Quote from: Rebis on October 02, 2007, 12:41:01 PM
   I think we have several really excellent threads on this site that we should send to the  scientists, doctors, and researchers.
   We also have the people to provide info to fill in the gaps.

that is cool, R! you think we could do that? what would the next step be?

-ell

Quote from: Ell on October 02, 2007, 10:04:49 PM

Quote from: Rebis on October 02, 2007, 12:41:01 PM
   I think we have several really excellent threads on this site that we should send to the  scientists, doctors, and researchers.
   We also have the people to provide info to fill in the gaps.

that is cool, R! you think we could do that? what would the next step be?

-ell

I don't know.  I should investigate.  I have 2 psychiatrists and a gender therapist that I can talk to.  Maybe they know some little men in tweed jackets who stand around all day cutting up frogs.  [/woody Allen]

Quote from: Rachael on October 02, 2007, 09:19:14 PM
intersex doesnt equal medical androgyne. im 46xx and intersex, that makes me as female as i look,
maybe you confuse intergender and intersex?
i have yet to meet an IS androgyne, only happy natal males and females who are IS, and trans people who are is and going from one to the other,.
R

Naw, I am not confused.

I am talking about a person who was born with male primary sex characteristics (genitalia) and developed female secondary sex characteristics (breasts, fat distribution, hair patterns) at puberty. This person has an intersex condition. That is eir body.

E is also an androgyne. E does not feel male nor female and in fact finds eir IS body to be exactly the body that feels right to eir. That is eir gender.

I'm not saying that this happens to every IS person. Just that it happens.

you do realise 'eir' isnt a word or even engrish?
R

Quote from: Rachael on October 04, 2007, 02:14:56 AM
you do realise 'eir' isnt a word or even engrish?
R

'Eir' is the adjectival form of the second-person possessive pronoun in the gender-neutral pronoun set invented by mathematician Michael Spivak. It is slightly older and follows more regular gramatical rules than the sie/zie/hir/etc one I see going about these days. It also just happens to be the pronoun set that the person I am writing about prefers. Or preferred at the time that I knew em.

'Eir' is equivalent to 'her' or 'his.' Actually, I am mistakenly using 'eir' when I should be using 'em' in one place in the previous post. It ought to say 'the body that feels right to em.'

This is not really relevant, and what are you really on about?

Actually, according to Spivak emself, e didn't invent it, just wrote about it as a cool idea in The Joy of TeX. Since that was a relatively high-impact book in certain circles (and fun to read, like most of the early TeX manuals and tutorials), the pronoun got a great deal of publicity, and as an unintended side effect got credited to em.

But yes, this is getting off-topic. If anyone is still interested, read the Wikipedia entry on 'Spivak pronoun'.

  Nfr

I think Spivak is as real spiffy name....

Someone start a pronoun topic - I have a feeling it will take off.

Hi all, I guess I can't help much on the grammar I think my grammar book was left in my bag under a tree when I was walking home from school 52 years ago. )

Is the proposition being put forward here about coming up with a label for androgen which stands for the desire of not wanting to be classified as either gender *neutral* I believe, like this word 'Eir' which is being designated to define this state being, neutrality, yes? no?

But then where do I fit in this scheme of the genders? Like I did not identify as either gender let alone feeling a need to have sex with a woman or a male. In my teens I did look like a girl and often got called Miss during the years leading to the final decision for the surgery.  I looked pretty much androgynous through many of those years, until just the last few years where I began developing male features. "Yuck!!!" I rather quickly made up my mind I didn't want to continue the rout of my previous self..

At least now I love who I am, and I am woman.
Cindy

hmm, interesting, and hir wasnt good enough ? or is things like hir, zie, and other ones i forget for differnet androgyne groups?
R

Quote from: Rachael on October 05, 2007, 05:04:20 AM
hmm, interesting, and hir wasnt good enough ? or is things like hir, zie, and other ones i forget for differnet androgyne groups?
R

Rachael,

   There is no formalized or approved or official set of gender variant pronouns.  People are just using what they picked up in different places and what they find preferable or comfortable for theirselves.

   Anyway, this thread was meant as a venue for people to discuss their understanding or [dis]belief in the androgyne condition.

   I believe that the thread has had it's highs and it's lows but also that there may be more to wring out of the topic before it spins off into space.

   If it keeps going sideways, I may lock it out of respect for what Tay was trying to accomplish.



Rebis

Hi  Rebis
Sorry I didn't mean to upset any apple carts here but, as naive as this may sound I have never heard of all these gender variant pronouns before until I ran into this thread and another one that was locked out a couple of days ago. I might be 62 years of age but I am also the new kid on the block when it comes to this gender variant labeling business. Now I just left another group not long ago, nothing to do with transgender, but I left for similar reasons, "labels" So I can see and understand where such labels could cause some confusion and problems for some. As far as I'm concerned, I consider myself a lesbian on these groups if I feel there is a need to classify myself. and just plain female on any other groups I attend out there.

Why can't androgen be recognized in it's own classification and be done with it? I been there for a time. One doesn't need to understand this concept to just let those who are share of themselves with others in there own space. And for anyone who doesn't like it then go to any other number of threads in this message board.

Cindy   

Quote from: Rachael on October 05, 2007, 05:04:20 AM
hmm, interesting, and hir wasnt good enough ? or is things like hir, zie, and other ones i forget for differnet androgyne groups?
R

Quote from: Doc on October 04, 2007, 12:09:06 PM
. It is slightly older and follows more regular gramatical rules than the sie/zie/hir/etc one I see going about these days.

Note use of word 'older.' Appearantly, it's eir that wasn't good enough, and I am not sure why.

So far as I know, none of these pronoun-sets have anything in particular to do with particular androgyne groups of any sort. They're simply proposed gender-neutral pronouns intended to indicate anybody, male, female or genderless, but without the implied insult of 'it' and without the 'is it one person or many?' confusion of using 'they.' Why inventors of gender-neutral pronoun sets habitually ignore the perfectly good ancient proto-English 'ou' is beyond me.

maybe you SHOULD formalise a set of pronouns, so people take you seriously as an established identity, fannying aroundwith prounouns only makes you look less certain yourselves... just a suggestion.
R

Quote from: Rachael on October 07, 2007, 02:44:12 AM
maybe you SHOULD formalise a set of pronouns, so people take you seriously as an established identity, fannying aroundwith prounouns only makes you look less certain yourselves... just a suggestion.
R

People have tried to formalize a set of pronouns many times, but it never works because other people disagree and don't use them, and so they never get adopted.  Maybe we just need to wait until people get used to using "they" in the singular sense again (pedantic grammarians be damned.)

And if people don't take me seriously, it's their problem, not mine.

maybe this is why debates like this start... form a unified front, make a coherant, visible alternative to gender as it stands currently. because if you dont get some form of fixed ideas together, the constant shifting sands version doesnt quite hold any water... I WANT to see this accepted as much as anyone, infact i WANT a coherant, understandable answer, society understands male and female, make androgyne as understandable, and people will stop debating its existance. currently, whispers and comments and rumours of a city, dont make a city...
R

Hello Rachael,

   Language is messy. It defies formalization.  most of the words we use regularly have been bent beaten and broken through many generations until they became accepted and regularly used.  I'm talking about words in general.

   Most words and meanings go through a very rigorous trial before coming into general use.  At some point, a set of pronouns will "magically" become accepted and used more to the point of "triumphing" over less used or less malleable alternatives.  It will be some time, however, and there really is no controlling it.

   At one time, our people were accepted and respected.  Like Doc said, there were words for us then. It would be nice to dig up the old lingo and squeeze some more juice out of it, but there's no way to make it happen in an official way.

   It is a difficult thing to recover culture and traditions that have been destroyed, buried, hidden, and ridicule by a particularly mean majority.  Binaries who accept us, or who would accept us if they knew of us, have no more access to our past than we do at this time.

   Just because we struggle with our own identity there is no reason for us to not be taken seriously.


Rebis from the Rubicon

Quote from: Rachael on October 09, 2007, 02:43:33 AM
maybe this is why debates like this start... form a unified front, make a coherant, visible alternative to gender as it stands currently. because if you dont get some form of fixed ideas together, the constant shifting sands version doesnt quite hold any water... I WANT to see this accepted as much as anyone, infact i WANT a coherant, understandable answer, society understands male and female, make androgyne as understandable, and people will stop debating its existance. currently, whispers and comments and rumours of a city, dont make a city...
R

This is relatively impossible, as "Androgyne" encompasses so many different feelings and identities.  Anyone who feels that they don't somehow fit into the Gender Binary gets shoved under 'androgyne' this includes androgynes, bigender, intergender, nullgender etc etc etc..  All of these identities have a unique self view.  How exactly would them forming together to make one set of pronouns be any different then shoving them into another box to which they don't fit?  Why does every androgyne have to be exactly the same for you to accept it?

Quote from: Rebis on October 09, 2007, 08:29:07 AM
Hello Rachael,

   Language is messy. It defies formalization.  most of the words we use regularly have been bent beaten and broken through many generations until they became accepted and regularly used.  I'm talking about words in general.

   

atleast language accepts one form of a word at one point in time before it evolves, and we havent stopped changing language, even now.

Quote from: Rachael on October 09, 2007, 02:43:33 AM
form a unified front, make a coherant, visible alternative to gender as it stands currently. because if you dont get some form of fixed ideas together, the constant shifting sands version doesnt quite hold any water...

Eh, making androgyne identity a 'fixed idea' will be making it a third gender form that doesn't fit everybody. You can include both bi-gendered and neutrois people in the current unfixed idea of an androgyne, but in a fixed one, naw. And what's fixed about the ideas of manhood and womanhood?

Anyway, I think this is silly. It would certainly be nice if we had, in English, a set of gender-neutral pronouns in common use, well known to everybody and not strange-sounding on anyone's ears or awkward on anyone's tongue. But to say that androgynes need that to be taken seriously is an excuse not to take them seriously.

Shall we refuse to take women seriously until they all decide if they are women, ladies, girls, grrrls, wimmen, womyn, gals, dames, chicks, lasses or what, and all share the same preferences as to which of these terms suit them and which are annoying and which are offensive?

Quote from: Doc on October 09, 2007, 08:08:51 PM
Shall we refuse to take women seriously until they all decide if they are women, ladies, girls, grrrls, wimmen, womyn, gals, dames, chicks, lasses or what, and all share the same preferences as to which of these terms suit them and which are annoying and which are offensive?

You forgot "broads".  That one is my favorite (used only where appropriate, of course)