Uhm. What strikes me as odd is that you seem to consider social constructs and non-existent in some sense. I mean, it's true they're ideas with no palpable material reality, but that doesn't mean they don't exist or they don't have real consequences to the people living in them. I will always fight for everyone knowing gender is a social construct with no biological counterpart (or at least, while I believe it to be true), but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist--just that we've some hope of changing it towards a future of more flexibility and tolerance.
People can get away with being not entirely conventional gender wise--'til a certain point. I don't doubt that if the behaviour/modisms/type of clothes differs from the 'norm' what is considered too much, people can get a lot of shit about it. So I don't really boggle at people being oppressed that way having an identity. (And words' meaning change--I tend to think that people using the identity have more right than anybody in defining that identity.)
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Date: 5 Mar 2010 11:43 pm (UTC)People can get away with being not entirely conventional gender wise--'til a certain point. I don't doubt that if the behaviour/modisms/type of clothes differs from the 'norm' what is considered too much, people can get a lot of shit about it. So I don't really boggle at people being oppressed that way having an identity. (And words' meaning change--I tend to think that people using the identity have more right than anybody in defining that identity.)