I was talking to K today, and we were talking about gender identity. It’s something we’ve talked about quite a bit, and we’ve been on the same page about the concept for our whole lives. She once said to me that she admired the way I easily adapted to people’s genders. We talked a bit about that, and I said it was because gender was unfathomable to me (just like it’s hard to describe the color blue to a blind person), so I accepted people’s genders without a murmur.
When you drilled right down to it, why did gender matter? Not in a sociopolitical sense because it matters a great deal in that way (and as a way to show solidarity/fight the patriarchy), and, yes, I can see why it’s important to individuals as part of their identity, but as a way of gatekeeping who can call themselves what gender, I am not a big fan of it. At all.
I have thought about this so much, it makes me tired. If I were going to be totally real–oh, here’s my post from yesterday in which I said I was going to talk about labels and dating, but then didn’t. If I were going to be totally real, I would just like to never have to think or talk about gender again. Just let me beeeeeeeeeee. There’s nothing I can or can’t do based on my gender, really, so why should I care?
This is where I get tripped up every time. I can do what I need to do regardless of my gender, so why do I need to have one? No one can explain this to me to my satisfaction, which is how I feel about a lot of things. There are times when I just have to accept that I will never truly get it. The only reason I think about it is because it’s so important in this world.
I’m saying this with zero snark–I don’t understand why the heavy emphasis on it. I know it’s me beacuse most people do care about it a lot. I would not care that other people cared so much about it if it was just for themselves. I’m very big on live and let live, but the ‘let live’ part has to go both ways.
Which it doesn’t. At all.
It’s really depressing that all the progress we’ve made is getting torn up in this presidency. I can’t even get angry because I’m just so drained and exhausted. I know that’s the whole point of this spate of terrible laws, but it’s working. And this is one reason I will never date a Republican.
See how I did that?
I had that in a dating ad thirty years ago. I said I would date any gender, race, religion, creed, but not a Republican. I wasn’t joking, even though I put it in a jovial tone. I’m even more not joking about it now. If someone is a Republican in this time and age, that’s all I need to know about them.
As I’ve said, it’s funny when people who don’t give a shit about discrimination in general (or covertly/overtly support it) want to bleat about discrimination in dating when it’s against them. People are allowed to discriminate in their dating lives, and it’s especially true when the discrimination is based on something like ‘this person doesn’t believe I should exist’. Or ‘this person is a racist sexist piece of shit’.