#gender prescriptivism

[enbycrip]

ID: I get very bored by the “you must present this way to be read as nonbinary” prescriptivism. It’s never going to be me - too curvy, too “tending to look far better in femme clothing”, too disabled. It seems entirely at odds with the entire point of embracing nonbinary as a category, tbh, which always seemed to me about being outside the prescriptivist boxes, having fun with your gender, getting sick of it, embracing it, taking the parts that suit you at any given time and putting the rest in a stash or the bin.

An awful lot of people seem to be doing a lot to make it another box to fail to fit in and all about being fuckable and young, which is every kind of depressing.

[knittinglizards]

i think the best way to summarize what the issue was (is. i know they're still around i just see less of them) with mogai type people is that if you ask them something like 'whats the difference between a man and a woman how do i know which i am' (those are just as examples you can fill them in w whatever label you like) they'll give you a direct concrete answer like such a thing exists

[faustandfurious]

You know, not sure how old that post on gender and not really caring how people choose to label you is, cause mobile doesn't have timestamps, but for me it's just like... I yam what I yam

Just not big on labels, my hatred for prescriptivism and preference for descriptivism in linguistics has carried over to the rest of my life and I'd rather describe stuff than try to name it

... only one that rubs me the wrong way is when people'll call me an egg and it's like man... you haven't even listened

I'd like to be a girl, but I just feel like me. My mom's been a man hater my whole life, so I grew up knowing guys are trash, so how much feeling like people would like me as a girl is my own baggage and how much it's this or that, but I've got zero interest in changing up anything physically

I'm too tired, and I don't like dealing with side effects

If I could shape shift the answer would be easy, I'd be a cute girl like 80% of the time and my normal body like 20%. What's that make me? Don't know, don't really care. I'd rather just describe it than name it, others can interact with it how they please

I yam what I yam

(Really wish I could get my friend to get how irritating the egg comments are though, just makes it feel like she's not listening)

Anyway, take care, sorry about the weird random ask

«I’m too tired, and I don’t like dealing with side effects»

Honestly, same. I’ve had enough surgery for non-gender reasons. I’m already on meds to keep my immune system from running haywire. As long as my body is not causing constant, debilitating pain, I consider that good enough for whatever my gender identity is or isn’t.

[xxlovelynovaxx]

Term Coining Time:

Descrippunk

This is for when you defy the efforts of people to box you in with neatly delineated labels that don't overlap, as if they were putting you in a house with a manicured lawn and a white picket fence.

You may use the label bi lesbian, bi gay, straight gay, or similar. You may ID as queerhet due to another identity queering your heterosexual attraction. You may identify as a traumaendo system or endogenic in the increasingly used meaning of "not fully formed from trauma" instead of "not at all formed from trauma". You may identify as a manwoman, a nonbinary man, nonbinary woman, or nonbinary manwoman.

You reject that these identities are inherently mutually exclusive and let your garden of dandelions riot across multiple yards. You refuse the idea that anyone but every individual using the label defines it - and accept that any use of the label not explicitly intended to do harm therefore becomes a part of the definition. You break down pointless fences and reject the idea of labels as property with boundaries and ownership altogether.

You refuse the concept that things like gender (especially manhood), system origin (especially traumagenesis), heterosexuality (in the context of other queer identities), and more, inherently taint an identity when present in any amount to the point of locking you out of identities that don't and can't inherently exclude them.

When someone says "words have meaning", you respond "the meaning we make of them". When someone says "that meaning matters", you say "people matter more than words, because words aren't alive and we are".

It's almost a hedonistic approach to labels - that they are here for our use and pleasure. It rejects prescriptivism at a fundamental level. It rejects a claim to a "right" to restrict the definition of a label or indeed to have any entitlement to its meaning once coined.

And it assumes good faith if there is room for any benefit of the doubt whatsoever.

I coined this specifically after dealing with the same shit for ID'ing as bi lesbian and a traumaendo system and multigender.

The one and only negative experience I have ever had with a supposedly inclusive system as a partially traumagenic system is when I was told by the coiner that being even a little bit traumagenic locked me out of the endogenic label, despite a self-contradictory origin in which I am simultaneously entirely traumagenic, partially traumagenic and entirely nontraumagenic. Because origins aren't that simple.

And no, I don't mean individual headmates, I mean our system is all of those. Plurality is more complicated than some systems would like to admit.

This was after being repeatedly harassed over the bi lesbian label and our multigenderness, so it came to a head there, but it's really all the same shit.

[mlembug]

Hope you don't mind me asking, but does bi lesbian mean? I've not seen it before and get the impression that googling it might give a negative impression.

Gonna paste a conversation that happened the last time I asked a bi lesbian this. A: I'm ignorant on the subject. Who are "bi lesbians"? Bisexual women who like men, but like women even more? Bisexual women whose "women I'm attracted to" set of people is larger than "men I'm attracted to"? Something else? Asking you because while I could just look it up, a person who's completely in the dark can encounter bad info. B: Depends what it means to the person using this label for themself B: I know that personally I use it as in bi adjective, lesbian noun As in I'm 99% lesbian, but I add bi to it to respect my 1%, and to respect the potential non-binary people I could get in a relationship with that wouldn't want to be considered women/women-"lite" C: Lesbian is also not necessarily an exclusive term B: Lesbian was never an exclusive term until proto-terfs came along in the 80s and made it one B: Heck even if you prefer prescriptivism over descriptivism: I'm not into men, but I am into non-binary people - I am into more than one gender identity, which also qualifies as bi by the 1991 bi manifesto definition, therefore my use of bi is justified even by "strict definition" standards, and my main, primary and default attraction being towards women, lesbian is also justified B: like you could come up with 50 different justifications for using bi lesbian as being more appropriate for you personally than either used alone A: yeah, these answer my question; thanks for your time answering B: But exclusitionists don't care, they don't know LGBT history, they don't know that lesbian defined as "exclusively attracted to women/never ever attracted to men" was pushed by transphobes and racists in the 80s that were angry that trans women and black women could be lesbians A: "angry that [...] black women could be lesbians" what B: yyeeep B: welcome to political lesbianism from upper middle class british white women from the 80s B: they were a fucked up bigoted bunch B: where they defined lesbian less as "likes women" and more "hates men" B: It's also thanks to them that we have the "gold star lesbian" label for any woman that hasn't "slept with the enemy" if I were to use their words B: I mean, hey, while I "understand" where transphobes are coming from (but not agree with them obviously), having encountered their logic nearly all my life, I can't even begin to comprehend the "logic" of that one B: like the idea that you can be a "lesser" lesbian… You'll find it popping up multiple times in lesbian discourse, and if you do the historical digging, it always, without fail, wraps back to UK white upper middle class bigots B: anyway that was my discourse for the day, thanks for listening~

[emtmercy]

One awkward thing constantly happening on TikTok is that a currently male identifying person will post a TikTok where they say stuff like word for word “I wish I could be a girl. It just seems so much more fun to be a girl. I love the way women dress and wish I could dress like that. I wish I had been born a girl”

And trans people will understandably be like “well that option is available to you”

And in response OP and everyone else will be like “fuck you fuck you fuck you damn you to hell for saying that. You’re inventing a new binary. So what, a man can’t say he desperately deeply unendingly wishes to be a woman anymore?? This is gender prescriptivism”

And I understand why OP usually responds like that like the closet is a scary place but everyone else it’s like please

The trans women in the comments didn’t put a gun to OPs head they just happened to notice the clear Situation occurring

[multigenderswag]

I think lesbian can be polysemous. the NMLNM definition includes enbians who feel they are lesbians too.

Also men can be nonmen sometimes.

But at the same time I'm a bi saphboydyke who is platonically lesbian. So I also feel represented by the definition of queer attraction to women.

And as a gay man too, I use sapphic to mean fem4fem sometimes. Why not⁉️

I just don't like the prescriptivism implying only one definition is right and to exclude many diverse experiences

Yeah, I definitely don't think lesbianism has One True Definition. It's something that's unique to the individual. I'm sorry if it came across like I was trying to enforce any one definition, but I feel like I've been quite clear on this blog that I don't believe in strict definitions.

Men can be non-men sometimes, but the NMLNM definition is often weaponized against people of other genders who are also men. Also, personally, as a bigender person- one of my genders is male and the other isn't, but I don't feel comfortable defining myself as a non man. Technically it's true, since I'm a genderqueer woman, but non man is very dysphoric for me.

If an individual lesbian feels that NMLNM works for them, they have every right to identify that way. The problem is when they enforce that definition on other lesbians who don't identify with it, which is what tends to happen with the NMLNM definition.

[ranboo5]

Unlabelled discourse is a lot of hay over an extremely simple set of concepts

sometimes multiple terms exist for similar/overlapping concepts and ppl may prefer one or both or neither that's fine (unlabelled, queer) (bi, pan, mspec)

it's neat that there is an unlabeled identity for people to opt into without having to personally or publicly identify the specifics of an identity

it shouldn't be assumed that just bc someone is unlabeled as in just existing as not labeled/officially as not labeled they have opted into the Unlabelled Identity (some unlabeled people might not be unlabeled (identity)), and that's fine and should be respected

what place someone occupies on sexuality and gender spectrums is none of your damn business

what someone chooses to identify as is also not your damn business

what are you a cop

you can literally spell it with one l or two it's fine the concept gets across and prescriptivism is a curse (I didn't see anyone arguing about this but I spelled it both ways in this post)

if you feel the need to be stupid on this post go ahead but if I, as a bisexual aroace nonbinary individual that is neither cis nor trans, have heard your exact argument before in another argument about what labels ppl are allowed to use, then you have to send me $3

[powerfem]

nobody disagrees that youre a woman because you were assigned female first of all, being a woman is a performance in which you are viewed, and feel like you are of the female gender. you can be gnc, but also femininity can be used as a way of self expression for gender conforming trans woman when theyre coming out. they werent happy as just gnc men, clearly so why assume that theyre just a feminine male in denial? google gender, i swear to fucking god you'll have an easier time understanding what IDENTITY means. and stop saying everyone uses a word the same way as you thats prescriptivism.

Being a woman isn't a performance pal. Being unhappy as a male doesn't make you a woman. Identity doesn't mean shit, you can't legislate based on feelings (or you shouldn't at least). I'm so tired of all this postmodernism and egocentrism. My identity, me, my feeling mine me my myself me. The world doesn't revolve around you.

Nothing more male than pretending a sad male can be a woman. Nothing more male than saying you can be a woman if you feel like it.

[lyxthen]

I hate you prescriptivism I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you how is it still a thing that people take seriously how is it popular even to this day like prescriptivism has been dead so long go speak anglosaxon if you so please imma use they/them pronouns and have a strong accent because hell yeah I fucking will and I'm gonna change the genders of words in Spanish and take my /s/ down to /h/ because I'm from the coast and that's what we do and you can make fun of the president for doing it because he is an ass but for the record I love the h sound and i do what I want and its ridiculous that I have to change it to seem more proper I don't care and I will use anglisisms and say gostear and releitabol and estrimear cuz we don't have words for that in Spanish so we might aswell steal them from English why the fuck not and I hate this crusade some people have against using English words like bro chill the fuck out bro I do what I do and that's that

[spaceysoupy]

This a genuine good-faith question. Why is lesbian a separate identity from bisexual if it just means queer attraction to women. Wouldn't that make all bisexuals, or really all women-attracted queers lesbian by default?

Okay, I’m gonna answer your most recent ask since I’m assuming you didn’t mean to send them twice or just worded it differently but I’ll also put the screenshot here and image id below my response. I’m also assuming this is from the screenshots posted of my 2S thread? I’ve already explained quite a bit there, but the reason I define “lesbian” as “(non-exclusive) queer attraction to women” is because it is, currently, the best language I have that does not inherently abandon or alienate a wide variety of people from the definition. It centers the important, historical definition and does not leave out those in history who were labeled or found comfort under the label “lesbian” who may, in this age, choose another label instead.

“Nmlnm” and “non-men” as I’ve explained in that thread are reductive, colonial terms attempting to force a neobinary onto all people, and it is particularly cruel when those terms come from a dehumanizing, anti-Black origin that has also been applied to Indigenous people. I balk so much at being called “non-man” not just because it doesn’t describe me or my gender at all, but because I’ve been called “non-human.”

Other lesbians can define their own definition of lesbianism however they want, I frankly don’t care. It’s when definitions are forced on others to conform, cut off, or harm them that I have a problem with it.

In short, no, it wouldn’t mean bisexuals are lesbians by default, because no label or definition of said label means that everyone is that label by default. I also find prescriptivism ridiculous in it’s entirety, and I use labels and definitions in terms of descriptive identity, so that should make more sense.

[image ID: Screenshot of an ask by moscitto time stamp sent two hours ago text reads “This is a genuine good-faith question. Why is lesbian it's own identity if it just means queer attraction to women? Wouldn't that make all bisexuals, and all women attracted queers really, lesbian by default?” End text end image description.]

[sasquapossum]

I'm not sure why, but I feel the need to elaborate (even more) on some of the things I've been sub-tumblring about recently.

A couple of decades ago, I read a book about law (I think Guilty: The Collapse of Criminal Justice but it could have been one of several others) with a very simple premise: prescriptivism doesn't work. Trying to write laws that preemptively cover every possible case before any even occur is a fool's errand. The motive - to avoid the abuses that can come from relying on prosecutorial or judicial discretion - is a good one, but the means do not suffice. Despite the unnecessarily arduous processes of making and interpreting highly prescriptive laws, they end up full of loopholes and that discretion is still abused. Have we not all seen how rogue prosecutors (Ken Paxton) and judges (Sam Alito) misbehave even when they have detailed written laws to guide them? Prescriptivism incurs a heavy cost but then fails to deliver the goods.

(Kind of off topic: I don't remember Rothwax's prescription, but here's mine: checks and balances and multiple overlapping institutions or ruie sets kept in carefully calibrated tension with one another so none can dominate and become reliable vehicles for abuse. You're welcome.)

That brings us to the discourse about labels for gender and sexual identities. That is also prescriptivism, and has the same problems. For all that label-lovers like to say use of the wrong label can cause harm, over-prescriptive use of them can too. "Use my labels or suffer my wrath" is a terrible way to be. Even the people to whom you think those labels apply might not agree. They might prefer different specific ones, and that's their right. They might prefer a more generic label, because fluidity is also a thing. In fact it's many things, which even the most detailed set of categories and sub-categories and sub-sub-categories can not elucidate. That rat-hole just keeps going on and on, and at the end it's still just a rat. You're not helping them by insisting on your labels.

By all means, offer up your labels as suggestions, as inspiration, as a way to find other like-minded people and their works. That's all quite laudable. But do not try to limit their paths or destinations to those you have defined. That's what oppressors do. Let go of your inner cop. Let people explore these things for themselves, and adopt whichever terminology they prefer. If they fit your definition of obnoxisexual but they reject the label, even if it's just because they don't like the way it sounds, let them. Live and let live ... always.

[loamly]

in general i think decentering and demoralizing gender identity is really important to me. someone’s gender tells you nothing about them except, well, exactly that. men can be kind and women can be cruel and vice versa, cis or trans, because we are all human beings capable of all things.

we should judge actions on an individual basis, like we do with fucking everything else. gender, like birth date, blood type or hair color, is not a magic cue telling you the inner workings of someone else’s mind.

leave your prescriptivism at the door please

[xxlovelynovaxx]

Honestly I'm so over the "you can't be therian or otherkin if you chose your type, you have to be otherlink or copinglink!" bs.

Like, we know someone's a toxic shit if they say "you can't choose your gender and are therefore not trans, you're just genderfuck/GNC". We know that with other identities that are 99 percent of the time not a choice, there are exceptions. People have complex relationships with their self/ves and part of that complexity can be choice.

Let someone who chose their type use therian or otherkin. Who cares? Are they respectful and safe? Then they belong in those communities regardless of bullshit gatekeeping. If not, they don't belong even if they fit the strictest definition of the word to a T, because while they are that identity, community requires some degree of safety from its members.

And like yeah yeah half of queer spaces at least still haven't got that memo, same with system spaces, etc. But my gods is it bad in the alterhuman community. Stop caring so much about someone using a word differently than you. You know words can have multiple meanings, right? You know words can even be their own opposite (auto-antonyms), right? You know words having multiple meanings is half the reason dictionaries exist, right?

This isn't even "kin as relate to" (which I also think has a bunch of bs around it but can at least kind of understand). This is literally "I am this identity, this is me, but this other arbitrary factor - voluntary/involuntary - has a different box checked". Y'all can't go around saying that all that matters is that you ARE that species and then say "oh but actually we're gonna shove you over in this other label because we've decided you don't belong in ours".

Everyone who uses a label gets a say in its meaning. Yes, even the people using it "wrong". It's circular logic to say that only the people who identify as the "right" definition of a label get to decide what definition is "right". But as someone who has fully involuntary kintypes and theriotypes... nah actually voluntary types can use the words.

(It's just more prescriptivism to insist that labels don't expand to fill the definitions used for them by EVERY person that uses them.)

Also, what if someone is involuntarily an animal but voluntarily a specific animal? What if someone has involuntary types but experiences voluntary shifts? Like???

The alterhuman community truly needs to kill the cops in our heads. At risk of mild misanthropy, remember, cops are a human invention.

[defectivegembrain]

Okay I just...not going to add to the original post because it wasn't supposed to be about this and like I'm not always great at telling what counts as derailing, but I'm pretty sure this would. But I can't just let it go because I'm me. Words don't have any inherent meanings, it's largely an arbitrary connection between meaning and sound/hand sign/written symbol. The reason "I use dude as gender neutral" sucks is not because a gender neutral usage is any less "correct", it's because no matter if it's changed, the word still has gendered connotations, and you don't get to decide for others if they should be comfortable with that. It very understandably feels like misgendering for some people, and intent doesn't change that. But neither usage is more "correct" in any inherent, unchangeable way. By that logic, we'd have to say "man" is most correctly used as a gender neutral term.

[metapianycist]

"If someone doesn't put any effort into looking like the gender they say they are, I don't believe that they could possibly have dysphoria or that they're trans."

—someone who is probably going to negatively impact your mental well-being and your capacity for empathy over time (even if you agree with them).

your framework subtly influences how kind you are to yourself and how you interact with others, no matter how polite you act.