Let's try this again...how would you react if someone called you an "it"?

Question

Apparently in my last post of this question, everyone is telling me how I should answer if someone asks me "a/s/l" which wasn't my question. I'm ok with how I treated the question and how I responded. If I wanted advice on how I should answer the question when someone wants to know my sex and /or gender I would have asked "how do I answer when someone wants to know if I'm male or female" but that's not what I asked.

I asked, "how would you respond to being called an "it""?

So...can we stick with the question at hand?

Not trying to be cranky, but damn..i'm i'm wasting 5 points asking a question, i expect to get answers on what i actually ASKED. Not just random rants.

Answer 1

I think I did answer it for you (or at least my attempt to)...everybody is an individual and should not have to conform to societies ideology of theoretically correct answers.

Answer 2

It strikes me as very disrespectful, like you are a thing and not a person.

A few days ago, I wrote about the reaction some fellow and sister panda fans had because the San Diego Zoo's beautiful new baby (all of six weeks old) hadn't been identified by gender yet. It struck me as odd. I wrote a meditation on it at my blog, and I hope it helps rather than hurts you.

Tacky self-quote begins:

//It's nice to know that the precious baby is a little grl bear. At the same time, I was a bit disappointed at the way some of my fellow and sister humans reacted. You see, this is the zoo's fourth panda cub, and it was a bit harder to determine this cub's gender than it was for her siblings. Panda babies are tiny, which means every part of them is tiny, which means sometimes it's tricky. Fans were getting upset not knowing! I'm thinking, "It's a little darling whose mother loves it! It's strong and healthy and growing and getting cuter every day! Who cares if we have to wait on gender, or even if it's intersexed?" (That has happened before.)

I'm a bit sensitive about intersexuality because I've met a few people who were. The Ex-Boy's got intersexed relatives--it runs in his family--so I did some research, too. (I particularly like the Intersexed Society of North America website.) It just seems right to me to respect the way people--or pandas--were made, unless they can't pass water or something. Not every animal or person was put on this planet to reproduce or to be the same as everyone else, and that's okay. Then we see that sometimes, to many other people, it's not okay, not okay at *all*, and we even have to induce conformity onto other *animals* who aren't bothered in the least by their difference. We have to have that clear category, even at the expense of other priorities. It was an attitude that seemed to dismay vets at the San Diego Zoo, too.

I think one problem is a deficiency of language, something else that San Diego Zoo vets admitted. We do not have a short pronoun for "genderless or not clearly gendered individual whom we value." Intersexed and transsexual activists have tried, with constructions like "sie", but that's not in the general vocabulary yet. We need something, I think. "It" is an object, a clock or chair or something, not a word we want to apply to an adorable and much-anticipated endangered-species baby, or our own beloved human baby who just looks a little odd when we change their diaper. In the Handmaid's Tale, there's a part where Offred's (the protagonist's) husband has their cat put down so their neighbors won't be tipped off to their escape from the new totalitarian regime by her meowing. Offred notes that the cat went from "she" to "it" in her husband's vocabulary, so he could stand to kill her. No wonder the veterinarians at the zoo called their unusually calm black and white baby "the cub" instead. No wonder the subject freaks people out. //

Answer 3

I'd be a bit upset, but wouldn't let it get to me too much.
Mostly because people online are complete strangers, they can only go on what information I give them. So, if I don't give them my gender and they called me an "it" I might be inclined to correct them.
If they still insisted upon calling me "it" even after having all the information, I'd simply put them on ignore and move on.

Not worth my time arguing with idiots.

Answer 4

As someone who walks the line between transsexual and genderqueer, I would not get offended. The way I look at it in my case is that for them, what else are they going to call me? If him and her don't exactly work, then what other option do they have? My reaction would hopefully be to provide them with some less offensive ways of using gender-neutral speech.

Answer 5

I strongly believe in "what you are is what I call you."
If you want to be called a her, or she then thats what I'll call you.

People need to realize that they ARE hurting feelings when they go around calling people out of their names. Calling someone an "it" is unacceptable, because what if it was your child or your future child that goes through identity issues and you end up calling them an "it."

Answer 6

It did sound like that is what you were asking. Most people would interpret a reaction as a "response to". But if I can restate the question as "How would I feel....?" I would be pretty darn displeased.

Answer 7

I believe if some one called me an "it" I would respond with contempt for such a condescending name or title.

Answer 8

I would respond "I am a person, not an it." If the people in the chat room continued to refer to me as an "it" and if it really bothered me that much, I would go to another chat room. It really isn't rocket science. Are you expecting people to say they would shoot people for that?

Answer 9

I wouldn't be 2 happy w/that @ all.... :(

I'd heard of this book called "A child called It"...

Sad,sad stuff to even hear of about another human being

going through being called "IT", and "The Boy" by his own

Ma...If one person doesn't need to be hearing that kind of

stuff,who else does???

Answer 10

Calling someone an ''it'' is, in my opinion, offensive.

If someone is transgendered and in the process of changing to the correct sex, that person should be defined as the sex they are changing into. I mean, that's the sex that person is anyway, right?

Answer 11

People on this board are so sarky, I asked which stars were in the closet and they all jumped down my throat!

Anyway back to question, no one should be called IT.