Today I got criticized on my Tumblr for saying "both genders" which implies there's only two. I try to catch that every time, but this time it slipped past. The criticism presumed that I didn't know, educated me about genderqueer people, and told me about the marginalization of genderqueer, gender variant, etc people. My first reaction was "WTF I'm trans, I KNOW THIS", along with various degrees of "isn't this person overreacting? It's just a small slip up!" "I've blogged a lot about this" and "I have plenty of genderqueer friends, and I work with agencies to be more trans inclusive, do they not realize I know this s- and it was just a mistake!?"
And then I realized... no... no they don't. They have no idea who I am, who my friends are, or what I do for work. All they know is I said "both genders" and they educated me in case I didn't know so I would know WHY I should fix it. It's not an accusation, and if they HADN'T done it and I was genuinely ignorant, I would go "but there ARE only two genders, so wtfm8?" It still hurt though, so I had to take a deep breath, rant to some friends, calm down... and then fixed it. And thanked the person for letting me know I made an error. It's hard, and I GET that in the moment, esp if anti-oppression is important to you, it feels personal. But it's not. The other person doesn't know you, they don't know that it's a mistake or what your intent is, all they know is you did something that they felt was problematic, and they wanted to let you know and that maybe you should fix it.
Now, maybe I DON'T think I did anything wrong and I don't WANT to fix it. That's fine too, but I'd do it with the understanding that I can't control how it will be read. Maybe they'll think bad things of me, and maybe they won't. Just as they can't read my mind, I can't (and shouldn't presume to) read theirs. I have no idea WHAT they thought of me (or IF they thought of me) when they wrote their complaint, and I shouldn't assume it's necessarily bad, or worry whether it is or not, because intent (on my part, AND theirs) doesn't matter. I made a mistake that I, in a better mindset, would have gone "oh I f-ed up, I'll fix that", and that's what matters, and what has to be fixed :)
And that's such an easy slip to make, too. I've made it and I am genderqueer. Isn't it fun how - what to call them? - societal prejudices? stereotypes? crawl into one's brain when one isn't looking.
ReplyDeleteBut that's why posts like this one are so important! *bookmarks it to reread on botching*
(and livejournal won't verify me to post. *sad face* But it really is me, I swear.)