QOTD

[redbird]

Another person’s sex or gender identification cannot possibly change my own, or threaten it in any way. About the worst that another person’s sex or gender identification can do to mine is to make me think a little more carefully about my own sex and gender and how those things are a part of my life.

I’m gonna say this because it needs to be said: if your own sense of yourself can’t hold up to the occasional bit of introspective scrutiny, you have bigger fish to fry than how someone else is identifying hir sex or gender. —Hanne Blank

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

Wow. Thanks for surfacing this!

[adrian_turtle]

"Another person's sex or gender identification cannot possibly threaten my own, in any way."

I agree with that.

It's a different statement, a very different statement on several levels, than,
"Another person's sex or gender identification cannot possibly change my own, in any way."

That statement does not fit with my experience. (It may be perfectly valid for Hanne's, of course.) I could not be the kind of woman I am without role models. As a young adult, I was aware of a fairly limited set of possible gender presentations--none of them fit me very well, so I tried to reject them all. (I didn't think in terms of changing the game or playing by different rules. I just didn't want to play.) When I saw people I admired performing gender in ways that looked like they could be comfortable for me, it changed the way I thought about the whole subject. It shifted my self-image.

[redbird]

An excellent point, my love. I think Hanne is trying to say something in the vicinity of "another person's sex or gender identification doesn't force me to change my own," an "it's not contagious" similar to "merely being in the room with a homosexual will not change your orientation."

[striped]

Well said! I don't know the context for this, but I think a lot of homophobia and transphobia does stem from some people's sense of the weakness of their own cis heterosexual identity.

[striped]

(...and the context is provided in the link, I see. And it looks interesting! *goes to read*)

[yarram.livejournal.com]

That's a wonderful quote. Thanks for sharing it!

[fjm.livejournal.com]

While I appreciate the sentiment and understand it as a political statement, I cannot agree with it as a personal one.

My sense of my own gender is actually pretty fluid and shifts according to who I am with and how they "present".

[redbird]

*nod* I think that the people who most need to be told "my gender is not a threat to you" are ones whose identity is less fluid, and to whom that lack of fluidity is important.