Thorns

Inspired by this post from a gnc woman who keeps having people insist on using they/them for her.

If your "inclusive" approach to gender consistently misgenders certain types of cis people, it's not actually inclusive. "Respect everyone's stated gender identity" is the very lowest bar you need to clear! If you can't manage that, wtf are you even doing. If you think cis people's feelings literally don't matter at all then (a) That sucks don't do that and (b) do you really think you're not ALSO misgendering certain types of trans people? Cos I bet you are! Go sit in the corner and rethink your concept of gender until you can manage a basic standard of decency and respect for all gender identities.

This includes anyone who, say, "compliments" any straight cis men they like by saying they must actually be closeted trans lesbians. If he says he's a man you treat him like a man! If your definition of man is so narrow that "treating someone like a man" is incompatible with like/respect etc, that's a problem with you! Even if someone you thought was a closeted trans women does actually come out as one, that doesn't change the fact that you should have treated her as a man while she identified as one.

There's nothing wrong with thinking someone is giving off Trans Vibes. Privately saying to a friend "I wouldn't be surprised if X came out" is fine. If you're close enough, approaching them to check in and offer to change what pronouns you use is fine. But acting like you're qualified to ignore their stated gender is never ok. Even if they are closeted, you just outed them!

"Respect everyone's stated gender identity" is the very lowest bar you need to clear.

(And of course this all applies to respecting stated sexuality as well. Yes I am looking at you, people who think it's ok to publicly insist that someone is 'secretly gay')

Ok I don't know if this has already been done better elsewhere, and it's more of an intellectual exercise than a serious call for new language.

But I've been thinking about how it would be useful to have a way to signify that when I, for example, describe myself as "a man" I mean it in the context of being genderfluid, having a gender which includes "man" but is not defined by or limited to it, and which is just as much "woman" and "other" in the same way. I am not a "man" in the same way that a binary trans man or cis man is a "man", where man is the entirety of their gender identity to the exclusion of "woman" etc.

So it's like... I'm a man&, and also a woman& and other&. (I would use man+ etc but have a vague memory of seeing that used for something else. Google just got confused when I checked, though)
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What options do you want to see in games which allow the player to customise their character's gender and appearance? What existing games have impressed you?

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So I spent the last however many years building up resources and social environments etc so I no longer felt so confused and alone about being a biromantic grey asexual woman. And now feel like I have to start all over again with being genderfluid :( I'm at the point where I don't so much have questions as like....a blank of ignorance I need to sketch out before I even know what the questions are.
( What I'm not looking for )
So does anyone have any recs? Books, websites, blogs, anything. Formal or informal, even fiction if it's got something useful to say (though not just "any good book with some mention of non binary genders"). They don't have to be entirely focussed on non binary people as long as they are genuinely inclusive. I guess what I'd like, to the extent it exists, is an equivalent to the breadth of feminist spaces, but either focussed on or equally inclusive of non binary people.

What I have so far:
Notes from a Wiscon panel on The Pitfalls of Haphazard Gender Inclusion with links to panelists' blogs
Notes from a "Beyond the Binary" panel which includes a bunch of links and the blog it's on.
A post with questions about how non binary and trans people fit into feminism and the "lifeoutsidethebinary" blog it's on.
Chaos Life is a comic created by an agender person which I generally like.

These are definitely something to start with (my browser is a wall of tabs right now :)), but recs would still be super useful.

(Also I need to make a new gender icon this one doesn't quite feel right any more!)