Updates will be over at plures for now. It's pretty much all public; feel free to add it. we is still on hiatus for now, but that's not permanent.

Confession: I used to be anti-singular-they. I used to avoid it at all costs in my writing, trying to use other non-sexist wording like 'he or she', using a generic 'she' instead of 'he' and substituting gender-neutral neologisms, like ey or zie.

Nowadays, though, I am really, really tired of prescriptivists who fulminate against singular 'they'. It's not because they care about precision; I care about precision. It's that their complaints about it really don't have much basis where the history of English is concerned.

There is not really much of a valid argument against using 'they' in the singular. English-speakers use a plural pronoun to refer to a singular concept all the time. You, the second-person pronoun, is etymologically plural, and its ancestors only became singular when the English adopted the French custom of using the plural pronoun to refer to people respectfully in the singular. You (and its Old English ancestor) is related directly to the other second-person plural pronouns used in a lot of Indo-European languages, like 'vos' in Latin (and its descendants 'vous' in French, 'vosotros' in Spanish and 'voi' in Italian and Romanian), 'ihr' in German and 'vas' in Russian. You, like the singular 'they', STARTED OFF AS PLURAL. If the complaint is that 'they' doesn't agree with a singular antecedent, well, you doesn't, either. Therefore, WHAT IS THE MATTER with using 'they' in the singular? People claim that it's because of the distinction between singular and plural, but English second-person pronouns lost that distinction a few hundred years ago! I don't see these same prescriptivists clamouring for the return of 'thou' to Modern English because it's ambiguous! Do you?

There could be so many uses for an accepted generic 'they' in society. If people who identify as genderless or genderqueer prefer it, they can use it without being shot down for being ungrammatical. People could use the 'they' pronoun before finding out someone's gender identity, too.

Gore Vidal's disgusting defence of Roman Polanski

What the hell, Gore Vidal? Why are you defending Roman Polanski at ALL? Even with the girl's age NOT being a factor, Polanski STILL kept going even when she said 'no'.

I am just seriously disgusted.

Like any of these are bad things? (And the 'misused quotes' just make everything even more charming, don't they?)

For screen readers: 'Barack "Hussein" Obama equals more abortions, same-sex marriages, taxes and gun regulations', with a caricature of Obama in a turban.

It seems that some people think that it's OK to disregard someone else's identity when they're upset at the other person or system. Trans women suddenly become men; trans men suddenly become women; plurals suddenly become singlets; autistics become neurotypicals; and bisexuals and gay people suddenly become straight people in denial. (Well, they actually don't, but they start to be treated that way in discourse.) 

This seems to have the idea of 'I will only validate your identity and support you if I agree with you.' This has the effect of silencing oppressed groups into agreeing with majority opinions, and making people the owners of others' identities. 'Your maleness belongs to me, and if you say or do anything wrong, I will revoke it.' 'I am the one who gets to determine your plurality, and if you say anything wrong, you're a singlet to me.' This is oppressive and unfair. No-one should feel as though they have to act a certain way in order to have their identity treated as an inseparable part of their existence. Anything else makes identity conditional on someone else's opinion of you at the time, and reminds me of tokenism and other bones thrown from privileged groups to non-privileged ones. It's virgins and whores; Uncle Toms and uppity Negroes; compliant patients and empowered individualists.

It's a horrible dichotomy; no-one can just be themselves AND have opinions you don't like. They can keep their identity if you agree with them, but they lose them if you don't. What, is there something frightening about the idea that someone else has the right to exist as themselves and disagree with you? (That's not entirely rhetorical; in fact, I do think that people find it frightening, and lash out by invalidating their opponent's identity so that their words can no longer be relevant to the community they represent. 'Oh, that person isn't really trans, so I shouldn't listen to their opinions about being trans.' 'Oh, this person isn't gay, what do they know?' 'They're not plural, so I will just ignore what they say about plurality.) 

This treatment doesn't just exist within the 'oppressed vs privileged' paradigm; it often happens within communities. Some plurals themselves will declare that systems that they don't get along with, or whose system structure is dissimilar to theirs, 'are not really plural'. Some trans people will say 'Oh, this person is REALLY A MAN (or WOMAN, depending on the trans person's birth sex)!' because someone upset them. This seems to say that 'The only other valid members of my community are the ones with whom I agree, and everyone else is a poser!' This is ridiculous; who says that everyone has to think and act identically in order to belong to a specific group? These actions seem to come from internalised forms of oppression that they themselves have dealt with. Because they are silenced, they must set themselves up to silence others. It's a bit like the internalised racism in nonwhite communities; even though they themselves understand the pressure to conform to a certain ideal of their ethnicity, they still perpetuate it within their own communities. For example, there is the pressure to 'not act white', and if you're 'acting white', you aren't really your own race, but a traitor.

There are plenty of trans, gay, plural and bisexual people who drive me insane. Nevertheless, I am not going to disregard their personal identification simply because I dislike them. I've got plenty of other things to criticise about their actions without attacking important aspects of their existence. I wouldn't want it to happen to me--or anyone else in my system--so why should I do it to anyone else? 

Conditional acceptance is not acceptance at all; it's scraps thrown to people so that they can uphold certain ideas of existence. It's something that's deeply wrong, insulting and condescending to those who have had to live their entire lives being forced to reject their own self-images in favour of society's strictures.

(No, this isn't about any of you, by the way, although it's something I have personally seen happen to us, as well as others.) 

(These are just some random observations about some of our reactions to music; they aren't mean to be an 'essay' or anything remotely coherent or organised. Most of my 'organised thought' ability is getting used elsewhere, like on our homework.)

Music serves a few purposes to us—it allows us a bit more sensory regulation, and some songs are also a bit 'stimmy' for us. When we've got music on, especially in public places, it allows us some control over our environment and our sensory experiences. We don't have to listen to people's mobile phone conversations if we don't want to. We can avoid others' music from their cars and phones. We don't have to hear loud cars or construction. Without music on, we're just at the mercy of our environment, and sometimes, it can be too much. It also allows us to focus on something besides other people, because the presence of too many people in an 'uncontrolled' environment (especially if they're talking) can be too much for us. We had a pretty hard time when we didn't have any MP3 player, and had to put up with all the noise.

There are also some songs that calm us down and take the edge off us. The genre of music depends on the individual; I like pop music (especially electropop), electroclash and Celtic music; Morpheus prefers metal and electronica; Hess likes some metal and some alternative; Darwin likes peppy pop music and children's music; Richard prefers classical. There's just something that it does to our brain that...feels a lot like stimming, and it's less conspicuous than other forms of stimming that we do, like hand-flapping or twitching. (Or our latest 'stim', feeling for dust, sand or other gritty or powdery substances and running them through our fingers.)

Due to recent events, this journal will be going on hiatus. Some individual journals will also be on hiatus; those journals will have hiatus notices posted to them. We are unsure how long this hiatus will be. If you wish to speak with us, you know how to contact us.

—The Management

FYI: Transgender women (MTFs; trans women; transwomen) are not 'men becoming women'. Trans men (FTMs; trans men; transmen) are not 'women becoming men', unless they feel they identify that way. Genderqueer people are not 'men/women who feel as though they deviate from the binary'. Genderless people are not 'men/women who feel as though they don't have any gender.' If they lack gender, they're NOT MEN OR WOMEN; they're just members of a genderless class. Noel is not a man; the trans men I know have never been women; the trans women I know have never been men. They've always been who they were.
( Ranting and philosophising. )

No, this isn't targeted at any of you! It's just that we've been...having gender and sexuality discussions a lot over the past few months, and yeah.

http://exunoplures.info/blog/?p=116

...Sometimes I feel like shoving that article in the face of people who say 'oh, BUT IT'S OK' whenever people invalidate us. Hess wrote it a few months ago.

(yes, I think we've been twitchy about the identity/invalidation stuff since...a few weeks ago. Our sensitivity about it comes and goes.)

The medical (MPD/DID) model of plurality often uses the word 'alters' to refer to members of multiple systems. Many people find it insulting, including the members of our system. We find that it deprives us of the right to define ourselves as people, and feels a bit as though we have to be a lesser class of people simply because we happen to be plural. Whenever people want to define what sentient, intelligent entities can and cannot be a person, we start getting into murky philosophical territory.

( The implications of alter, and discussion of personhood. )