Ahh, pronoun problems...

by liberal japonicus

A teacher here in Japan, much younger than me, mentioned on Facebook that he was letting students know that they could tell him their pronouns if they were different from their university profile. We chatted a bit about it, but it left me with some questions. Since folks here are in education and others are education adjecent, I thought it might be an interesting topic. More below the break.

In reply to the teacher mentioned above, I said that I didn't do that, and I thought it was problematic for the level of students that I had, whose English skills are pretty weak. They've gotten particularly bad since the pandemic, when lots of them had online/remote classes. Japanese education, I think, relies pretty heavily on social learning, where people learn things because everyone else in the class is learning it and the pandemic disrupted a lot of those patterns. There have also been some changes in the primary and secondary level English curricula that have wreaked havoc, and I'm finding students who often fail to have a grasp of pronouns, because it was assumed that they were learned, and I'm having to teach them. However, I said that I could see a need to do that with students, especially if they were hoping to study in the US, because it is a cultural point.

Talking about pronouns in the context of teaching English as a foreign language, some feel Japanese don't really have true pronouns, but a class of special nouns that function like pronouns, but often serve more to denote status and relationship. For example, there are a plethora of words for the first person singular and their use depends on who you are speaking to and what your relationship is to them. However, since Japanese is a 'pro-drop' language, which means that the subject is often omitted unless absolutely necessary, you can basically avoid saying pronouns 99% of the time.

When my daughter had her US study cut short because of the pandemic, she finished up a few of her classes remotely and she was at home, and I heard the teacher ask for introductions and the students all gave their name and their pronouns, which might baffle a Japanese exchange student. If I had a student in that situation, I might point them to a page like this but I got to thinking about the larger question of what it is actually doing.

When pronouns are asked for, because we probably would never use those pronouns when the person was in the conversation, unless we wanted to be sarcastic or rude, like a person relating a story about a partner and saying 'the place looked great, but _she_ said I was crazy to go in there', If you think about it, the number of times you actually use someone's 'pronouns' are exceedingly small. The APA 7th edition first endorses the use of the singular they to avoid he/she conundrums and says that you should only use he or she if you know that the person uses those pronouns. I don't know if people teaching research writing ask students to determine what pronouns their sources use, but for my students, it's a struggle to simply access, understand and correctly use the ideas of different sources, so asking them to find out what pronouns a writer uses is not really on the menu.

But back to the use of pronouns, it seems to me that the teacher is asking for the pronouns not because they are going to use them in class (a third person reference to someone in class is probably going to be the person's name) but it is a way of discreetly determining sexual orientation. In that sense, the introduction of pronouns is to provide a safe space to let you reveal that in a round-about way. Of course, revealing one's preferences in that area is particularly challenging, There is the handkerchief code and stop light parties, both offering semiotic systems of preferences that are then communicated to others in the know. As such, I understand why it exists and why it is being used now, but I have to wonder if it is simply another euphemism because we have problems dealing with it straight up? (pun not intended) Do you think it will become entrenched or simply be a passing fad when we find other ways of revealing personal preferences?

Comments

[Snarki, child of Loki]

I don't have pronouns.

My nouns are strictly amateur.

[Jaege Green]

Pronouns have nothing to do with sexual orientation.
Pronouns are (strongly but not perfectly) correlated to *gender identity*.

I would have imagined that you just got the terminology wrong, but then you invoked hanky codes and stoplight parties - neither of which particularly pertain to either sexual orientation *or* gender identity (they’re about relationship status or sexual availability/interests) - so it seems like you’ve just gone completely into the weeds over a series of topics you show no evidence of understanding.

[JanieM]

As a gay person who would probably be labeling myself "mildly non-binary" if I were younger and still had the energy, I have to sign off on Jaege Green's first two lines, but also cut lj some slack as someone who (like most of the world) still needs some education on these topics and how they intertwine (and don't).

As an old person / grammar nerd, I find the pronoun thing maddening and wish we could just re-engineer English to have generic pronouns, i.e. without (human) (i.e. I don't mean linguistic) gender distinctions at all. Why does it matter which gender I am, and/or which pronouns I prefer, when I'm guying a Snickers bar in the San Francisco airport?

Which is where I am at the moment, about to fly home after a month in redwood country. I will be glad to be home, playing with the grandkids in the lovely month of May, but like Sam Gamgee I also feel torn in two -- will miss the folks here, and the landscape.

[JanieM]

guying -> buying (LOL)

[Hartmut]

I wish for the time when "pronoun trouble" was a reference to Looney Tunes only.

I would also prefer, if people chose new words instead of (in my view) misappropriating/misusing existing grammatical forms. Or just revive a defunct one (go far enough back and you're likely to find one suitable).

But the main problem is people making unnecessary problems about it for ideologocal reasons. That goes into both directions, although at the moment the opponents are the worse. E.g. politicians in certain states that get laws passed that make asking for preferred pronouns a firing offense.

[wj]

Do you think it will become entrenched or simply be a passing fad when we find other ways of revealing personal preferences?

I think it will prove to be a passing fad. Either we will go back to using pronouns as we have for centuries, or we will dump them altogether, and use one something, functionally similar, for everywhere we now use pronouns.

but it is a way of discreetly determining sexual orientation.

If so, it seems particularly problematic. My orientation is not the business of everybody I interact with.

And given the proliferation of letters included in LGBT...., it seems like a lot of new pronouns would need to be invented. That would add complexity to a language which, in my observation, tends to reduce complexity over time. Again, that suggest a passing fad.

[liberal japonicus]

Jaege, I appreciate your comments, though I'm still not sure how, if (as you say) sexual orientation and gender identity are strongly correlated, how is the practice not a covert way that majority society is trying to get information about people who are different from them? I'm not sure what the answer is, but when majority society decides to incorporate a minority, it does it in a way that makes sure that the minority can be identified.

Giving one's pronouns seems like one of those well meaning gestures that actually disrupts the understanding that it is trying to create in that it supposedly creates a safe space for them to reveal something about themselves, but what they are revealing is not clear.

[Marty]

It would be great if we didn't have a society that treats you differently based on your declared gender, sexual preference, preferred sexual activities.

We create waves of issues because everyone is required to be binary everything, and pick a side to be on. It also just makes sexual adventure problematic. All of the labels are simply because we need to know what team you're on.

Declare early and don't dare change because you either lied or were weak and you've deserted our team. Tribalism at the micro level

Bah

[Marty]

Sorry to interrupt, I happened by at the wrong. Return to your regularly scheduled programming.

[Michael Cain]

Do you think it will become entrenched or simply be a passing fad when we find other ways of revealing personal preferences?

Passing fad. If the alternatives are truly personal pronouns, that must be memorized per person without reference to visual cues, or a single set of gender-neutral pronouns, I'll bet on the gender-neutral pronouns.

I'm no sort of linguist, so take it with a grain of salt, but my understanding is it took England about a hundred years to drop gendered nouns, starting in the Danelaw and spreading southwest. So "passing fad" may cover that sort of time.

[JanieM]

if (as you say) sexual orientation and gender identity are strongly correlated,

lj, Jaege Green did not say that, at all, but rather, that the wish to specify one's pronouns was correlated with the wish to be clear about gender identity. The pronoun thing has nothing to do with sexual orientation.

Also, you seem to be thinking that it's the dominant culture that is demanding that people name their pronouns so that they will be forced to reveal something about themselves that they might well not wish to reveal if they really understood what was going on. (N.b. as I have probably said before, "Men, Women, and the Rest of US" is my favorite book (sub)title of all time).

In that sense you have it completely backwards. Jaege Green or anyone else is welcome to correct me on the history and social dynamics of this trend, but my understanding is that it has been driven first of all by people who don't believe that there are only two "genders." Some people do not want to be stuffed into M or W -- don't believe they actually ARE either M or W -- thus odd things like "ze." (??)

Meanwhile, people giving their pronouns as the ones we all grew up with probably agree that there are more than two "genders" (I have made up a model for this but I'm in an airport again with no time to write about it), but feel that they *do* fit into one of the two bins we all grew up thinking were the only ones that existed, and that the dominant culture (I believe) still wants us to believe are the only two that exist. (Intersex people notwithstanding, as the most clear-cut example of a contradiction to the dominant paradigm.)

People who give the conventional M or W pronouns are doing it in solidarity with people who know that it's more complicated than just two.

Please forgive haste; I have to go find my gate.

[JanieM]

People who give the conventional M or W pronouns are doing it in solidarity with people who know that it's more complicated than just two.

For clarity: I'm sure who give the conventional M or W pronouns can be presumed to "know" it's more complicated than just two as well. I phrased it clumsily. Scant sleep, food, and water -- will be remedied soon.

[Pro Bono]

I'll reveal my preferred pronouns to anyone who might want to refer to me using a pronoun. (In English academic emails, it's common to include this information in one's signature.)

I'll reveal my sexual preferences only to people for whom it might be directly relevant.

[nous]

Okay, so there are a lot of things going on here with the pronoun thing in academic settings, and a lot of them overlap in sometimes messy ways.

On my learning management system user profiles and my course webpages I have my pronouns listed next to my name. I do that mostly to prevent my students feeling embarrassed if they mistake my first name as being female and then refer to me in email as Ms. when trying to contact me before classes start. (My first name is somewhat gender ambiguous.) It's not a big deal, but students get really weird about issues of respect sometimes and feel as if they have done something terrible if they get it wrong when dealing with an authority figure.

I generally handle the pronoun question at the same time I handle the question of preferred name - how would you like us to refer to you in class when addressing you? Especially important because I have many international students in my class who are tired of having the pronunciation of their name slaughtered in public and want a name everyone will get right. Pronouns are just another part of that question of reference. I don't ask explicitly for pronouns, I just leave the invitation open in case it matters.

My trans friends hate the whole pronoun discussion. To them, the need to ask and to make clear a pronoun implies that they are failing on some level with their gender performance, and it can provoke a bit of dysphoria. My non-binary friends, meanwhile, want to be able to make their choice of "they/them" explicit in order to reduce the number of times they get steered into binary assumptions.

I don't know that I would call it a fad. I think it may be a marker of a transition that does get resolved in other ways, or it's a distinction that will get de-emphasized over time if strict binaries loosen up and afford people more range in how they think about gender and identity. But don't for a second think that a lot of people 30 and below haven't decided that all us older types have some weird paranoia around gender and sexual preference that really aren't a big deal if only people would stop trying to force everyone into boxes.

I don't think that part is going to change unless the authoritarian types make that change impossible through force.

I do think, though, that they will try to make that change impossible.

And I will fight back for the sake of those I love for whom this is literally a matter of life and death. Closets of whatever variety are erasure and death.

[JanieM]

My trans friends hate the whole pronoun discussion. To them, the need to ask and to make clear a pronoun implies that they are failing on some level with their gender performance, and it can provoke a bit of dysphoria. My non-binary friends, meanwhile, want to be able to make their choice of "they/them" explicit in order to reduce the number of times they get steered into binary assumptions.

Thanks for this in particular, nous, in the "nothing is hardly ever simple" department. Maybe if "people [get] more range in how they think about gender and identity," the burden of "gender performance" will be lighter as well. (At least, I think that's part of what you meant?)

[Hartmut]

The ambiguity (seeming or real) of names is one of the reasons that should be uncontroversial for pronoun clarification but unfortunately is not and this as least can be put 100% at the feet of the demagogues. I get regularly puzzled reading lists of schoolkids and being unable to guess the correct sex of a not insignificant percentage because the given names are from cultures I am not familiar with. And I often find them to be actually ambiguous (i.e. given to both boys and girls) looking them up. It used to be only Italians around here where names ending with -a that were unambiguously female in German (e.g. Andrea) could be male, if the person was Italian.
There used to be a law in Germany that required at least one given name that could not be confused (after a period of actually banning ambiguous names like Kai and Tony).
Well, at least better than the French law that had a (short) list of allowed given names that parents had to choose from.

[nous]

Yes, JanieM, when gender roles are more permissive and allow for more overlap, it gives everyone a measure of grace to find comfortable personas for themselves that feel affirming, rather than alienating.

[nous]

Hartmut - my Chinese internationals have particular difficulty with all of this, coming from a culture with names that have no particular gender attached, and a lack of gendered pronouns in (spoken) mandarin.

They find my name a particular puzzle because my first name is ambiguous and not particularly common, and my surname is the given name of a famous Chinese singer, so they often revert to their own cultural naming order and asume my surname is my given name.

This is all quite challenging for an English language learner.

[Jaege]

Liberal Japonicus: you seem to have misread me: I absolutely didn’t say sexual orientation and gender identity are correlated. Someone’s gender identity contains no information about their sexual orientation. It’d be like speculating someone who’s tall has a big p*nis (ie: an offensive & intrusive assumption with some weak statistical evidence)

Gender identity and *pronouns* are correlated (ie: most people, cis and trans, who are women use she/her, most men use he/him - but there are exceptions) If you knew someone’s pronouns are he/him, you might reasonably guess he’s a man (99+% confidence) but you shouldn’t assume he is straight (~80% confidence)

[wj]

don't for a second think that a lot of people 30 and below haven't decided that all us older types have some weird paranoia around gender and sexual preference that really aren't a big deal if only people would stop trying to force everyone into boxes.

I don't think that part is going to change unless the authoritarian types make that change impossible through force.

One is reminded of the time (was it actually 20 years ago by now?) when there was a similar generational split over homosexuality. With some older adults getting exercised on the subject of someone being (maybe) gay, and kids just shrugging and asking "Yeah. So?"

[nous]

Not that all of the younger half are so open to relaxing such things. All the youngers on the crazy evangelical side of my family are willing to take up arms against the LGBTQ+ tyrants who control the world. It's just that their generations have a lot fewer people who become scared and squeamish at the very idea of relaxed gender norms in public.

The other thought that's been bouncing around in my head with this subject is the absolute freakout in the oldboy side of science fiction fandom when Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice came out and won a bunch of awards. The source of the freakout - the narrator used "she" as the neutral general pronoun:

She was probably male, to judge from the angular mazelike patterns quilting her shirt. I wasn’t entirely certain. It wouldn’t have mattered, if I had been in Radch space. Radchaai don’t care much about gender, and the language they speak—my own first language—doesn’t mark gender in any way.

The oldboys were in full panic mode over this - as if this sort of thing wasn't absolutely at the heart of what speculative fiction ought to be doing with our unexamined paradigms.

[JanieM]

wj: One is reminded of the time (was it actually 20 years ago by now?) when there was a similar generational split over homosexuality. With some older adults getting exercised on the subject of someone being (maybe) gay, and kids just shrugging and asking "Yeah. So?"

nous: Not that all of the younger half are so open to relaxing such things.

Not that we're all oblivious to the fact, but both 20 years ago and now, plenty of people of all generations would prefer not to have any reminders that gay people and gender-nonconforming people (of whatever flavor) exist. That's why they are so busy trying to rebuild closets.

[wj]

But noticably fewer in the younger generations than the older ones. Slow progress, but progress nonetheless.

[liberal japonicus]

apologies for the absence, had a chance to take the weekend off (and off-line) and did so.

Jaege, apologies, you are correct, you didn't say that sexual orientation and gender identity correlate. (and thanks for commenting, I've not seen your handle before) However, I'm not sure how one can say that sexual identity and gender identity have no correlation whatsoever (or that the correlation is totally happenstance). You say (if I understand your figures) that pronouns give you 99% of the way towards gender identity and 80% towards sexual identity. As this is a semiotic system,, getting 80% 'creates' a link. One could argue that the goal would be to delink gender identity and sexual orientation, and that's only going to come about if we take steps like this. That may be true and I don't want to discount the idea. As JanieM points out, there are tons of people trying to rebuild closets. But I'm thinking of my classroom praxis and what, if anything, I should do here.

I'm curious if giving pronouns is something that happens in other non-English speaking countries. If not, it seems like one of those WEIRD paradigms ala Henrich. So I'd be interested in what experiences people here (and I realize this audience trends male and white) have had with presenting pronouns.

[Girl from the North Country]

lj, is it possible you are assuming that "sexual identity" and "sexual orientation" are more or less synonymous?

[liberal japonicus]

As Jaege correctly pointed out, my post didn't make any separation between sexual orientation and gender identity. But I'm not sure what it buys us if we make a 3 fold system of gender identity, sexual identity and sexual orientation. As nouns, identity seems more 'fixed' while 'orientation' is more mutable, at least to my way of thinking, which is why identity is probably more problematic. I've been thinking a bit about this because of a number of conversations about citizenship and passport, mirrored with the voter id travails of Bojo and other conservatives, which is why I meant this to be an open thread. With identity, how does one point to something that 'proves' it?

[wj]

I'm curious if giving pronouns is something that happens in other non-English speaking countries.

I'm wondering if it happens in English speaking countries other than the US.

[JanieM]

lj -- you are the only person using the phrase "sexual identity," so you are the one who should probably explain what you mean by it.

GftNC asked if you were assuming "sexual identity" and "sexual orientation" were synonymous; you could start by answering that question. If you aren't assuming that, then maybe you can explain what you mean by it, because I for one don't know.

In my framework there's gender identity (are you a woman, a man, or one of "the rest of us"), and there's sexual orientation (who do you prefer to have sex with?). I don't know what the third leg of your "three fold system" would be.

*****

wj: see Pro Bono on May 3: I'll reveal my preferred pronouns to anyone who might want to refer to me using a pronoun. (In English academic emails, it's common to include this information in one's signature.)

[liberal japonicus]

I was following Jaege's comment where he said

Pronouns have nothing to do with sexual orientation.
Pronouns are (strongly but not perfectly) correlated to *gender identity*.

I did use sexual identity, in my reply to Jaege at 10:27, but that was just sloppiness on my part. I initially said orientation and then started using identity, and if I had an editor, they would point out that out and ask why I'm swapping terms. So I assumed that GftNC was adding sexual identity rather than responding to my usage, and I wasn't intending to make a tri-fold distinction. Sorry about that. I do think that identity is more fundamental than orientation, which is why I tried to use gender identity and sexual orientation. hth

[nous]

If I were going to suggest a three-fold system for communicating personal sexual/gender information, it would likely be something more like gender identity; gender expression; sexual orientation. That would open space for people who identify as male, female, non-binary; butch, femme, genderqueer; homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, pansexual, asexual (and other, rarer possibilities).

Those do seem like distinct modes of personal identity/expression.

[JanieM]

Google this phrase: "sexual orientation categories survey" and have fun seeing how many breakdowns of sexual orientation people can come up with.

Then there's this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gender_identities

"Human" might work well..... ;-)

Excluding AIs, naturally.

[Girl from the North Country]

Well, it won't surprise anyone to find that I actually do favour a three-fold system, I was just confused as to what "sexual identity" meant in lj's context. My three categories, again unsurprisingly, are: 1. Sex, 2. Gender identity/expression, 3. Sexual orientation. And, as all who have followed our previous discussions will know, I believe that only the first of those is binary.

[nous]

As far as classroom context is concerned, all that really matters most of the time is doing our best not to make anyone feel as if they do not belong in the conversation, or in the room, because of the way others address them within the classroom community.

Basically, it's just Wheaton's Law at work.

And it works both ways. I never want anyone to feel as if I am forcing them to accede to any role unwillingly. If someone wishes to keep quiet about any of these things, they are free to do so. The only persona that has no place is the role of The Dick.

[JanieM]

The only persona that has no place is the role of The Dick.

Words to live by.

Also good guidance for any group trying to navigate group-dom....

[wonkie]

I wonder what the effect would be on gender identity if we were able to shed the baggage of expectations now attached to "male" and "female". It is hard to imagine, but what if being female just meant body parts with no expectations about behavior and being male just meant body parts without cultural expectations. IN other words, a cultural change that allowed people to just be themselves, however that worked out. Would the issue of gender become a physical thing if we removed the cultural baggage?

[CharlesWT]

IN other words, a cultural change that allowed people to just be themselves, however that worked out.

Without any cultural nudges, most men would still act more like other men than they would act like women. And most women would act more like other women than they would act like men.

[wj]

"Most" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.

[hairshirthedonist]

If most men and women chose that without the expectations, so what? For the rest, the expectations make things more difficult. Or does acting like a man or woman imply expecting others to do the same according to their, um, "plumbing" (as someone used to say).

[CharlesWT]

Everyone should be allowed to act as freely as possible. They should be able to define themselves however they wish. As long as they're not forcing anything upon anyone else.

Gina Rippon and others argue that there would be no differences between men and women if not for culture, socialization, stereotypes, and expectations as to how men and women should think and act.

Other people beg to differ.

The Science: Male Brain vs Female Brain: It's politically correct to say men and women are mentally the same, but Stossel lays out science that says otherwise

[wonkie]

"Or does acting like a man or woman imply expecting others to do the same according to their, um, "plumbing" (as someone used to say)."

This is what I was getting at. Would there be a need to identify as both or neither if a person could simply be divergent from expectations without being judged for not conforming?

[nous]

Just as Western Medicine is built on a model of an idealized dead male body, the idea that men's and women's brains function differently at a categorical level is just another instance of the "mostly" that wj mentions above. These studies of the brain that Stossel points to outline a range of possibilities and create a heat map of how individual brains map onto that range. We then use those heat maps to predict behavior based on observed differences in distribution.

Individual brains aren't male or female. They are what they are. Take the brain of a fetus with xx chromosome pairs and put it in a womb with a fraternal twin who has xy chromosomes, and the xx twin will exhibit more "male" traits due to crossover hormonal influence during development. That's not genetics, that's circumstances.

So like wonkie says, maybe start with a model for human behavior with no normative overlay and a few ideas of how traits might cluster in the population, and let people map themselves onto the sets of behavior that seem to best fit. Those heat maps aren't a telos, they are just a bayesian distribution.

[wonkie]

Of course there are people who are physically some of each, but--to my limited knowledge--they usually go by one or the other, often after experiencing a great deal of trauma. For example, (this is my limited experience) a young woman who, as girl, was concerned that her period hadn't started--only to discover at about sixteen that she didn't have a uterus. She had internal testes.

But I think the pronouns are more for people who don't conform to the gender expectations, rather than people who have anomalies in their physical development.

[wj]

Would there be a need to identify as both or neither if a person could simply be divergent from expectations without being judged for not conforming?

One difficulty here is that there appears to be a wired-in inclination to conform. And to sanction (socially) those who do not conform. Yes, the social pressure can be overcome. And there can be changes in what areas conformity is expected in.

But conformity, per se, looks like a being consistent, regardless of the culture or subculture. Even among those who rebel against the conformity expected by the broader culture end up demanding conformity (to a different set of norms and behaviors) for members of their rebel subculture.

[Lurker]

wj,

You are pretty correct here. The idea of having no expectations on human behaviour is a beautiful one, but also undoable. We are social beings, and we acculturate into the norms of our surroundings. And if we claim not to have norms, then the actual unseen norms are so rock solid that they are unbendable.

What we can do is to try to accept deviation from the norms: human behaviour and diversity is too large to classify neatly, and we need to accept other people without pressing them into ready-made sockets.

For example, the above-mentioned "gender expression" that nous raises has categories "butch, femme, genderqueer". As a hetero cis-male, I would find it quite difficult to classify my own gender expression to one of these categories, which seem to me to discuss subcultures that are quite foreign to me. If I look at different ways of expressing manliness, I actually lack the necessary vocabulary, because such subgroupings don't exist in my social surrounding, nor would the wide diversity of how hetero cis-males actually express this identity fit into narrow classifications.

So, for me, nous's discussion of trifold identity was very useful, as it made me start wondering at a social classification where I am as clearly outside the normative classes as many a LBGTetc. person is in his/her/their/zer/etc. life daily.

[liberal japonicus]

Thanks to lurker for reviving this thread with a comment. I read this a few days ago and have been chasing down other information

https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-05-08/the-fusion-of-two-sisters-into-a-single-woman-suggests-that-human-identity-is-not-in-our-dna.html

We so naturally go to the language of inheritance that, it seems to me, the discussion of genetic and how traits are passed down complements our ideas too well.

[hairshirthedonist]

Does she have 2 souls? (Conversely, do identical twins share one?)

[Girl from the North Country]

I've heard of people who in adult life have been found to have within their body the remains of a twin who was absorbed when they were in utero. In fact I knew a woman to whom this happened, and it had real psychological repercussions. But this really is a fascinating and extraordinary case.

[Michael Cain]

I vaguely recall some science fiction crime procedural where the bad guy was a serial rapist/murderer who was getting away with it because the DNA from a cheek swab wasn't a perfect match to the semen found on the victims. The twist was that the remnant of his absorbed non-identical twin were his testicles.

Even earlier there was a story where the wrong guy was arrested based on a clear fingerprint match. The detective eventually solved it when he discovered the actual criminal who had an identical index finger print.

Unfortunately, we seem to be finding many more cases of sheer incompetence in forensic lab work than situations that could happen, but with extremely low probability.

[Hartmut]

Despite the saying that one should not assume malice, if mere incompetence is a possibility, I'd not be too sure about that in the case of forensic labs.
Too many cases of collusion with corrupt law enforcement are on the record or strongly suspected where 'convenient' results could be almost guaranteed.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

Hartmut has a point, and it is a strong reason for having forensic labs being independent, and having their tests be done "double blind".

Well, that's if the motivation is "accurate results". If the motivation is "help the cops and prosecutors"? Not so much.

[JanieM]

lj -- that was a cool article about DNA and cells.

First, a question. GftNC wrote this:

I've heard of people who in adult life have been found to have within their body the remains of a twin who was absorbed when they were in utero. In fact I knew a woman to whom this happened, and it had real psychological repercussions. But this really is a fascinating and extraordinary case.

The article starts off like this: Two eggs fertilized by two sperm coincided in a uterus and, instead of giving rise to two sisters, they fused to form a single person: Karen Keegan.

If I'm understanding correctly, what GftNC is talking about is the same thing that the lj's article opens with. The article says "sister," but two eggs fertilized by two sperm means fraternal twins, does it not? In the case of identical twins, the DNA would be the same so that wouldn't be the same situation.

Or am I missing something?

Anyhow, I googled "What is the frequency of human chimeras?" and the top google result is this paragraph:

A human chimera is made up of two different sets of DNA, from two different individuals. Experts aren't quite sure how common natural chimeras are in the human population, as only 100 cases have been documented so far. However, the prevalence of natural human chimeras is hypothesized to be as high as 10%.

...which is from here, and which I can only read in a stripped down version (i.e. I can't follow the footnotes).

It would be fascinating to find that DNA is just the tool of cells.... For chimeras, I wonder how the cells "decide" which DNA to use for which body part and at which phase of development. Might be fun to live another 100 years and watch what the research turns up! (If climate change and political disaster even leave us with the capability of doing such research...)

(PS: When I was young I thought I wanted to be an astrophysicist. I couldn't manage the courses, as it turned out ... long story ... but anyhow, if I were deciding now for my younger self which scientific field to choose, it would probably be genetics instead. Then again, I would be working in a field where someone thought the phrase "junk DNA" was useful....)

[CharlesWT]

The article says "sister," but two eggs fertilized by two sperm means fraternal twins, does it not?

In theory, a chimera could have two fathers. But the odds of it happening are vanishingly small.

Even with one father, skin tones can vary in many different patterns.

[nous]

Huh, some people really do contain multitudes.

[Tom H.]

wj -- explicit pronouns are a big deal in the UK; not just because I work in a US-headquartered multinational, but in government, at universities, etc.

I've known trans people since '99 or '00, and got used to it quickly enough, but have felt my attitudes shifting since I had a family member say "I think I'm trans". This person in particular has mental health issues, non-mental health issues, and a difficult & complicated history, and it seems clear to me (admittedly not being inside their head) that it's a maladaptive response to their difficulties.

Observing my kids, the adolescent cohort appears to have become become considerably less tolerant of non-well-defined gender presentation & sexualities. AFAB but tomboy or forcefully extroverted? Must be trans. AMAB but delicate or sensitive? Must be trans. On the autism spectrum enough to not connect emotionally with peers? Must be trans. Teenager who is late to develop, or just isn't hormonally driven? Must be ace. I've observed serious peer & social pressure to accept these labels & alignments rather than leave things a little bit undefined or accept a wider possible breadth of expressions within a single sex/gender.

As a child of the 70s and 80s in the USA, we had plenty of non-gender-conforming examples in the culture, and although I might have been personally uneasy with them (coming from a rather narrow upbringing) this gender-bending seemed more broadly accepted than it is today in many cohorts of UK culture.

I originally figured I'd reply to this thread because I was surprised by some of the early assertions - for a family member, whether or not they're present in the home, the question of pronouns comes up multiple times every day. I suppose in a classroom with more students present there are fewer references to each student and thus more fewer times when a pronoun would fit?

[liberal japonicus]

for a family member, whether or not they're present in the home, the question of pronouns comes up multiple times every day. I suppose in a classroom with more students present there are fewer references to each student and thus more fewer times when a pronoun would fit?

That's an interesting observation. It had me do a little digging and for UK contexts, it is often in the email signature block, though for me, email is getting rather fraught, because I'm overwhelmed with it in Japanese and English, so I've sort of withdrawn from having email conversations. Though I try to teach the singular they to my students because it can avoid a lot of problems.

This link was also interesting, will try to find this book
https://las.illinois.edu/news/2020-01-29/tracing-history-gender-neutral-pronouns

[Girl from the North Country]

If I'm understanding correctly, what GftNC is talking about is the same thing that the lj's article opens with. The article says "sister," but two eggs fertilized by two sperm means fraternal twins, does it not? In the case of identical twins, the DNA would be the same so that wouldn't be the same situation.

I assumed that cases like the woman I knew meant that the twin had been absorbed later than lj's linked case. For example, if I remember correctly, there were small e.g. teeth or bones, whereas in the lj case I assumed it must have happened long before such structures formed in the fetus, probably when the two were just agglomerations of a few cells...

[wonkie]

Whenever a new rights movement or a new awareness of some kind of disease or condition becomes the subject of lots of public speculation, and discussion there will be copycats, publicity seekers and Munchausen-type parents who get a self-aggrandizing thrill out of their kid being "special." As a special ed teacher, I encountered this fairly often; there are parents who want their child to be special because it gives them a vicarious experience in specialness through constant involvement with schools, doctors, the legal system in the role of "advocates" for their child.

There will also be troubled individuals who see the condition in themselves mistakenly because they are not able, at that point in their lives, to handle whatever the real problems are.

To add to the confusion, a person who genuinely has the newly controversial condition can also be a screwed-up person, and a child can have the real condition but also have parents who engage in maximum self-promoting drama about it.

The news media, in the search for the sensational, will seize on the outliers.

I am no longer teaching, but I can readily imagine that classrooms now have students who want "they" to be used because it is the latest fad or because their parents have seized on it. Meanwhile, given the range of human behavior, the tomboy will get they-d whether she likes it or not and the boy who is slightly outside the expected box of behaviors will get labeled as gay, trans, or they.

It would make life easier for everyone if we would just let people be who they are without worrying about categorizing.

[wonkie]

I stuck a comma in the wrong place. I blame my dog who bumped my elbow. BTW I am not opposed categorizing by genuine need. It can be handy to know by a label what issue a person may have to that the response can be appropriate; however, as a classroom teacher, I can't see that it matters what sexual orientation a student has or if the student presents in a way that is not within some essentially arbitrary definition of "male" or "female". My role in the classroom, it seems to be, is to require civil behavior while promoting tolerance and respect. I'm may catch blowback for saying this, but I don't see using "they" as essential for this. I see an intolerance for intolerance as essential--no bullying of anyone. Respect for everyone.

My point: I think it's a more constructive conversation to say that males get to be male in any way they want to be male, and females get to be female in any way they want to be female. If someone doesn't feel that the conventional understanding of male or female applies, that's fine. They should get to be male or female in an unconventional way.

[nous]

Tom H. - Observing my kids, the adolescent cohort appears to have become become considerably less tolerant of non-well-defined gender presentation & sexualities. AFAB but tomboy or forcefully extroverted? Must be trans. AMAB but delicate or sensitive? Must be trans. On the autism spectrum enough to not connect emotionally with peers? Must be trans. Teenager who is late to develop, or just isn't hormonally driven? Must be ace. I've observed serious peer & social pressure to accept these labels & alignments rather than leave things a little bit undefined or accept a wider possible breadth of expressions within a single sex/gender.

Yeah. This is a bit of a struggle, and honestly, a lot of that is just a product of this stage of development. Even in my first-year college classes, my students come in craving checkboxes that will help them organize and make sense of their world without the need to constantly question and re-evaluate their place in things.

Of course they also come in with the conviction that half of the checkboxes they do have are absolute bullshit and they want to go after those hypocrisies with all their energy.

I really do think, though, that the answer to most of these identity-related panics lie in fewer checkboxes and more tolerance for interstitial spaces - less emphasis on "finding your true identity" and more on "exploring your place in the world." If we can lower the stakes around these decisions and reduce the urgency of having to figure out your answers, that seems like it should take a lot of the pressure off of our interactions.

Wonkie gets to this in much the same way I am suggesting. I don't disagree with wj when he says that people do make judgments, I just think that we should try to build more wiggle room and reversibility into our norms.

[JanieM]

small e.g. teeth or bones

Strange stuff.

Here's the most thorough link I've found with lots of info about "vanishing twins" -- interestingly enough, from Japan.

"The world is so full of a number of things..."

[Girl from the North Country]

Strange stuff.

So strange that I almost started doubting my memory (it was a couple of decades ago). But, from your link Janie:

Fingers, teeth, and other body parts are not absorbed and lodge into the remaining fetal body. It's easy to imagine why this could be a rather traumatic discovery for someone discovering it in adulthood.

[wonkie]

I'm probably reacting as child of the sixties. I was in high school when Women's Liberation became a thing, and there was lots of discussion about what it meant to be feminine. My reaction was pretty simple. To me, anything a biological female does is feminine and anything a biological male does is masculine. This came directly from my experience of coming of age as a female at a time of transition in our cultural understanding of femininity. I resented the conversation because it didn't seem to me that anyone had any business defining femaleness for another female (including other females). The whole debate seemed absurdly arrogant.
Of course, it was also the time of "Do your own thing."

[JanieM]

it didn't seem to me that anyone had any business defining femaleness for another female (including other females)

Words to live by.

Compare Gloria Steinem: “Women have two choices: Either she's a feminist or a masochist.”

Activism gone to rot: "I, not you, define what's good for you" -- Infantilizing people under the mask of pretending to empower them.

[Girl from the North Country]

wonkie, I'm glad you specify "biological female", which is why in my three-fold proposal the first, binary one, is Sex. And personally, I'd be just as happy if the words "feminine" and "masculine" were retired. Which, again, is why I think "gender identity/expression" is (and should be) a wide, wild, creative and possibly infinite continuum.
(That's if a continuum can be infinite - I have never pretended to be anything other than lamentably ignorant about maths - looking up the Continuum Hypothesis makes me lose the will to live.)

[wj]

Tom H. the adolescent cohort appears to have become become considerably less tolerant of non-well-defined gender presentation & sexualities. AFAB but tomboy or forcefully extroverted? Must be trans. AMAB but delicate or sensitive? Must be trans. On the autism spectrum enough to not connect emotionally with peers? Must be trans. Teenager who is late to develop, or just isn't hormonally driven? Must be ace. I've observed serious peer & social pressure to accept these labels & alignments rather than leave things a little bit undefined or accept a wider possible breadth of expressions within a single sex/gender.

That has long been my, probably incoherently expressed, concern.

Some people are indeed trans. But it feels like the label is being thrown around far too casually. In addition to other issues there, that can lead to someone (especially some kid) who isn't actually trans accepting the label and taking irreversable steps as a result.

[nous]

Pretty much any limited set of gender norms is going to create a sense of social pressure to conform and perform within the accepted limits. I'm sure some kids are being told by others that how they feel about themselves makes them trans, and that later they will decide that they are most comfortable with some other gender identity. Fifteen years ago, that conversation was my trans-man friend being told that he was a butch lesbian and that seeking gender affirming care was a betrayal of feminist solidarity. He just celebrated his fortieth and said that fifteen years ago he could not imagine still being alive at forty.

Erasure feels like death. Erasure leads to death.

What I'd most love is for all of the outsiders to quit putting themselves into the conversation and give young people and their trusted advocates the space and time to figure these things out, and to take the least permanent path to an identity that affirms their continued living.

In many (maybe most) cases that will be less permanent changes that allow for more extended consideration. But the advocates need to really listen or else they will miss the cases where the dysphoria is strong enough that not affirming the young person's self-perception will lead to an even less reversible, self-administered choice.

[Marty]

". But the advocates need to really listen or else they will miss the cases where the dysphoria is strong enough that not affirming the young person's self-perception will lead to an even less reversible, self-administered choice."

In general, pronouns are a problem because we have made every pronoun so literal in defense of every minority that offense in casual conversation is guaranteed. So I won't use one in even the most polite company except they/them. So I don't need your pronouns. Hell I can barely remember names.

[Marty]

The first part of that comment was meant to be deleted.

[wj]

The current situation is confused enough that I just stick with him and her until and unless someone specifically asks me for something else. And since, like Marty, even remembering names is a challenge, I'm likely to require reminding per conversation. (And I really feel for non-native speakers of English trying to navigate this.)

Here's hoping that it doesn't require the couple of decades I expect for things to sort themselves out.

[Girl from the North Country]

In many (maybe most) cases that will be less permanent changes that allow for more extended consideration. But the advocates need to really listen or else they will miss the cases where the dysphoria is strong enough that not affirming the young person's self-perception will lead to an even less reversible, self-administered choice.

I agree with every word of this.

[nous]

Think I've said this before, but pronouns are pretty low-hanging fruit in terms of supporting people. Accepting them, and trying to use them is almost always taken as a sign of good faith. Grumbling about the inconvenience of it or blanket refusal is taken as a sign that you don't accept them.

But if you show good faith, they are usually pretty forgiving of the occasional slip, and accepting of any apologies.

More prickly responses are usually reserved for people of bad faith or moments of high stress.

[Hartmut]

It could be so simple:

hermaphrodites = they (with "is")
[maybe also multiple personalities with "are"]
sexless (=neutrum) = it
non-binary non-neutral = ti

Nasty addendum:
Anything not covered by this or traditional ways: "shit" (short for "she-he-it")

[Snarki, child of Loki]

The *big* problem with using people's preferred pronouns (and names) is REMEMBERING them.

To quote a memorable line: "I never for get a name or a face, except .... usually"

[Gwen]

Well, you know, some people are cis, but I feel like that label gets thrown around far too often....

Teenager who is late to develop, or just isn't hormonally driven? Must be ace.

It is, in fact, valid to be asexual for a year or two or five and then later become allosexual--it's not like it's required to have a sexual orientation of "Probable Future _sexual" for the intervening years! Whether it does turn out to be just a phase or not, though, it means a lot to have people in one's life who are supportive of that self-identification. And having that kind of support can be important if there is the later sexual awakening you're privately speculating on (which was, incidentally, also privately-or-publicly predicted for every single fully-grown adult who grew up ace).

It's even valid to be allosexual for years and then become asexual. In case anyone was wondering.

[Hartmut]

And to think that The Church used to pray for all the world to become asexual...
(because a) sex is icky and b) it would force G*d's hand to start the apocalypse before no one is left to tribulate)
St. Augustine hoped for a time when children could be born without anything lustful having happened before
(because that's how in his sick mind original sin got transmitted.
There was an endless debate, whether humans would lose their sex organs when going to heaven, or if all females would become repaired (=male). But one thing was sure: NO SEX IN HEAVEN.
No surprise that they always emphasized the horrors of hell, not the joys of heaven (while Islam consequently does both).

[CharlesWT]

One of my favorite depictions of Heaven and Hell is Heinlein's Job: A Comedy of Justice. I gave a copy to a guy who was at least in the same ballpark as the Jesus freaks of the time. He admitted that it was interesting and gave him some food for thought.

[nous]

Augustine was being a dry drunk for his own horndog leanings.

Now Jerome, that was an ace champion.

[Hartmut]

Reading Augustine's "Confessions" I got the strong impression that his ideas of original sin arose from his own out-of-wedlock baby son crying and getting on his nerves. He interpreted that as (deliberate) evil and concluded that even newborns are not innocent. Therefore it had come out of the womb already infected with sin => original sin.
And if it was infected already in the womb, it would go straight to hell, if it died there unbaptized.
One effect of that still lingering is in the abortion debate. An abortion sends a soul to hell, so it cannot be allowed under any circumstance. For centuries this especially sick idea did not really catch on fully and the "late ensoulment" idea (Originating iirc from Aristotle) made abortion in the first 40 days for boys and 80 days for girls less problematic (a lesser, not a deadly sin). That only changed when the immaculate conception of Mary gained popularity (which decreed that at the moment of Mary's conception G*d intervened to keep her free from original sin because Jesus would have refused to 'enter an unclean vessel'. This would not make sense, if the soul did not enter at the moment of conception [still leaves the question about the souls of identical twins unsolved]. Thus the soul must enter at conception and aborting it at any stage would send it straight to hell to suffer for eternity. Dante got into theological hot water when he dropped the latter part in his Divina Commedia, leaving the unborn in hell but otherwise unharmed.

I think I have expressed here repeatedly that I loathe and despise St.Augustine - in particular for his poisonous ideas still virulent. Most other monsters among the Fathers of the Church mostly lost their toxic influence shortly after dying or have since. Not him.
OK, there is one thing were he was less odious: He did NOT (to my knowledge) condone using murder as a tool to forward the case of Christ while several others did.

[wj]

I think I have expressed here repeatedly that I loathe and despise St.Augustine - in particular for his poisonous ideas still virulent. Most other monsters among the Fathers of the Church mostly lost their toxic influence shortly after dying or have since. Not him.

Although one can make a case the Paul was worse, and did at least as much damage. Absent him, Christianity generally might have been something that Jesus could actually recognize.

[JanieM]

CharlesWT: I can't remember where in Texas you are, but I hope you're okay....

[CharlesWT]

JanieM, thanks for the thought.

No bad weather near me here in Plano just north of Dallas.

On Mother's Day, 1993 I did have the interesting experience of having a tornado pass within a block of me.

[JanieM]

On Mother's Day, 1993 I did have the interesting experience of having a tornado pass within a block of me.

I've experienced that in northeastern Ohio -- sounded like a train. My one experience of a mild earthquake here in Maine, which I didn't know was an earthquake until later, sounded like a snowplow.

[JanieM]

PS the tornado that passed near where I was staying was a very small one.

[CharlesWT]

The one here in 1993 was small too. But it stereotypically killed two people in a trailer park.

[Girl from the North Country]

I was in LA when the big quake of 1994 struck, in the middle of the night. It woke me up, the room was shaking and things fell off shelves. I'd never been in one before, but luckily my old friend next door was an Angeleno born and bred, and knew what to do. We went out and slept in the car, and listened to the radio. The next morning early we went and laid in supplies (of water, food etc). In the following weeks, the aftershocks were very frequent, and we always had the TV on a channel that had a crawler which told you the magnitude of every one after a minute or so. We became expert at estimating: "I think that was a 5", "No, I reckon no more than 4.8". The fascinating thing was that for quite a long time afterwards I realised that I no longer completely trusted that the ground under my feet was solid and to be relied upon.

[Hartmut]

The Colorado GOP also has some "thoughts" on pronouns.

https://mikethemadbiologist.com/2024/05/22/reaching-across-the-aisle-to-my-good-republican-friend/

All Colorado parents should be aiming to remove their kids from public education.
[...]
Our next policy aims to save Colorado children from progressive Democrats who want to turn more kids trans by requiring teachers to use “pronouns” that do not make any sense and cause gender confusion…