To boob or not to boob?
This is going to be an examination of something that happened a month or two ago but Nicole mentioned it the other day so the revisitation has motivated me. My ex, Kaylee, the relationship that was somehow the healthiest that I had ever been in, recently had her breasts removed. In an attempt to be "genderless" or perhaps in an attempt to go for some "alien aesthetic". She's not transgender, I dated her for years, I can assure you of that so please don't start in on this being some kind of transphobic rant. It's not. It's an examination of what happens with psychosis when, instead of being addressed as a serious issue, is treated like an "equal but different" perspective. Or, more likely, "there's something wrong there but I don't want to be labeled a bigot and thrown from polite society" perspective.
It all seemed a bit monkey see/monkey do when I was up close and personal with these ideas, which increasingly breed within the intersectional movement, as I watched it first develop with our roommate. Our roommate, and Kaylee's best college friend (and friend to me, at the time, as well, she lobbied for me to move in, so no hard feelings) was dating a girl who made the proclamation that she wanted to be referred to as they/them. Let me be upfront, I don't do that. Not out of meanness but because that is not how I use words. I use words as tools to most efficiently describe a person, a scene, a thought, or an object. Her girlfriend was not only a single person but a girl. As much of a girl as a girl could be. I am not going to call something that is black in color red because I am told to, it's nothing personal, but it's inaccurate. That being said, I'll call you by your name and treat you as respectfully as anyone else but objective reality, by my measurement, is worth hanging onto.
But I digress, this isn't about me.
Back to the timeline. Soon after said roommate decided to go the they/them route. So I decided to have a discussion with Kaylee about it. I was just curious what this whole phenomenon was about and I also wanted to share the reasons why I am going to stay away from the pronoun switcheroo. She basically explained that it's about personality, at least for them, and not some kind of dysphoria. They didn't fit in, or find interest in, what are some pre-conceived notions of what a successful girl makes. Motherhood, most prominently, but other general stereotypes as well. And they looked over at boy stereotypes and said well I don't like those so much, either, but I for one know that I don't like this girly shit. They/them, as pronouns, were just placeholders until something else, or more accurate, presented itself. I found the whole thing to be rather childish, to be honest, in the sense that you're allowing society (or your perception of society) to define you, or define womanhood and manhood, as opposed to you just defining yourself. "I'm just as much of a girl as you are, and the fact that I don't want to breed little monsters doesn't change that". As opposed to this pariah mentality.
Whatever, intersectionality is all about the escalation of victimology and disempowerment for the good of the collective. So no real surprise there. But then something interesting happened. Kaylee told me that our roommate was discussing hacking off her breasts as part of her hope to become a genderless specimen. At the time, surprisingly, Kaylee was not totally on board. She found it a bit extreme and, liking her roommate's breasts, suggested she get to keep them for herself if she didn't want them. But still, it wasn't considered a real big deal.
I felt it was a very big deal. I wasn't close enough friends to really do or say anything but I looked at it as an extreme form or self mutiliation. I looked at it like "jesus, is this time for an intervention?" But the preoccupation with the subjective, well she says she's not of any gender so, made such an approach unthinkable. But. If you do not have a medical reason to start hacking off breasts or any other part of your body should we not consider that a mental or emotional issue? When a teenager cuts themselves we raise red flags. Do we just not do that now because it's a "medical" procedure?
Ultimately, I don't know if said roommate wound up having top surgery or not but Kaylee went on to do so. And again, the question, should someone have intervened? Take that proclamation as a call for help as opposed to a call for applause? Yaaaaas bitch, slay! I do think it is a sort of group psychosis. It is not coincidence, in my view, that these thoughts of genderlessness continued to grow with her new boyfriend, who identifies as a girl, and the confirmation bias of subjectivity as reality became more pervasive. Kaylee did have some psychological issues, she believed she had bipolar disorder or something else, which she thinks she got from her mother, but couldn't there have been a better way of dealing with them? At what point do you stop being a loving friend, or boyfriend, or girlfriend, and become an enabler? Is it cowardice or a genuine sense that this is all normal?
It's a weird time and I guess it doesn't really matter now, I don't date or speak to Kaylee anymore, and I don't have any kids that I need to protect from this madness but I find it really creepy how we've slowly allowed this to become a new normal. There's nothing wrong with telling a friend or loved one to sit down with you and talk when they start approaching extremes, as opposed to assuming every change is a form of progress.
wasz, ryan
It all seemed a bit monkey see/monkey do when I was up close and personal with these ideas, which increasingly breed within the intersectional movement, as I watched it first develop with our roommate. Our roommate, and Kaylee's best college friend (and friend to me, at the time, as well, she lobbied for me to move in, so no hard feelings) was dating a girl who made the proclamation that she wanted to be referred to as they/them. Let me be upfront, I don't do that. Not out of meanness but because that is not how I use words. I use words as tools to most efficiently describe a person, a scene, a thought, or an object. Her girlfriend was not only a single person but a girl. As much of a girl as a girl could be. I am not going to call something that is black in color red because I am told to, it's nothing personal, but it's inaccurate. That being said, I'll call you by your name and treat you as respectfully as anyone else but objective reality, by my measurement, is worth hanging onto.
But I digress, this isn't about me.
Back to the timeline. Soon after said roommate decided to go the they/them route. So I decided to have a discussion with Kaylee about it. I was just curious what this whole phenomenon was about and I also wanted to share the reasons why I am going to stay away from the pronoun switcheroo. She basically explained that it's about personality, at least for them, and not some kind of dysphoria. They didn't fit in, or find interest in, what are some pre-conceived notions of what a successful girl makes. Motherhood, most prominently, but other general stereotypes as well. And they looked over at boy stereotypes and said well I don't like those so much, either, but I for one know that I don't like this girly shit. They/them, as pronouns, were just placeholders until something else, or more accurate, presented itself. I found the whole thing to be rather childish, to be honest, in the sense that you're allowing society (or your perception of society) to define you, or define womanhood and manhood, as opposed to you just defining yourself. "I'm just as much of a girl as you are, and the fact that I don't want to breed little monsters doesn't change that". As opposed to this pariah mentality.
Whatever, intersectionality is all about the escalation of victimology and disempowerment for the good of the collective. So no real surprise there. But then something interesting happened. Kaylee told me that our roommate was discussing hacking off her breasts as part of her hope to become a genderless specimen. At the time, surprisingly, Kaylee was not totally on board. She found it a bit extreme and, liking her roommate's breasts, suggested she get to keep them for herself if she didn't want them. But still, it wasn't considered a real big deal.
I felt it was a very big deal. I wasn't close enough friends to really do or say anything but I looked at it as an extreme form or self mutiliation. I looked at it like "jesus, is this time for an intervention?" But the preoccupation with the subjective, well she says she's not of any gender so, made such an approach unthinkable. But. If you do not have a medical reason to start hacking off breasts or any other part of your body should we not consider that a mental or emotional issue? When a teenager cuts themselves we raise red flags. Do we just not do that now because it's a "medical" procedure?
Ultimately, I don't know if said roommate wound up having top surgery or not but Kaylee went on to do so. And again, the question, should someone have intervened? Take that proclamation as a call for help as opposed to a call for applause? Yaaaaas bitch, slay! I do think it is a sort of group psychosis. It is not coincidence, in my view, that these thoughts of genderlessness continued to grow with her new boyfriend, who identifies as a girl, and the confirmation bias of subjectivity as reality became more pervasive. Kaylee did have some psychological issues, she believed she had bipolar disorder or something else, which she thinks she got from her mother, but couldn't there have been a better way of dealing with them? At what point do you stop being a loving friend, or boyfriend, or girlfriend, and become an enabler? Is it cowardice or a genuine sense that this is all normal?
It's a weird time and I guess it doesn't really matter now, I don't date or speak to Kaylee anymore, and I don't have any kids that I need to protect from this madness but I find it really creepy how we've slowly allowed this to become a new normal. There's nothing wrong with telling a friend or loved one to sit down with you and talk when they start approaching extremes, as opposed to assuming every change is a form of progress.
wasz, ryan