First of all, there are those pesky intersexed people again. There are more people than our society likes to admit who have ambiguous genitals or chromosomal anomalies that don’t fit in with our ideas of neat little male and female categories. (A cursory overview of intersex conditions is listed here.)

Secondly, you can’t describe someone’s entire health profile by deciding which sex box they go into. Bodies are more complicated than that. Even amongst cis people, there are biological overlaps. As a personal example, if I took women’s multivitamins, I’d be poisoned. Even though I have a "biologically female" body. How is that? Because we have different nutritional needs than other people based on other factors apart from sex (in my case, a genetic disorder is what causes this particular issue.) So because my nutritional needs are "biologically male," what does that make me?

The second problem with insisting another person’s body is "biologically this or that" is that, by clinging so desperately to the "your body is really female/male" line, you are still privileging the body over the person’s identity. My argument is that we, as human beings, can all interpret our bodies in a way that makes sense with our identities without killing our bodies or getting dread diseases.

We do this already to minor degrees. How often have you heard someone attach sentimental value to a scar? Or point to a birthmark and say, "It’s a heart" or "It’s a kitty face" or some other thing? It would be pretty rude to come down and say, "No, that’s just an abnormal pigmentation of the skin caused by injury or vascular irregularities. Stop being silly." Clearly, that’s what scars and birthmarks are, but the technical explanation of others is not as important as a person’s interpretation of their own body. These marks may have sentimental value, or it may simply be more pleasant to think of a weird mark as a flower or whatnot than as skin damage. It does not stop that person from seeking appropriate medical care if their marks start showing signs of cancer-like activity. So why should anyone else feel compelled to rain on that proverbial parade?

I argue the same principle applies to trans people. I can call my body male to my heart’s content. It doesn’t mean I am going to pretend that it’s no big deal if I get a lump in my breast. (And frankly it’s not your job to make sure that I check.) I don’t need you to tell me that my body is "really female" or "biologically female." I can take care of my body’s individual needs, such as checking my breasts for lumps, without needing to label my body in a way that I don’t wish to label it.

I fell into the trap of labeling my body as somehow essentially female for a long time, and it caused me a lot of mental anguish. The perceived incompatibility of my mind with my body was the source of a lot of discomfort for many years. But once I took a more subjective stance on my body (realizing that it is mine to interpret how I wish), and fixed the incongruity in my own mind, it relieved a major source of stress in my life.

A turning point in my life was researching sexual homology. (Specifically, looking at this web page.) Seeing the origins of particular genital tissues and the similarities between "male" and "female" sex organs made me realize that I could re-interpret my body to be something I am more comfortable with.

Before, I had a lot of sexual difficulties. I couldn’t really touch myself without feeling castrated and wrong. The things I was expecting to be there weren’t there. My genitals were alien and unpleasant to me. But that was a matter of interpretation. I was thinking of them as being somehow essentially female and therefore I was uncomfortable with them. After researching sexual homology, however, I changed the way I thought about my body. In essence I "re-mapped" my associations.

I started with the penis/clitoris. It hadn’t occurred to be before that the two were homologous organs. So the next time I touched my genitals, instead of thinking, "I don’t have a penis, I have some other weird thing instead," I thought, "Okay, so, I can think of this clitoris as a small penis, because they’re similar." And strangely enough, it worked. I was able to become more comfortable with my body based on my new interpretation.

Your first thought may be, "But it’s not really a penis." What difference does it make to you how I interpret my body? As I’ve said, I don’t ignore my health. I realize that my penis doesn’t work the same way as a normal cis man’s penis. But there are plenty of people, cis and trans, with "abnormal" organs and tissues, who take care of their body based on the way that their individual bodies work. Someone with a prosthetic limb may refer to their artificial arm as "my arm," despite the fact that it’s not flesh and blood, and still attend to the health needs unique to their situation. Interpretation need not be delusion, and in fact, I believe that it can be an incredibly positive action to take.

I realize that my particular solution to how I came to be comfortable with my body is not for everyone. However, I do think that because it was such a positive experience for me that it is worth sharing how I came about it.

The only problem I have with it is the lump thing- men need to check as well. Everyone with breast tissue needs to. TRANS MEN need to unless their surgeon scrapped it completely. Pap smears would be a better point.

How Can White People Enter Discussions About Racism?

“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

I think this goes for anyone of privilege in any discussion, and the response was very thoughtful. I especially liked that it pointed out that anger isn't only directed at white people, but everyone, because this is a sensitive topic. I think this can be applied everywhere. The full post can be found here:

They don’t want you to talk about racism as a white woman. They don’t want me to talk about racism as a black woman. They just don’t want to talk about it. The mainstream prefers to think of racism as a thing of the past. The topic stirs up too much guilt and anger and demands. And admittedly some people of color can’t get past anger at white people to be able to trust them as allies. I hope that you will continue to write about racism, but to answer your question: No, white people cannot enter the race discussion without angering people. But then, No one can enter the race discussion without angering people.
[...]
No matter how long you are a part of the anti-racist movement, don’t think that your involvement trumps the real life experience of people of color.

But, it could simply be that you are a victim of racial prejudice–of people who think that a white woman can’t possibly care or think about racism. That sucks. The best thing you can do about this type of racial prejudice is call it what it is and move on. You should not let it stop you from doing something you think is worthwhile. Racial prejudice too often limits the lives of its victims.