So. I am not up to date with all the latest debates. I’m not on Twitter for a start. But none of it seems to make any logical sense. I am left leaning and all my friends are very liberal. I think I must be missing something in this whole debate, I’m genuinely open to being told I’ve completely misunderstood.
A friend and I are part of the same Facebook group which is for buying and selling kids clothes. Someone made a comment about looking for clothes for a boy “that are quite girly” because their son likes girly colours and patterns. I thought “what a stupid thing to say, kids can wear anything, who cares”. Friend comments and starts off by saying something similar. Talks about how colours are for everyone, boys and girls don’t have to wear different things, everyone can just have their own likes and dislikes. Fine. But then goes on to say “maybe as an adult he will choose to identify as a different gender, or maybe he will be gender fluid, sometimes people have different genders to the one they are assigned at birth”.
Huh? I don’t get it. So we are telling kids that it’s ok for boys to like ballet and pink and girls to like blue and football. I can get on board with that. Also saw a campaign trying to remove girls and boys signage from kids clothing shops which I am all for. I thought this was all to remove outdated crappy stereotypes and to make everything accessible to everyone. But then we are saying that as an adult if you like frilly pink things then you should/could identify as a woman? Or if you’re into football and beer than you should identify as a man? So it seems like the removal of shitty stereotypes in childhood is actually just to make it easier for people to be “gender fluid”? Surely this is all just based on stereotypes too.
If not and it’s something deeper than that… what is it based on? If it’s not just surface level likes and dislikes? What does it mean to identify as a woman or man? I don’t identify as anything. I am biologically female. I am an adult female which means I’m a woman. Being a woman for me doesn’t mean liking pink and makeup and dresses. My identity is my personality and my own personal likes and dislikes and as far as I was aware none of this is anything to do with whether I’m male or female. It’s not even to do with whether you’re attracted to males or females because obviously women can be straight or gay or bi and men can be straight or gay or bi. So in what scenario does someone need to identify as a different gender?
Have I gone wrong somewhere? I previously thought we were making headway by removing outdated stereotypes. But now it sounds like people are being encouraged to identify as a different gender if they don’t conform to those old stereotypes? It seems people like my friend are simultaneously supporting the removal of gender stereotypes in childhood as well as the reinforcement of them in adulthood. Sorry this is probably sounding very naive.