Yay! I've finally found my gender label

[QuentinSummers]

AFAB non-binary femme apparently. Who's with me??!!
www.vice.com/amp/en_us/article/d3x8m7/five-queer-people-on-what-femme-means-to-them

That’s the one Iggi. Flavia was a most “energetic” girl. She ran around the aforementioned tree one time! Not surprisingly Flavia did not get herself a husband unlike “Lucky Cornelia”.

I thought I had cornered the market on egotism (that's very interesting but can we talk about me now?) but that lot beat me hands down (without actually being in any way interesting)

Thing is I was just as self absorbed and narcissistic as a youth. As were all my friends. Into body modification or music or droning on about French cinema or being a goth/greebo/punk all very seriously.

But we didn't think it made us oppressed (in fact most people I knew were fighting for others, in the Anti-Nazi League or whatever) and we certainly didn't think we were going to change any laws in order to affirm our identities as punks!

We did know that our friends who were black or gay suffered actual discrimination which needed to be addressed. Fearing for their lives stuff, police harassment. Not 'literal violence'. Literal violence.

But enough about me, what did you think of my latest book

Most of us were Mrs

Oh the Angst. And how we mocked those two years younger. Idiots.

But these people aren't teenagers are they? They're all in their twenties at least.

25 is the new 18

I blame the parents. Back in the day, (normal, good) parents quite rightly took the piss out of teenagers and young people. It’s not unkind, in fact it’s quite the contrary. Can you imagine trying to test the world, break boundaries and be subversive only to be met with... no resistance at all? Or worse: concern, encouragement and understanding? Disaster!

Aren't you all getting a bit bored by now of the perpetual trans and enbie bashing? It's not only unkind, but just mindnumbingly repetitive.

I have yet to hear a definition of non-binary (sorry, ‘enby’ ) that couldn’t be just as easily summed up with ‘I have a personality.’ It’s just ‘I’m not like other girls’ for people trying to be woke.

Mumoftwoyoungkids - ha! You did Ecce Romani. I did Cambridge Latin. Can still remember the first line now... Caecilius est in horto. Poor Caecilius. He got covered by lava in Pompeii. His gardening days were done.

What sleighbellend said. (Great username btw).
I am sometimes bored but then I get the absolute rage that women need a label to be completely normal and like lipstick, yet feel they will be seen as valid.

One of the contributors says "Our culture hates femininity, calls it weak. Our culture is inept at nurture and care, terrified of vulnerability and softness—all things that are squarely in the femme’s handbag. To indulge in femme culture is actually to be brave, and to have strength. So when I say I am femme, I am saying that I try to live my life bravely."
Call femininity/femme being female and I could get behind that sentiment. But woman is now the preserve of men and gentleness is transphobic. So Yes, sometimes it's boring but it's also rage inducing to have my material reality reduced to a costume (appearing female) and unspeakable transphobia (the messy biology bits)

We were all gender non-conforming as well. I had a shaved head, DMs and army surplus while my male friends were all wearing make up (and a few dresses). No one cared.

It's not the non-confirming or the trans stuff, it's the legislative changes and pretending gender should be a protected characteristic for every single special person. Rather than sex, sexuality and actual characteristics that aren't bullshit.

*femaleness is transphobic. Interesting my autocorrect insists femaleness should be gentleness

So, what's different about "non-binary" "agender", "zie/zir", and "Ms"?

Femme and butch are very longstanding terms. I'm assuming they would sound pretty boringly normal to most on this thread. Others are newer coinages (not all, I see a fair few I was using as a spotty teen/20 yr old).

@PricklyBall This is very nicely put.
"However, there is no real fact of the matter about being "gender fluid" - it's just a narrative to use as short hand to describe their feelings. It's the reification (to use a fancy philosopher's word) of gender I object to - the idea that gender, which is actually an oppressive political system used to keep women (and men - but in terms of sheer amount of damage, women primarily) in a restrictive set of boxes. It's not a real part of the natural world."

What I don't see is how these 5 individuals are doing more than inventing shorthand in this article to describe their feelings about gender restrictions and boxes they dislike. Some inadvertently comic perhaps, but others quite touching.

MrsTerry
Would love to have seen you in the day.

I was feminine. Doc Martins and a beret. Thought I was as cool as fuck. .

Didn't trample over people's rights certainly

Just read a post on twitter about how he knew a certain band/thing/ whatever was cool before everyone else knew it was cool..

How I lafffffphed.

Bloody hell, someone find me a Total Perspective Vortex to put them in.
I'm biologically a woman who thinks gender is contrived made up nonsense to tell me what I ought to like and do as a woman. Well, do you know, I'm a she with no gender, who mostly can't be arsed to wear makeup or shave all the time. I don't have deep thoughts about it . I don't understand what they're on about. God knows what made up 'gender type' they'd allocate for me.

Megan Murphy had a pleasingly rude commentary on the Guardian's version.
www.feministcurrent.com/2017/07/28/special-millennials-special-please-tell-im-special/

What's strange (to me as a middle-aged AMAB transman) is that they are so desperate for an IDENTITY, rather than just playing around with stylesas young people have done in the past half century. They insist that their identity be validated by using ridiculous pronouns. And this insistence is getting a hard legal edgein Canada and in many places in the USA, it's a crime to misgender someone.

cromeyellow0

I’ve read that brilliant article by Megan before. But in the light of the article in the OP, it all makes a little more sense. Some of it. A bit. I think.

It’s also very, very funny. Which is obviously the most important thing.

It was the woman saying that her identifying as femme is both subverting and celebratory of femmness.

In other words, a woman who wants to wear lipstick, but doesn’t want you to think that she’s buying into patriarchal oppression by doing so. So it’s no longer femininity, it’s ‘queering’ femme.

Me? I just like lippy.

Yup, another trans bashing thread...

On the subject of definitions, I was pontificating earlier that MRAs could probably identify as feminists in the loose sense as they meet the criteria of wanting equality between the sexes (just that they view men as being the ones who are underprivileged).

Did you see this one, Datun? Woman decides she's a transman, then wears make up:
www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2017/12/07/why_some_trans_men_don_t_like_makeup.html

If you see this woman in makeup and call her she, then you have committed the crime of misgendering!

This is an innovation enabling youth to overturn hierarchies of seniority: children can gain ascendancy over their parents, students over their teachers. Of course the comparison is farfetched, but there are echoes the Cultural Revolution when Red Guards were given license to attack the party cadres.

StigOfThePlump

Most feminists do not seek equality. They seek liberation from a patriarchal system. Equality would be a byproduct.

If they wanted equality they would recommend that 117 million boy babies were killed before they were born, that two men a week were murder by their partners, that women committed 50 percent of sexually violent crime, that young men were murdered for marrying outside their religion, that boys’ penises were cut so they could never enjoy sex, etc. That would be equality. Eliminating those things is feminism.

cromeyellow0

I’ve read it, but I’ll have to read it again tomorrow when I’m more awake! A quick skim couldn’t determine whether it was special snowflakery extraordinaire, or some kind of subversive double bluff.

The sheer number of people who buy into all this must have a point, surely !

Yup, another trans bashing thread...

It isn't trans bashing. It is shaking its head in bewilderment at why these people think anyone should care about the minutiae of their lives.

Also, my prediction is that literally no one is as interested in them as they are. The delusion that strangers on the street will see a woman with short hair and glasses or a man with pigtails and gasp, “What creature is this!?” is pure teenage narcissism.