#lgas14 — Public Fediverse posts

#LGaS14: Now Paige Johnson (http://nitter.nl/_paige_j) on the politicisation of online talk about gender: how do people describe and position themselves vis-à-vis #inclusiveLanguage

Key themes in talk rejecting inclusive language include "erasure of women" and "political correctness gone mad"

Edmonton #LGaS14: strangest because #bottomStigma is a thing, so we would expect a queerphobic #slur to focus on that

Edmonton offers several explanations for this, mostly suggesting that this is because agency suggests greater responsibility for the deviant act — and therefore greater deviance

In the end, it matters more that queer sex is taboo than what role exactly you take in it

Douglas #LGaS14: #transmasc folk have sophisticated understandings (and fears) associated with being perceived as male: of taking up space, becoming toxic, betraying confidences they received because of their AGAB

Needless to say, for many of them it feels like *a lot*

Now Rowan Douglas (the Judith Baxter award winner) on #transmasculine folks' experience of negotiating #gender identity in interaction #LGaS14

(Transmasc broadly defined: anyone AFAB who identifies with some masculine role)

Based on phenomenological interviews seeking to understand participants' fraught life world

(Funny how I seem to be coming across #InterpretativePhenomenologicalAnalysis all over the place these days)

There's been a flurry of brilliant 3-minute presentations at #LGaS14 but they were just too fast to toot about — might try to recall some main points afterwards

Bailey & Mackenzie #LGaS14: description of Mermaids shifts from "supporting children" to "transgender lobby group" — possibly reflecting that an organisation provides an easy target for criticism even for those who might shy from overtly attacking trans people themselves

(Not that many transphobes have that many scruples ofc)

Now Aimee Bailey and Jai Mackenzie looking at representations of #Mermaids in the UK press #LGas14

~450 articles 2015–2022, with a truly massive spike in the last year, and dominated by the Times (25% of total published)

Keyword analysis shows a generally sympathetic if stereotyped representation up to 2018, shifting since then to fearmongering, centering transphobic groups and questioning claims of discrimination

It seems clearly a function of exposure, because it disappears in people who use they/them themselves — though it's interesting to see that exposure predicts naturalness ratings a lot better than it does active production #LGaS14

Nadir Junco summarises the evidence about #singularThey in English before comparing British and American varieties

An experiment asking participants to fill in pronouns for a variety of antecedents found that people find it the most difficult to use 'they' following a proper name reference — especially those who don't personally know anyone who uses they/them pronouns #LGaS14

Heritage: not only are #trans characters rare, they're rarely explicitly identified as such

It can make sense in terms of the game's narrative to rely on indirect cues (but these can be very stereotyped, such as mention of surgery) or talk from other characters (but that raises the problem of why it would be appropriate for them to disclose someone's trans status) #LGaS14

Right now it's Frazer Heritage (http://nitter.nl/Noun_Fraze) talking about the language that characters in #VideoGames use to talk about #trans characters and identities #LGaS14 — starting with the difficulties in even telling whether a character is trans or cis

I'm having an extraordinary time listening to brilliant work on #language #genderStudies and #sexualityStudies at the #BAAL #LGaS14 meeting, and I struggle to toot about it because no one so far seems to have a #Fediverse handle 🙃