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Splats and Spivaks - how computers break down/reconstruct perceptions of gender

  
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
09:11 / 19.04.05
I remember mentioning splats and spivaks in a thread on the use of the epicene pronoun (that is, a pronoun that does not denote or demand a gendered reading) - a quick Google reveals the thread, in all its bad-tempered glory, here.

Annnyway, t'other day I roused myself to find out more about this sparticular interface of gender identity and online gaming, two great tastes that taste great together. I don't know if it was the first usage, but the only extant one, unless I am spelling "Spivak" wrong, is this one.

It struck me as interesting that there didn't seem to be an exact delineation between "neuter" and "spivak" - spivak seems to be a non-gendered gender, whereas neuter does not partake of gender. Maybe, however, the answer to the question "what's the difference between neuter and spivak?" is "one is it and one is e" - the pronominal usage either avoids or subverts the "he/she" parallel. So, hmmm.

The splat, despite silly name, also does something quite interesting. One of the potential uses or importances of the epicene (itself a complicated adjective) that has become relevant in the last decade or so is the proliferation of situations in which one might not have immediate access to the cues whereby you might normally conclude a gender usage, either through intention or simple unfamiliarity.

However. The splat usage is a chosen, programmed attribute. That is, it doesn't mean "I don't know enough about your gender to call you he or she with a certainty of correctness, so I will use this form as a temporary or permanent solution", but rather "I want to conceal or defer how I stand in terms of binary gender, and am using a technological system to do so". Which is interesting... the closest example I can think of, in a way, is the Miss/Mrs/Ms. thing, which came up in the shouty thread linked above also. That is, Ms. was an innovation that allowed one to emply the structures of title (as a "splat" is able to use pronouns) without revealing whether or not one was married. Except the use of the wild card asterisk makes it even harder to translate into speech.

So, how many genders do you think you need, for personal use and to describe the world around you? Are splats and spivaks, or anything of that ilk, meaningful to you?
 
 
Ex
18:46 / 19.04.05
This interests me because I’ve been wondering how one can get outside a two-gender system, both linguistically, or more broadly.
There are at least two initial options (see me smash binaries with, er, more binaries):
* you can identify as both he and she (to a greater, lesser or equal amount) – in the MUD mentioned, you could take the ‘hermaphrodite' pronoun: “Combines characteristics common to both polar genders.”
* you can identify as neither he nor she.

This distinction interests me as ‘androgyny’ gets chucked
around a lot as a concept, and sometimes it’s meant to signify ‘I have component parts from both genders’ and sometimes ‘I don’t have many distinguishing (physical or mental) gendered attributes’.

I was reading some Sandra Bem stuff lately (not recent stuff, though), in which you could 'score' highly for gendered characteristics (of both genders), or low for both. High on both characteristics from both genders got you the label ‘androgynous’, low on both won you ‘undifferentiated' - this rather splits androgyny into two bits (at least).

Where you go from not being either gender (or not defining yourself in relation to the existing two genders) is a really underexplored field (I think). So the neuter MUD gender ‘Partakes of neither polar gender’, which seems simple, but the spivak may be a third gender but has no given characteristics (you’re right, the spivak/neutral line is tricky; it says spivak is “A third gender alternative; or, perhaps, the absence of gender in the common sense.”) Presumably spivak will acquire meaning as a gender through use, which is an intriguing idea.

I like the way the splat allows one to deliberately defer statement and stay in a kind of limbo – of course, it doesn’t say why you’re declining to mention, so it could be for fairly ‘traditional’ gendered reasons (you have a ‘real’ male or female gender persona that you’re hiding, but you don’t want to appear outright as the other either, you’re fed up with getting hit on, and so forth).

I really appreciate any textual marks that allow people more easily to
occupy other gender positions like this, whether it’s just for a jaunt or as a marker of something more significant.

A particular instance in which this all came into focus for me was when I attended a conference (on groovy sex’n’gender stuff). I filled in a survey which gave a variety of tickboxes for gender –from “male” to “female”, with the area in between was mapped out in degrees of “mostly male” or “somewhat female” or “equally male or female”. It should have been a refreshing change from the usual two-box no-option model, but it made me realise how much I didn’t relate to it. Theoretically, the middle position was gender neutral, but it was still very gendered – it still assumed that you would be partaking of these two categories, which to me feel odd. Like someone offering me the chance at identifying as “equally windsurfer and cheerleader”. Or “somewhat scone baker”.

I’ve never actually MUDded or MOOed, and would like to know how they function – I only know the anecdote that Kate Bornstein (I think) couldn’t pull online as a spivak. Everyone wanted to know her ‘real’ gender before they had ‘unreal’ sex with her.
 
  
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