Sorry but this is where I draw a line

I do think it's a bit ridiculous for people to actually get angry when someone misgenders them, assuming the mistake was made my someone innocent - not somebody doing it to make a point. I have a brother in law who is trans, and a new friend who is genderfluid, and I get the pronouns wrong sometimes and correct myself, or let myself be corrected. I understand that something new like this can be hard to adjust to, and gender norms are socially ingrained. So thinking of something existing other than men, and other than women, can be kind of hard to accept.

I wanted to actually reply to this bit:

It just feels like people are trying to eliminate genders all together

because something in the way it's phrase resonated with me. Would that be such a bad thing, really? Gender roles in highly stratified societies are already being challenged openly, and have been for many many years. Being a woman in STEM, with a passion for playing hockey and racing dirtbikes, and the go-to person in my home for fixing and installing things, I've been held back by being a woman more times than I'm comfortable with. I'm certainly not alone in this. I, while I do identify as a woman and quite enjoy looking and feeling feminine, often times think about what it would be like if we didn't have genders. Realistically, why would it be such a bad thing? Would people really change that much? Choosing your gender is about wanting to be seen as an individual, and not a gender. I'm very fond of the idea of a world where gender matters about as much as our shoe sizes. Nobody walks around thinking, "I'm a size 8 shoe, so I really am not sure if I should be seen wearing a dress today", but people who want to wear dresses but feel they cant because of their gender would certainly be judged for wearing a dress!

I'm not saying we should all live neutral, grey, non-feminine/masculine lives. I'm just saying that we shouldn't be held to certain standards and ideals of a gender if we don't want to be. There's nothing wrong with a woman who wants to be everything that femininity can be, but I also don't believe there's anything wrong with a woman who doesn't want or feel like she needs to be any of those things to be a woman, and chooses to abstain from that gender.

I'm not sure what my line of thinking classifies in support of, really. I'm really not entirely sure what the motives and ideas of gender-fluidity and whatnot actually are. I guess all I'm saying is that we shouldn't have to be defined by what genitals we have if we don't want to be.

The pronoun thing is why I'm fond of the Finnish language. Our pronouns are gender neutral.

/r/confession Thread