#gender theory

[whereserpentswalk]

Hi, I saw one of your latest posts talking about the gender "segregation" where you state that women's only spaces shouldn't exist. So, if that was actually real, do you think me, a cis lesbian woman, should I be using a changing room or a bathroom used also by people with penises?

I would feel very uncomfortable being naked near someone who is biologically a male and I have the right to say no, no matter how they react, cis women's feelings matter too and nobody can tell me when I should be uncomfortable, same thing goes for sports, cis women could get physically hurt if a biological male played against them and this had already happened in a school in the US.

This more confirms how you far left activists don't care about us

I do not care about people's disgust when it comes to means of segregation. Do you think that during the 1960s there was no white person who felt uncomfortable sharing a bathroom with someone with dark skin when desegregation hit bathrooms and locker rooms? Do you think there's no white person who feels that way now (hell, a big reason American suberbs are a thing is that it allows white people to live in white only places post civil rights laws)?

How is your desire to feel comfortable through segregation any diffrent? There is a group you feel uncomfortable with in a space so you want it segregated, I suggest you either not use that space or find a way to be more comfortable. Society may have a responsibility for you to be safe, but there is no responsibility for you to feel safe.

And do you think nobody wants to be segregated away from you? You're literally a queer person, there are people who do not want you in public because of the exact same uncomfortablity with you. You probably have way more in common with trans people than most cis people do. If many people were allowed to remove what makes them uncomfortable from society, you would be forced into the closet. This isn't a hypothetical, the same people pushing for removal of trans people from society have same sex relationships as their next target.

Uncomfortablity is not something society can or should protect you from.

[whitehairedanimeboyfriend]

"We can always tell" is a violent threat btw.

[overthegardenwirtt]

the imane khelif stuff is so crazy because the real reason she is upsetting so many people is because she is a person in the public light who is actually showing that sex is not as binary and biologically determined as terfs/transphobes like to pretend.

like forever the argument has been there are 2 sexes: biological woman (XX, Vagina) and biological man (XY, Penis). but that is not and has never been the case. so now these people have to try to pick apart the things that they THINK make u one biological sex, plato's theory of forms-style, and they can't find a black and white answer and it drives them insane

does testosterone make u a man? does estrogen make u a woman? what about people with PCOS who produce more testosterone? what about men who get their testes removed because of cancer and no longer naturally produce testosterone? what about men going on finasteride? what about people with klinefelter syndrome who have XXY? when we really get down to it, biological sex can become just as fluid as gender sometimes and that is scary to a lot of people

[arielthedaydreamer]

The world would be a better place if cis people understood the concepts of gender euphoria and dysphoria as things that everyone experiences, not just trans people.

The woman is not wearing makeup and a short skirt for male attention. She is doing that because it gives her gender euphoria as a woman.

On a more serious note, if a man doesn't feel comfortable to wear a pink shirt; eat a pink ice cream; listen to a female singer who is popular; express his feelings; drink fruity juices; hold his girlfriend's purse; say certain words; act with kindness towards his loved ones; apologize; deescalate conflict; watch a movie enjoyed by women; play with a small and fluffy animal; because he thinks these things make him look girly, less manly or "nor a real man", that is no way to live. That man is experiencing intense levels of gender dysphoria and he needs help.

I feel like people only look at men like that and laugh and call them sexist. Some of them might be and they need to be called out for it, but I feel like gender dysphoria is very common in cis men and we should be calling it what it is.

A cis man doesn't "feel uncomfortable" when he paints his nails for the first time, he gets dysphoric. Just like the cis woman who wears jeans during summer because she forgot to shave her legs and is embarassed about it.

Dysphoria happens to cis people, All. The. Time. Pass the message on.

[remidepointedulac]

remaking this post because I originally wrote it as a reply on someone’s post about how tme/tma are intersexist and I want to link to it without drawing attention to their blog.

The theory of trans-misogyny is actually already inclusive of intersex people. Julia Serano, the coiner of the term trans-misogyny, said this when going in depth about the term

As the term has caught on, transmisogyny has increasingly been used as shorthand for any prejudice expressed toward trans women, regardless of content. However, while trans women are certainly targets of transmisogyny, any person who is perceived as, or presumed to be, a feminine or feminized "male" may be subjected to these same derogatory, pathologizing, and sexualizing attitudes (albeit to varying extents). - (Source)

she also said

In the years since Whipping Girl was published, the term "trans-misogyny" has taken on a life of its own, and people now use it in ways that I never intended. Specifically, I used the term to describe how the existence of societal misogyny/traditional sexism greatly informs how people perceive, interpret, or treat gender-variant people who seemingly "want to be female" or "want to be feminine" (regardless of their actual identity). However, many people nowadays use the word "trans-misogyny" in an identity-based manner to refer to any and all forms of discrimination targeting trans women. According to this latter usage, some would argue that people who identify as men, or male crossdressers, or drag queens, cannot possibly experience trans-misogyny—a close reading of Whipping Girl will reveal that I very much disagree with this premise. (See Chapter 48 of this book for a detailed explanation regarding why identity-based views of marginalization tend to be inaccurate and exclusive.) - (Source)

Basically, the popular definition of the terms TMA and TME would be fully inclusive of intersex people if the definition of trans-misogyny TMA/TME went off of was the same as the original definition, instead of adding on the criteria that to experience transmisogyny you have to be AMAB and a trans woman/transfeminine person (although i’ve seen people say transfems who don’t ID as women are tme as well). I believe this is why Julia Serano herself doesn’t use the terms TME/TMA, the way most people use the terms are too different from her theory of trans-misogyny.

[misespinas]

I feel like the thing Mulan (1998) accomplished better than any other Disney ‘princess’ film was how her society valued women based off 1. their attractiveness and 2. their ability to be submissive.

Other Disney movies (ex. Beauty and the Beast) make references to the misogyny women face for being unable to fulfill traditional female roles, but the disgusting standards aren't explored nearly as much as they are in Mulan. The entire song “You'll Bring Honor to Us All” focuses on all these horrible beauty standards she is expected to uphold:

“With good breeding/ And a tiny waist”

“Like a lotus blossom/ Soft and pale”

“a perfect porcelain doll”

But the song also reflects the social status of women and their roles in society:

“Boys will gladly go to war for you”

“A girl can bring her family/ Great honor in one way/ By striking a good match”

“Men want girls with good taste/ Calm/ Obedient/ Who work fast-paced”

“A man by bearing arms/ A girl by bearing sons”

Mulan’s reflection of this caricature she is meant to become is so much more powerful and sticks out even compared to other more recent Disney movies (Frozen, The Princess and the Frog, etc.)

I personally feel like Mulan is the only ‘princess’ who does not fall into the society's expectations of feminity in come category. She does not seek to become an object, and she defies the roles her society wants her to uphold. Mulan is the only Disney film that shows the impossible standards women are given. The only film that comes close to this would be Brave.

[intersexcat-tboy]

Benevolent sexism is still sexism.

If you think placing women on pedestals is feminism or suggesting all women are victims who need protection from men, that's benevolent sexism, not feminism.

If you think abuse is inherently less abusive, less harmful, painful, serious, anything of that sort because a woman is perpetrating it, you've fallen for benevolent sexism.

[whereserpentswalk]

You've been on a generational ship your entire life. There's about a million people on the ship, the population doesn't grow or shrink at all. Your entire life is and will be defined by a limited amount of room, a small space, barely large enough for everyone there to fit, that has become your entire world.

The humans that exist on generational ships are very alien to the humans that exist on planets. Your job is to maintain the ship and carry the culture of humanity but you don't need a human lifestyle to do it. Because reproduction needs to be done through artificial wombs all humans are neutered, with sterile sexless bodies. Everyone's job is determined by ship authority, and very dark things happen to those not able to perform some sort of duty. People spend the first fifteen years of their lives in virtual reality, learning about humanity in a simulation until they're ready to live as adults. Everything is so alien from the earth that you read about in books.

It wouldn't be so hard if society wasn't meant to resemble earth, meant to resemble the most conservative and traditional of earth. The American flags hanging up on the walls, despite everyone alive on board having never known America. The way the pods you live in have astroterf lawns, and fake blue skies painted above them, and the facades of American suburban homes. The way resources a distributed from things meant to look like family run stores, despite the monolithic power behind the economy. Even as monolithic as station authority is it still must dress as democracy, and must preach capitalism in a world with no markets, and patriotism in a world with no nations.

Despite your sexless body you're not free of performing gender. You wear dresses over your breastless neutered body, are expected to act feminine, to carry gender rolls into the planet you're going to. Your husband is expected to do the same for maleness. You love him but your situation feels like a performance with no audience. Despite having neither the instinctual desire nor the physical apparatus to you try to be physically intimate with him, it's what everyone does with their spouse, it would be weird not to.

Space isn't as empty as earth thought it would be. There are things that lurk in the void between stars. Nobody fully knows what they are, where they come from, even if they all come from the same place. Sometimes they put the ship in danger, sometimes the authorities make deals with them. But nobody is allowed to know. You're just all told to be afraid of them but not understand why you have to be afraid. The nightmares between stars aren't delt with with knowledge but with ignorance, they do seem creepy from the little you've seen of them but everyone kind of knows their power is being used for something by the station. Patriotism is always helped by having monsters beyond your borders.

Your entire you've dreamed of blue skies and stars and fields and forests and oceans and all those pretty things you've never seen, that you never will see. People always dream of being so high ranking they'll have access to suspended animation and life extension technology, but so few ever reach that rank. You've read all the classics they allow, read Dante, and Milton, and Homer, tried to let poetry bring you to earth but that planet is alien to you now. Sometimes you wonder what it would be like if you weren't raised in a world that copied earth, if you were accepted as a member of a race that lives on a ship, that exists so liminally. Would there still be such a longing. Mabye you shouldn't have been expected to meet a standard from another world. Mabye you weren't born to long for anything. Does it scare you to think you wouldn't want earth if they didn't tell you to?

[malloryrowinski]

You're a transphobe!!! You should be embarrassed

Okay this is getting old now. I know you probably won’t read this reply as you’re clearly refusing to educate yourself on what I stand for, but I wanna have this on my blog regardless so here we go.

I’m a radical feminist, and I’m gender critical. Being gender critical means recognizing that gender is a social construct made to keep women, as a class, oppressed on the basis of their sex, and uphold the patriarchy. The sex you’re born with is a fixed set of characteristics and is immutable (this is a fact. Sex is binary, not fluid. before you try to pull the intersex card, @/not-your-intersex-pawn here on Tumblr has posts that will explain this to you in much greater detail than I can, like their response here).

Now, your sex doesn’t say anything about you! It doesn’t mean a single thing, it just recognizes which set of biological characteristics you were born with. It doesn’t indicate your personality, hobbies, likes and dislikes, whatever. You are a whole person and your sex is just your sex. Women are and have been historically oppressed on the basis of their sex. Not because they identified as anything connected to the female sphere, they were forced into this sphere of subordination and yada yada (gender roles!) on the basis of them being born female. 

Gender, on the other hand, is an identity. Even the gendies themselves have lost the plot a little in my opinion as everything regarding gender now is just so… vague? But basically gender is an identity. Some say it’s innate, some say it isn’t. Most agree that you can change your gender, or at least “reclaim” it, if you believe it’s innate and that you were "born in the wrong body". You can claim any gender, actually, and define it however you please. 

Calling me “cis” would be incorrect not because I’m not a woman, but because I’m not part of the gender craze, meaning that’s an ideology I don’t subscribe to altogether. I don’t believe in it. There’s no such thing as gender. I’m just a woman, neither cis nor trans. 

There’s also an additional note that I would like to make here: as long as we as a society recognize gender, we’re gonna have people either conforming to it or resisting it, or claiming a different gender identity. This is basically the same as “as long as catholicism exists, we’re gonna have catholics, atheists, and people either converting to catholicism or abandoning it”. This does not refer to the group of people who go through physical sex dysphoria. This group may choose to access what you would call “gender-affirming care”, which isn’t gender-affirming for them, because they do not have a problem with their gender to begin with, and most of the time don’t even recognize gender as important/real. Their voices have been unfortunately silenced by the “new wave” of TRAs over the past 5 to 10 or so years, and I do not wish to speak on their behalf, you can do your own research on this, or listen to amazing people such as @/buct-reidentified here on Tumblr. 

If you disagree with me and do believe that gender is an important part of oneself - I don’t have a problem with that! You’re entitled to your own opinions just like I am to my own. If you read all this and still think I’m transphobic, I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do to help you. 

The reason I don’t include trans women in my feminism isn’t because I don’t respect their identity. But their identity is irrelevant when it comes to a movement focusing on the liberation from sex based oppression. What matters is their sex, whether you like it or not, because women are oppressed on the basis of their sex. You can identify as a trans woman but I genuinely hope that you’ll see how being a trans woman is different than being born with a female body. These two will face radically different experiences and challenges, each unique to that group. 

I do believe that trans people, of any kind, do need their own protections, safe spaces, etc. because they clearly are discriminated against and no one should be able to attack or discriminate against anyone because they don’t agree with their identity/the way they present themselves/whatever. 

I do support the preservation of same-sex spaces for women, but this isn’t rooted in fear of trans women but in protecting women from predatory men who exploit gender theory to gain access to these spaces and harm women. I’m sure we can both agree that these cases have happened and I’m not fear-mongering. This is not because all trans women are predators. This has happened and continues to happen because when you give predators and abusers a chance to be predatory and abusive with little to no repercussion by hiding behind an ideology like the gender one, they are typically eager to take it. Women have a right to their same-sex spaces because of the sex-based oppression they’ve faced throughout centuries. Taking these away or reforming places that are specifically sex-exclusive into inclusive ones is not fair to women and results in a zero-sum game. 

So basically, if you identify as a trans man and want me to accommodate you by using he/him pronouns, I have no problem with that. The same goes for they/them or she/her. I’m happy to respect and use your preferred pronouns because I respect you as a person. However, this doesn’t change my understanding of your biological sex. I simply recognize that you identify as trans, which is part of who you are, and I respect that. You believe in gender and I don’t, that’s okay. If you take it to the “I should be able to access sex-exclusive spaces because I identify as trans”, I would politely explain to you why I disagree with that and what options I believe we should make available instead. 

There a ton of points I haven't touched but that are related to this topic, but this is the basics.

[typhlonectes]

[loveerran]

Is it tiring for you to have to explain yourself to all the bigots in the world

One would think so, right? I really appreciate the empathy and allyship behind this question.

Surprisingly though, I am finding it very energizing to relate my story. Most of the people I talk to are admittedly not hard core bigots or threatening. But they may be people who don't understand. Speaking to them and working with them not only helps them understand and see the queer experience in a different light, but helps me feel I am doing some good in the world. Even when people disagree with me, but are willing to talk, I usually find there is a path forward and a positive impact to be had.

Last year I spent some time talking to the mom and dad of a trans kid at one of the conferences I attended. The mom is gay and was wearing a 'gays against groomers' t-shirt. Even though she is part of the LGBT community, she was having difficulty relating to her child's gender journey. She was concerned about affirming voices, including online friends and medical professionals. She was worried she was losing the child she had given birth to, and that 'giving in' to being trans would negatively affect her child's life. Her and her husband even did a youtube video with a conservative host to talk about the dangers and evils of gender ideology. We probably spent the better part of an hour together, and I had an opportunity to listen to their viewpoint, hear their concerns, and share a bit of my story. I am not sure any opinions were changed, but it was still good to trade ideas, learn from each other and take away some things to think about.

I spent most of my life in hiding, terrified and full of self-hatred. Finding opportunities to share, to promote understanding (particularly in spiritual contexts), is incredibly healing for me.

The principles of my faith encourage not only the ministering of others to me, but my ministry to them.

[autogyne-redacted]

Ok, so let's talk about "misandry."

(Heads up that I use terrible US foreign policy as an example of underlying gender ideology, Death to America of course)

1) if we're working within a social justice, privilege-oppression type framework, there is no systemic oppression of men as men, or trans men as trans men (beyond transphobia). Within these privilege oppression frameworks treating misandry or transandrophobia as a real thing is gonna have disastrous consequences.

2) But we need to be abandoning the identity politics social justice orthodoxy as fast as we can. Occupying a position of privilege within the discourse is dehumanizing and hellish, it has a terrible track record with transmisogyny (not a coincidence), and trying to map gendered power just by looking at identity groups means you miss a ton of what's happening within the groups, and in less straight forward ways.

3) a huge part of the gender binary is between camab ppl as (instrumental) subjects and cafab ppl as (responsive, feeling) objects. And this is fucked all around.

To pick one of the more egregious examples, US military directives make heavy use of the category of "military aged males." People outside this category are (theoretically) assumed to be non combatants while "military aged males" in ~warzones~ are basically valid targets by default. https://tinyurl.com/4skt53tx

This category also faces extra exclusion from refugee and asylum status: https://tinyurl.com/4txsmepy

We could explain this as a symptom of misogyny. That women should also be recognized as being capable of enacting violence and treated equally. This is the most straight forward application of orthodox gender theory and likely the worst.

Or we could say that there's something about the intersection of being Arab/Muslim/young/read as male that leads to a unique oppression.

But it's not like it's just this intersection. If we look at prison populations, or who gets hit by police violence, or weaponized accusations of Sexual Assault the logic is actually fairly consistent here, if a little messy to talk about.

Ppl seen as men are seen as capable of wielding power and this leads to benefits if they're seen as basically good. If they're seen as crazy, dangerous, evil, hostile, or at risk of being any of these, being seen as capable of violence makes shit way worse. Lots of intersections push you further towards being viewed as a threat.

(A pretty good bite sized model of transmisogyny is that it misgenders us as men + we get negative respect since we rejected masculinity + it frames us as crazy/dangerous).

Ppl seen as women are going to be seen as less competent, in need of guidance, control and protection by default. But it comes with certain (conditional) protections. Violence against women certainly happens, but the fact that it's a special protected category says a lot. (There's a lot to say about how much these protections are worth, who they really apply to and when they disappear and what happens then, but it's very clear that they exist and that they mean something).

4) so am I arguing for the existence of misandry? Absolutely not*. Gender is just a fucked up system of division and control all around. Privilege frameworks suggest that women are going to experience the same shit as men they share identities with + misogyny + possible extra intersectional oppression. And while this approach is sometimes helpful, I think a better default framework is that gender is just a way to create more social categories for a more complicated system of control with common threads like the subject-object binary that can play to different ways in different contexts.

The whole thing needs to be dismantled and we need to see ppl across gender categories as whole human beings with a meaningful interiority, the capacity for violence, etc. And if we recognize that gender is a complicated system of control, it follows naturally that our gender discourse shouldn't all ask men to sit down / shut up / listen.

5) the issue with transandrophobia BS is that it really wants to exceptionalize the trans masc experience. "It's fucked up that I'm being seen as suspect and capable of violence like terrible cis men, I'm obviously one of the good ones." And as they fight for the best of both worlds ("I should be respected like a man but still seen as incapable of chauvinism") it pushed naturally for trans fems to get the worst of both worlds.

6) returning to feminist "man-hating" there's a lot i oppose for being essentialist or doubling down on subject-object binary. Beyond that, a lot of it is just mean. And like, ppl can be jaded and mean sometimes. But a lot of social justice feminist dogma was ppl developing a bristly defensiveness from constant harassment and trolling. Ppl defending this as an understandable response, and then that shifting into codifying and valorizing it. And I just think it's a miserable way to live and it's miserable to be on the receiving end of it.

I think some grace and understanding for ppl being jaded and bristly is rly helpful but I'm done with valorizing it.

7) all of this said, basic feminist takes about men having lots of pressure and motivations to be chauvinist still apply. And they certainly apply to trans men. But there's a difference between having social expectations that you be a chauvinist and bowing to that pressure. And lots of men are chill and nice! Yes even cishet men!

It's easy to want to draw a hard line where you're "one of the good ones" and are categorically separated from the possibility of being sexist (ontologically incapable of violence, even?) and that goes really poorly.

(most of my beef with transandrophobia is that it's doing this + exceptionalizing trans masc experience in a way that fucks over trans fems).

But I'm not gonna ask ppl to constantly self flagellate or be hyper vigilant to make sure they don't slip up. Sin frameworks are miserable and it's not like being interpersonally shitty in a way that lines up with oppressive systems actually has consequences that much worse than just being an asshole.

So much of the more aggressive side of social justice just feels like ways to treat enemies, not your friends or ppl you want to be in community with.

I'm glad we've been moving on from it.

*editing a footnote since this has already come up a couples times / this post seems to be leaving my immediate circles: by saying misandry isn't real I mean: there isn't a systemic oppression of men as men that parallels misogyny. Gendered oppression isn't a "both sides" situation. When "egalitarian" or mra types brought "misandry" into the discourse this is what they were pushing for.

While I object to the idea that all men evenly oppress all women, patriarchy absolutely has men at the top. It's a complex and multi-directional system of power but there is an overall gendered slant to it. My framework here is still a feminist framework.

[dandelionjack]

if i won’t have lost the special interest by the time i’m back at uni and i’d have seen most of classic by then i want to write an academic paper on gender in doctor who. because there is SO MUCH to say about it. thinking about missy’s lampshading of the companion-as-gender in world enough and time. companion is a de facto gender, right? and the doctor is a gender. thirteen is not more feminine than ten or eleven, in fact, she’s emotionally distant and harsh in highly masculine-coded ways and the doctor will always find themselves taking on the masculine role re: the narrative, no matter what gender the actor that’s playing them is. of course amy pond as the ur-example of the companion without agency, treated by the story as a vessel and an object to pass between husband and doctor. then there’s subversion (ace, bill) and deconstruction (clara). martha’s character being simplified in the public consciousness as ten’s tragic rebound, ignoring her doctorification arc. doctorification itself as a transition of sorts. time lords’ gender-fluidity contrasted with their culture’s rigid social norms. cybermen and daleks turning themselves genderless as a marker of dystopian uniformity. the role of river song. rose noble and her magical mystery metacrisis transgenderism. charley sneaking onto the R101 dressed as a boy. ace dressing gwendoline in a man’s costume in ghost light as a symbol of evolution

i swear it could go on forever . i bet when i’ve watched the rest of classic the list of examples would be twice as long, the earlier you look

[poetofdiana]

Romantic vs Platonic Love

What is the difference between 'romantic' love and 'platonic' love? I don't think there is any innate difference between these 'types' of love. Aromantic/asexual philosophies argue that the centrality of romantic relationships in society devalues friendships and defines them as less important than romantic relationships. Phrases like "we're just friends" and "friends with benefits" support this idea. What do relationships look like that don't center romance above friendship?

One of the big differences that people will argue exists between romantic and platonic love is the intensity of the connection. However, I'd like to assert that the cultural devaluation of friendship is what facilitates this belief rather than an actual difference in potential intensity. As someone who is currently and has in the past been involved in emotionally and physically intense friendships, I have first-hand experience with how intense these relationships can become. I have cuddled, slept overnight with, shared feelings that I've shared with no one else, discussed relationship boundaries, bickered, and much more with my friends. When society centers romantic relationships, we define friendship as any important connections that are 'less than' romance. This puts limitations on expressions of love between friends that have tangible consequences. When asked to define cheating, many people will name 'excessive' physical or emotional intimacy between friends as something that they are uncomfortable with their romantic partner engaging in. In the absence of these cultural limitations, friendships could be equally or even more intense than romantic relationships.

[ASIDE: This is also tied to the relatively new cultural idea (based in the development of the nuclear family) that a romantic partner should be the sole source of all emotional, physical, and mental comfort/support. This limits social networks and allows for the perpetuation of domestic violence by romantic partners. It is also simply a less sustainable relationship model than the diffusion of support/care needs into a robust social network.]

Once people begin to conceptualize romantic and platonic love as equally important (as is often the case in poly and aroace spaces), they sometimes argue that there is an innate ineffable difference between what romantic and platonic attraction feels like. I do not intend to argue against the idea that people feel different ways towards different people. Instead, I'd like to argue that the classification of these feelings into 'romantic' and 'platonic' is reductive and harmful in the pursuit of meaningful connections that don't fit neatly into the category of 'romance.' When attempting to make sense of our emotions, we strive to find patterns. Given the socially legible categories of 'romantic' and 'platonic' feelings, it makes sense for people to attempt to categorize each of their relationships into one of these boxes. However, this way of viewing the important relationships in our lives limits how we can experience them. 'Platonic' relationships are devalued and limited by romantic norms. Relationships that are not socially legible as either platonic or romantic are seen as weird and undesirable, encouraging limitations on these relationships in order to fit them into one of the categories. 'Romantic' relationships are grounded in a set of socially agreed upon norms that do not necessarily reflect the desires of the individuals in the relationship, but become expectations due to the categorization of the relationship as romantic.

So what do close relationships look like if 'romance' and 'friendship' are done away with entirely? Without a set of social norms governing each relationship, individuals must develop these norms within their relationships through communication, boundary-setting, and care. Different relationships will naturally have different value in an individual's life, but instead of conforming to the social expectations placed on each relationship because of its categorization (romantic vs platonic), that individual will be free to determine what the value of each relationship is for them.

In my pursuit of meaningful, healthy relationships, I have already begun this work of deconstructing relationship categories. Though it is hard work to set expectations for each individual relationship, it facilitates a much deeper emotional connection than simply allowing expectations to follow from a relationship label. I have been able to set boundaries in relationships that would violate traditional norms of romance or friendship (for example, I regularly cuddle and massage one of my partners, but we do not kiss). It is freeing to let go of social norms that pressure us to engage in specific behaviors or feel specific feelings about people simply because we have labeled them 'romantic' or 'platonic.' Though it is hard work, it has been incredibly beneficial to the quality of my relationships to deconstruct this norm.

[sixpossumsinaclownsuit]

Just remembered something:

In all the talk about "drag queens will make your kids trans!" Or "queer media will make your kids trans!" (All of which isn't true), those aren't the reason I became trans.

I was already icky with the idea of being a "girl" and growing up to be a "woman" and being bound to the concepts of "female." Then I watched Good Omens, saw Crowley exist as a man and a woman, saw Beelzebub be whatever tf they are (iconic), and my little high school brain said "that! I want to be that!!"

I had also by now read Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology, and had read how (more than once) Loki shape-shifted into being a woman (technically one time he was a female horse but that's besides the point).

So remember, kids: drag queens and gay Disney characters won't make your kids trans, Neil Gaiman will.

[[Brief interlude: Obviously, I never 'became' trans, I simply found an identity that suited me more, and started making changes in my life that made me more comfortable with who I am. So, to make it very clear by being literal in a side note (I'm autistic), this is almost entirely satire, as a dramatization of how I identified with nonbinary]]

Honorable Mentions: Terry Pratchett, and Rick Riordan: who wrote the genderfluid child of Loki in Magnus Chase, and was the first ever time I'd heard of the concept.