#so you're never going to be doing cross-bucket comparisons bc the other bucket is just. an off-limits mystery | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

aeide-thea · 1 year ago

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look, i realize that talking to you guys is not exactly a great way to take the temperature of the cis masses on an issue, but—

a post came across my dash just now in which the OP said twice that it was 'odd' to find herself relating to a male character in the book she was reading, and i'm just. totally fucking baffled by that reaction???? like for me 'relatability' is absolutely never a matter of someone's having a body or social positionality that tidily maps onto mine, it's a matter of, like, personality traits! traumas! attitudes towards the world! it's a metaphor! i'm so baffled by this idea that it would matter at all to someone whether a character shares their exact gender, of all things!

#like ultimately i DO kind of think this is a relatively mild manifestation of oppositional sexism #where like. the idea that you might be more similar to someone of a different gender than you are different is just. deeply shocking #bc the idea that like. Men and Women are Different and Never the Twain Shall Meet is so fundamental #and so all men have to go into one bucket and all women into another (and nonbinary people don't exist)#so you're never going to be doing cross-bucket comparisons bc the other bucket is just. an off-limits mystery #but like. absolutely WILD to me that people also do that with BOOKS #like did she also read like. where the red fern grows and go 'yeah i can't relate to grief abt a beloved pet dying bc it's Boy Grief'#ugh okay i can't contemplate this any more it's fucking me up lol #bookblogging #gender

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