Awhile ago, I think you said something like “my gender identity is ‘tiger’, by which I mean ‘if you’re making guesses about what sort of things I’ll do, or what social role I’ll play… the thing where you might have used ‘man’ or ‘woman’ as a heuristic label to inform a bunch of your guesses will be less accurate than if you think ‘tiger’, which includes both a kind of strength [and maybe predatoriness?] but also lithe gracefulness”.
I think Malcolm Ocean chimed in in that (FB?) convo and said ‘oh yeah me too!’ and that made something click in a useful way to me. I liked the definition of gender where swapping in “tiger” was a reasonable third-option (and it felt more useful than previous attempts I’d seen people make to convey some kind of nonbinariness), and having the two datapoints of you and Malcolm made me go “oh yeah I have a pretty clear sense of what a “tiger” is.
I’m curious if a) you remember that, b) does it still feel accurate now?
a) I do remember that. b) It it still seems like a pretty good pointer to a (the?) main way I think of and experience myself, but I want to be clear that I was being at least somewhat tongue-in-cheek, and I would not in full honesty claim that I “identify as a tiger”, or any sort of otherkin.
Awhile ago, I think you said something like “my gender identity is ‘tiger’, by which I mean ‘if you’re making guesses about what sort of things I’ll do, or what social role I’ll play… the thing where you might have used ‘man’ or ‘woman’ as a heuristic label to inform a bunch of your guesses will be less accurate than if you think ‘tiger’, which includes both a kind of strength [and maybe predatoriness?] but also lithe gracefulness”.
I think Malcolm Ocean chimed in in that (FB?) convo and said ‘oh yeah me too!’ and that made something click in a useful way to me. I liked the definition of gender where swapping in “tiger” was a reasonable third-option (and it felt more useful than previous attempts I’d seen people make to convey some kind of nonbinariness), and having the two datapoints of you and Malcolm made me go “oh yeah I have a pretty clear sense of what a “tiger” is.
I’m curious if a) you remember that, b) does it still feel accurate now?
a) I do remember that. b) It it still seems like a pretty good pointer to a (the?) main way I think of and experience myself, but I want to be clear that I was being at least somewhat tongue-in-cheek, and I would not in full honesty claim that I “identify as a tiger”, or any sort of otherkin.
Yeah (I did understand that but seems good to clarify)