5 ms·

I cant help but feel like if gender norms weren't so rigid and people were allowed to express themselves however they feel comfortable without being stigmatized

I cant help but feel like if gender norms weren't so rigid and people were allowed to express themselves however they feel comfortable without being stigmatized and judged then you wouldn't have people say (imo) crazy things like "my biology is the biology of a woman regardless of whether or not doctors agree." Funny thing, but back in the 80's, there was a kerfuffle in the LGBT community on campus where I was going to school. (I lived in a house with some prominent people in the group, including the campus president. We also deliberately chose a gay man as our house adviser.) Many militant LGBT people were basically bashing the bisexuals, calling them "fence sitters." Even going to the level of yelling at them and coming up with an ideology of denying the existence of bisexuals. There were also a number of couples who got effectively harassed because the man was declared by the crowd to be a "self denying" gay man and the woman was similarly declared to be a "baby dyke." There was this ideology that this form of attraction wasn't "real." Isn't society butting its nose into people's love lives the problem in the first place? I say we just leave people alone and let them work it out. Everyone should be "live and let live" as much as possible. From what I've seen, this is by far the best policy. Looking back on it all, those events were just another instance of angry teens and 20-somethings running around acting as if they knew everything there is to know about a big, complex subject. It's a big, complex subject we're all too close to and therefore biased about. (The problem in 2019, is that the hot blazing centers of our culture create incentives for the exact opposite of the "live and let live" mentality.)

DoreenMichele 8y ago
Isn't society butting its nose into people's love lives the problem in the first place? The reason "society" -- aka other people -- does that is because our sexual choices often have impacts on other people. If you sleep around casually, wind up pregnant out of wedlock and/or with a terrible, incurable STD, this will impact other people quite substantially. If you continue to sleep around casually afterwards and don't tell your lovers of your diagnosis, you are spreading disease in an outright malicious and incredibly selfish fashion. Etc. Most people who want society to butt out of their sex lives also want society to rescue them when something terrible happens. If people were all "It's all good. I'll just sleep in a ditch and wait to die of AIDS. I don't need nothing, thanks! I did this to myself." you might see less pushback from society concerning what people choose to do behind closed doors. Or, you know, if someone just wants to masturbate and not involve anyone in how they get their sexual needs met, cool. But that isn't how most people operate. Unfortunately, most people have a fairly poor track record of thinking in earnest about how their sexual preferences, predilections and choices impact other people. In many cases, they do a poor job of thinking about how this will impact the people they are actually having sex with. They often don't think at all about others beyond that who may be impacted as well. I am not justifying homophobia, etc. But a policy of "live and let live" is not as simple as most people perhaps wish it were.
grawprog 8y ago
>Isn't society butting its nose into people's love lives the problem in the first place? I say we just leave people alone and let them work it out. Everyone should be "live and let live" as much as possible. From what I've seen, this is by far the best policy. I agree so much with this and it's always how i've tried to be. I've never really understood why people choose to make this their business. They don't have to. They really don't. It's just never made sense to me why what two other people choose to do together would be anything to do with me or why people would expend so much energy worrying about it. There's just never seemed like a good reason to waste time and energy, judging, worrying, or even really thinking about what kind of people other people are attracted to.

DoreenMichele 8y ago

Isn't society butting its nose into people's love lives the problem in the first place? The reason "society" -- aka other people -- does that is because our sexual choices often have impacts on other people. If you sleep around casually, wind up pregnant out of wedlock and/or with a terrible, incurable STD, this will impact other people quite substantially. If you continue to sleep around casually afterwards and don't tell your lovers of your diagnosis, you are spreading disease in an outright malicious and incredibly selfish fashion. Etc. Most people who want society to butt out of their sex lives also want society to rescue them when something terrible happens. If people were all "It's all good. I'll just sleep in a ditch and wait to die of AIDS. I don't need nothing, thanks! I did this to myself." you might see less pushback from society concerning what people choose to do behind closed doors. Or, you know, if someone just wants to masturbate and not involve anyone in how they get their sexual needs met, cool. But that isn't how most people operate. Unfortunately, most people have a fairly poor track record of thinking in earnest about how their sexual preferences, predilections and choices impact other people. In many cases, they do a poor job of thinking about how this will impact the people they are actually having sex with. They often don't think at all about others beyond that who may be impacted as well. I am not justifying homophobia, etc. But a policy of "live and let live" is not as simple as most people perhaps wish it were.

grawprog 8y ago

>Isn't society butting its nose into people's love lives the problem in the first place? I say we just leave people alone and let them work it out. Everyone should be "live and let live" as much as possible. From what I've seen, this is by far the best policy. I agree so much with this and it's always how i've tried to be. I've never really understood why people choose to make this their business. They don't have to. They really don't. It's just never made sense to me why what two other people choose to do together would be anything to do with me or why people would expend so much energy worrying about it. There's just never seemed like a good reason to waste time and energy, judging, worrying, or even really thinking about what kind of people other people are attracted to.