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trans-friendly Turkish pronouns
Monday, January 29 2024
I hadn't had any caffeine at all yesterday, so I thought it might be fun to make myself a french press of coffee this morning. Unfortunately, though, I wasn't feeling well enough to really enjoy it. Throughout the day I had gut issues that kept me at considerably less than 100%. The Occam's razor explanation for these was that they were a continuation of the hangover I'd had on Sunday. I don't usually believe in hangovers that last more than a day, but in the few cases where it's happened to me, the main complaint on the second day is problems with my guts.
Despite this, I managed to drive to Woodstock a little before 5:00pm to meet up with Gretchen at the bookstore. We'd be meeting two of her newer friends for dinner at the Garden Café, and I could've brought the dogs had I been willing to risk an incident involving Charlotte, but I didn't. That was lucky, because there was chonky husky with a couple at the table right next to the one we ended up sitting at.
Gretchen's newer friends tonight were a youngish couple who run a new business in the Hudson Valley. Since one half of the couple is trans and presents as male, much of our conversation was about queer issues, coming out, and dealing with intolerance. Since the couple can now pass as conventionally heterosexual, they don't encounter much grief from intolerant people, but in the past they've had issues, particularly early in the transition or when the maler of the two would tell someone what pronouns to use, which turned out to be (and remain) "they" and "their." This had Gretchen feeling apologetic, as she'd never actually received the pronoun part of the introduction and had been use "he,", "him," and "his," since "they" present as male. They responded that it didn't really matter, and I got the impression that the preferred pronouns were only preferred out of a wish that English pronouns could be as gender-neutral as they are in Turkish (they actually brought up Turkish as a language having this trait).
Meanwhile, I was enjoying my glass of Montepulciano wine and egg plant rollatini with linguine (a rare special I haven't seen at the Garden in years). Nobody else at our table was drinking; Gretchen rarely drinks alcohol, and our new friends had met each other in Alcoholics Anonymous and still abstain from drinking. Our new friends also heard the story of how Gretchen and I had gotten back together after a twelve year estrangement due to the power of Google.
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