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My Gender in a Nutshell

GIF description: someone saying "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." Then walking away. Specifically the last scene from Gone With the Wind.

Edit: Basically just don't refer to me in a dehumanizing way and we'll get along just fine.

10 comments
  • yesterday you were twisting yourself in knots to justify misgendering others. Today you're patting yourself on the back for "not caring".

    • ?

      Gender is like a muti-axial spectrum right, so when it comes to refering to people that whole spectrum is wrapped in a big circle of "gender neutral / agnostic" pronouns with some cut outs inside for gender specific ones. And it's not like a form fitting circle it's like a cookie inside a bakery. Like gendered pronouns are like different kinds of cookies but the bakery deals in more than just cookies. The gender neutral / agnostic pronouns are outside of the spectrum but also contain the spectrum.

      It's like he/she/they is like snickerdoodle/chocolate chip cookies/baked goods, and not snickerdoodle/chocolate chip cookies/gingersnaps. Like 'he/she' is a fine descriptor of living things and 'they' is the blanket term for living things as to snickerdoodles/chocolate chip cookies is a fine descriptor of cookie and 'baked goods' is the blanket term of baked things.

      But as mentioned in the spoilered part: gender info is stored so poorly in my brain and is something I think about so little that it's going to slip out of my brain basically immediately so I go with the gender neutral by default. It's not a "fall back to gender neutral, I can't remember what they prefer" it's a "refering to someone multiple times and it slips out of my brain without noticing". Like proofreading my comments is something I do constantly but I still miss things constantly.

      I hope that makes sense?

      Edit: I came up with a different way to voice my thinking but bear with me it's odd. Say there's 3 people, 1 is colorblind (monochromatic), 1 says there's only a handful of colors and the rest are confused, and the third says there's a color spectrum. The monochromatic colorblind person agrees with the person who says there's a spectrum (basically everything is a spectrum, why not color?) but due to not seeing color defaults to refering to things in generic ways. Would you say the colorblind person is an ally to the person saying there's a spectrum or would you say that they're an ally to the person saying there's only a small number of colors and the rest are confused?

      I'm basically the monochromatic colorblind person in this scenario. It's Greek to me.

10 comments