the word of the year is...

[IamWren]

I came across this on the interwebs about Dictionary .com's word of the year for 2015.
I don't know if this necessarily means societal views are shifting about identity and transgender issues but if nothing else the concept and conversation is popping up enough get the word "identity" as the word of the year. Here's an excerpt from the blog post Dictionary posted on their site.


"Celebrities and films propelled terms around sexual identity into the spotlight this year, causing a wave of interest on Dictionary.com: in the days following Miley Cyrus’s acknowledgement in Elle that she identifies as pansexual, we saw lookups for that term soar. The February premiere of the movie Fifty Shades of Grey contributed to a sustained interest in related words on Dictionary.com, but lookups spiked for terms beyond those launched into popular culture by Christian Grey: demisexual, omnisexual, and asexual all trended in lookups this year. Dictionary.com added the word sapiosexual this year, defined as “a person who finds intelligence to be a sexually attractive quality in others."

Their blog post also referenced an article that came out recently (Oct 6, 2015) in the New York Times titled "The Year We Obsessed Over Identity (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/magazine/the-year-we-obsessed-over-identity.html?_r=2)".

Now I know there always is a big smackdown on our forum about "yet another label", "I hate labels", "I'm just me" but it seems as though for the general public (and some on this forum) to compartmentalize those who do not conform to gender norms by use of labels/definitions gives something to grasp when trying to understand the concept of gender scale and fluidity.

What do you think?

[Beverley Sims]

Everybody needs a box of their own.

Mine will only come when I am dead.

Meanwhile they can't even find the glue to stick a label on me.

[Krisi]

I would say the word of the year is "offended". It seems like everybody is now offended by something someone else is doing or saying and wants it outlawed.

[Wen4cd]

I think once again we're in a pool of people who generally tend to lead the mainstream by several years. We are the exotic carrot in front of the horse. The discussions and ideas we have and share are going to be more cutting edge because we have a bunch of um ..bright and unconventional people in these circles throwing ideas around, and generally desperately trying to save ourselves by rewriting conventional thought.

Eventually it trickles down to a mainstream media outlet, and a slightly homogenized depiction of a concept becomes digestible to the masses, either on TV, film, pulp fiction, pop music, viral meme, etc..

That's when the google analytics with show a mass rise in interest in a term.

[Tina_gm]

I agree that the word of the year should be offended.

[Robin414]

Hi Sue! What do I think? I think I better get my 'girl on' before 2016 while it's still cool 😉

[AllieSF]

I like that word as word of the year, "IDENTITY". Yeah, there is a lot of positive attention to all of us T's and others who cover the identity spectrum whatever that is. All the attention that we can get will help us all over the long run whether we think we need any help or not. I may not benefit a lot from that, but the future generations will, I hope!

[ReineD]

Facebook is jumping in on the bandwagon too!

They have three gender choices: female, male, and custom, with a box next to custom to enter the preferred label.

And ABC came up with a list of 58 options!

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2014/02/heres-a-list-of-58-gender-options-for-facebook-users/

[pamela7]

58? surely they should stop at 57 baked beans?

[Katey888]

First of all - it would be great if the general public had one (or more probably, a small number) of acceptable terms to label us with. I agree wholeheartedly. :) I have long spouted that this is the real benefit of 'categories' or 'types' in that it allows easy passage for muggles (normals - my stereotyping and compartmentalisation of everyone outside of our strange community... :devil:) to make progress in understanding who we are and what we represent and therefore take a little step closer to acceptance of who we are... The pervasive difficulty being, of course, that we barely agree amongst ourselves at all the fine distinctions... Ah, well... :daydreaming:

The NYT article is an interesting one - sexual and race identity majors heavily over gender, but that's not disproportionate if you think of the cultural, ethnic and sexual proportions of those who are likely to read the NYT Magazine. And the fact that the genderly-challenged readership would be a much, much smaller percentage than the others... :)

58 variants don't really help - and many of those are really 'equivalents' with just a small turn of phrasing... (cis male = cis man = cisgender male = cisgender man... I'm surprised they didn't add "dude" as an option, for those that identify with that particular epithet... :facepalm:) The paranoids among us might see that as a way of established media further fragmenting any effort we may make to be recognised as a coherent block, but it's probably just a few interns at FB that want bragging rights for coming up with more diverse typologies... That doesn't help... :(

Katey x

[IamWren]

Hi Sue! What do I think? I think I better get my 'girl on' before 2016 while it's still cool ��
You know Robin, hopefully one day CDing will be somewhat passé and then you could say you were CDing when CDing was still cool.


I would say the word of the year is "offended". It seems like everybody is now offended by something someone else is doing or saying and wants it outlawed. Wow, ain't that the truth. Seems as though everyone too easily gets their delicate, little sensitivities butt-hurt. As my ex-wife used to say about female friends who whined about this and that, "put your big-girl panties on and get over it".


I'm surprised they didn't add "dude" as an option, for those that identify with that particular epithet... :facepalm:) Katey x
I should SOOO change my user name to: aDudeNamedSue! :D

[Beverley Sims]

Victor Borge got it right when he spoke of the pioneering Danish operations.
There were three sexes in Denmark....

Male, Female and Convertible.

[flatlander_48]

aBNS:

The thing is, we are ALL Something and that Something (and whatever plurals apply) is described by different names. Unless we want to revert to amorphous blobs of organic material, we characterize ourselves in terms of various names: child, old, young; fat, skinny, average; tall, short, average; and so it goes. However, we tend to freak when orientation and gender identity come up. What that says to me is that we are not being very honest with ourselves and are trying to avoid the reality, whatever that may be.

As far as I'm concerned, folks shouldn't waste their breath telling me statements like "I'm just a human being.". B/S. That covers everyone on the planet and says absolutly freakin' NOTHING.

DeeAnn

[Robin414]

aDudeNamedSue...LOL! 😂 Seriously, Johnny Cash is thinking 'ahhh, I totally missed the mark 😧 '

[Jonni Lin]

Amen, DeeAnn.