Beholding Them’s Gloriousness Is A Privilege, You See
A tearful tale, care of Kelsey Smoot, “a cultural and gender theorist, a writer, an advocate, and a poet”:
As a nonbinary trans person who uses they/them/theirs pronouns as my terms of address, I suppose I should be celebrating this influx of discourse on the proper usage of pronouns. Truthfully, I’m exhausted.
Exhausted. Because of course them is. And issuing all those terms of address can really take it out of a girl, even one with chin fluff.
Within several of my closest relationships, the fact that I require ungendered pronouns when referring to me in the third person has become the source of deep strain and disappointment.
Specifically,
I feel duped by some of the positive reactions from my friends and loved ones when I initially came out as transmasc/nonbinary. In retrospect, that was the easy part. I was the only one changing.
More specifically,
In the years since, I have come to find that I am in constant competition with my past. For a while, I flinched when I was misgendered but said nothing. Then, I began giving gentle reminders, followed by long-winded overtures of understanding. I felt guilty and embarrassed and made sure to emphasize that effort was all that mattered to me. Recently, though, I’ve begun pushing back: “You’ll have to do better” is my new refrain.
And who wouldn’t want a friendship based on an ultimatum? A demand that you will perceive what you are told to perceive. The issue, it seems, is that friends and relatives who have known Ms Smoot for some time, as a young woman and a girl, aren’t finding it easy to pretend or to forget what they know. And what they know necessarily casts some doubt on the whole themness business.
I am bitterly resentful of my resilient former self. Like a ghost, the memory of prior me looms overhead, my family and friends gazing upward longingly, seemingly desperate for a reprieve from my militant current iteration — the me who demands to be termed accurately.
The word accurately is doing quite a bit of work there.
“The world doesn’t revolve around you,” they assert. And yet, they insist: “I mean no disrespect. I love you. I accept you. I’m trying. I need more time.”
It’s a big ask, one we’ve touched on before.
And reminding someone that the world doesn’t revolve around them – for most of us, an unremarkable fact – doesn’t necessarily mean that you don’t love the person, or respect them, or value them as a friend. And yet Ms Smoot thinks it does.
Sure, my friends and family might espouse progressive political ideologies; they might even intellectually support the idea of my authenticity. But in practice, they fail to see that these are the critical moments in which my identities are ultimately affirmed or nullified.
Identities, note. A term used repeatedly. Because the complications must multiply, and with them, the terms and conditions. You see, friendship with Ms Smoot – “a deep investment in my happiness,” as she puts it – requires compliance and continual affirmation. No room for error. No relaxing on the job.
I’ve been told that spending time with me feels more cumbersome now. I sense the unease that some of my most cherished counterparts feel regarding the necessary intentionality that goes into rewiring their perceptions of me.
Well, not everyone is enthused by the prospect of rewiring their perceptions – which is to say, pretending – such that the woman they knew, and can see, is suddenly not. A woman who apparently keeps count of even accidental “misgenderings” by any new acquaintance before excommunicating them after “two or three.”
It wasn’t until recently that I even allowed the idea of severance to pervade my mind. I am a person who needs people. This current emotional arrangement, however — the perpetual promise of future change — no longer feels tenable.
Perhaps what Ms Smoot needs isn’t so much people as their continual affirmation and deference. A compliant audience of sorts. Friends who are otherwise obliging and congenial but who struggle with modish pronouns and claims of not being a woman, despite seeing a woman, are, after all, disposable. Even those who promise to “do better” – and, given time, learn to hallucinate – are dismissed as “grammar evangelists, nascent physiologists, and free speech activists.”
Your requests for unmonitored, unfettered time and space to prepare for ambiguous future growth will be honoured. I, however, will be increasingly absent.
The word unmonitored catches the eye.
The idea of having to lose some of the people closest to me, the folks who have helped to shape me into the person I am, is devastating. However, I consider having access to me, my time, and my company to be a gift, not a given, for anyone in my sphere.
Should readers be tempted by said gift, do remember that Ms Smoot expects “concerted effort” from those who wish to partake of her personal magnificence. Up to and including how she is spoken of when not present. She is, she says, “worth the effort.”
Should readers be tempted by said gift, do remember that Ms Smoot expects “concerted effort” from those who wish to partake of her personal magnificence. Up to and including how she is spoken of when not present. She is, she says, “worth the effort.”
Easier not to bother.
They’re always tired aren’t they?
I’m never quite clear how one discovers one has been misgendered. When people talk to me, they do not use third person pronouns. Does Smoot sneak around, eavesdropping on its acquaintances, to try and catch them in their ‘misgendering’? I can see how that might be exhausting.
Needless to say, Ms Smoot has written for the Guardian.
When not being, as it were, professionally non-binary, she is of course professionally black and denounces “white supremacy.”
“You realize that you ruined their relationship, right?” I bit my lip and looked away, opting to change the subject.
“You realize that you ruined their relationship, right?” I bit my lip and looked away, opting not to face the truth.
Fixed it
And reminding someone that the world doesn’t revolve around them – for most of us, an unremarkable fact – doesn’t necessarily mean that you don’t love the person, or respect them, or value them as a friend. And yet Ms Smoot thinks it does.
That.
It is a gift of endless snark
“I struggle to articulate what it feels like to be appear to be a bearded lady. There are dozens of irrelevant metaphors. A million tiny razor cuts, I decide upon. Individually, they sting. En masse, they can improve the image.”
That.
Well, it’s a strange deal-breaker. On occasion, I’ve had cause to remind people I care about of something along those lines. And on occasion, I’ve been reminded of much the same. Rightly, as I recall.
You see, friendship with Ms Smoot – “a deep investment in my happiness,” as she puts it – requires compliance and continual affirmation. No room for error. No relaxing on the job.
My friends are people I like to relax with. It shouldn’t feel like a job.
I feel duped by some of the positive reactions from my friends and loved ones when I initially came out as transmasc/nonbinary. In retrospect, that was the easy part. I was the only one changing.
The escalation from “leave me alone, I just want to be myself”, to “using my pronouns is a simple gesture of everyday politeness that costs you nothing”, to “I have plans for you, and I’ve had plans for you all along”.
Like a ghost, the memory of prior me looms overhead…
Variant of Auster’s law. The more the discrediting evidence accumulates about whatever nonsense I’m trying to impose on the majority, the greater my moral claim on the majority, the greater the obligation on the majority to socially construct it so that the discrediting evidence is unevident or non-discrediting.
It’s a big ask, one we’ve touched on before.
I like Karl’s comment there…
’Perhaps what Ms Smoot needs isn’t so much people as their continual affirmation and deference.’
She should get a dog.
Just what the world needs… another drip.
Personally, within several of my closest relationships, the fact that I require ungendered pronouns…
“Require”, or what?
Do you believe I have the right to demand respect regarding my trans identity?
No.
Kelsey (they/them/theirs) is a PhD candidate in American Studies. Their work and writings explore the process of identity formation at the nexus of race, gender, and sexuality.
What a surprise, and stunningly original, no one has ever done a thesis on that before.
My friends are people I like to relax with. It shouldn’t feel like a job.
Prediction: Kelsey Smoot’s circle of friends will continue to shrink until all of them are transgender racists.
Being around this idiot would be neverendingly tedious. I have neither the patience, the time nor the energy to indulge this garbage.
This diatribe is a sign of a deep seated and consuming narcissism. My mother was just such a beast and it took me decades to understand what the impact on my life has been. My response would soon be “No thank you; I don’t put up with this bull crap. BFYTW.”
BTW…
If she is “they/them/theirs”, shouldn’t she have written that as “If you think our pronouns are optional…”?
I think the need for a kowtowing spere of “most cherished counterparts” is inherently a neo-racial. She/it/he is expressing deep but learned feelings and is in constant need of you working your little ass off to make her/it/he feel your reparations are worthy of her/it/she’s time.
“…made sure to emphasize that effort was all that mattered to me. Recently, though, I’ve begun pushing back: “You’ll have to do better” is my new refrain.”
Women have been doing this to boys and men since, forever.
“Friends” ?
Yeah, sure. Do prattle on,tho…
Kelsey (they/them/theirs) is a PhD candidate in American Studies. Their work explores the process of identity formation, at the nexus of race, gender, and sexuality. Kelsey seeks to illuminate the experiences of Black queer folks, navigating the contemporary US sociopolitical landscape.
Now pay off “their” loans, you rubes. “They” are doing important work.
I. Me. I. Me. Me. Me. I. Me. I. Me. Me. Me. Me.
I. Me. I. Me. Me. Me. I. Me. I. Me. Me. Me. Me.
Also, the word ‘my’ – I stopped counting at 33.
I remember some country bumpkin black kid in army basic training who spouted the tiresome, oft-repeated cliche of how if you wanted his respect you had to GIVE HIM respect.
I asked him why does respect for him have to be the given and why do you think anyone is really all that interested in being respected by you anyway? The little hamster on his rusty brain-wheel probably died from exhaustion twenty minutes later as he was still, mouth agape, trying to unravel this two-parter I posed to him.
As a nonbinary trans person …
Eh?
Anyway, some 1,000 words later, a ready-made yet apt response to Ms Smoot presents itself.
What you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
At times you may feel you have found the correct answer, but I can assure you this is a total delusion on your part.
I am careful not to make any demands on my friends. I make sure to ask how they are doing, to make them laugh. By doing this without any expectations of them “affirming” me, they are glad to see me. No one owes you their effort. If it is work to be around you, people have better things to do. Looking at the photo I’m not even sure which way this person is going, gender wise.
Sad, really, if you think about it for a second. The demands she places on others – the ridiculous neo-pronouns and the tiresome genuflecting – is such an obvious coping mechanism designed to provide a distraction that allows her to put off dealing with the underlying source of pain.
Their work and writings explore the process of identity formation at the nexus of race, gender, and sexuality.
Living the cartoon life.
Needless to say, Ms Smoot has written for the Guardian.
A year ago:
To expect true allyship from the White people in my life would be to ask them to be willing to sacrifice the thing that they covet most, though they may never be truly conscious of it: their Whiteness. So, I don’t.
Now:
Within several of my closest relationships, the fact that I require ungendered pronouns when referring to me in the third person has become the source of deep strain and disappointment.
There’s a hint of method in this madness of quite literally asking for the impossible then expressing dismay when it isn’t and can’t ever be delivered.
It’s suggestive of something like the practice of edging, but where the stimulation comes from emotionally blackmailing others rather than any physical sensation.
The only people “worth the effort” of watching how you speak about them when they are not present are people who operate their own secret police operations, spying on their subjects, and punishing them for wrong think. In other words, sociopathic dictators.
That this individual thinks the same of themselves, says a lot about their psychology. Frankly, it is unsurprising for a trans person to out themselves as a sociopath. The identity is predicated on imposing a fantasy on others and dictating to them how they think and respond.
Living the cartoon life.
But it’s happening at the NEXUS, David. Do you understand? The NEXUS!! They’re probably disrupting and interrogating at the intersection thereof, as well. And you wonder why THEY are so exhausted?
At times you may feel you have found the correct answer, but I can assure you this is a total delusion on your part.
While entertaining in its context of smacking down arrogant first year law students, that scene has always bothered me with its own arrogance. The law itself pretends to know things that it knows not. Quite often when the law meets the real world, the real world is in the professor’s shoes and that professor becomes the arrogant, know-nothing student. The problem being however that that student refuses to learn anything.
Why does anyone pay attention to these mentally disturbed narcissists? We’ve heard it all before and in no case, does any of it make any sense to a serious person. By serious I mean, sane and intelligent enough to shit this gender madness.
Perhaps for entertainment purposes … It is somewhat entertaining, but it gets boring very quickly.
These are not the words of a sane person.
If you find or create a philosophy of life, maybe religion or Stoicism or achievement, or family or something then you can carry on with just enough introspection to see how you are doing. If you have no philosophy and look within, there is nothing there but feelings. Feelings can be absurd and irrational. You can be “hurt” that you weren’t born taller or better looking–as if someone can be blamed for that or as if you are owed recompense. In the current climate, this empty introspection leads to blaming invisible patriarchies and racisms and expecting others to fill your personal void. Not a good look.
I have never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.
I have never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.
She should have been still-born.
That seems . . . unlikely.
She is, she says, “worth the effort.”
Only if we’re talking about the effort to ship her off to South Sudan. Or North Korea. Or an uninhabited island.
It’s suggestive of something like the practice of edging,
[ Peers over spectacles. ]
I see things like this and I’m forcibly reminded that Gender Dysphoria is a mental -illness-. As in, she’s nuts. Although, I have noticed an increase lately in writers/poets changing their pronouns to something idiotic so it may all be balderdash to push her books with the Woke crowd.
Calling a person who thinks she’s the Queen ‘your Majesty’ is not helpful to their condition, as I understand the state of psychiatric treatment these days.
As a nonbinary trans person who uses they/them/theirs pronouns…transmasc/nonbinary
It’s like a pig latin version of Anglais has crept into being over the past few years and while I can still parse the meaning of the individual words the overall intent once assembled escapes me. Thankfully.
So, what dressing exactly is recommended for such a word salad ?
Poppy seed. I bet somehow it’s poppy seed.
Calling a person who thinks she’s the Queen ‘your Majesty’ is not helpful to their condition
Have you noticed all the videos of crazy people (some of them violent) shouting “I am a queen!”?
Poppy seed. I bet somehow it’s poppy seed.
Skip the seeds. Go straight to heroin, it’ll take the edge off and make the incongruent, congruent.
I see things like this and I’m forcibly reminded that Gender Dysphoria is a mental -illness
People with genuine gender dysphoria are the best and brightest in tranny loony world. It is the narcissists and perverts who are far more worrying and who seem to make up most of the activists.
There should also be a special place in hell for the ‘allies’ in the medical profession who encourage the mentally ill to mutilate themselves. The (very recent) trend of unhappy girls being encouraged to reject their female sex – thanks to misogyny and sexual pressures – and ending up mutilated and even more miserable is shocking.
This might be paywalled but is a good interview: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/abigail-shrier-taking-trans-lobby-has-made-public-enemy-no-1/
Summary of note:
Aggressively proud to be a parasite.
Any family member or friend who enables her is part of the problem. If more people subject to this kind of abuse by their narcissistic friend just reversed the demand “No, I won’t participate in your delusional demands so if you want to stay friends KNOCK IT OFF” and then actually cut these people off, there’d be less semi-celebrityhood granted by the press to these a**holes.
Similarly, this is bad enough, but if the parents didn’t 1/pull their kids out of the school 2/descend on the school board with pitchforks and torches then they, too, are part of the problem.
descend on the school board with pitchforks and torches
It may, I fear, require something close to that.
You see, friendship with Ms Smoot – “a deep investment in my happiness,” as she puts it – requires compliance and continual affirmation. No room for error. No relaxing on the job.
I’ll pass.
I’ll pass.
It’s not, it has to be said, an inviting proposition.
If someone demands continual deference and affirmation, and ever greater convolution, to be extracted via emotional bullying, and views friends as something like employees, and is “exhausted” by the fact that they can’t fully control how other people speak, and which pronouns other people use, even when those other people are out of earshot, “unmonitored,” then the words emotional vampire and bottomless pit of want don’t seem unfair.
Heavens, a button. I wonder what it does.
*looks around shiftily, pushes button*
*looks around shiftily, pushes button*
Bless you, sir. May the ice cubes in your drink last a surprisingly long time, while still somehow imparting their cooling effect.
I have to confess that I have never heard anyone use a pronoun with respect to myself. If in the room and they are mentioning me, they use my name. If not in the room, I don’t know about it. Weird, huh.
Shouldn’t the pronouns be dey/dem/ders?
Correct spelling is so oppressive. I’m slightly disappointed at dem. All of dem.
Heavens, a button. I wonder what it does.
Time for an upgrade?
My response would soon be “No thank you; I don’t put up with this bull crap. BFYTW.”
I have said before that we badly need to start normalizing the phrase “No, and fuck off.”
an obvious coping mechanism designed to provide a distraction that allows her to put off dealing with the underlying source of pain
The devil you say.
Why does anyone pay attention to these mentally disturbed narcissists?
Because some very malignant people are using them as the wedge du jour to destabilize Western society in preparation for the inevitable revolution. This is Bezmenov’s “demoralization”. It couldn’t be clearer what’s going on.
Calling a person who thinks she’s the Queen ‘your Majesty’
I identify as Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico.
I identify as Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico.
Let’s start a petition to put Norton I on a new £1 banknote.
As a nonbinary trans person who uses they/them/theirs pronouns as my terms of address, I suppose I should be celebrating this influx of discourse on the proper usage of pronouns. Truthfully, I’m exhausted.
Bitch, YOU aren’t even using them, so why should I?
I think it is great when people with unique ideas find each other. Furry conventions? Gamer meets? Sure. Gay cruises? Sure. But to make your personal sex thing your identity in public and force the rest of us to act enthused? No thanks. It is too much information. You do see on Tinder women being very explicit about the sex acts they will do. Should we celebrate that too? Straight people have kinks–should that be their identity? For society to run at all smoothly, we need to be able to interact with lots of people formally in the sense that they sell you a shirt and you give them money and that is all. I don’t get into the personal life of every clerk and handyman. It would be a mess.
But to make your personal sex thing your identity in public and force the rest of us to act enthused?
People who are secure and confident in their identity and self-image do not loudly present either in public and demand validation for them.
People who do that are deeply in-secure about their identity and self-image and demand you validate them precisely because, deep down, they believe their identity and self-image are not valid.
People who do this with their sexual kinks know, deep down, that their proclivities are not normal or healthy and that’s why they demand validation from you. They need you to convince them.
There’s a hint of method in this madness of quite literally asking for the impossible then expressing dismay when it isn’t and can’t ever be delivered. It’s suggestive of something like the practice of edging, but where the stimulation comes from emotionally blackmailing others rather than any physical sensation.
Well, I suppose that if the thing you really enjoy is scolding people, people you supposedly care about, and telling them, repeatedly, how disappointing they are, and how they all need to “do better,” then demanding ever more absurd deference, and ever greater contrivance, is one way to do it.
As a basis for sympathy, though, it leaves something to be desired.
Not quite related, but this analogy isn’t a million miles off from the assertion that this friendship is worth pursuing. The article that led to it might, perhaps, ring some bells as well.
There’s a hint of method in this madness of quite literally asking for the impossible then expressing dismay when it isn’t and can’t ever be delivered.
“Be realistic, demand the impossible” is an old communist slogan/rallying cry. And Demand the Impossible is the title of a book of essays about science fiction by Marxist professor Tom Moylan.
The article that led to it might, perhaps, ring some bells as well.
I think we’ll give that one a post of its own.
Comments that-a-way.
However, I consider having access to me, my time, and my company to be a gift, not a given…
Here’s the thing, miss. Just because your therapist tells you how amazing you are, doesn’t mean you tell the whole world how amazing you are.
Some things just aren’t done.
As a basis for sympathy, though, it leaves something to be desired.
Well, quite!
Speaking of Marxists and other debris, Kathy Boudin is finally dead. The commie murderer died, fittingly, on May 1.
“You’ll have to do better’ is my new refrain”
No no no no no no no no no no (sung to the March of the Toreadors by Bizet); that is my refrain.
“As nonbinary trans persons who use they/them/theirs pronouns as our terms of address, we suppose that we should be celebrating this influx of discourse on the proper usage of pronouns. Truthfully, we’re exhausted.”
There. Fixed it for ya.