N.B. I may be mindkilled on some or all of this topic. Please salt liberally.
A third view is that identity is just a set of suggestively named tags a mind can apply to itself, and every mind if free to chose what it wants. By this view “goth”, “plumber”, “female”, “gay”, “brony”, “rationalist” and “black” are all the exact same type of label, and a pink-skinned person with a male body in white clothes who likes females, have never watched my little pony, and cant fix a leak if her life depended on it are able to call herself all those things and should be able to expect evrypony to treat her like it. While this is counter-intuitive and has obvious drawbacks, there are strong social reasons to consider this view.
You have just described the entirety of tumblr’s “social justice” culture (note: link is to a satire). The assumption there is that identifying as any label makes it automatically valid; doubly so if it’s not a mainstream identity, triply so if it lets you claim you’re not as well treated as normal cis white males with wealthy parents. As a result, you get people who misuse terms that actual groups use (i.e. “trigger”, originally meant for PTSD flashback and/or epilepsy inducing content, has now been watered down through misuse into the much vaguer idea of “it squicks/disappoints/annoys me”, rather than “it causes me serious physical/psychological harm”). And then there’s things like transabled and the aforementioned otherkin/soulbond/etc. classifications, which… well, I honestly have no idea if they’re jokes or a real thing sometimes.
As a result, anyone who so much as misuses the terminology people choose for themselves (even if they were never told it existed) is dogpiled by insults about how one is bigoted, ableist, privileged, etc..
Apparently each of these checkboxes corresponds to a distinct gender identity with an actual community around it. Is this actually best for serving the interests of everyone who wants a “nonstandard” option on that list? I get that humans are diverse, but those are some pretty fine distinctions to insist on making. (What’s the difference between agender and genderless?)
So here’s what I’m trying to say.
While social justice as an abstract concept is something that is needed, insofar as an umbrella term for things like disability rights, feminism, etc., in practice, it seems to be enforced by shrews who think that they are special snowflakes and lash out if any of their odd identities is attacked.
And if you want to make “let anyone identify as anything they want” a thing, you’re going to have to explain that to people who have been hurt by things like this: why they’re supposed to yield to the kid who thinks she’s a transsexual transethnic otherkin, doesn’t have enough spoons (energy) to argue and/or is “triggered” by aforementioned argument (yet stays up until 3 in the morning yelling at people on the internet).
I’m still working on detoxifying myself from attempting to label everything I “am”, so as to stack the SJ “oppression” bonuses like some bizarre twisted version of a puzzle game. At least I didn’t end up writing much of that down, or otherwise I’d have a hell of a time taking it back. As it is, I’m still attempting and failing to internalize keeping one’s identity small, so...
N.B. I may be mindkilled on some or all of this topic. Please salt liberally.
You have just described the entirety of tumblr’s “social justice” culture (note: link is to a satire). The assumption there is that identifying as any label makes it automatically valid; doubly so if it’s not a mainstream identity, triply so if it lets you claim you’re not as well treated as normal cis white males with wealthy parents. As a result, you get people who misuse terms that actual groups use (i.e. “trigger”, originally meant for PTSD flashback and/or epilepsy inducing content, has now been watered down through misuse into the much vaguer idea of “it squicks/disappoints/annoys me”, rather than “it causes me serious physical/psychological harm”). And then there’s things like transabled and the aforementioned otherkin/soulbond/etc. classifications, which… well, I honestly have no idea if they’re jokes or a real thing sometimes.
As a result, anyone who so much as misuses the terminology people choose for themselves (even if they were never told it existed) is dogpiled by insults about how one is bigoted, ableist, privileged, etc..
As an example of how deep the rabbit hole goes, there’s the attempt at an inclusive gender checkbox form, which...
Apparently each of these checkboxes corresponds to a distinct gender identity with an actual community around it. Is this actually best for serving the interests of everyone who wants a “nonstandard” option on that list? I get that humans are diverse, but those are some pretty fine distinctions to insist on making. (What’s the difference between agender and genderless?)
So here’s what I’m trying to say.
While social justice as an abstract concept is something that is needed, insofar as an umbrella term for things like disability rights, feminism, etc., in practice, it seems to be enforced by shrews who think that they are special snowflakes and lash out if any of their odd identities is attacked.
And if you want to make “let anyone identify as anything they want” a thing, you’re going to have to explain that to people who have been hurt by things like this: why they’re supposed to yield to the kid who thinks she’s a transsexual transethnic otherkin, doesn’t have enough spoons (energy) to argue and/or is “triggered” by aforementioned argument (yet stays up until 3 in the morning yelling at people on the internet).
I’m still working on detoxifying myself from attempting to label everything I “am”, so as to stack the SJ “oppression” bonuses like some bizarre twisted version of a puzzle game. At least I didn’t end up writing much of that down, or otherwise I’d have a hell of a time taking it back. As it is, I’m still attempting and failing to internalize keeping one’s identity small, so...
edits: because there’s no preview button