Gender
Pardon my terrible punctuation
Recently a good friend of mine asked me if I could refer to her with male pronouns, Gender being a subject that is rampant upon most college campuses. It's a subject I wanted to avoid all my life but now I had to deal with it head-on. I told her no and she respected that. But the situation made me upset and frustrated toward her even when there was no clear reason as to why. I truly wanted to know why I was frustrated because frustration is a catalyst for knowledge, wisdom, and character building. My reason for saying no was because I was brought up to refer to people who I recognize as female as she and her. Being the heterosexual male that I am, I'm pretty good at recognizing and distinguishing who is and isn't female, most likely because of evolutionary purposes. The way these distinctions are manifested by my speech is through the use of female pronouns. To refer to a female by anything else would be fundamentally false by my standards (I believe language is meant to make clear distinctions between ideas in order to aggregate a functional society) to change the way I speak and think because of the feelings of another person would hinder my integrity, and I care about my integrity far more than I care about the feelings of even my closest friend. However selfish it may seem, its the truth and I value the truth above all things.
Even though I recognized this reasoning I was still passive aggressive towards her about it (I'm grateful that she is very patient with how my attitude can be at times. She has faith in me and I in her. I don't take her as a stupid person so there must be good reasons on her part when it comes to this.) Even if she wasn't trying to enforce this identity upon me, she has made it clear that she is very much against this, I was still uneasy about it--especially because she is considering transitioning.
I found that it was partly because of the SJW ideologies and agenda. It is undoubtedly part of the gender conversation and with it comes its negative connotations. Secondly, I must've taken her as a potential love-interest and I was disappointed to see most of all that possibility thrown out the window. Why? because masculine features is not what I look for in a partner. Also, my ability to relate to her has diminished slightly, why? there's a part of her that I will never completely understand, and I absolutely hate not being able to understand something. Before I thought I had a pretty good understanding of who she is as a person to a satisfactory extent, but that is no longer the case. Lastly, and this an Opinion in the utmost meaning of the word, people hold the meaning of gender to a high esteem. Too high. Becuase conforming to a gender norm or the idea of how a certain gender should act, look, or be like rubs me the wrong way. Why? because acting, looking, and being your own person isn't synonymous with gender. Gender is a very small part of one's identity, at least it should be in my accord, and therefore I treat it like the small thing I believe it to be. For example, if you look at a film with a strong leading female character, being a female is not what made her a strong character. Being a strong character is what made her a strong character, she just so happens to be a woman. Gender is far less important than many would have you to believe. Good character and competence are what should be recognized and acknowledged. With all of this taken into account, I could understand why I was so frustrated at the time.
Of course, despite all of this we are still good friends.
I could imagine why one would find all of this offensive, to which I say:
Recently a good friend of mine asked me if I could refer to her with male pronouns, Gender being a subject that is rampant upon most college campuses. It's a subject I wanted to avoid all my life but now I had to deal with it head-on. I told her no and she respected that. But the situation made me upset and frustrated toward her even when there was no clear reason as to why. I truly wanted to know why I was frustrated because frustration is a catalyst for knowledge, wisdom, and character building. My reason for saying no was because I was brought up to refer to people who I recognize as female as she and her. Being the heterosexual male that I am, I'm pretty good at recognizing and distinguishing who is and isn't female, most likely because of evolutionary purposes. The way these distinctions are manifested by my speech is through the use of female pronouns. To refer to a female by anything else would be fundamentally false by my standards (I believe language is meant to make clear distinctions between ideas in order to aggregate a functional society) to change the way I speak and think because of the feelings of another person would hinder my integrity, and I care about my integrity far more than I care about the feelings of even my closest friend. However selfish it may seem, its the truth and I value the truth above all things.
Even though I recognized this reasoning I was still passive aggressive towards her about it (I'm grateful that she is very patient with how my attitude can be at times. She has faith in me and I in her. I don't take her as a stupid person so there must be good reasons on her part when it comes to this.) Even if she wasn't trying to enforce this identity upon me, she has made it clear that she is very much against this, I was still uneasy about it--especially because she is considering transitioning.
I found that it was partly because of the SJW ideologies and agenda. It is undoubtedly part of the gender conversation and with it comes its negative connotations. Secondly, I must've taken her as a potential love-interest and I was disappointed to see most of all that possibility thrown out the window. Why? because masculine features is not what I look for in a partner. Also, my ability to relate to her has diminished slightly, why? there's a part of her that I will never completely understand, and I absolutely hate not being able to understand something. Before I thought I had a pretty good understanding of who she is as a person to a satisfactory extent, but that is no longer the case. Lastly, and this an Opinion in the utmost meaning of the word, people hold the meaning of gender to a high esteem. Too high. Becuase conforming to a gender norm or the idea of how a certain gender should act, look, or be like rubs me the wrong way. Why? because acting, looking, and being your own person isn't synonymous with gender. Gender is a very small part of one's identity, at least it should be in my accord, and therefore I treat it like the small thing I believe it to be. For example, if you look at a film with a strong leading female character, being a female is not what made her a strong character. Being a strong character is what made her a strong character, she just so happens to be a woman. Gender is far less important than many would have you to believe. Good character and competence are what should be recognized and acknowledged. With all of this taken into account, I could understand why I was so frustrated at the time.
Of course, despite all of this we are still good friends.
I could imagine why one would find all of this offensive, to which I say:
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