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But seriously, is anyone else tired of "man trapped in a woman's body"//"born this way" rhetoric? It feels like you're already bargaining from a standpoint of "theres nothing I could do about this, but if I could...."
i mean shit, i think i remember :pete: being asked a question about whether he'd take a shot that "cured gayness" and he said yes with his husband in the audience.
Yeah I've long since checked out from the discussion of where an orientation comes from. A coworker once started citing a bunch of genetic studies at me and how it can only be a choice and even said that thing about men going into prison and becoming gay there.
It's just the worst framework possible because yeah it's all from "is it your fault or not" or "should you face punishment for your choices." How about it doesn't matter? It shouldn't matter if who I am is 100% or 0% in my own hands.
Yes, once again, it is the predestination debate that's plagued protestants for centuries, but for Gender/Sexuality. It's so toxic and bad. Idk where it comes from because I've been An Obvious Little Queer since I was a kid, but also the "born this way" stuff just does not resonate with me. I always say I chose to be this way, just to present a different narrative. It's a narrative that both non-queer and queer people need exposed to, sadly enough.
Edit: also forgot to mention that I'm INCREDIBLY sussed out by cishets and scientists attempting to ascribe a cause to queerness before we've liberated queers. Seems like an easy recipe for Doing An Eugenics to me.
You know that could work to get bigots to go directly mask off, since they're so used to hearing the opposite. They're so used to talking in these abstract terms about being LGBTQ and the psychological impact on kids, or family hierarchical structure, that if you just directly say "yeah I know all that and I'm gonna do what I want anyway." Then they're forced into a corner where all they have left is calling you a slur or saying you'll go to hell.
I kinda like what you're doing. Maybe it won't work all the time, but I like what you're trying to confront.
Also it's very fun after a bigot goes mask off to say "yeah I'm getting my degree to be an educator, and im gonna turn your kids trans, too." Or just doing the whole "I was gonna turn kids trans" whenever more liberal queers do the whole "we dont wanna convert your kids, we just wanna live." Like yeah living is nice but ive 1000% gotten people to transition who Probably Wouldnt if they didnt meet someone like me and I see that as nothing but a good thing
Thanks homie. It's a really alienating path to walk tbh, but I think it leaves the cissies in a better place to meet queer people going forward than if I did the whole "apologizing for being queer" thing. I dont mean directly apologizing, but so many queers are so beaten down by cisciety that we live our lives as if we need to apologize for who we are. I remember my friend writing a letter for SRS, and the line that resonated with me and still makes me cry for my sisters, brothers and siblings was "I'm tired of feeling like I have to apologize any time I'm going to be naked around someone." ugh
Yeah I've always hated that rhetoric because it's never mattered and at best it opens the door for "ok well you could choose not to act on it then"
Like yeah you're right I could choose not to do something or other — I could choose not to present butch, I could choose not to kiss girls with tongue, i could choose not to love and appreciate and stan all women as a default — but I like doing those things so I'm gonna keep it up, and fuck anyone who tells me otherwise.
At the end of the day I sure as hell am choosing to be gay.
I guess the "born this way" rhetoric is helpful for like indoctrinated teens who are just starting to realize they're gay and knowing that's a Problem for their familial and social circles, but it's definitely not great as a fully evolved queer adult
And yeah, it's like at a certain point I didnt choose my feelings, but I definitely chose to be this loudly and proudly queer, and present in a way that (I'm hoping) makes people question their schemas around gender.
Proud butch lesbian btw
:rosa-salute: :flag-lesbian-pride:
oh mood, every time someone waffles between sir and ma'am or defaults to using they/them when addressing me, I feel like I'm inching society towards gender abolition entirely :sicko-hippie:
Oh yeah I view it as a necessary dialectic phase of the discourse, but I think it's time for us as a culture to move past it, and I definitely wish more queers sort of matured out of that mindset. But so many get stuck at that stage.
It's ridiculous that the synthesis is just "respect people's personal autonomy regardless and stop giving a fuck" and we still haven't collectively gotten there yet
I guess the “born this way” rhetoric is helpful for like indoctrinated teens who are just starting to realize they’re gay and knowing that’s a Problem for their familial and social circles, but it’s definitely not great as a fully evolved queer adult
I always heard "born in the wrong body" and the like about being trans, same with "it's not a choice". This precludes the possibility of experimenting and questioning to find out what makes you happy because by definition those actions are choices, and the end result is you make a decision based on the results of your experimentation.
So, because I could repress myself, I thought that meant I couldn't be trans. If I was trans, I thought, then I shouldn't be able to bottle up all these feelings. Likewise, I had no fucking clue what being born in the wrong body meant. That's obviously some kind of dysphoria I don't have, but since that's all I ever heard "makes you trans", once again I thought I couldn't be trans because how the fuck should I know what another body is like (spoiler, crossdressing helped me simulate what a better body might be like).
Anyways this is all to say I'm right behind everyone here talking about the choices they made; it wasn't my choice to be "born this way" and I'm not a fan of feeling sorry that I was. It sure as as hell was my choice to come out though and I'm never backing down on that.
protestant work ethic is just the meme explanation of who lives near european coal deposits
It's only protestant work ethic if it's from the Protest region of England, otherwise it's just sparkling capitalism
Buttigieg said he would cure his gayness back when he was first finding out his sexuality and had a lot of self-hatred. Any queer on this site has probably felt the same way before.
That sort of rhetoric was probably somewhat useful back when the majority of the population still operated off the base assumption that LGBT folks were just morally depraved sex perverts and child molesters engaging in aberrant behaviour because they were sick and or evil
Yo I heard this exact sentiment the other day in a lecture which discussed Xenofeminism. It really had never occurred to me before.
I got an enby friend who is into xenofeminism, and their position is pretty similar to this as well
I'm positive English Anglo-Saxons invented the Protestant work ethic. Or was it the Calvinist Teutons?
Everyone below is wrong. Protestant work ethic had its theory laid down by Calvin but was first a dominant cultural force in the Golden Age of the Netherlands, the first real capitalist empire.
Calvinist Teutons for sure. The proud Norman Anglicans and the rowdy Presbyterian borderers know that they should be chaste and calm like those robotic Swiss and Dutch, but Lord forgive them, sometimes they just gotta do them, and that's their Right as the Saved, full of God's grace.
The argument that it's not a choice is such a defensive, apologetic stance. It also alienates bi and pan people who could theoretically choose heteronormative relationships and end up missing out on a side of themselves.
And yeah, the choice narrative invites compromises and solutions that invite cures and treatments.
Also also - "choice" is such a charged word in the US. I'd prefer not looking at my love life and identity with the same disingenuous framework they use to enforce oppression inherent in capitalism.
The problem that any mass social activism has to contend with is you have to convert many people who are very stupid, and very evil. Like, there's people who think gay people are immutably born that way, and they still want to discriminate against them! One of the reasons Trump won was because he spoke for a section of society sick of having to do cringe things like be polite and not shout slurs at people; these people who become enraged if you tell them not to mock someone else, and the easiest argument to appeal to a peabrain like that is "it's not their fault they're mentally disabled/black/gay/trans."
It's awful, but I get it.
