(1 of 5) Hi! So I’m the neurodivergent person from the other day. I’m going to try and explain the terms that confuse me, but it might not come out clearly or I might accidently offend someone. If one of these might offend someone, please don’t post it. I’m trying my best with wording it just becomes difficult sometimes. -U
The first idea/term that confuses me is the use of abbreviations or shortened versions of words all the time. For me, my perception of shortened words is that the words are less meaningful. Words are simply squiggles and random sounds that humans associate meaning with and I feel that by shortening these squiggles, it just takes away even more meaning. So I guess I was just hoping that someone could try to explain the benefits of shortening words/phrases.
The second is the use of girl and boy in gender names such as demigirl and nano boy. Everytime in the past few years that I’ve been referred to as a girl, it’s always been in an infantilizing way and made me feel like I was lesser than the person. So I was also wondering if there was a reason why girl and boy are used instead of other terms that have a more grown up connotation like woman and man.
The other thing that confuses me is when definitions have multiple words that share them. I have a vague understanding of umbrella terms, but broader concepts are harder for me to understand than specifics so I was wondering if one of you could explain the distinction between like transgender and non binary and genderqu**r and when you use each one and their differences. Sorry if these don’t make sense or offend anyone. Please don’t post any of these that might offend anyone. Thanks! And sort again for my rambling ways.
1) The benefits of shortening words/phrases is just to make sentences less bulky. ‘DNA’ is a lot easier to remember and say than ‘deoxyribonucleic acid’ for example. It’s just more of a mouthful, has more room for spelling errors, and longer. So shortening words/phrases is considered useful by a lot of people, but it’s especially helpful to neurodivergent people who have trouble with large blocks of text, memory, writing/reading, and/or speech.
2) I gather just personal preference and the age bracket for this one. A lot of the people who ID as nonbinary tend to between teens-mid/late twenties. There are exceptions, of course. And those people may feel more comfortable/familiar with ‘girl’/’boy’ compared to ‘man’/’woman’. Another thing to note might be that there aren’t really Adult alternatives for boyfriend/girlfriend. manfriend/womanfriend sounds kind of weird, and I do think the two might be related given that adult terminology tends to be reserved for more formal conversations while more casual terminology leans toward girl/boy. But it’s okay to be uncomfortable with being infantilized and people have expressed disliking the terms for the same reasons before.3) Everyone who doesn’t identify with their assigned gender is transgender (unless they don’t personally like it). Trans is then broken off into two groups: Binary and Nonbinary. Under binary you have trans men and trans women. Under nonbinary is a spectrum of other genders. genderq*eer is a specific gender. It might help to think of it like a family tree! Grandmother -> transgender, Sibling 1 -> Binary -> has two offspring, trans men and trans women. Sibling 2 -> Nonbinary -> has a LOT of kids, one of which is genderq*eer.
