Sunday 4 January 2015

Transgendered people and correct pronouns.

There was a story recently about a young transgender girl, who committed suicide at least in part thanks to her parents lack of acceptance. As is always the case, comment threads about this story found people crawling out of the woodwork to demonstrate their lack of compassion by "correcting" people's use of gender pronouns, viz. "HE, the person was a HE". In a rare moment of levelheadedness, I decided that rather than balling out one such commenter for the asshole he is, I decided to take a gentle approach and reach out to whatever scrap of humanity still resides within him.

This is what I wrote:


I get that you're confused about biological sex and gender identity not being the same thing, I even understand that you might not agree that it is. That's fine; it's your right to believe that.

But...
If using a particular gender pronoun to describe someone is going to upset them, but using the other one isn't, why not use their preferred one? What possible effect does it have on your life to use the pronoun that will save another human being pain?
You'd have to be a really lousy person to insist on using a pronoun you think is right, knowing that it causes pain.

I'm assuming you identify as a follower of Christ, but does your insistence on pronoun usage really come from a place of love? Or is it pride that you get to think yourself 'right'?
Your choice is to act out of love, or act out of pride... WWJD?

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