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Comment by danellis | Hacker News Reader

He says he attributes it to his autism, but maybe that isn't the cause at all. I'm not autistic, but I recognized what he was writing about. I have difficulty showing genuine emotions. My wife joking calls me Captain Holt (a reference to the stoic leader of the Brooklyn 99). Encounters with strangers are a draining experience involving a constant inner dialogue that sounds like am-dram director: "Emote more! Bigger smile! Deliver with eye contact! Now bring it down a notch. Act concerned by this revelation."

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Consider social anxiety. Many autistic people suffer from it. One cause might be that they were bullied in childhood. But they were bullied because they were autistic.

You could argue that the cause is being bullied as a child, but you can also argue that the cause is autism. I'd say both are true, but as long as the solution is the same it doesn't really matter.

Unfortunately it's a bit more complicated than that in reality. Many high-functioning autistic people are often initially misdiagnosed with bipolar, borderline, ocd, add, narcissism, schizoid, etc, for example, because their symptoms appear the same. But the underlying causes, or internal mechanism can be quite different, and the same goes for solutions. On top of that, it's quite common for autistic people to have both autism and, say, ADD.

Personally I feel that we often spend too much time thinking about causes, perhaps because of the history of psychology. Causes are only relevant insofar that they require different solutions, and spending too much time dwelling on a cause can often itself become a problem.

I'll certainly cop to social anxiety, ADD and OCD.

According to the profile at the top left of the page, this person's preferred pronouns are "they" and "them". They self-identify as non-binary.

I am sorry, not a native english speaker.

What does this mean?

The author of the article believes that their gender cannot be categorised as either male or female (hence a "non-binary" gender), so they prefer for others to refer to them using "they" and its inflected forms, rather than "he" or "she".

The singular "they" is already commonly used when the gender of a person is not known, so its extension into non-binary genders is quite sensible, in my opinion. Some others who regard themselves as a non-binary gender prefer invented pronouns such as "xe" or "ze", but I think expecting others to remember and use these is rather unrealistic, whereas "they" has the advantage of already having mainstream use in similar contexts.

Here is my understanding, after some extensive conversations with people in the same situation as the author.

In English one refers to a male as "him" and a female as "her". However, some people identify as "non-binary", which means that in their own internal self they so not feel that they are entirely male, or entirely female. As a result, they find it not quite right to be referred to as "him", but also not quite right to be referred to as "her".

So they prefer to be referred to in the gender-neutral "them".

If you are "traditionally aligned", if your personal self-identity matches the body your ghost[0] inhabits, this can be totally mystifying. Personally, I've come to accept that people are weird, and if someone says they want to be referred to as "they" and "them" then why not?

[0] "You are a ghost driving a meat covered skeleton made from stardust[1] riding a rock floating through space."

[1] Or nuclear waste - take your pick.

Edit: To the people downvoting this, it was intended to be a factual answer to a direct and reasonable question. I have no idea why you think this comment is inappropriate and deserves a downvote.

That must feel terrible...

Is this common? Never heard of it.

I have no personal experience of it, but I know people who have. As a result I've read a bit about it. It seems that people in these circumstances can be content with who they are, but the external pressures from society can be overwhelmingly unbearable.

I don't know how common it is, but you can look up the terms "non-binary" and "transgender" and find out more.

Again, personally, I think we should just let people get on with being who they are. Respect them for who they are and the work they do, and just stay the hell out of their personal lives. No business of mine.

Thanks for the thoughts!

It's extremely common on parts of the internet but extremely rare in normal life

Tumblr principally.

I feel like we would've said that about gay people thirty years ago if we'd had the Internet we do today. ' I live with one person who uses "they/them" and have lived with three others, one of whom identified as transgendered (as opposed to "gender queer). At the high school I worked at, we typically had a transgendered population of 1%-5%, but no one who used they/them--just one who used he/him/his and several that used she/her/hers. I think I've known more transgendered people than I've known CMU, Harvard, Stanford, and MIT grads combined, despite working in a tech startup and being the son of two CMU grads.

Yes, it's rare, but not as rare as graduating from Harvard, and it's definitely not just an Internet phenomenon. There are just a lot of areas where they don't feel welcome. They're real people in real life and they tend to congregate in places where they'll be treated as such. Right now that includes sections of the Internet, but also quite a few real life enclaves.

I agree with you, but Only a small subset of transgendered people want their pronouns to be they/their

In the spaces I frequent, it's becoming more common to introduce onesself by also introducing your preferred gender pronoun. "Hey, I'm Danielle, they/them." "Hi, I'm Mike, he/him." "Hi, I'm Sarah, she/her."

I like doing this because it's one small, simple way of welcoming those who might not otherwise feel accepted.

I haven't met anyone that has said that they consider themselves "non-binary", "transsexual", "transgender", or any of the other subtly different labels that they could use, but part of the current zeitgeist, especially within socially liberal-leaning circles, is to spread awareness of how diverse human sexuality is.

I don't think that there are really solid numbers for how different people identify themselves. The information would have to be self-reported, and since there would still be some social stigma attached in many places, I doubt that a survey would end up being very accurate.

I think you mean gender instead of sexuality. Gender is who you are, sexuality is who you like. (I'm replying to try to help, not to nitpick.)

I think that I meant both, and only wrote one.

Why not 'it' ?

Again, by my understanding, the pronoun "it" carries the baggage of non-person-ness. "It" is used for things, not people. I'm happy to be corrected on this by people with personal experience.

Some people have a mental illness that makes them feel like their biological gender isn't the correct one. For some, they "feel like" the opposite gender. Others feel somewhere in between and extrapolate that to mean that there is a spectrum of genders, hence "non-binary".

So maybe this is some variation of Gender Dysphoria [0].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_dysphoria

Edit: It seems it maybe caused by biological factors as well

Would this really be considered a mental illness? You can experience gender in many ways whilst remaining in good mental health. Gender identity is not always mapped directly to biological sex. It is much, much more than something you "feel like".

The original post started "He says he attributes...". The author's profile suggests they would prefer "They say they attribute...".

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