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For example, I've had students ask me (in good faith) how it was possible for international medical bodies to report different counts of COVID-19 cases during the early years of the pandemic. And one of the answers is that you need to first define what you mean by a "COVID-19 case." Do you include self-reported incidences? Waste water data? Geo-fenced social media posts about people complaining about their coronavirus symptoms? Federal estimates? Hospital data? How do you compare countries/territories/substate entities with mandatory reporting mechanisms vs countries/territories/substate entities that rely only on voluntary self-reported cases? And what combination of these do you use? How you construct what you mean by "case" is going to impact the outcomes you report. These different counts of COVID-19 cases can all be true simultaneously, not because numbers are made up, but because they all come out of different methodologies that can be equally valid.

And this is true across all science, not just social science. Bill Clinton said it best lol: "it depends on what your definition of the word 'is' is." This feels obvious when you look at scientific research that uses "skull measurements" as their object of analysis - the concept itself is white supremacist, regardless of how "sound" the research is. But even something as apparently self-evident as a COVID-19 case still requires a definition, and how you define your variables is necessarily going to impact how the research goes and what conclusions are drawn.

These definitions are always embedded in political & social assumptions. And again, this does not mean that science is all made up or nonsense or whatever. There is a widespread fetishism of "objective knowledge" that is itself ideological - the idea that knowledge can be divorced from all historical and political contexts, that you can scrub bias from research and simply report the facts. Valuable, well-supported, well-constructed scientific research is always embedded in these contexts. Not just as a result of researcher assumptions, but of the material context it exists in - what research resources are available, how & what research gets funded, the academy's relationship to the state & non-government bodies that both provide data and use that research to inform policy, the historical relationships universities often have with settler-colonialism and imperialism that give them access to "foreign" research subjects, etc etc etc.

polyamory being less about "being someone who experiences multiple romantic attractions simultaneously" and more about rejecting the core assumptions of monogamy as bolstered by the societal regime of heterosexuality. similarly i tend to think plurality is less about "experiencing multiple selves" and more about rejecting the core assumptions of singularity as bolstered by the societal regime of saneism.

i think how you organize your experiences of attraction and relationships can conform to the monogamous model quite easily, and forcing it to do so is generally socially beneficial to you, thus if your experiences lean closer it's easy to let them just stall and not do further introspection. but introspection and self-critique is always useful, so i recommend more elaborate analyses at every opportunity. thus, i think the "no assumptions, figure it out yourself" model of polyamory that prioritizes granting tools over making assumptions tends to be more useful. of course, if your relationships can conform to monogamy, you receive increased legitimacy, legal benefits, heightened trust from monogamous ppl, and less weird questions, among other things. so like, i think i can really only make claims and arguments about tools of self analysis.

similarly, i think how you organize your experiences of identity and selfhood can conform to the singular model quite easily, and forcing it to do so is generally socially beneficial. i think generally 'plurality' is first understood as only describing those who are totally unable to conform to this model, but i think as with all deviation from the norm, more questions than "are you totally incapable of conformity" should be asked. in all of my experiences, i have seen time and time again that some level of apparent plurality seems to be a normal expected part of the human experience. worksonas, code switching, drunk identity, hell even some subspaces all seem to exist on the same spectrum as plurality. but, over and over i see these different states of self be basically insulated from introspection or individual analysis by a rejection of plurality/assumption of singularity. when performing analysis of the self, i think one must not ask "is this correct", but rather "is this useful".

even people trying to commiserate with me complaining about the dumb responses assumed that it was just about sizing. and phrased it all like "you're so seen and valid". fucking christ.

"It's incredibly difficult and challenging using public bathrooms as a transgender woman and it should be obvious why if you have paid attention to anything ever"

"Girl I feel you, welcome to womanhood. sometimes the seats are gross or someone's left something on the floor, we all experience this, you're so valid for this"

(meanwhile I'm lucky if I'm not immediately stopped upon entering)

the bar for "passing" as a woman as a brown or black person is much higher, black and brown people are consistently expected to modify their bodies in "unnatural" ways to a much greater degree to emphasize their femininity, whether it's straightening their hair, silicone pads, wearing more makeup, more revealing clothing, undergoing cosmetic surgeries to shift fat around their body, etc

similarly, most of the practices and procedures decried as "mocking" and "misogynistic", as "defiling" womanhood, in so many posts by white transfeminists on this website are the same fucking practices used by women, cis and trans, who are not white, trying to make their womanhood more legible in societies that associate femininity with whiteness

when you decry the prevalence of "obviously fake tits and thighs and garish makeup" in drag, often paired with the assertion that the intent is simply to ridicule womanhood and no one could genuinely derive gendered actualization from it, it echoes much of the criticism levied at travestis and the prevalence of silicone injections among predominantly black transfeminine people in Brazil, who wished to emphasize a particular standard of beauty that may not be considered "natural" to white cis women in America.

this, the travesti's beautification practices being contrasted negatively with the emerging field of transsexuality, the push by medical institutions to make existing embodiments of what we now call transfemininity conform to the transsexual patient's more "natural" and "dignified" womanhood, which more closely resembles the eurocentric beauty standards set by American sexologists and captured by the Brazilian clinic, is intrinsically tied to the travesti's greater marginalization from cis society