LGBTAI+ Question and Discussion Thread IV: [Citation Needed]

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Originally Posted by golentan

The point that people seem to be missing is that your comfort zone fades into the background until you are deprived of it.

Living things notice changes to the sources of stimulus around them, but stop paying attention at some point unless it's a source of discomfort. We become habituated to our "default."

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Well, yeah, but luckily humans have empathy, memory, and imagination.
Contrary to fish, I know what it's like outside my comfort zone because I've been there and I can remember how it feels.
I know what it's like to be outside of my comfort zone because others have been there and I can empathise with them.
I know what it's like to be outside of my comfort zone because I have a vivid imagination and can understand (though not perfectly) what it's like without ever going there.

These three combined means that I have some clue what it's like to be of the opposite gender (if we're keeping the whole fish-thing relevant to the thread) without ever being it. To me (and I think to razade, too), it never seemed to be all that different. To others, it does seem to be very different. Both are valid views, I think.
But "you can't know until you've been there" is not constructive, because it limits any conversation to an elite few.

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Originally Posted by Murk

Well, yeah, but luckily humans have empathy, memory, and imagination.
Contrary to fish, I know what it's like outside my comfort zone because I've been there and I can remember how it feels.
I know what it's like to be outside of my comfort zone because others have been there and I can empathise with them.
I know what it's like to be outside of my comfort zone because I have a vivid imagination and can understand (though not perfectly) what it's like without ever going there.

These three combined means that I have some clue what it's like to be of the opposite gender (if we're keeping the whole fish-thing relevant to the thread) without ever being it. To me (and I think to razade, too), it never seemed to be all that different. To others, it does seem to be very different. Both are valid views, I think.
But "you can't know until you've been there" is not constructive, because it limits any conversation to an elite few.

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You can't understand the crushing wrongness of dysphoria without having experienced it, I don't think. You can take guesses at what it might be like to be the other gender, but mostly that generally manifests as "me, but with different jiggly bits". So I very much doubt you do know what it would be like to have a body that doesn't fit you, unless it's happened to you, because you have no reference point for it.

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Originally Posted by Heliomance

You can't understand the crushing wrongness of dysphoria without having experienced it, I don't think. You can take guesses at what it might be like to be the other gender, but mostly that generally manifests as "me, but with different jiggly bits". So I very much doubt you do know what it would be like to have a body that doesn't fit you, unless it's happened to you, because you have no reference point for it.

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I'd agree, somewhat, with this. It's possible to imagine what it'd be like to be dysphoric, especially with someone who's experienced it describing it to you, even if you can't fully FEEL the dysphoria.

And, more than that, it's fully possible to be helpful, kind, and compassionate to those who do have dysphoria (or any issue, really) without knowing fully what it's like.

Man, how do allosexual people deal with this crap all the time? I'm pretty sure having a crush counts as intrusive thoughts. (Shows how healthy my relationship with my sexuality is. I mean, I don't think we've even talked in like three or four years.)

What are allosexuals? I guess it's not people who love jumping.

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Originally Posted by Vinyadan

What are allosexuals? I guess it's not people who love jumping.

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Yeah, I want to know. I looked it up and it's either the opposite of asexual, or someone who is gay or maybe even a heterosexual. Thanks, google.

...I imagined it as a sexual Allosaurus and I like my answer better.

Thanks everyone for the replies about other languages.

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Originally Posted by noparlpf

Man, how do allosexual people deal with this crap all the time? I'm pretty sure having a crush counts as intrusive thoughts. (Shows how healthy my relationship with my sexuality is. I mean, I don't think we've even talked in like three or four years.)

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I dunno, I get crushes all the time but they're not sexual in nature. I'm a bit of whatever you would call a romantic Nympho. But I would in general caution one to not be beholden to their labels. I'm not sure if this is the problem you're having but its worth saying.

Also, do you equate thoughts of hunger or getting music stuck in your head or being distracted as intrusive thoughts? And does that make them a bad thing?

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Originally Posted by Vinyadan

What are allosexuals? I guess it's not people who love jumping.

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Usually refers to Non-Acesexual people.

In English, allosexual means "not asexual". In some other languages, though, it means "not LGBT". That makes the word confusing to me and I try to avoid it (especially since "sexual" is already the opposite of "asexual" so allosexual technically meant "not not sexual").

Question that just occurred to me - are there any good gender-neutral or non-binary equivalents of referring to someone's sex for emphasis? As in, "Oh, you're talking about Mary? Yeah, that woman is an absolute genius", or "Oh, I love his art." "I know - the man's a wizard with a paintbrush."

Using "person" there just doesn't seem to work, to my ear, but I feel a gender-neutral version is needed.

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Originally Posted by Heliomance

Question that just occurred to me - are there any good gender-neutral or non-binary equivalents of referring to someone's sex for emphasis? As in, "Oh, you're talking about Mary? Yeah, that woman is an absolute genius", or "Oh, I love his art." "I know - the man's a wizard with a paintbrush."

Using "person" there just doesn't seem to work, to my ear, but I feel a gender-neutral version is needed.

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They're, their and them.

"They're an absolute genius." "Oh I love their art." "Oh, I know, they're a wizard with a paintbrush."

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Originally Posted by Razade

They're, their and them.

"They're an absolute genius." "Oh I love their art." "Oh, I know, they're a wizard with a paintbrush."

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Doesn't seem to carry the same emphasis, to me. There's a subtle difference between "The woman is a genius" and "She's a genius" - it's those shades of tone and implication that I'm trying to capture.

So, it looks like it's my year to be the teacher advisor for our school's GSA.

(This will be the third year we've had a GSA. Two years ago, the teacher running it found a new job and quit at the end of the year. Last year, the teacher that replaced him found a new job and quit at the end of the year. I am planning to stay in my current job indefinitely, but may or may not stay the club advisor in future years since I'd really rather run a publications/yearbook/newspaper/etc. club instead. No one else is willing to run it this year because we have only 5 full-time teachers, all of the part-timers are too busy to run a club during their limited hours, and I'm one of the two full-time folks who is not already running at least one club. Of the two of us with theoretical time this year, I'm probably the better fit for the club leader since I'm queer and I believe the other available teacher is not, plus I did at least go to GSA meetings regularly in college decades ago.)

Anyway, I'm trying to figure out how to explain what a GSA is in a nutshell for announcements and things like that.

Our school is a hybrid-online option school within a public school district, and as a school we attract a mix of students from homeschool backgrounds and students for whom "regular" public school didn't work out for a variety of reasons. Relevant to this post, this means that we both get some students who are from extremely religiously conservative families (who may still homeschool for some subjects and only take, say, PE or math with us) and that we get students who are tired of dealing with the many ways that being trans is not well supported by the school system (and are just looking for a way to do school that lets them be themselves with less stress and hassle). (Some students are in both of these groups, of course, which is a group I want to handle with particular care and respect as they figure all of this out.)

This means that it's very important that our GSA be open and affirming to our students who definitely need all the signals we can give them to let them know that they're welcome and safe here, but that we also will be explaining what a GSA is to students who have not had a lot of exposure to the entire idea before but like to join clubs and be social. (Our other clubs are things like "chess club" or "art club", so students generally know right away if they want to join.)

We offer some programs for grades k-12, and a full-time option for grades 3-12. This club would probably be for grades 7-12, with exceptions if we had some elementary students who specifically requested to participate. (All of our clubs/activities are broken up by age with very few exceptions.)

Any ideas for ways to quickly and clearly explain what a GSA is for our meeting notices/announcements given this mix of students? I only have one student who definitely wants a GSA this year, but hope that more would show up once we started promoting things. (I REALLY don't want to have a one teacher one student club of this nature, because that would be about the most awkward thing in the world, so I plan to promote heavily.)

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Originally Posted by Heliomance

Question that just occurred to me - are there any good gender-neutral or non-binary equivalents of referring to someone's sex for emphasis? As in, "Oh, you're talking about Mary? Yeah, that woman is an absolute genius", or "Oh, I love his art." "I know - the man's a wizard with a paintbrush."

Using "person" there just doesn't seem to work, to my ear, but I feel a gender-neutral version is needed.

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My first thought is to refer to them as "kid", as in "That kid is an absolute genius". My second thought is that it might seem condescending, for someone who would prefer to be seen as mature. Maybe use "dude", depending on your region? In my area, people of all ages, races, and genders refer to each other as "dude". It seems pretty neutral (at least here), and packs a bit of a punch, pronunciation-wise.

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Originally Posted by Delicious Taffy

My first thought is to refer to them as "kid", as in "That kid is an absolute genius". My second thought is that it might seem condescending, for someone who would prefer to be seen as mature. Maybe use "dude", depending on your region? In my area, people of all ages, races, and genders refer to each other as "dude". It seems pretty neutral (at least here), and packs a bit of a punch, pronunciation-wise.

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I'm in my late 20s, "kid" doesn't really work for my peers! Dude is gender neutral in some contexts, but shades decidedly masculine a lot of the time.

How about "beast"?

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Originally Posted by Heliomance

Doesn't seem to carry the same emphasis, to me. There's a subtle difference between "The woman is a genius" and "She's a genius" - it's those shades of tone and implication that I'm trying to capture.

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I mean...that's cool and all but that's the proper grammatical way to refer to people in a gender neutral way. It not having the gravitas and embellishment for you personally isn't particularly at issue. You said a gender neutral version is needed. Those are the gender neutral version.

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Originally Posted by Razade

It not having the gravitas and embellishment for you personally isn't particularly at issue.

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Well, no, quite the opposite. That's exactly the issue in question.

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Originally Posted by Heliomance

..Dude is gender neutral in some contexts, but shades decidedly masculine a lot of the time.

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Same thing with "guys".

"You guys" seems gender neutral, "a guy", and "the guys" doesn't.

When I was very young "Man" (capitalized), and "Mankind" were synonyms of "Humanity", and those alternate terms no longer seem used,.just like "firefighter" has mostly replaced "fireman".

If you watch Star Trek (the original series) you may notice that usage of "Man", which has fallen out of fashion, similarly "The race of Men" in Lord of the Rings means humans.

I've read that in Old English: "wer and wīf (and wīfmann) were used to refer to "a man" and "a woman" respectively, while mann could also be used for gender neutral purposes"

And "wife" in middle and early modern (Elizabethan) English had uses like "Alewife", which meant a women proprieter of a tavern.

Language changes with use.

As a high school student in the 1980's my teacher taught me that "Gender refers to words, sex to people", which hardly seems how the words are used today.

To "trol" meant a way of catching fish when I was a youth, now it seems to mean "working to make someone angry".

If I live another 30 years, I expect that some more words will change meaning.

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Originally Posted by 2D8HP

When I was very young "Man" (capitalized), and "Mankind" were synonyms of "Humanity", and those alternate terms no longer seem used,.just like "firefighter" has mostly replaced "fireman".

If you watch Star Trek (the original series) you may notice that usage of "Man", which has fallen out of fashion, similarly "The race of Men" in Lord of the Rings means humans.

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Still used, just not as common.

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I've read that in Old English: "wer and wīf (and wīfmann) were used to refer to "a man" and "a woman" respectively, while mann could also be used for gender neutral purposes"

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Yep - man just meant human. Pseudofeminists concerned about "Womyn" (because otherwise it would have "Man" in it and that would mean that women were - gasp - humans) should really be more concerned about all those poor wifwolves out there.

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As a high school student in the 1980's my teacher taught me that "Gender refers to words, sex to people", which hardly seems how the words are used today.

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I'm not convinced that that was ever really true, though. It's an oversimplification, like the one about how effect is a noun and affect is a verb (which can effect a substantial change in my affect).

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To "trol" meant a way of catching fish when I was a youth, now it seems to mean "working to make someone angry".

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Yep - the etymologies are related, actually. Trolling people means baiting them much like you would a fish via the fishing technique of trolling.

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Originally Posted by 2D8HP

As a high school student in the 1980's my teacher taught me that "Gender refers to words, sex to people", which hardly seems how the words are used today.

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Originally Posted by Jormengand

I'm not convinced that that was ever really true, though. It's an oversimplification, like the one about how effect is a noun and affect is a verb (which can effect a substantial change in my affect).

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I would guess this was an attempt to correct someone who referred to the "sex of a word", while words don't have sex, and they oversimplified it.

Suffice it to say, sex is biological, so only biological things have sex. Gender is more expression and usage based, so words can be gendered. I assume that's what they were trying to communicate.

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Originally Posted by EternalMelon

I dunno, I get crushes all the time but they're not sexual in nature. I'm a bit of whatever you would call a romantic Nympho. But I would in general caution one to not be beholden to their labels. I'm not sure if this is the problem you're having but its worth saying.

Also, do you equate thoughts of hunger or getting music stuck in your head or being distracted as intrusive thoughts? And does that make them a bad thing?

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I mean, I have chronic GI issues and don't get hungry unless I'm stoned, but I know what you mean. And no, but those are normal things. My problem is more that I perceive and romantic or sexual feelings in myself as abnormal. Didn't really mean to post here though, I meant to post in the main thread, so I'm probably going to make a vent post over there later.

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Originally Posted by Lissou

In English, allosexual means "not asexual". In some other languages, though, it means "not LGBT". That makes the word confusing to me and I try to avoid it (especially since "sexual" is already the opposite of "asexual" so allosexual technically meant "not not sexual").

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Technically it means "attracted to people other than oneself." So it's not perfect as an antonym to asexual, but since "autosexual" isn't really a thing it works. Parts of the ace community started using allosexual because some non-asexual people interpret an implicit judgement in the word "sexual" and "non-asexual" sounds dumber than "allosexual."

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Originally Posted by noparlpf

I mean, I have chronic GI issues

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Happy Veteran's Day! [/lamejk]

Are there nice ways to compliment a person's appearance, without focusing on the attractiveness of said appearance, if said person is nonbinary?

For example, if you want to be nice to a girl without objectifying her or saying you're attracted to her, you can say she's beautiful. Different connotation than "hot," "cute," "pretty," etc.

What's the nonbinary equivalent of beautiful? Is it the same, or is it too strongly associated with girls?

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Originally Posted by AuthorGirl

Are there nice ways to compliment a person's appearance, without focusing on the attractiveness of said appearance, if said person is nonbinary?

For example, if you want to be nice to a girl without objectifying her or saying you're attracted to her, you can say she's beautiful. Different connotation than "hot," "cute," "pretty," etc.

What's the nonbinary equivalent of beautiful? Is it the same, or is it too strongly associated with girls?

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Cute? Cute is always good, in my mind.

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Originally Posted by AuthorGirl

Are there nice ways to compliment a person's appearance, without focusing on the attractiveness of said appearance, if said person is nonbinary?

For example, if you want to be nice to a girl without objectifying her or saying you're attracted to her, you can say she's beautiful. Different connotation than "hot," "cute," "pretty," etc.

What's the nonbinary equivalent of beautiful? Is it the same, or is it too strongly associated with girls?

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I tend to compliment people more specifically on something they're wearing, how they styled their hair or other choices they made rather than how generally good looking they are which avoids a lot of the gendered adjectives. Then again I'm a fashionista and a seamstress.

Cute does work well for generic though.

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Originally Posted by Recherché

I tend to compliment people more specifically on something they're wearing, how they styled their hair or other choices they made rather than how generally good looking they are which avoids a lot of the gendered adjectives. Then again I'm a fashionista and a seamstress.

Cute does work well for generic though.

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I agree with this. You never know which parts of a person's overall appearance are things that may actually be making them really uncomfortable, but picking out specific style choices they've made is much more likely to be a compliment about something they chose specifically rather than something they feel like they're making the best of.

Also, making a specific compliment ("I love your hat") re-affirms to the person that you actually looked at them and paid at least a little attention to them specifically at the time of the compliment, whereas "you look cute" is something that someone could reflexively say without even looking at the person first since it's vague.

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Originally Posted by AuthorGirl

Are there nice ways to compliment a person's appearance, without focusing on the attractiveness of said appearance, if said person is nonbinary?

For example, if you want to be nice to a girl without objectifying her or saying you're attracted to her, you can say she's beautiful. Different connotation than "hot," "cute," "pretty," etc.

What's the nonbinary equivalent of beautiful? Is it the same, or is it too strongly associated with girls?

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"Hey, you're looking good! I especially like [your hat, that tie, the way you did your hair, etc.]!"

I have to say that I don't understand what gender dysphoria is or what it's supposed to feel like. As someone who recently came out as nonbinary in general and genderfluid specifically, I do understand the desire to be the opposite sex; I have had fantasies about turning myself into a girl since I was 12 and am now really happy I can finally be one.

What I don't understand is how being a guy can feel downright horrible. Like, I get that I secretly wish I had bigger breasts and less body hair, and the latter is pretty annoying to have to shave off all the time, but feeling something inherently WRONG about being male isn't something I've experienced.

The closest I can think of is when I'm reminded of something closely tied into my male identity when presenting as female and I start to miss my boy self. I guess I'm not even sure where I'm going with this.

tl;dr I'm confused about how I can love being a girl, be fine as a boy, and not dislike being either.

Hi everyone!!

I am writing a sci-fi novel (kind of) mostly for fun i know i am not a good writer. The thing is that i want to be very inclusive, i have a couple of male main characters that are developing their relationship in the book and a well established lesbian couple (secondary characters). The problem is that i am worried about my subconscious bias of a heterosexual male (catholic background), my idea is to write them as any other couple but there is circunstances that can affect them, they are living in a hipercapitalistic, homophobic and xenophobic dystopia where they are discriminate and even jailed for their political and sexual orientation (the lesbian couple are political activists and the gay are a pagan terrorist and a scholar reformist). Also i have less problems to write signs of affection between women than men, again my heterosexual bias. Any advice?

I have also a trasgender secondary character, but she (she transitioned from male to female) is from a far more technologically and socially advance country (federation like), my doubt here is that they have the enough genetics and nanotechnology to transform a male body to female (and reverse,) like she was born like that, but i don't know if a trasgender reader will prefer a less perfect transition. She has an informal relationship with one of the male characters (who knows that she transitioned), and at the middle of the book he brokes the relationship becuse he falls in love with the female main character. Perhaps it would better to eliminate the relationship from the beginning because i don't want to give the impression that he drops because she is trasgender. Advice?

If i express something that can seem offensive, please forgive me, it is ignorance or my terrible english. Thanks and love to all :)

There's a user on this forum whose demeanor, speech patterns, and other forms of communication remind me of somebody I know offline. This acquaintance is trans, and the similarities are so strong, I have a [...well, "suspicion" seems too confrontational as a word choice, but something of that variety] that this user is also a trans individual.

With their privacy as a concern, and to avoid possibly outing them, I won't name names or anything like that. What I'm wondering is, is there a non-invasive way to ask this user personally about something of this nature, or is it better to try and forget the whole thing as none of my business? I normally wouldn't even think about this for more than a moment, but in this case, the similarities are so uncanny, I couldn't help but wonder.

If leaving well enough alone is the best option, I'll sod off right away.