Quite new too all this but i've been reading a lot recently, material girls, trans, listening to the Nolan podcast etc. Also would like to try to understand other views so have been reading up on Mermaids and Stonewall. Something I really struggle with is all the gender identities. It doesnt feel at all helpful to transgender people to use self identity as a term for so many different things. Many of these sound more like personality traits than identities. I read an article on Mermaid today that talked about Neopronouns by someone who identifies as a Maverique. This is defined as "Maverique is a non-binary gender that is defined as being completely independent from male, female, masculine, feminine, neutral, or anything in between or derived from any of them. It is also not a lack of gender. It is characterized by autonomy and inner conviction regarding a sense of gender which is unorthodox, unconventional and entirely independent of conventional concepts of gender. Despite this maveriques have a distinct and firm sense of gender."
I'm really struggling to understand how this sort of thing helps to improve understanding of transgender issues. And how can we cover identities like this in law. Where proposed legislation refers to lgbtq+ do people realise the range of identities that this might include. I can understand why identifying with ids such as Ace might appeal to young people, I'm just not sure it makes sense to try to legislate for this, any more than it would make sense to include introvert as a protected characteristic. Does someone identifying as a Maverique need protection from potential discrimination based on their (non) gender? Sometimes I wonder if young people are just playing a joke on us oldies and are actually giggling in corners at our gullibility. There was a thread recently about someone who self identified as a cat and I have absolutely no idea if this was a joke or not! Feeling very old!