8:50pm June 2, 2014

A problem I have with language, and gender, is a connotation thing I don’t know if it’s fixable.

Like… the gendered words have had all this time to accrue connotations and layers and layers of meaning. Both good and bad, mind you, and not all of it’s connotations I want. But those layers make those words feel so much more comforting to me.

Brother, sister, mother, father, grandma, grandpa, son, daughter. These words all have depth.

Sibling, parent, grandparent, grandchild, child, offspring. Some of those words have some depth, but some of them sound clinical and detached. No layers of meaning.

Same with a lot of the pronouns.

I think the reason that sie and hir are one of my favorite pronouns, is because I was on a MUD that routinely used them for androgynous characters, so they gained some level of depth for me. And ze/zer/zem resemble the pronouns used by a neuter-gendered intersex persson I used to know, so those picked up associations too. But even those don’t have the association of he or she, either. But I do have a serious affection for sie/hir, and that’s probably one of the reasons it’s a preferred pronoun. I played a lot of androgynous characters on that MUD specifically in order to get that pronoun.

I wish we had more words that had the weight and depth of ‘son’ and 'daughter’ without the gender. But 'child’ and 'offspring’ just don’t seem to cut it. 'Child’ has its own layers and depth behind it, but it’s different than 'son’ or 'daughter’, it’s of an entirely different type.

I am rambling.

But somehow I can handle sie/hir best, then ze/zer/zem, and then I have some trouble with the others. I’m also used to xe/xyr/xem from an intersexed nonbinary person who used those, which is probably why ze/zer/zerm is easy for me. But a lot of the other pronouns just confuse my brain, even though I know they have their own illustrious histories.

I am still rambling.

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