Reddit reviews Imajica: Featuring New Illustrations and an Appendix
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Harper Perennial
I also feel that "it" is the best pronoun I could use for myself, and I also feel intense pressure from the community to NOT use that pronoun. It also seems absurd to me that a person should be offended by what I choose to call myself. I think it's reasonable to assert that I'm allowed to use whatever words I like to refer to myself, but if you ask me not to use a given word around you because it bothers you, I'll try to accommodate that, just like I'd try not to swear around a person who asked me not to. With a pronoun, though... it feels like that is too fundamental and tied to one's identity to be reasonably policed this way.
If a lesbian wanted to be called a "dyke" (personally I love this word), or like my best friend, if a gay man liked using the word "faggot" jocularly to himself and his friends (I know a LOT of gay men who do), I wouldn't try to tell them that they shouldn't, but I also would understand why it would offend people. So I'm not sure what the answer is. Part of the reason I have no problem with "it" personally, I think, is because of Clive Barker's Imajica. One of the main characters is a creature whose sexuality and physical appearance are determined by the person LOOKING at it - a creature of manifest desire, so to speak. It's known as a mystif, and throughout the book is referred to as "it." The book is romantic, deeply emotional, and Pie'oh'pah never feels disrespected or denigrated, but I couldn't argue that "it" doesn't dehumanize Pie - it does. That's the point. Pie is not a human and shouldn't be thought of as a human. That would be limiting your understanding of it and who it is.
And here we come to the thing. "Dehumanize" means two things, and one of them is okay, and the other is not. When we mean that someone is treating a person as if they don't deserve rights, safety, the same things everyone else deserves, we call that dehumanizing, and that's fucked up. I don't think that the use of "it" as a pronoun necessarily does that, though. I think the use of "it" as a pronoun does the other form of dehumanizing, and it's the one I'm fine with: it sets me apart from humanity, makes me sound as if I am not human.
Think about the difference between saying: "You are not A PERSON" and "You are not HUMAN." I could be a person with rights and feelings without being human. I see this idea come up in /r/ennnnnnnnnnnnbbbbbby a lot - a lot of enby folks seem to feel this same disconnection I do, this sense that humanity as a concept is an ill-fitting suit, that the body can't be entirely divorced from its binary construction and so gender feels inextricably part of the human experience. There are tons of memes about being "a vaguely girl-shaped void in space" or "an ancient existential horror in a flesh suit" etc. - enbys FEEL dehumanized, and we don't particularly seem to mind that. I've never felt that becoming a man would make me more comfortable with myself, but I've many times felt that becoming a ROBOT would sort some of my shit out. I don't want to be a human. I don't want it to be easy for people to decide how to categorize me and then forget me. I don't want them to skim over my pronoun comfortably and then class me with all the other people they've ever known who used that pronoun. I want them to think about it when they say it, even a fraction as much as I have, and consider both why it bothers them and why it might not bother me. I want them to want to ask questions and be curious. For those reasons, I use the pronoun "it." But there's only one important reason, and that's that "it" feels like me. That's what pronouns are for. They're words that you use to refer to a specific person, place or thing. I would like to be specified, and in that respect, "they" is insufficient. "It" is specific without being definitive.
And if someone is the kind of person who would be so troubled by my use of "it" to refer to MYSELF exclusively, they will probably be troubled by a lot of other things about me, so we probably won't be friends. I think it'll be all right. I ain't hurtin anybody, and neither are you, so you do what feels right.
Currently on the fourth book of A Song of Ice & Fire series (AKA A Game of Thrones). The fifth book was recently released, and all are long, engaging books (so far).
Edit: I recently read Imajica which was completely phenomenal.
Another other one I just thought of is Imajica by Clive Barker
I - Imajica by Cliver Barker Awesome book.
I love "It" as well, but my favourite book is "Imagica" by Clive Barker.
Just read it. Thank me later.