Again focusing too much on the terms and labels and not enough on the distinctions people are trying to make does everyone a disservice.
Honestly this whole thing just reads like 3 or more separate... errrr axis's I guess you'd call it overlapping.
On a biological level we have the two sexes, male and female. And yes I know intersex people exist as a biological concept but they are rare, often even one off cases and I ever so wish that progressives would understand that "Exception Worshiping" is not the purest form of "Inclusion."
Then we get sexual orientation; straight, gay, bi, asexual... really does seem like it should cover everything and I have zero idea what meaningful distinction terms like pansexual and the absolute nightmare of all labels Tumblr has come up with are acually trying to say. You like sex with other genders, you like sex with your gender, you like sex with both genders (I realized I probably just answered my own question there....) or you don't like sex at all and I don't really see outside of either branding or "I want to feel special so I need a new label" (which by the way at some point we have to addreess is a lot of this) how anything else would fit in there in any meaningful sense that actually defines or describes anything new.
And now for the 3rd axis, gender identity... and the one I understand the least. Transgender, as in used in the concept of a person who wants to biologically be or plans or wants to transition biology to another biological sex... yeah I get that because there's a functional difference being described.
But pretty much after that all concepts of gender identity... do sort just stop making sense to me. Since I don't think biological men and women should have societal restrictions placed on them the idea of some special subcategory of people subverting them is meaningless to me.
Look at it this way. Let's look at once common but slightly older and archiac term that has mostly fallen out of use... crossdresser. A crossdresser was (is, I'm sure the subculture still exists in some context) a person who preferred to wear the clothing of the other gender.
See the problem? For that concept to have any meaning at all you have to agree that men and women are required by some level; social, legal, whatever to wear different clothing. If you don't, if you think men should be able to wear skirts and women to wear to wear pants and so forth... the concept stops being meaningful.
And that's basically been my whole problem with gender politics in general in the last decade or so. It's honestly seemed like a concentrated effort to bring back all the old genders roles and rules I thought we were trying to get rid of for the sole purpose of letting a subculture feel special for subverting them.
Honestly this whole thing just reads like 3 or more separate... errrr axis's I guess you'd call it overlapping.
On a biological level we have the two sexes, male and female. And yes I know intersex people exist as a biological concept but they are rare, often even one off cases and I ever so wish that progressives would understand that "Exception Worshiping" is not the purest form of "Inclusion."
Then we get sexual orientation; straight, gay, bi, asexual... really does seem like it should cover everything and I have zero idea what meaningful distinction terms like pansexual and the absolute nightmare of all labels Tumblr has come up with are acually trying to say. You like sex with other genders, you like sex with your gender, you like sex with both genders (I realized I probably just answered my own question there....) or you don't like sex at all and I don't really see outside of either branding or "I want to feel special so I need a new label" (which by the way at some point we have to addreess is a lot of this) how anything else would fit in there in any meaningful sense that actually defines or describes anything new.
And now for the 3rd axis, gender identity... and the one I understand the least. Transgender, as in used in the concept of a person who wants to biologically be or plans or wants to transition biology to another biological sex... yeah I get that because there's a functional difference being described.
But pretty much after that all concepts of gender identity... do sort just stop making sense to me. Since I don't think biological men and women should have societal restrictions placed on them the idea of some special subcategory of people subverting them is meaningless to me.
Look at it this way. Let's look at once common but slightly older and archiac term that has mostly fallen out of use... crossdresser. A crossdresser was (is, I'm sure the subculture still exists in some context) a person who preferred to wear the clothing of the other gender.
See the problem? For that concept to have any meaning at all you have to agree that men and women are required by some level; social, legal, whatever to wear different clothing. If you don't, if you think men should be able to wear skirts and women to wear to wear pants and so forth... the concept stops being meaningful.
And that's basically been my whole problem with gender politics in general in the last decade or so. It's honestly seemed like a concentrated effort to bring back all the old genders roles and rules I thought we were trying to get rid of for the sole purpose of letting a subculture feel special for subverting them.
