I'm not sure if I've said anything or anything much on the whole gender identity situation going on with Caitlyn Jenner (if you haven't heard, she has now changed her name to Caitlyn) but I feel that there's a serious case of transphobia plaguing the internet (specifically my Twitter timeline) that needs to be addressed, yep you guessed it - you're in for a rambly social justice post.
To make this plain and simple, now that Caitlyn has changed her name from Bruce, there is no excuse for people to continue calling her Bruce. When she initially said to the world that she identified as a female, she did say that she wanted to be referred to as a him for that time, but now she has said she wanted to be referred to as she/her, and it's important to do that because failing to recognise someone's pronouns is abusive and disrespectful, essentially what you're doing is invalidating the gender identity that person identifies with and telling them you don't think that what they're feeling is real, and so you don't think it should be acknowledged. You are removing that person's right to be comfortable within themselves so that you feel more comfortable, because you're offended by them expressing how they feel.
By refusing to call Caitlyn Caitlyn, you're ignoring the person she has identified herself to be, and if you invalidate someone's own identity, you're basically saying you don't care about them as a person, and you find their existence to be an inconvenience for you. Doesn't sound very nice, does it?
And another thing, people who are criticising her for changing her name in order to feel more like a female on the grounds that 'gender is a social construct' and we shouldn't associate names with certain genders, stop trying to belittle the problems that transgender people face. Maybe gender is a social construct, but as it's a current, prevalent part of our society, people have a right to identify as one gender and if it helps them feel more comfortable with who they are to change their name to a stereotypically female or male name, why shouldn't they have the right to that? Plus, most of the systems in place at the moment are social constructs - different types of sexualities are social constructs, different races are social constructs, even our concept of right and wrong is a social construct.
Our ideas of gender are always changing, and I do agree that we should try and remove the stereotypes associated to certain genders because no person should feel confined to the stereotypes of their gender, but if it helps a person feel more comfortable with who they are by doing things that are stereotypically linked to one gender, why is that such a big deal? Furthermore, most of the people I've seen criticising Caitlyn for changing her name on the basis that 'gender is a social construct' are cisgender and funnily enough have stereotypically male or female names, by criticising a transgender person for changing their name so they can better identify with their gender, you're ignoring the problems faced by transgender people. It's easy for someone in a more privileged position to say 'she shouldn't have to change her name' because they haven't the faintest idea what it's like to question your gender identity, whether or not gender is a societal construct, it's something that's so prevalent in our society you can't ignore it so if changing your name makes you feel more comfortable because you associate with a gender that society has constructed, you absolutely have the right to do that.
All I'm getting at is that gender is a really confusing thing to come to terms with for a lot of people, and the amount of criticism I've seen for Caitlyn Jenner has just shown how alive transphobia is (not that I thought for a second it was dead, but it's just brought it to my attention again). If someone identifies with a certain gender, whether or not it be a societal construct, use the correct pronouns for that gender, use the name the person has for themselves whether it be the one they're born with or one they've assigned for themselves, and just be open and tolerant towards people in a less privileged position than you are. I know I have privilege in the sense that I'm cisgender, but I like to consider myself an ally to people who don't share that privilege and I think it's important to bring awareness to the issue so we can stop treating people who aren't cisgender like a taboo topic. For more information, I found this blog post really helpful so give it a read and this video from Kat Blaque who's a transgender WOC so what she says has a lot more depth than anything I could say on the issue.
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