Quote:
Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
We’ve made great progress in the last 50 years moving away from traditional definitions of masculinity and femininity. The goal was to erase the outdated notions of gender altogether and just let people be who they choose. If people want to wear dresses and makeup, let them. If they want to do wear their hair short and do combat sports, let them. If they want play with guns or play with dolls, be aggressive or compliant, wear makeup or shave their hair - let them choose without labelling any of those choices masculine or feminine.
So reifying those preferences by making gender a core identity is a step back. It imposes arbitrary categories on a spectrum of behaviour. It reinforces the association of dolls and dresses with girls, and guns and trucks with boys.
Biological sex is innate and (in almost all cases) binary. Gender isn’t. It’s a made-up concept that scrunches up a whole spectrum of human behaviour into two categories based on cultural expectations. We should be moving past it rather than reinforcing it.
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This aspect of what Cliff is saying I think I agree with. Disclaimer: I don't feel super informed on this topic, and am very open to being wrong/learning here.
As soon as the letters started being added to LGBT, it doubled down on the idea that people need to be put into buckets, and we just created more buckets. But the more buckets we created, the more people that were left feeling like they didn't fit a bucket (which can be a lonely/lost feeling). I know there's the "+", but I think I agree with the spirit of what Cliff is saying: Can't we just let people be who they want to be and act how they prefer to act without judgement or trying to categorize them?
Everyone is an individual, and in more ways than just gender or sexual orientation. I think trying to label people is harmful. People have long sought to come to conclusions about people based on race, appearance or nationality. I don't see that as positive. I think it's good for everyone to learn that they operate in a deeply ingrained social construct of what it means to be male or female, and to challenge themselves to escape that, but I don't think more/new buckets is necessarily the answer.