Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected].
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected] or [email protected]
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
You know, we have a word for "male-type person": its man. It doesn't matter if you are not a biological man, or in some kind of transitional stage, or whatever else might be the cause for this awkward phrasing. It is simply how this is called and it isnt discriminatory, you can use it. Also, a "female model" might well be referred to as a woman. That's not discriminatory either.
I don't know what your goal is in being this persnickety about someone else's wording, but you should probably be sure that you're right before you go around correcting people. For example, if we replaced "female model" with "woman", it would make OP's comment way less clear, because a photographer works with people other than just models and that wouldn't be clear with just "woman".
Regarding "male-type person", I would ask you to take a moment to try to imagine a world where "male-type person" is a more appropriate and correct phrasing than "man". Arguing in good faith means temporarily setting aside your belief that "man" is more correct in order to better understand OP's point and their overall point. As an example, OP may not actually be a man at all, but may be perceived as male by people within the hobby, in which case, "male-type person" may not be elegant phrasing, but it's more correct and informative than "man".
You claim your corrections aren't discriminatory, but that's besides the point, because a comment can be "not discriminatory" and also impolite and unconstructive to the discussion.
I also found the wording a bit needlessly convoluted (kinda like gender, amirite). But yours is a really interesting perspective. I'm not sure if I'd write the same way but I also wasn't bothered enough to correct their diction lol
I'm not entirely sure why everyone assumes I have some nefarious bigoted purpose here.
My point is, it doesn't matter for a quick anecdote if the person in question is whatever makes simply “man“ imprecise, and requires the "male type person" (what could that even possibly mean if not man?) specification, be it they are trans or identify as something else.
Is the next step to introduce the reader to the preferred pronouns of all parties involved? I dont know these people and it has no bearing on the anecdote. That is entirely too convoluted and unnecessarily complicated if there is no actual reason.
I would also argue that if they are for example trans they could just reasonably be called man or woman depending on what they now identify as. Doesn't require a specific qualifier. Why all this convoluted doublespeak when there are already normal words for that?
Call women, women. Men, men. Trans women and men too of course, because why not and unless the fact they are trans is somehow relevant, it is fully sufficient. For everyone who identifies as neither, keep it with neutral pronouns (again unless more information is relevant).
They probably likely meant they come off as a typical man. I felt your comment was unnecessary, like stop looking for it and you’ll find it less. You know? You took what was likely poor phrasing into something else entirely.
I think there is a bit of a misunderstanding of some inclusivity in regards to non-binary identities here.
There are a lot of grey areas that use different words very specifically. Masc and Femme for instance describe a wider range of binary and non-binary identities than "Man and Woman" as many non-binary people are closer to binary trans folks but use a different set of mental mechanisms where they don't strictly align with the categories of "man and woman". Masc and Femme can be used with "presenting" to specify what people tend to read someone as based on cultural dress and behaviour or but left as is to describe gender identity.
On the other pole of talking about sex rather than gender or gender presentation some have started to move away from "assigned gender at birth" and use descriptives like " male/female phenotypic (or type for short) when needing to refer to one's physicality to describe aspects when talking strictly about lived experience regarding their body's sexual characteristics.
The trans community particularly has a lot of very specific language regarding how different aspects of our experience impacts us. For instance a male phenotypic person will have certain aspects assumed about them because of their body independent of their gender which given certain circumstances they need to talk about in a neutral way. Talking about sex can be a bit of a landmine situation in trans circles because it's both a touchy subject and it's where the most dogwhistles tend to be. As such it's a bit chaotic... As such Phenotype does not strictly mean "birth sex". It's more about what physical sex characteristics people perceive and react to... Trans language wise it's something not universally adopted or liked but it is consistent with the usage in the above post where the poster is describing people perceived as at least potentially possessing some sexually male characteristics. This covers cis/ trans men/ masc non-binary people, some trans women / femme non-binary and various flavors of non-binary people.
While I can understand feeling like this is a bit much but it's mostly that language and conventions inside the community and inclusivity forward movements changing rather rapidly to account for the way discourse changes from year to year with new dogwhistles popping up with the evolving discourse as more people become knowledgeable about the basics. Less awkward conventions of language are always being tested because universality is likely a ways away. Trying to be pedantic about it might prove to be a losing battle. Give it another decade or two and it might settle into a singular convention once there's more concensus.