Gender, Gender, Everywhere!
As a low key nonbinary, I don't make a big deal out of my desire to have no gender, or my persistent feelings that gender is fake, except perhaps here in my LJ. I do fly a full-size nonbinary flag in my office downtown (a gift from T), but it rarely comes up in conversation with coworkers. One time a coworker asked whether nonbinary people could only date other nonbinary people -- my vocal response was "no", although my actual sentiment is "I wish".
Lately my default "feed" over at Substack has become dominated by gender, in the same way that my default feed over at Medium did before I quit Medium. I quit Medium because there was no way to avoid this default feed and view only the posts by people I wanted to follow, in chronological order. I'm still able to view Substack posts in this way using the "inbox" so I haven't quit Substack yet.
But it appears that any long-form essay social media site that runs an engagement algorithm will eventually focus upon "men vs. women" bullshit. It reminds me of how basic it is for most people to view themselves as "a man" or "a woman" and how they base all sorts of bullshit on these gender identities. Anytime somebody writes "as a woman" or "as a man" I feel like downvoting them and blocking them. You can't downvote on Substack yet, but, ugh.
The very first item in my Substack feed this morning talks about "men" in its first paragraph. Scroll down a bit and someone complains, "I'm so tired of man talk." Below that is an essay titled "Why Women Pay the Price for Caring for and Understanding Men".
It's tough escaping the influence of a culture that constantly stamps me as "man", and I imagine it's even tougher trying to make the culture stamp you as "woman" when you were born "man". I try to lean against these stereotypes. They bother me even when transgender people use them to describe themselves, because I feel like they've decided to swap one stereotype that doesn't fit them for another stereotype they imagine fits them somewhat better (though it doesn't, which is a mean thing to say out loud, but that's what I'm thinking, that this entire gender enterprise is fake no matter which one you align with, sort of like people who leave one version of Christianity for another LOL).
It would be OK if somebody were writing an essay about what it's like to have a penis, and comparing and contrasting what it's like to have a penis with other people who have a penis. That would actually be something related to genetic sex characteristics. But so much of what people write about when they invoke gender has NOTHING TO DO WITH GENETIC SEX CHARACTERISTICS. WTF is "man talk". Whatever man talk is, I bet you could describe it without resorting to a gender stereotype, and I bet both some men and some women engage in such kind of talk, while some men and some women do not.
Sex characteristics are real, of course, I can see that I have a penis and you have a vagina. But all the rest is bullshit, just shut up.
Have a good weekend, readers!
Lately my default "feed" over at Substack has become dominated by gender, in the same way that my default feed over at Medium did before I quit Medium. I quit Medium because there was no way to avoid this default feed and view only the posts by people I wanted to follow, in chronological order. I'm still able to view Substack posts in this way using the "inbox" so I haven't quit Substack yet.
But it appears that any long-form essay social media site that runs an engagement algorithm will eventually focus upon "men vs. women" bullshit. It reminds me of how basic it is for most people to view themselves as "a man" or "a woman" and how they base all sorts of bullshit on these gender identities. Anytime somebody writes "as a woman" or "as a man" I feel like downvoting them and blocking them. You can't downvote on Substack yet, but, ugh.
The very first item in my Substack feed this morning talks about "men" in its first paragraph. Scroll down a bit and someone complains, "I'm so tired of man talk." Below that is an essay titled "Why Women Pay the Price for Caring for and Understanding Men".
It's tough escaping the influence of a culture that constantly stamps me as "man", and I imagine it's even tougher trying to make the culture stamp you as "woman" when you were born "man". I try to lean against these stereotypes. They bother me even when transgender people use them to describe themselves, because I feel like they've decided to swap one stereotype that doesn't fit them for another stereotype they imagine fits them somewhat better (though it doesn't, which is a mean thing to say out loud, but that's what I'm thinking, that this entire gender enterprise is fake no matter which one you align with, sort of like people who leave one version of Christianity for another LOL).
It would be OK if somebody were writing an essay about what it's like to have a penis, and comparing and contrasting what it's like to have a penis with other people who have a penis. That would actually be something related to genetic sex characteristics. But so much of what people write about when they invoke gender has NOTHING TO DO WITH GENETIC SEX CHARACTERISTICS. WTF is "man talk". Whatever man talk is, I bet you could describe it without resorting to a gender stereotype, and I bet both some men and some women engage in such kind of talk, while some men and some women do not.
Sex characteristics are real, of course, I can see that I have a penis and you have a vagina. But all the rest is bullshit, just shut up.
Have a good weekend, readers!