Good resources on gender flexible and asexual?

[Tanaqui]

I can't imagine that the norm of NOT announcing your sexuality upon first meeting someone in a professional or semiprofessional environment will ever change.

 

I mean I suppose unless your professional environment is in the adult industry lol.  Otherwise, I am pretty sure that most of us want sexuality kept OUT of those situations.

 

So you don't wear a wedding ring when you meet people? Because that, by its action, announces that you are not asexual.

 

[Guest]

So you don't wear a wedding ring when you meet people? Because that, by its action, announces that you are not asexual.

Lol asexual people get married.

 

Eta- also, most people don't define themselves by what they are not. Just for practical purposes it's generally too vague.

Edited September 13, 2017 by OKBud

[Haiku]

I can't imagine that the norm of NOT announcing your sexuality upon first meeting someone in a professional or semiprofessional environment will ever change.

 

Yet this is not the situation the OP described. This was a small group breakout discussion for which we are unaware of the dynamics of the conversation. It's entirely possible that this student's comments weren't considered in any way unusual in the specific conversation.

[Ananda]

So you don't wear a wedding ring when you meet people? Because that, by its action, announces that you are not asexual.

 

Asexuals can and do marry.  I think it is quite common for asexual people to desire romantic relationships and marriage.  Although there are those, of course, who don't as well.

[Haiku]

I think the norm has changed for younger people, especially in situations they consider to be social, and for many students, a psych class small group discussion would qualify.

 

Whether the older generation agrees or not really has no bearing on how younger people view the social norms. The norms are what they are for the group in question.

Edited September 13, 2017 by Haiku

[Pen]

Since OP and her DD have no control on how this other person (or anyone else) intro'd themself in the class group, that mainly seems irrelevant to me. (Unless that is a standard intro for that school and the DD needs to know what to say (or not) about her own sexuality in her own self intros.  )

 

All the DD has to do is to figure out how she deals with the info (or other like it in future), and all the OP needs to do is figure out some guidance on that for her dd.

 

In my own life, the most confusing part is when someone else refers to the gender flex person I know as they or them, and I think more than one person is meant and am left pondering who all "they" are. I wish just a name would be used for clarity.  

 

 

 

 

[Haiku]

And going further, social norms are not an unqualified "good thing." Historically, many social norms have been discriminatory and destructive, and it was right and necessary that they changed.

[Bluegoat]

Since OP and her DD have no control on how this other person (or anyone else) intro'd themself in the class group, that mainly seems irrelevant to me. (Unless that is a standard intro for that school and the DD needs to know what to say (or not) about her own sexuality in her own self intros.  )

 

All the DD has to do is to figure out how she deals with the info (or other like it in future), and all the OP needs to do is figure out some guidance on that for her dd.

 

In my own life, the most confusing part is when someone else refers to the gender flex person I know as they or them, and I think more than one person is meant and am left pondering who all "they" are. I wish just a name would be used for clarity.  

 

Yes, it's irrelevant in that sense.

 

My sense of what would be polite is to use whatever pronoun the person wants, within reason, and ignore the rest, because it isn't really relevant.

[Haiku]

It's incredibly out of touch and elitist to expect anything more of anyone who doesn't have a permanent full time teaching contract.

I'll ask my husband, who has been an adjunct professor at the local university, whether "out of touch and elitist" are accurate words to describe me. 😂

 

Funny how you know so little about me yet assume so much.

[Haiku]

'Gender flexible' is a nonsensical concept, that falls apart when you attempt to interrogate it logically.

 

Nice try. You don't get to decide how other people experience their gender identities.

[Haiku]

Then you should know better than to hold to the romantic view of professors who have the luxury of giving a hoot about your identities.

 

Ok. Sure.  :lol:

[Haiku]

No, I don't. But I also don't have to pretend that 'gender flexible' makes any kind of sense. Unless the person means 'I am flexible about which gender roles I adopt', in which case say that.

 

Right, because this student's identity expression should be all about meeting your needs. 

[LMD]

God, I find young people and their supporters of their 'identities' so narcissistic. There are real problems in our universities and their employment practices/affiliations that once upon a time, students used to be out there protesting.

Lol! Narcissistic is right. Hello strangers, here are some of my very important feelings about myself, I know that my feelings are priority number 1 for your college experience! I don't care if that's mean. And I'm loving the ageism, us old (lol) folks just don't get it.

[LMD]

Nice try. You don't get to decide how other people experience their gender identities.

No, and they don't get to dictate how I experience logic.

[goldberry]

And really, let's say it's extremely inappropriate. Okay. Well, this is a life lesson: Sometimes in life, people will disclose things that they really ought to have kept to themselves. You'll be talking to a casual acquaintance and they'll let drop that they go to NA in the church by your house, or that they just recently found their birth family and now realize they're prone to breast cancer, or that their ex-wife (aka "the person you're actually friends with") is the reason their kid is a brat, or that they've recently switched religions/diets and you have GOT to try it for your spiritual/physical health, or that they're gay and do you wanna make something of it, or that they have a really cute rabbit and you, the person they met five minutes ago, must surely want to see 100 pictures of the rabbit. (All examples taken from real life.)

 

Sometimes this happens in a work environment. Whether it should or shouldn't, it does. And these kids are going to have to know how to deal with it. College is a fine time to practice not just whether or not to disclose personal information (and how much, and to whom, and when), but also how to react when people say things that you would've kept quiet about in that particular circumstance.

 

THIS, a million times over....

 

[goldberry]

Then you should know better than to promote the romantic view of professors who have the luxury of spending time on student identities as some sort of standard to which teachers should be held.

 

 

She said she had human relationships. That's it.  She never said all professors should be held to some standard, but that many were, in fact, interested in their students.

 

You're reading an awful lot into her statement. 

[Haiku]

And I'm loving the ageism, us old (lol) folks just don't get it.

 

If you can't or don't accept that things are different now, then yeah, you don't get it. I'm not a young person. I don't care to discuss my gender or sexual identities with people, but that doesn't change the fact that young people do.

 

I recently, after many attempts to dissuade my father from referring to people as Orientals, told him that if for no other reason, he needs to stop because to people my age and younger, he sounds like an old fart who goes around calling people "Negros." He, too, grumbled about the exact meaning of the word Oriental and tried to defend his position. I told him, "Well, Dad, like it or not, the language has changed. Change with it, or sound ignorant and unkind."

 

(Cue all the people who rush to defend the term Oriental. :D )

[Guest]

If you can't or don't accept that things are different now, then yeah, you don't get it. I'm not a young person. I don't care to discuss my gender or sexual identities with people, but that doesn't change the fact that young people do.

 

I recently, after many attempts to dissuade my father from referring to people as Orientals, told him that if for no other reason, he needs to stop because to people my age and younger, he sounds like an old fart who goes around calling people "Negros." He, too, grumbled about the exact meaning of the word Oriental and tried to defend his position. I told him, "Well, Dad, like it or not, the language has changed. Change with it, or sound ignorant and unkind."

 

(Cue all the people who rush to defend the term Oriental. :D )

 

I am a young person.

 

So are you saying that the word gender has a different meaning today? Or simply that the word gender is utilized in a different way?

 

It doesn't seem comparable to Oriental since at its inception it was used to differentiate, negatively, "them" from the Occidentals. It's essentially indefensible if one is into the idea that skin color and cultural mores do not make some people more human than others.

 

What, to you, is the difference between gender and gender roles? Surely you are not arguing that one's gender roles are innate and therefore not to be critically apprised. And then, if they are indeed innate, how can they flex?

[Haiku]

Your denigration of older women as 'racists and bigots' doesn't surprise me though. 

 

Um, WTAF? Never did I say that. I have no freaking idea where you got that from. And you even put it in quotes, like those are words I actually typed. Seriously, chill out. You seem bent on attacking me personally, apparently because I had the gall to disagree with you.

 

My story about my dad was merely mean to illustrate that times change, and the things people say and do change.

[Haiku]

So are you saying that the word gender has a different meaning today? 

 

I am saying that no one has a right to dismiss or denigrate someone else's self-identification. Especially in terms of sexual minority youth, this has historically been the norm, and it has led to tragic consequences for LGBTQA+ young people.

 

And not for dramatic flourish but merely so you don't expect any more responses, I'll say that I am done with this thread.

[Guest]

I am saying that no one has a right to dismiss or denigrate someone else's self-identification. Especially in terms of sexual minority youth, this has historically been the norm, and it has led to tragic consequences for LGBTQA+ young people.

 

And not for dramatic flourish but merely so you don't expect any more responses, I'll say that I am done with this thread.

Roger. You're* saying literally nothing is legitimately dismiss-able or subject to critisism as long as it is claimed as part of anyone's personal identity.

 

Clear as an alarm bell.

 

*And a huge swathe of the population

[PineFarmMom]

Well, I hope you're out there working hard to reverse the trend of adjuncts employed on a casual basis, because this kind of utopia is rapidly biting the dust.

 

I'm sure dh would love to have 'human relationships' as well as, you know, do his job of teaching skills and content, except that he has to rush off after class to his second, or third job.

 

It's incredibly out of touch and elitist to expect anything more of anyone who doesn't have a permanent full time teaching contract, which is becoming standard practice in academia.

 

God, I find young people and their supporters of their 'identities' so narcissistic. There are real problems in our universities and their employment practices/affiliations that once upon a time, students used to be out there protesting.

Yes! It is unbelievably narcisstic. I won't participate.