The right to mis-define oneself

[bennyboy]

I feel like this is sort of relevant to the topic at hand and I wanted to say it

Regarding some of the special snowflake tumblrina indentities (agender, pangender, omnigender, Non-Natives who appropriate the term "Two Spirit", Pansexual, demisexual, etc etc) I do feel like these are cases of mis-representation.

I think feeling you are between male and female can be real in itself, I'm sure if you can be fully trans in seeing yourself as the opposite gender, you can also see yourself as mentally between male and female. However, I feel like all these terms are, like I said, cases of special snowflake syndrome where these people are digging for attention. I saw one guy (sorry, a "demisexual androromantic pangender", let's not call them a guy in case we trigger them) on Tumblr... apparently 14 years old. Really? I barely knew I was gay at that age, you mean to tell me you've found yourself enough in life to know what all those terms are supposed to mean and that you are all of them? No no no. It's like "just" being gay or trans is too passe for these people.

This might sound petty, but I have a real problem with this. When you have people calling themselves all these unicorn identities, it's making a circus act out of the LGB and trans/gender-variant communities. People won't take the community seriously with that bollocks. It's probably part of the reason people are looking at Caitlyn Jenner (whose identity as a trans/woman truly is legitimate) with questioning eyes. It's not ok.

Here's the thing.  What's this "between male and female" stuff?  What, if not purely physical terms, defines the terms male and female?  The way you react emotionally to things?  Whether you like puppies or not?  Whether you want to wear an apron and be dominated by your sexual partner?  Whether you enjoy adding items of flair to your wardrobe?  Exactly, what?  If you're not looking for innies or outies in defining both sex AND gender, it seems to me you are supporting male and female stereotypes.

If you have a penis but you like to look beautiful and wear a dress, why do you have to insist this is somewhere in the middle of a male/female scale?  Doesn't this undermine the femininity of the many women who don't care about conventional "beauty," or who don't like wearing dresses? Are you going to tell them that they are male, because they don't conform to a 1950s view of what it means to be a woman? I think Jenner does a disservice to actual woman by pretending that adopting those stereotypes makes him one.