by Oranjui » June 11th, 2015, 3:44 pm
Can we stop being pedantic (read: arrogant dickwads) and realize that connotations are present in just about all words, and people won't necessarily agree on them? Moy thinks that "anomaly" carries a negative implied meaning (which personally I agree with), but others don't see that.
Anyway, you defined "normal" but didn't actually define what these "norms" and "typical" things are. I've been trying not to get involved in this because it seems like such a polarized issue, but at least in the way I see it, any social classification of people (or other animals, for that matter) simply just can't be labelled "natural" or "normal," whether we're talking about binary genders or seeing people on a gender spectrum, or deciding what qualifies as a psychological disorder, or what someone's personality type is, or pretty much anything else you can think of. We invented it, therefore it is artificial. Maybe we've created definitions that suit the majority and are therefore "normal," but it's not like differing from what is defined to be normal is bad, or that it shouldn't have happened [note: should = used to indicate obligation, duty, or correctness, typically when criticizing someone's actions]. Gender is a social construct created by humans and nobody is going to naturally fit in anywhere; they look at what's out there and figure out what they associate most with, so then they decide to label themselves as that. At least as far as I know, when you're born, you don't have any notion of what constitutes someone who identifies as male, female, bigender, or whatever else. This is getting a little off topic but the closest thing to concrete in this kind of discussion is biological sex, which is obviously defined by what body parts you have...and still requires more than just the label of "biologically male" or female, because there are still people who are intersex or born without reproductive organs or whatever.
Mostly I just think we need to quit trying to lump people into groups and treating the perceived minorities as special and deserving unique treatment, and instead just start accepting everyone for who they are and quit caring about if someone's male or female or transgender or bigender or agender or straight or gay or lesbian or bisexual or asexual or white or black or Christian or Hindu or atheist or agnostic or ignostic or Republican or Democrat or Libertarian or Communist or Fascist or Anarchist or whatever the ♥♥♥♥ else you want to label yourself as. Each of us is an individual, different from everyone else in the tiniest ways. I don't know about you guys, but I'd rather just be myself than try to identify myself as and conform to the ideals/demands of some other group that's trying to fight for special rights or whatever. But that's just me.