I wrote yesterday about a heated post at Ask A Manager about gender, civility, and how even so-called progressive people can be waaaay behind in DEI issues. It wasn’t surprising that progs can be like that–I’ve been a Dem all my life and have seen it time and time again. What surprised and discouraged me this time, though, was how vehement and negative they were. How willing they were to take the third-handed acocunt at face value that protrayed a potentially trans woman in the worst possible light without even blinking. For a group that usually chews every issue to death, so many commenters took at face value that the customer service rep was rude/snotty/uncivil/out of line, etc.
There were paragraphs written, often in florid detail, about how bad, bad, bad the CS rep was for *checks notes* politely asking someone to refer to her as her gender. Again, this is the line:
“I identify as female, please address me as such,”
That’s it. That was the whole line as it was reported. This was after the SIL had said, “Yes, sir” in response to the CS rep saying she had to put the customer on hold.
This one line was called rude, nasty, snotty, and more. As more than one trans person pointed out, that kind of language isn’t something taht most trans people use any longer. The ‘I identify as’ part, I mean. That is so a decade ago. Nowadays, they are much more likely to say, “I’m a woman.” Nevertheless, people in the comments spent so much time dissecting this one sentence, that, once again, was related third-hand by someone who didn’t even hear the conversation.
Let me repeat that. The letter writer wasn’t there for the conversation. They went to visit their sister-in-law (SIL) and the SIL related the interaction. It wasn’t even something that had happened that day, probably. But it bothered her enough to write a nasty email (LW’s words) to the CS rep’s manager about how
the behavior was rude and the rep made my SIL feel as if she had committed a cardinal sin, but my SIL had no way of knowing their gender other than by their voice because they were on the phone.
It’s commonly known that when we regale others with stories of our experiences, we make ourselves look as good as possible in the retelling. That’s just human nature. In this retelling, which, granted, was not by the SIL, but by someone who is probably going to be somewhat sympathetic to the SIL, this is what we get. The SIL misgendered the CS rep. The CS rep says one sentence about her gender and then moves on.
My god. The gnashing of the teeth. The wailing. The rending of shirts! You would have thought this CS rep had killed this woman’s child in front of her for the admonishment that she received in the comments. How dare the CS rep remind her that she’s an actual heuman being and not just an automaton, placed on earth to serve!
Side note: Another thing that is widespread is confirmation bias. We tend to see tihngs that agree with what we aleady think/believe. In addition, anything outside the norm was seen as weird and magnified a million times. What I mean is, look. I’ll use veganism as an example. Two decades or so ago, when vegan started gaining traction, people started making jokes about how sanctimonious and pushy vegan people were. It has died out somewhat, but it still pops up now and again.
How vegans are soooooooo pushy about it. How they think they’re better. Blah, blah, blah. I didn’t buy it then, and I buy it even less now. Here’s the thing. Meat eaters (of which I am one) are awful to vegans. Everything from ‘Oh, I could never give up meat!’ (Good for you? I guess?) to talking about eating meat (why? why do this?) to beingbelligerent about it. In fact, I would say meat eaters are bigger assholes about it than vegans in general. Are there vegans who are jerks? Of course! Because there are jerks in every group. But because vegans are not the norm (more so back then), it sticks out even more. And because they are the out group.
If someone in your gorup says something with which you believe, it’s not going to stick out to you, obviously. If someone in another group says something that is antithetical to what you believe, then it’s going to stick out. That’s just human nature.
Anyway, in the post, there was a woman is a regular in the commentariat who usually has a rational point of view. She’s not American, so that puts an interesting twist on things. When it comes to gender, though, she gets…weird. Especially agender. For whatever reason (I know thhe reason. I’ll get into it later), that really sets her off. She responded to this post, and it started with comments about the letter itself. But, then for whatever she decided to go off the rails about agender people. She said she didn’t understand agender people (that’s fine! I don’t completely get it myself, and I am one. But, at the same time, it’s weird that she brought it up because the post was not about that at all. I will say that I brought it up early in comments, so maybe she was responding to me, but it was still weird), but then went on to say that
“…I may be confused, but I don’t have to understand this to treat such people with as much dignity and respect as I do everyone else, at least as long as they can accept that my gender is a central part of my identity that needs to be acknowledged for me to feel respected.”
This was the second time in the same (very long) comment that she said that her gender was very important to her and that she would be ‘seriously offended’ if someone referred to her as ‘they’.
Girl. Please. This made me lose respect for her because one, WE KNOW. WE KNOW THAT GENDER IS SUPER DUPER IMPORTANT TO SO MANY GODDAMN PEOPLE. I have to yell it because as with any other issue, of course we fucking know! My god. Have you seen the state of the world when it comes to gender these days? As I said, she’s not American, but this country is almost in a civil war right now because of gender issues.
Those of us who are on the outside are very aware of the norms. We have to be to survive. And the repeated reference to being ‘seriously offended’ by being called ‘they’ is…precious (she’s said it in other posts). ‘She’s fine with misgendering other people based on how they look, but even though she says she doesn’t look very feminine herself (and would call someone who was androdynous-looking ‘they’), she would be ‘seriously offended’ by being called they. Double standard much?
I love the internet, but I’m not sure I want to know the inner workings of people’s minds to this extent. Yes, it’s good to know that people think like this, but it’s disheartening to have it in shoved in my face.
I also know that my level of thinking is very different than most other people’s. It makes me feel very lonely most of the time.