The tl;dr version of the previous post

[textualdeviance]

Dear The World:

Asking you to stop requiring people to be either butch or femme doesn't mean I'm denying those gender identities to others.* It certainly doesn't mean I'm denying gender identity itself. I'm not trying to take away your lipstick. I'm just asking you not to support a cultural paradigm that says I'm a worthless, pathetic creature (or should at least have the decency to identify as butch instead) because I don't wear it.

See also: just because I'm an atheist doesn't mean I'm trying to burn your church down, asexuals aren't anti-sex, blah blah blah.

This isn't like voting, where abstaining can have negative effects on others. It's just a matter of how one goes through the world on a personal level. If you can't enjoy playing a game without coercing everyone else into playing it, too, the problem lies with you. It's possible--really, it is!--for people to be different and yet have equal value in the world.

*Assuming those identities are, in fact, natural or at least freely chosen. If I see someone who's trying to do the femme thing but it's obvious she's not happy with it, and is only doing it because she feels obligated? I'm still going to call her on it.

Comments

[caraeileen.livejournal.com]

That makes sense. You are saying it's not how a person presents themselves, it's how they act and the choices they make around that presentation? FWIW, I don't know any Butch, femme, or trans people who do consider gender binary. the ones who I think might are either young, new to the lifestyle, or both.

[textualdeviance.livejournal.com]

Yep, that's the idea. Pretty much the same as making other choices about what one's doing, buying, saying, etc., with the needs of others in mind: like people who are clearly identified with one race acknowledging the more-complex identities of multiracial people, instead of accusing them of being traitors or ashamed of themselves for not sticking to the racial identity they're "supposed" to have.

I've met very few folks around here who don't get the whole intersectional/blended identity thing--yay for living in an area with so many bright, progressive people. But I've definitely encountered it elsewhere. I've seen some newly transitioned folks, for instance, who are trying really hard to establish themselves, and that spills over into trying to push other gender-noncompliant people into transitioning. Pretty much the same as someone who's found religion. They're so thrilled that they found something that works for them that they want to bring everyone else on board, too. They don't get that it doesn't delegitimize their transition for other people not to feel doing so is right for them. It's a reasonable concern, I spose. I know trans men often get the, "but why can't you just be a tomboy?" speech. Which is undoubtedly annoying. (I've also seen some butch women argue the opposite--that the very existence of trans men devalues butch identities. They get smacked down just as hard if I'm around to hear that crap.)

Really, like religion, it seems that people who somehow have less conviction in their own identity are the ones who want to reinforce it by molding everyone else around them in that image. It's evangelicism borne of insecurity. Like gay folk utterly convinced that bisexuals don't exist just because some people have used that identity as a waypoint or a (totally misguided) way of being partly closeted. I've also seen some people argue that if gender is a construct or in any way fluid or non-constant, then somehow we'll all devolve into formless clones. Like folks who believe that if we allow same-sex marriage, everyone's suddenly going to go gay and our species will die out. Just ... it would be hilarious if they weren't so convinced about it.

It's definitely young folks sometimes, too. Especially young women who have yet to really have that "aha!" moment about feminism. It can be really painful to have that moment of realizing that the world's been lying to you all this time about what you're supposed to be, and to realize that all the angst and effort you've spent trying to be as femme as your culture insists you should be is really unnecessary. Cognitive dissonance tantrums can be rampant in college kids, poor things. They often go for killing the messenger, even if that messenger is just pointing out their own existence as evidence that there's life beyond binary cisgender. I've even had some young women tell me I have no business discussing feminism, much less benefiting from it, because I point out that sexism isn't about deingrating femme characteristics, but about the systematic oppression of all women, regardless of how feminine they are or how their bodies are configured. Just because I'm never going to be a bio mother and don't shave doesn't mean I'm magically benefiting from male privilege. Sheesh.

And I guess that's why this is all so important to me. Just by existing, I tend to be a lightning rod for people who want the world to be neat and tidy and easily understandable. People who are bent on shaping everything and everyone they see into "us" and "them" boxes have a really hard time handling someone who doesn't fit, or who doesn't even have the decency to believe those categories exist along a line, rather than in three dimensions. Life can get very complicated and confusing when you can't use binary labeling as shorthand for how you deal with everyone you meet. People like me are a wrench in that plan, so folks often react as if I'm "really" something other than what I am, so they don't have to understand that people aren't so simple.