So i just came out to my dad abt being nb, and he said something really wise about names, i think.
He said “Gifts are not obligations. You give things to people, and you hope they like them. And your name was a gift from us to you. If it doesn’t work for you anymore, you’re not obligated to keep it.”
and i just thought maybe other people could use hearing something like that.
that’s so beautiful
Reblogging for people since it sounds very, very wise.
Support nonbinary people who veil. Whether you wear a hijab or a turban or a tichel, you do you. Your gender is valid, your faith is valid, and so is how you express it. It is not contradictory. I’m proud of you.
Is there any gender-neutral royal, noble, hereditary, courtesy, etc., title out there? I’m thinking something general equivalent to Master/Mistress or Lord/Lady, but my research is turning up nil. Any historians/linguists out there with some suggestions?
I’ve been looking into gender neutral titles for nobility
lately. There are some interesting ideas, but a lot of them require you to NOT
be stuck up on historical linguistics. Which… isn’t me.
This list has a few.
Some involve combining words together, which is perfectly fine but I really don’t like. Some involve taking real terms and using them in novel ways. ‘Liege’ is an extremely good term, but it has been historically used as a direct address – ‘my liege’ – and not is ‘Liege Donald’ or whatever. People are drawing from other languages – I saw someone use ‘Comte’ as a gender neutral alternative to ‘Countess/Count’. ‘Comte’ is the French version of ‘Count’, and would probably throw anyone who knew the language.
I recently saw ‘princet’ used as a gender neutral
alternative to ‘prince/princess’. But ’-et/ette’ endings ARE sometimes gendered
in French, and enough have been borrowed into English that I felt it wasn’t
neutral enough.
I started looking for alternatives myself, and realized that
the problem wasn’t the words being used, but the lack of context. Gendering in
language follows rules. ‘Duchess’ is recognizably the feminine equivalent of ‘Duke’,
despite the words being quite different.
And HEY, I study historical linguistics as a hobby! I could
TOTALLY make up some rules for a third set of noble titles. Pretend the English
set of titles was actually a homogenous set, instead of a mish-mash of various
languages, and extrapolate from there.
Here’s what I came up with (my ‘methodology’ is at the end):
Princet (prɪn/tsɪt ‘prinTSIT’)
a nonbinary term paired with Prince (prɪns ‘PRINS’) and Princess (prɪn/sɛs ‘prinSESS’)
Duquet (dʒɪu/kit ‘JOOkeet’)
a
nonbinary
term paired with
Duke (duk ‘DOOK’) and Duchess (də/tʃɛs ‘DUHchess’)
Marcheste (mar/tʃɪs/tɛ ‘marCHISteh’)
a
nonbinary
term paired with
Marquess (mar/kwɛs ‘marKWESS’) and Marchioness (mar/ʃiɑn/ɛs
‘marSHIONess’)
Cynthet (kin/Ɵɛt ‘KINthit’)
a
nonbinary
term paired with
Count (cʌunt ‘KOWNT’) and Countess (kɔn/tɛs ‘konTESS’)
Barante (bi/ræn/tɛ ‘beeRONteh’)
a
nonbinary
term paired with
Baron (be/rɑn ‘BAron’) and Baroness (be/rɑ/nɛs ‘baROness’)
–
Leidh or Leithe* (lið ~ lɪyð ‘LEETHE’ )
a term of address paired with Lord (lord ‘LORD’) and Lady (leɪ/di ‘LAYdee’)
*or ‘Leid’, or ‘Leith’, or any other spelling. It’s not like
English had set spelling at the time, OR like its spelling made any sense.
Also, the pronunciation is with the ‘th’ sound from ‘the’ not ‘teeth’
**see previous note regarding spelling. This one is ‘teeth’ not ‘the’
Okay? But how do I use these strange words?
I’m glad you asked. Let’s take Xavin De’zean*** of Tarnax VII, for example. (Or read about how to use NON THEORETICAL titles at this amazing site. It’s my favourite.)
They could have various titles:
Introduced as ‘Their Highness, The Princet Xavin’, shortened
to ‘their Highness’ for later mention. When you’re talking TO them, you say ‘your Highness’ the first time, and then ‘Thir’ later in the conversation.
Introduced as ‘Their Grace, The Duquet of Tarnax’. Addressed
as ‘your Grace’. (Friends might call them ‘Duquet’ or ‘Tarnax’)
Introduced as ‘Their Leidhship, The Marcheste of Tarnax’ or
‘Leidh Tarnax’. Addressed as ‘your Leidhship’****(Friends can use ‘Marcheste’
or ‘Tarnax’)
Same patterns for ‘the Cynthet/Barante of Tarnax’
Or, if one of Xavin’s parents was holding a title (not them), they would
get a courtesy title (simplified):
Leidth Xavin De’zean, address as ‘your Leidthship’ or ‘Leidth
Xavin’
(Note that this form uses first name and last name. ONLY rulers, princes/princesses, and children with courtesy titles use first names. NO FIRST NAMES FOR NOBILITY.)
OR, if they married a noble (say, for example, her Ladyship,
The Marchioness of Majesdane^), Xavin becomes:
Their Leidship, The Marcheste of Majesdane, addressed as ‘your
Leidship’ or ‘Leid Majesdane’
FINALLY, if the got disowned for pretending to BE The Marchioness
of Majesdane and messing up royal affairs:
Mesret Xavin De’zean, addressed as ‘Mesret De’zean’ or ‘Xavin’.
***Character from Marvel’s ‘Runaways’ series. De’zean is actually their father’s first name, not a last
name, but I do what I want
****I find conflicting information about the use of ‘my
Lord/Lady(/Leith)’. I don’t THINK they should be used for actual nobility. I
think they were mostly used like we use ‘sir/ma’am’ now – shopkeepers (or
servants) being respectful to anyone, no matter their actual title.
^Karolina Dean, also from Runaways
But Gecko, some of these are weird. What were you thinking?
I was thinking that English is weird, and I needed to blend
in 🙂
Basically, I looked at the way the male terms in my list mutated
when becoming female. I pretended that all of this could be explained through a
mixture of labialization and sibilantization****. I made up a similar process,
involving palatization and non-sibilant fricativization and then adjusted words
to fit. Similar to the feminine ’-ess’, the neutral suffix is ’-et’ (and
becomes ’-te’ for bisyllabic words).
In useful English: When ‘Marquess’ becomes ‘Marchioness’ the ‘kw’ sound in the middle becomes a ‘sh’ sound. The ‘k’ sound in ‘Duke’ is a ‘ch’ sound in ‘Duchess’.
If I only added an ‘-et’ to the end of all the male terms, the results would sound artificial. English is rarely that simple.
If I copy how the feminine words are formed, though, the results sound like feminine words with ‘ss’ replaced with ‘t’. Because they are.
So I MORE SUBTLY replaced all the ‘s’es with ‘t’s. Using SCIENCE. It was very scientific and real linguists will totally not roll their eyes. Did you see all the fancy words I used before? Trust me, that’s science.
Say I “believe” that explanation. Did you REALLY have to spell everything wrong?
I THINK so?
I speak Canadian English, which
is pretty far removed from Middle (British) English (or it’s fantasy
counterpart). So if spell things how I pronounce them, there’s no assurance that you’ll read it the same way.
And English spelling is SO DUMB. It’s so dumb now, and it was DIFFERENTLY dumb during the height of the feudal system. If I spelled things according to modern pronunciation, some words would have looked anachronistic.
Trying to give spellings that
hinted at pronunciation, didn’t look like an unrelated word, and made sense for
the period, was HARD. Some I gave up and just let the spelling be as far from
intended pronunciation as it wanted to be.
‘Seer’? ‘Cynthet’??
Ugh. Use any
spelling you like. PLEASE. Make the spelling work, it is killing me.
****It really, really can’t. I don’t even think all the
words come from the same LANGUAGE, much less mutate according to the same
process.
Avengers Academy now has two confirmed non-binary characters!
Loki and Odin have confirmed that Loki is bigender/genderfluid, switching between male and female pronouns and appearance. And they did it a lot better than the A-Force comics the current game event is inspired by.
And my favourite black hole mentioned that stars, whether shaped like ponies or people, are neither boys nor girls. Everyone has therefor been referring to Singularity by cute nicknames, instead of pronouns.
Anyways, they’re both great characters and really fun. Singularity is the cutest character ever – I adore the little pigtails in the level 1 design. And Loki just bleeds a need for approval that makes me want to give her many hugs.
EDIT: Further play suggests that Singularity does not use pronouns at all. I apologize for my error.
After all
that complaining about how I DON’T CARE about queer stuff, I should probably
feel ridiculous posting this. BUT.
I really,
really, want a fic about Bart having as much understanding of gender identity and
sexual attraction as I do of romantic attraction.
Bart coming
to Tim and asking about some aspect of dating, or why people respond badly to
homosexuality, or something else Tim is COMPLETELY unequipped to explain.
And Tim
carefully asking questions to confirm that Bart still doesn’t get why he’s
supposed to go in the men’s washroom or not wear skirts. Because he doesn’t
identify with any gender OR feel any dysphoria when labelled. He doesn’t care,
and because he’s BART, he has no clue that he SHOULD care. And he has never
felt attraction to either gender (Carol and future!Rose can still have happened.
I’m happily married to my best friend. You don’t need romantic or sexual
attraction for a relationship). He’s never got that it’s a thing different than
friendship.
I want Bart
getting the talk I never got. From the ground up. Describing gender to someone
who’s upbringing allowed him to avoid any opinions about it at all. Describing
attraction, both sexual and romantic. With super basic examples.
And Tim
being SUPER AWKWARD but also surprisingly good at it. Because he sees things
from the outside all the time, so I’d think he’d be good at describing feelings
that someone has never experienced to them in a way that would make sense.
I want to
see sexual and gender identity explained as if they were magic, or some other
concept that doesn’t exist and nobody is expected to know anything about. And
the little lightbulb moments with Bart, as some weird behaviour suddenly makes
sense and he excitedly asks Tim if this is why people do __.
Also, SO
MANY bonus points if at some point Tim is explaining asexuality and Bart is
like, that’s how you are, right? And Tim fumbles and then says something about
how he’s complicated, because there are a lot of outside factors (trauma, neglect,
being an awkward nerd, etc.) for him. In this fic, I want a Tim who isn’t
asexual, just really uncomfortable with sex and sexuality. Because that
interests me too.
Even more
bonus points for a coda at the end with Bart excitedly telling Kon what he now
understands and Kon having his own little Eureka moment. Because his upbringing
also leaves the possibility for SO MANY gaps in his knowledge base he might
never have even noticed.
The Genderbread Person has been going around the web for a while now, so you may have seen it. It’s GREAT. I’m posting it here because of some thoughts I’ve been having lately.
Ever since Jay came out I’ve been trying to figure out my response.
I didn’t really have much of one. But I keep thinking about trans and non-binary stuff, and that usually means I’m relating something to myself. And I think @lauralot89 was wondering if it was kind of normal for ladies to consider being male, or something. Something about whether women were more likely to be comfortable with an idea like that.
(sorry if it bothers you guys to be in this post. And if I butchered what you were talking about, Lauralot. Just tell me if I bothered you guys.)
I definitely identify as female. It just doesn’t seem very important. But gender identity doesn’t seem like sexuality. I don’t feel I can say it’s unimportant. Like, I’m asexual, and sexual and romantic attraction REALLY DON’T MATTER to me. But you can’t just dump gender from your life. You can identify as agender, but are their people who actually identify as of unidentified gender and really don’t care one way or the other? Maybe they do. I’m confused and trying to figure it out.
Anyways, I finally realized why this genderbread picture kept coming to my mind. I get the idea of having some ‘female’ and some ‘male’ aspects to yourself. And how much of each being you have being different for everyone. But I only considered that in regards to how a person’s male-ness compared to their female-ness. I never considered how a two people who thought of themselves as female could have differing attachment to the idea. That feeling less like of one gender didn’t mean you felt more like another.
Basically I feel female enough that I’m fine with that identity, but not enough that being gendered another way by someone would bother me. I feel that gender is important, by MY specific gender isn’t, really.
So I’m not sure I’ve really respected trans people the way I should. Because I really don’t get dysphoria (in this regard), or the importance to having your gender be right.
In conclusion (not that this really acts as any sort of conclusion) I kind of want to see how people identify on this little person.
This is how I see me:
(Though the fact that I can’t indicate that my tiny bit of attraction is mostly towards androgynous men and slightly male-presenting non-binary people was a bit troublesome. Like the sexual attraction bar wanted to be in one place to show the TYPE of person I was attracted to and somewhere slightly different to show how MUCH I felt this attraction. Asexual problems, probably.)
kiragecko 