I think the romantic element is linked to desire for intimacy of some kind or other, and is there to some degree in every friendship, but when that becomes a “romantic attraction” usually varies and honestly is defined in hindsight more often than not.
So, not knowing is normal. If someone is pressing you to decide, they can definitely wait.
Yes, not terribly common, but frequent these topics, especially outside community-moderated spaces, and you’ll meet them. They’re sometimes used as examples of rabid attack-dog liberalism. I’m not sure of their motivation, but it might be similar to those who impersonate police, just the terminally-online version of hammers looking for nails.
Where they miss the plot is that the ultimate goal should always be kindness and respect, not appeasement or rule-enforcement. Education is part of it of course — understanding our implicit biases, where they come from, what the symptoms look like, etc — but the reason we learn to be better to each other is because that’s how we ourselves would like to be treated, not to avoid getting flamed, brigaded, “cancelled,” or what-have-you.
Anyway, thanks for putting in the effort to learn. I think you’ll make a good ally.
Moralism and vigilantism are common early attempts at allyship that are misguided and can become toxic — e.g. it can present as bullying.
When they’re acting as my ally, I try to pull them aside to discuss why prioritizing behavior over understanding is rarely a winning strategy and how to better help.
If they come at you, here’s how I usually handle corrections from external allies:
Any moralizing or remedial attempts beyond that is harassment. I’ll either extract myself OR start asking deep-cutting questions about their motivations, what they hope to accomplish. Get them talking about themselves and their credentials. So far in my experience, with only 1 exception these interactions have been exclusively online. Invariably the vigilantes are not actually part of the communities they claim at all, just using someone else’s cause to bully people online who they feel deserve it. Please report them.
Hmm yeah person-first is tricky. Personally I would only default to that in specific situations. In conversation it might sound too careful and make someone feel like they were being handled or patronized. But if someone asks me to refer to them that way, then I’ll do my best to remember. Not to avoid offense really, just because it’s considerate.
IMHO it’s not worth worrying too much about accidental offense. An accident is an accident. If you listen to others, care how they feel, and are doing your best to be respectful and kind, that’s all that matters. The rest is just practice.
If someone gets mad at you for an honest mistake, or just refuses to believe you didn’t know and will do better next time, then that person is being unreasonable. You could choose to talk it out with them if you wish, but you’re definitely under no obligation to suffer abuse from anyone, no matter what they’re going through.
Sometimes the phrasing to specify is a bit clunky to me without going into some unnecessarily long descriptor.
I get where you’re coming from. This is usually a habit that people develop with no ill-intent.
The trouble with using people’s descriptors as nouns is that in English, it has the tendency to sound disparaging, or at least “othering” (as in those people and us vs them), so as a general rule if you’re unsure it’s best to avoid it; e.g., “white person” is preferable to “a white,” “straight person” is preferable to “a straight,” etc.
If “____ people” or “people who are ____ ” sounds overly-formal/delicate/“PC,” one trick I see a lot is “____ folks.” You can see a few examples of it in this thread actually.
I agree with Ada. The competitive sports issue is fraught and often used in bad faith as a rhetorical wedge in discourse. Also, given its vanishingly small practical relevance to the vast majority of trans people, in nearly every case it is legitimately “in the weeds.” But to avoid leaving you hanging, and since I’m rather partial to weeds, I’ll bite.
First, can we say the prohibition of anabolics in competitive athletics has succeeded in eliminating them?
The answer is relevant because popular arguments against trans athletics tend to hinge on athletes’ hormonal advantage in womens’ athletics being unfair on account of prohibition, which can only be true if the prohibition itself is fair, which can only be true if the correct answer to the question above is unequivocally “yes” (because unenforceable restrictions are effectively a handicap to rule-followers alone, which is demonstrably unfair and unjust).
I suspect most with even passing familiarity would admit that prohibition in sports has, at best, only made the use of anabolics and other PEDs a more complicated and expensive logistic of elite programs, and that their use persists to a certain degree in virtually every competitive tier. There are of course numerous potential topical implications here (and of course the complication of intersex athletes like Edinanci Silva or Caster Semenya) but since the popularly established rhetorical crux is fairness based on hormones, we must attend to the reason hormones introduce unfairness to a sport.
My opinion is that arguments against trans athletics are disingenuously filling a grievance against what is, in reality, a preexisting unfairness in most sports that fans often prefer not to talk about.
Yeah this is a favorite pet theory of mine as well, partly because I like imagining guys like Andrew Tate protesting being labeled “trans alpha” or whatever, but also because it’s just a fact that many cis people experience a form of gender dysphoria and commonly seek hormone therapy for it at early ages.
I’ve found that comparison usually clicks with uninitiated cis people immediately, even when they’ve only heard othering and alarmist narratives up to that point.