I think of that pic of Colin Farrell in costume as Alexander the Great lying on the ground covered in blood with an arrow protruding from his chest and smoking a cigarette all the time.
Okay but can anyone articulate the mindset that leads older people to feel like they NEED to know people’s gender identity all the time? Like what’s going on there
Cause it feels like I’ve had a hundred xonversations with cis straight people around 40-60 years old that goes like
Person: Did you see that?
Me: See what?
Person: That. It, him, whatever they’re called
Me: (Sees a femme with masculine features)
Me: What about them
Person: Well what is that? He’s dressed in women’s clothes, so is he-it, they- What does that mean?
Me: I mean. If you’re concerned about pronouns you can probably ask
Person: But do I call it a Mister or a miss?
Me: Well uh. That depends on what they tell you but “them” is usually safe…. but based on their makeup, hair, and heels I don’t think they’d be mad if you assumed thry were a lady
Me: So like. I’d say she’s probably just. Here for the event
Person: That’s fine, I get that, I don’t have a problem with trans people, I just don’t get how you’re supposed to know
Person: Like how do you know if someone is transsexual or just cross dressing?
Me: Uhhhhhhhh
Me: I mean
Me: I don’t know. Any cross dressers. Who would be offended by being pronoun’d by their outfit. But like.
Me: I guess if you choose wrong. And they correct you. Then you just…. apologize and use what they tell you?
Me: …. Do you plan on talking to them?
Person: No
Me: Then why d. Why does it matter
Person: I’m just trying to understand
Me: And that’s great! But like. You don’t need to
Person: What
Me: You don’t need to. Necessarily. Understand. You know?
Person: Huh
Me: They’re here for the event. You don’t have to interact with them. In two hours they’ll go home and you’ll never see them again
Person: I’m just confused
Me: You’re allowed to be confused
Me: You can stay confused
Me: It’s not illegal
Like
I don’t know how applied statistics works
Thats fine
I’m probably gonna die confused about that one
I don’t need romance know the gender and physiology and medical history of a random stranger I’m never gonna talk to
Why do you need to know
Do you think they’re gonna quiz you before they leave
Are you worried you’re gonna get a bad grade
For my parents, who are more 70-80, it’s because they grew up with gendered rules for social interactions, and it’s an anxiety thing. (I also suspect they’re both autistic, which might explain the panic about following social rules.) To them, interactions with men allow x,y,z and don’t allow a,b,c. And the same for women. And if they don’t know what someone’s gender is, or if they know someone is nonbinary, they don’t know which rules apply. And it panics them.
There is some of the usual pearl-clutching about “dangers” and such, but I’m not sure they really believe that under all the nonsense they’ve internalised. The more I’ve talked to them about these things and seen them interact with people, it really does seem to be about anxiety and not embarrassing themselves. They were taught to put people into boxes, and interact with them based on that. And that works well for them in 95% of conversations, and you can see the code switching, especially in my mum, when she’s talking to a man vs a woman. But if she doesn’t know which code to use? Pure panic. I’ve seen her basically have a meltdown once we get home about whether she handled the interaction properly. Whether she slighted the other person by doing something wrong. Whether they’re off muttering about how terrible she is for something she said.
There’s a lot of comments on this post about discrimination and such, and people like that definitely exist. Just wanted to point out that it isn’t always that. Some people just got taught such strict gendered social rules, and nothing about just treating people like people, that they don’t know how to navigate social interactions when those rules don’t apply, and it stresses them out.
In addition, societies often run on a level of “knowing” that’s used, oil-like, to smooth out social interactions—that you can look at someone and know a number of things about them: their gender, their class, their profession and/or the general nature of their immediate purpose (you dress differently to go to a funeral than you do to go to the grocery store), something about their relationships, and their general willingness to share a set of standards about how people should convey themselves.
A medieval Londoner could look at any stranger and tell if they were a servant or an apprentice or a storekeeper or an unmarried woman or a housewife (and how prosperous her husband was) or a lord or a nun or a priest or whatever; if two strangers came upon each other they knew at a glance who was to bow to whom (and life was a succession of giving and receiving small bows by way of passing acknowledgment) and whether they were of sufficiently compatable status to have a conversation or seek a friendship.
People’s entire constructions of social interactions RAN on this shit for thousands of years. The intricacy and the importance of it has largely dropped, but when parents freaked out in the eighties over their son’s long hair or housewives in the fifties refused to step out of doors without gloves, hat, and handbag, they were running on the social programs they grew up into and being protective of a type of status and respectability that had had real consequence in their lives.
And that consequence depended on the understanding that they didn’t just have those things, they were those things. A lady was someone who had the personal skill and poise and attention to detail to pull off ladylike behavior (and the money to buy the necessary quality clothing and the leisure time to put herself together); faking it would have been no more expected than that an amateur would present herself as a prima ballerina by dancing across the stage; ladies, as well as other sorts of people, were self-proven by success.
A child who’s grown to teenage years learning the concepts of freedom and truth and applying them to self-expression has largely inverted the order of operations their parents have used; instead of “I am a good, respectable high-status lady and therefore I wear the proper clothing and accessories with good grooming and good poise, and express my personal aesthetic preferences within that context” they get “I feel most myself and most comfortable with long hair and T-shirts and jewelry, this is WHO I AM, Dad, why are you persecuting me?” and the rigid standards that allowed Dad or Mom to access the securities of high social status according to the mores of their generation are subordinated or dismissed entirely, to the embarrassment and terror of their parents who viewed that respectability of dress and behavior as both security and privilege were aghast that their children would so willingly reject it, when it arguably was barely REAL to their children in the way it was to them, and functions more as prison than social status buff.
The idea of dressing purely for one’s own aesthetic pleasure, let alone being a whole new gender, comes across as part neglect of a very important social function, and part pure dishonesty, to someone who depends on the structure granted by standards and assigned places in the standards. A paradigm shift in which rights replace responsibilities and in which gender is understood as a social construct rather than a force of nature, is not something they’re well equipped to handle, and the translations and explanations have not been as useful as they could be.
Social mores and their use are a technology, in the widest sense of the word, and a lot of old people are in their “you met your fiance OVER THE INTERNET?!!! They could be anyone, you’ll be murdered!” stage regarding the ability to choose to become something other than your family status and birth assigned you.
We’re saying “assigned” as in “assigned gender at birth” should be a suggestion, and they’re trying to wrap their heads around it not being a rule, and what it means when an island they’ve stood on since birth reveals itself to instead be a really big whale.
