fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #4066 ]

[ SECRET POST #4066 ]

⌈ Secret Post #4066 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

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^This, ffs. Stop trying to cram people into boxes you assign them.

More like they're doing it to themselves. You don't need a label for every minutiae of gender.

First of all, how much "minutiae" are we talking about

Second, how do you know people don't need it

They're doing a great job of cramming themselves into tons of narrow little boxes all on their own.

If you have a cat, try picking it up and putting it in a box. Doesn’t work, does it?

Yes, my cat loves it!

Your cat ruined my metaphor. I love it anyway. Give it a treat from me.

Edited (#$%^ html) 2018-02-21 00:13 (UTC)

My cat gets into boxes on his own. If I put him in a box, he's happy about that too. Then he stays there until he's hungry or something. Cats love boxes. They're famous for loving boxes. How can someone not know this?

Because only dumb assholes get in this box.

And my cat will happily get into a box (or better yet, a paper bag) all by himself...but it has to be his own idea. He'd jump right out if you tried to put him in there.

#notallcats

NAYRT but like

I think that's kind of the point here? let them do it instead of trying to define it for them? the problem isn't the categorization, it's who has the authority to make that categorization

Oh no you're right. People are perfectly capable to make themselves look ridiculous, they don't need additional help for it.

I'm sorry you think anything but male/female/strictly nonbinary with no fucking reference toward being designated anything at birth is ridiculous

Gender is bullshit anyway. What's the point of labeling your personal mix of boy feel girl feel no feel instead deciding it doesn't fucking matter in the first place?

Since it's based on cultural stereotypes that are ever shifting in the first place.

Because gender is a deeply embedded social construct that we use to understand our identity and society, and have done for 100s of years, and it's not something that you can or should just wake up one day and decide is now abolished. It's neither possible nor desirable.

It's a framework of meaning. You can reject specific implementations of that, and the hide-bound rigidity that accompanies them, without rejecting the basic framework.

nayrt but wait, so you ARE saying society gets to define gender?

So ye women of past who insisted on wearing pants instead of skirts, or sneaked into the army, or refused to have kids, or liked playing ball with the boys were all actually nonbinary since they didn't conform to societal expectations! Wow.

nayrt but wait, so you ARE saying society gets to define gender

Gender as a set of ideas is, in part, socially determined, yes. That doesn't mean that any individual person's relationship to that framework is determined by society.

So ye women of past who insisted on wearing pants instead of skirts, or sneaked into the army, or refused to have kids, or liked playing ball with the boys were all actually nonbinary since they didn't conform to societal expectations! Wow.

There's like 4 or 5 different ways in which I disagree with that

but most fundamentally, probably, is that taking an action that doesn't fit into the gender binary isn't the same as having a nonbinary identity

How would you define the difference between having a nonbinary identity and taking consistent actions that don't fit into the gender binary?

I think that, in general, an identity is something distinct from an aggregate of actions. it's a combination of self-definition and performance and persona and those kinds of things, in my mind - not to say that it's unrelated to actions and experience, but it is not just those things.

The claim that gender really is "socially determined" is pretty sad, considering previous discourse focused on how society doesn't get to define gender. That your presentation, hobbies, behavior, etc. has absolutely nothing to do with your gender.

How do you disagree with that statement, by the way? I'm just curious because you haven't offered a criteria to define male and female besides partially socially determined, which would suggest someone can be objectively "male" despite having female genitals if society determines they are more masculine than feminine. If gender is socially defined, why would someone claiming to be nonbinary do so (since they must acknowledge that it is up to society to define their gender)? If there is no tangible, objective way to define male and female, how could you define nonbinary?

What I said was that gender-as-a-social-construct is socially determined - the external framework - not the person's identity and relation to that framework. I don't think that any person's individual gender is or should be defined for them externally. I am certainly not saying that it is up to society to define anyone's gender. It's more that gender-as-a-social-construct is a background for all of our understandings of gender that we variously use or reject in defining our own identities for ourselves.

So, do you mean then, a person's understanding of their own gender comes from their understanding of gender in general, which has been influenced by external forces?

I could understand this, but not without the caveat that someone's understanding of their gender is likely to change and evolve as their understanding of gender in general changes and evolves - both as their perspectives naturally may change as the get older, and how society views men and women changes.

On the other hand, I also struggle to find this significant outside of personal soul-searching since there doesn't seem to be objective criteria to define it. If your understanding of gender volunteers society's expectations of gender roles, can your gender change if you travel to Saudi Arabia, or Japan, or Finland, or the moon - if the backdrop of external framework of a society's expectations of gender changes? Can you be a man according to Saudia Arabia and a woman according to Finland and is everyone nonbinary on the moon?

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2018-02-21 03:02 (UTC) - Expand

So is the thing we call "The United States," but you can't get away with breaking federal law too often without consequences.

Similarly, the class system we call "gender" may be bullshit, and the markers for that class are historically constructed, but folks still get beaten and raped for not performing the right markers.

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