Every June, i go to yet another pride festival and I think about gender not as biological or sociological, but linguistic.
We (humans) made all this up. For the sake of simplifying our understanding of the world we live in, we came up with categories that apply broadly to most instances. So when something new comes up, it's easiest to put things in one of those boxes.
This is not always applicable. That's why we have a word for 'fish,' and most people agree on what is and is not a 'fish,' but all fish do not share a common ancestor.
Another example: 'vegetable' is not a useful term in biology, but it is a useful culinary term. So we can put things like tomatoes (fruits), carrots (tuber), and broccoli (flower) in the vegetable category for cooking and dietary classification, even if individually they're different things.
Those kinds of classifications are useful in the disciplines where they are useful, but generally not outside of it. In an ideal situation you look at every instance with individual nuance, but sometimes that can be a bit much.
Arguing taxonomy is a favorite pastime of a certain kind of guy that I work with. It's a way to feel googleably smart, but its not always applicable in real-world situations. (Example: I once said I was cold. He told me that 'cold does not exist, it's the absence of heat.' Which might be true, but hypothermia is real. Warping of metal under extreme conditions is real. Contracting of molecules, shattering of glass, and presence of ice are all very real. So while possibly technically correct, functionally useless as a talking point. Believing that 'cold' does not exist does not make me less cold.)
When trolls are like 'what is a woman,' I'm like... several levels of education above answering that question in a way that they're willing to understand, because they are trolling. They dont actually want an answer and they wont listen to the answer i give them. "You'll still have to go to a procologist instead of a gynecologist." Etcetera.
Those are areas where the words 'man' and 'woman' might be useful distinctions, but it's also really rude to talk about a person's genitals, so I really don't need to know what kinds of doctors they see.
So when a person is not conforming to their gender, it's been easy for me to accept that linguistically they have a right to call themselves whatever they want, their social structure may allow for this, and biologically it's none of my fucking business.
germansingergirl
blakekathryn
gamechangershow
tangentwithtanner
romaincrisis
theartofmadeline
