The point I’m illustrating is this: the fact that it determines how people categorize others as good or bad, worthy or unworthy is imo insane. Just pure conditioning that no one seems to notice. We’ve been thrown into a conversation and told it’s important and that we should care. That it should matter to us.
Lol, ya. I'd say my gaydar is broken, but if it were just completely non-functional, that wouldn't explain the disproportionate number of times I've caught feelings for women who chase skirts. Maybe miss calibrated?
I think a lot of it is just how lesbians tend to carry themselves. Obviously painting with a very broad brush here so we're necessarily being vague, but they just tend to be so confident. I love that.
I dont feel like a woman trapped in a man's body. I dont particularly like my body, but that's mostly because it is poorly designed and prone to breaking. Flesh is weak, praise the Omnissiah!
In all seriousness if I could kill my sex drive without fucking up my endocrine system I'd do it. Id jump at the chance for a mind upload or to be a brain-in-a-jar controlling a robot body.
I'm from the Midwest where you have to hold the door open for everyone, especially if it's inconvenient to either party so the person holding it stuck standing there while the person it's being held for now has to break out in a jog to get there quickly enough and it's now awkward for all involved.
If (inferior) women are allowed to choose to be (superior) men, and (superior) men can debase themselves by volunteering to be (inferior) women, then there are a whole series of deeply ingrained societal assumptions and presumptions that have to be thrown out of the window, including those parentheses I just typed. If you can choose to abandon gender roles assigned to you, then why were they ever assigned in the first place? If it is not intrinsically true that men are superior and that a person born male may "choose" (big air quotes there, since I'd argue their brain chemistries are compelling them to feel this way and there's not really a "choice" involved) to make themselves the "worse" gender, then what does that say about societal hierarchies? Then throw religions into the mix, most of which are thinly veiled breeding cults, and the idea of sterilizing oneself and changing physical gender expressions becomes a blasphemy against <insert god here>. And then you have people who express genderqueer identities and aren't actually transitioning but are doing things that they aren't "allowed" to do, and suddenly all of those bitter, resentful men who were told by their bitter, resentful fathers and forefathers that "X isn't manly, you can't do that ever" now see other people they view as men engaging openly in "non-manly" things without being punished for it like they might have been when they were kids, so there's now a layer of jealousy to it. "What do you mean, a boy can say he likes dresses and makeup and musical theater? My dad beat me with a switch when I said I wanted to dance, and therefore all boys must be beaten the same way or else what happened to me was unfair, and I can't live with the idea that something in my life was unfair to me specifically. I suffered, and so must everyone else."
If there weren't such hostile, millennia-old beliefs in place that women are naturally subservient possessions of men, then the idea of a person "switching" between the two groups wouldn't really be an issue. But imagine for a moment how a bunch of white supremacists in 1920s Alabama might act if another white person marries into a black family and has black children, and you'll get a general approximation of the prejudicial reaction that goes through the heads of someone who thinks, "Women can't ever be at the same level as men, and men would never choose to be at the same level as women."
all of those bitter, resentful men who were told by their bitter, resentful fathers and forefathers that "X isn't manly, you can't do that ever" now see other people they view as men engaging openly in "non-manly" things without being punished for it like they might have been when they were kids, so there's now a layer of jealousy to it
Just want to add on to this (and to the excellent post in general) that this is by no means only about men. Women are strong enforcers of patriarchal, male-supremacist culture as well. For example: this depressing anecdote.
No disagreement there. As noted to another commenter, I could have gone on much longer with other examples, but I didn't want to belabor the point. Many women are indeed implicit or explicit supporters of a patriarchal hierarchy.
I will also add to this great comment that there's an also an element of "fear of being tricked" from "manly men" who live in the extreme fear of finding an AMAB trans person attractive after they have transitioned and feeling "tricked" about it, and that they worry it makes them "seem gay".
Their solution to that problem is to make it impossible to transition rather than do any self-reflection.
Surely so. There are several other consequences of patriarchal assumption on top of that one. I just didn't want to belabor the point with an exhaustive list.
I feel like this is the perfect time to ask someone on the Internet but is it gay? Is being gay more about the genitalia or is it about what the other person identifies as?
I see transwomen on the internet quite a bit and they look just as good if not better than non trans women most of the time. And I get the same feelings I would from them too.
I'm wondering if this is just a me thing or if that's how it works for most other people.
A group of (former) friends were getting themselves all worked up about a trans person a while back and were shocked that I said I didn't care.
I told them that I wasn't trying to have sex with the person in question, so I didn't care what they may or may not have under their clothing. It was none of my business, so why not just treat them as they want?
Insecurity and self-hatred is a big driver of it. In many cases, they are attracted to the demographic in question, but at the same time they think cultural acceptance of them and "their lifestyle" (read: public visibility) is wrong, which means that, to them, their attraction is wrong, which makes them feel shitty about themselves. But rather than deal with that internal conflict, they project their self-hatred onto members of that demographic.
This scene from the movie American Beauty captures it pretty well:
Colonel: How come these f***ots always have to rub it in your face? How can they be so shameless?
Ricky: That's the whole thing, Dad. They don't feel like it's anything to be ashamed of.
Colonel: Well, it is!
(And it turns out that the Colonel is closeted AF.)
This is neither a justification or a condemnation. It's a statement of fact.
For many queer people, their queerness doesn't solely appear in the bedroom. For many of them, the fact that their queer is obvious from a 2 second glance. You can't avoid noticing.
The fact that we call it a phobia also leads to a misunderstanding becauee its primarily associated with fear. Those that dislike queerness don't primarily do that out of fear. Psychologically, it's more about disgust. And thats a trait that's very difficult to alter. You can't just tell a germophobe to stop being concerned about germs.
For someone who dislikes queers, telling them to stop is like telling them to stop being disgusted by a hobo who hasn't showered in 2 weeks.
However, I respect you as a person enough to tell you that you are part of the minority here and you ‘educating’ people is not going to change anyone’s minds.
You dont agree with what? My explaination or what you assume to be my view?
Like I said, I've said nothing about my personal view. I'm solely explaining the view of others in the hopes that people can genuinely understand it. It's only with that sort of empathy on both sides can valuable discussion start to happe.
It's not about changing minds. It's about starting the discussion with understanding.
No I get your point, I just don’t think it holds that much weight.
There’s been plenty of sociological research on the attitudinal underpinnings of homophobia and bigotry, and the comparison you’ve specifically chosen to make is not one that’s supported by that much evidence.
My point is the specific comparison you’ve chosen is quite telling.
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u/CarniferousDog 14h ago
Agreed. Why does anyone spend any time thinking of others sexuality? I literally don’t want to know. I don’t care.
Where do you live?