Quote:
Originally Posted by Heart
You know what? I think we get fixated on pronouns as a way to avoid deeper issues. As if pronoun usage is the be-all and end-all of respect and liberation. That's kind of funny actually. And really, its such a privileged position when you think about it -- getting to determine what pronoun you use, getting to demand that everyone remember it, getting to be offended when someone gets it wrong, Asserting ourselves over pronouns on this site and others becomes a primary focus. Whatever.
Once the discussion in this thread turned to pronouns, I wasn't moved to participate and I haven't read all the other threads, though I did vote in Nat's poll. I voted that I sometimes default to "she" for butches. Why do I do that? Quite simply because everyone's individual, personal pronoun preference and their whole personal history and journey of how they got there does not matter to me as much, or more, than the underlying cultural, social assumptions, messages, and "isms" (read sexism) that are continually being played out in queer communities around such things as pronoun choice. So, I default to "she" as a minor form of resistence against that. (Please note: I said default. I did not say that I use "she" willfully against someone's stated preference.)
There. I said it. That felt good.  |
Heart, I do agree with you that fixating on pronouns does avoid the deeper issues. However, calling butches He/Hy as a default is a symptom of the underlying issues in my opinion. Butches are still be equated to or compared to male. To me it doesn't feel privileged to assert that I am She. Apparently people think being She'd emasculates a male identified person.
I have in my sig- She is not just a pronoun choice. Yes, it is the larger issues.