Incarnation Issues

It's old-fashioned. It's modern. It's butch. It's femme. It's snazzy. It's practical.

Wikipedia talks about the bloomers and the leg-o-mutton sleeves, but I'm also noticing a lot of these outfits have absolute supervillain lapels, which I also like a lot.

Obligatory disclaimer: critiquing a work on the basis of beliefs it seems to reveal does not mean that the critic believes it is morally acceptable to mistreat the author of said work. It is not, in fact, morally acceptable to mistreat the author of said work.

The first thing the reader learns about the narrator of the short story "I Sexually Identify As An Attack Helicopter", by Isabel Fall, is that it* sexually identifies as an attack helicopter.

The second thing the reader learns about it is that its body is "an XX-karyotype somatic female".

Singular they was meant to be and (and mostly still is) the way to refer to someone without gendering them! using singular they was the 'it's too hard to make a new gender neutral singular third person pronoun catch on, lets just use singular they, we already use it for unknown gender and have for ages, it's the most feasible way' compromise.

calling someone 'they' is not misgendering them, it's NOT gendering them at all. it's going 'i'm not telling you what gender this person i'm referring to is'.

maybe it's because i don't know their gender (classic use case), maybe it's because i don't want you to know (i've done this when i'm talking about cis friends to family who think men and women shouldn't be allowed to be friends), maybe i just don't think it's relevant to the conversation at hand, maybe it's because they're agender or nonbinary or their gender is complicated (the people who say 'my pronouns are they/them').

maybe it's a losing battle, and the use of singular they has shifted from all the people in the last category that we really do need to come up with a new word if we want to refer to people without bringing up people's gender in english.

But i think it's unreasonable to go 'i'm not someone in that last category, so you are never allowed to talk about me without explicitly mentioning my gender in any conversation you have with anyone ever'.

Personally, nobody has ever been outright homophobic to me in my entire life, just sometimes obnoxious about gender nonconformity. Which is pretty different from how people talk about things.

Like, looking at the "straight privilege knapsack":

I could go for months without being called gay if my girlfriend was not amused by calling me gay.

I am not asked to think about why I am a lesbian,

or generally to speak for all lesbians.

People do not ask me why I chose it, or why I disclosed it, or insult me about my orientation.

If people have made assumptions about my sex life I haven't noticed.

I have not been accused of pushing my orientation onto others.

My friends and family all know and they're chill and I never expected them to not be chill.

I have not worried about problems going home from meetings.

I think my orientation got covered in sex ed but I don't remember. It didn't show up in English class books that I remember but that was not in my top 10 complaints about English class.

People don't define me by my orientation.

When I have problems I need not ask of negative situations whether it has sexual orientation overtones.

Nobody noticeably reacts when I hold hands with or kiss my girlfriend.

I did not grow up with games that attack my sexual orientation.

People mostly don't use terms for my sexual orientation to describe things.

My employers have never cared.

I guess I can't count on representation in all media but I don't care that much. Like, it would be nice if Terraria had gay NPCs, but it only has a few NPCs who express attraction, so it seems not crazy for all of those NPCs to be straight. It would also be nice if random pop music was gayer but it doesn't matter that much and, you know, it would also be nice if random pop music wasn't about relationship drama and the club.

The majority of men are basically, like, fine, but it's a well-documented observation that people will tend to stick around with people who hold similar values etc. This is called "homophily" in the social sciences.

So you get these calls for men to "call out" their friends who make misogynist jokes but well... most of the men who will actually hear that message are already not friends with the men who make those jokes, BECAUSE they find men who make those jokes odious.

Decent men and scumbags tend to self-sort into distinct social scenes. This isn't absolute, there are mixed groups, but it can lead to specific scenes or subcultures where all the men are shit heads. If you are finding yourself surrounded by such men consider taking up new hobbies and expanding your social circles. You may have to go out of your comfort zone.

And my mum said "well, maybe in that case she'd learn to be more careful."

Aaaaand I think my resulting reaction of horror at the idea of forcing 50% of children to play more carefully due to clothing requirements made her realise exactly what she'd just said.

maybe in that case she’d learn

to be more careful.”

My parents, especially my mom, spent a lot of time teaching me to be more ladylike. This was the 80s and 90s, so it was different. And we had a lot of shows like Golden Girls and Designing Women that also told us it was okay to not be ladylike sometimes.

But I've also become more fond of the ladylike lessons as I've gotten older. I was diagnosed with autism when I was about 40. I'm high functioning, I also know my mother's lessons helped. Because she taught me how to sit while wearing a dress and how to be unfailingly polite and proper and acceptable dress codes for situations. And I have no idea or concept for how neurotypicals learn that stuff, but I actually really needed it.

I'm also autistic, and the vast, vast majority of women I find myself around would agree that there's absolutely nothing wrong with a woman asking out a man, and that gender roles are outdated.

The vast majority also agree that they personally would prefer for a man to ask them out, and they don't do that very often.

I didn't just silently "pick up" on how to know if a woman is flirting or just being friendly, and when and how to ask women out, and that's been a problem for me that I've had a tough time dealing with.

I feel like there's probably something similar that happens with girls. What if 99% of the men you meet agree that there's nothing wrong with a woman who doesn't wear makeup but they personally find it attractive and would be more likely to ask out women in makeup?

I think boys should wear skirts and girls should wear trousers and everybody should be encouraged to play in dirt if they want to.

But allistic people these days often don't seem to understand how often they tend to conform to traditional gender roles and how difficult it can be for a substantial portion of the public to pick up on those through cultural osmosis rather than explicit instruction.

It helps to know what people expect of you so you aren't *surprised* when you break a rule you didn't even know you were supposed to follow.

Little girls play with dolls, and the dolls come in boxes specifying where the doll is going and what outfits she's wearing for the occasion. Little girls dress themselves up in princessy outfits and throw fake tea parties where they pretend to have table manners (and therefore learn them). Little girls watch movies about noblewomen in ballgowns. They take dance lessons and also acting lessons and also other types of performing arts lessons where they need to wear skirts and walk and talk in specific ways (and wear stage makeup!). There are huge giant doll heads on which little girls can practice doing makeup. There's an infinite number of activities for little girls where they can learn about explicit rules for how to be a girl, we don't need to impose the formal-setting-only rules onto them while they're performing other types of equally developmentally important activities, such as being physically active or being in nature.

Clothes and makeup are also competences that require basically zero social skills. The skills you need are the skills of a graphic designer, basically: you need to understand that Comic Sans doesn't make your webpage look formal but a nice Serif font does, and you need to know some colour theory. All of which girls' female relatives and friends readily point out to them at appropriate occasions. And all of it is completely orthogonal to looking feminine OR being restricted physically: you can be perfectly cozy and physically active in a loose skirt, and you can be formally dressed in a very constricting masc three-piece suit, and both of those can look fashionable and be competently styled. Even if you start off in your teens or as an adult, you'll learn to be passable at it in like a couple of months, and there's a myriad of resources telling you how because society thinks it very important to explicitly teach women how to do it. If I wanted to learn how dress for my colouring or body type or aesthetic or chosen occasion a quick Google search would spew up hundreds of thousands of words of explicit instruction, many of which in a visual format and with dozens of examples. And a large chunk of them focus on what's considered more widely attractive, because whether women are attractive and why is an inescapable topic in modern culture. And it, once again, has more to do with art skills than it does with social skills: if you can understand why a certain video game character is widely considered cool and then reproduce those aesthetic traits, you can do the same with what's considered sexy/conventionally attractive, and as a woman you have enough resources on that to last you a lifetime.

OTOH autistic women also struggle with recognizing that someone is flirting with them, or being successful at dating, because you simply cannot successfully learn those things without getting good at constantly fine-tuning your interpretation of a complex social situation based off of minute constantly changing and highly contextual cues. No amount of explicit instruction will help if you can't do this sort of reasoning constantly while the situation is happening, similarly to how no amount of explicit instruction at playing volleyball can fix naturally poor hand-eye coordination. That's not how it works.

Socially competent men usually "feel out" the situation by being vague yet suggestive, observe how the other person reacts, and use this for their cues on whether to escalate and how much: they'll give off a bunch of tiny ambivalent hints (that they can play off as jokes to maintain the social harmony and status quo if they don't work) and then observe whether the woman responds favourably or builds on it with her own tiny just a shade less ambiguous hints, to which he will then again slightly escalate, until at least one of them is reasonably sure that the other one will say yes if they ask for a date. If you've heard of Charles Osgood's GRIT conflict deescalation technique, or Salami tactics in diplomacy, it's the exact same principle. Women also very VERY frequently start with the subtle hints first - how many couples do you know where they can't agree who started flirting with whom? - and the eventual formal invitation on a date traditionally being the man's job is quite frankly just a formality, as are most "dating rules", because they're often the culmination of an implicit mutual agreement that has already been reached, well, implicitly over the course of the interaction.

If the girl is autistic or otherwise has poor social skills (or low self esteem that makes it so she doesn't interpret the situation as flirting), most guys will interpret her lack of follow up as her not being interested, take the hint, and give up, and the ones who keep on insisting are people who are either creeps who can't take no for an answer or guys who are both creeps and have poor social skills (the guys with poor social skills who aren't creeps tend to just be very very passive, as you yourself attest to). So she's not gonna be any luckier in dating than you are - it's the autism that's the problem, because this type of social skill can't be taught as a series of rules - not her gender. Autistic women also struggle making friends with women who aren't autistic, because those relationships also often require this level of reading the room, especially in adolescence and young adulthood, and they're not explicitly taught any of that either, and they suffer for it a lot. Like, A LOT. Which you can discover by listening to their experiences.

The reason people are dogpiling on you is because you're equating gendered things unrelated to social skills that can be taught very easily (if you managed to learn that you need to wear business clothes to a job interview without being forced into them every day as a child, a woman with your equivalent intelligence and social skills can manage to learn when she should wear a skirt and how, trust), with social skill problems inherent to autism as a disability, as if femininity=being pretty and wearing makeup (because boys like it!) and masculinity=being assertive and charming (because girls like it!), so only men are required to ever have social skills (that they can then use to display their masculinity) and girls can just coast on their looks. This comes off as very sexist to some.

If these are your starting premises, and some more of your starting premises are that being good at dating can be taught through explicit instruction (on what "the man's role" is), you can't get mad when people aren't helping you because it's quite impossible to help you on your own terms.

Successful dating isn't about "playing the role of man correctly", it's about "being very good at handling emotionally fraught and highly ambivalent social situations", and anyone who tries to tell you it's the former is some sort of grifter. And these grifters are often sexist weirdos so this type of discourse eventually grew to be associated with them, unfortunately. Any "dating rules" can be done away with if what I previously described about the underlying implicit communication and constant adjusting to each other is correctly done - for example, if a guy is sending out many correctly done signals that he likes a woman, and there's a natural back-and-forth, but he isn't asking her out, most women will bite the bullet and ask him out themselves eventually, because based off of the social cues present they'll conclude, "he likes me but he's shy", and the ones who don't are women who don't like shy guys and reject him based on that (which isn't most women, btw). OTOH if the implicit part is not there, no adherence to good manners or formal dating rules or displays of masculinity will save you, because you'll come off as robotic, and the non-autistic person will be confused and put off because your explicit words don't match the message you're sending on a more implicit level. The reason "dating coaches" just tell you to go and get rejected a lot before you pick it up is the same reason basketball coaches tell you to try throwing the ball into the hoop many times - they hope that you'll pick it up intuitively and learn how to instinctually recognize where the ball's gonna land and subtly adjust your grip and the force of your throw. But if you have a coordination disorder this won't help you. And most people without a coordination disorder won't be able to give you specific instructions on how to do it because they just threw the basketball a lot until they got the hang of it naturally.

When you start talking about all these rules and how to do this and how to do that expecting formal instructions on the level of some kinda video game walkthrough, which is what socially incompetent guys do, most people recognize that the approach itself is wrong because to them it's obvious that what they're asking for won't help. They're doing allat correctly quite subconsciously, and they'll at best try to come up with some half-assed explanation for why something should or shouldn't be done on the fly when really whether it worked or not and on whom is just ridiculously contextual and intuitive ("it doesn't matter whether you ask her out first", she'll say thinking of the guy who did everything else correctly and also had the type of personality, looks, and interests that she liked; "ugh men giving you compliments is annoying", she'll say thinking of the guy who ignored all her hints about not being interested, while ignoring how she melts on the spot when given one in the right context and at the right time, etc). The only reason I can break it down to you as granularly as this is because I have a PhD in child social development and like 15 years of being good at dating behind me. The advice the autistic or otherwise socially incompetent girl is given won't be much better or more useful than the advice you're receiving, btw, nor will she be better than you at comprehending it.

If I wanted to learn how dress for my colouring or body type or aesthetic or chosen occasion

You would be *astounded* at how far in life an autistic person can get before realizing something as simple as "people dress differently for different occasions."

And like, honestly? If you only figure that out when you're in your mid 20s or your 30s and discover that it's a fairly easy skill to develop your first reaction is going to be "Why the hell didn't people just tell me this shit when I was a kid?"

This is also true of makeup application and shaving, except both of these have much worse failure modes than showing someone your underwear by mistake. Screw up makeup and you can get an infection, screw up shaving and you can cut yourself. (My mother did try to teach me to shave, when I was a young teenager, but she had the bold theory that reusing a disposable razor indefinitely was basically fine. Perhaps it worked for her, at some point, but it did not work for me. I got cuts, and a small scar that took several years to heal.)

It's not "just graphic design". I do plenty of graphic design. I sit at my computer and I pick colors and I can try an infinite number of 256³ colors for free. I only get hurt if I have bad posture.

I guess GSL are supposed to be an example of some leftwing identity group run amok, but their demands always seemed some of the most reasonable demands from any identity group, to me.

Bisexual women who see themselves pairbonding in the end with a man, outnumber lesbians like 8 to 1 or whatnot. If you ever hooked up with someone, fell for them, began planning a life with them, and were told - oh, no, I'm gonna marry a man, sorry - then you might want to narrow your opportunities to the people who are at least categorically able to have a serious, long term relationship with you.

There was a woman who wrote a column for the Atlantic (or someone) about how non-Jewish women shouldn't date Jewish men. Her reason is that the Jewish men SAY they are areligious and happy marrying a gentile, but then at some point they realize that want a traditional Jewish family/community, and they dump the girlfriend and marry some daughter of their mother's friend. Her evidence for this claim was that had happened three times to her.

Yes, leveling this broad, general stereotype as a reason to avoid Jewish people is pretty antisemitic. But if something broke my heart THREE TIMES, I'd be paranoid too. I think this woman gets an official pass for her, personally, to never date a Jewish man again. Thrice burned and all.

(The problem was no one should let her publish in a national magazine based off of this Small Sample Size.)

So like, if some lesbians have been burned falling for women-who-also-like-d*cks, I see why they don't want them in their hook up spots. Okay, sucks to be you. Because they outnumber you so much, being around them would make it very hard to find a real date.

Is there some other dimension to this that I am missing? I know ANY stereotype becomes 100 times worse on tumblr where we will see teenage proto-demagogues spewing the dumbest takes, but that's true for every sexuality out there, so why so much hate for the GSL?

If you were dating a GSL and you believe you intended to get married one day, but she breaks up with you because she found out you bounced on a man in your old life -- okay, I am sorry, that really really hurts. But also she's allowed to break up based on old baggage and worries.

Signs You Are NOT A Lesbian: […] You notice that female-centered communities or Lesbian culture feel distant, uncomfortable, or uninteresting to you.

Signs You ARE A Lesbian: […] You prioritize the approval and opinions of womyn above all else. The validation of other womyn feels essential and nourishing to your soul, whereas male approval feels hollow, transactional, or like a burden. […] You experience a "lifting of the veil" regarding your past. When you view your history through the lens of Lesbianism, confusing past behaviors suddenly make perfect sense. […] You feel "embodied" during interactions with womyn. In the presence of womyn you are attracted to, you feel hyper-aware of your own body, your skin, and your breath; conversely, interacting with men often makes you feel dissociated, numb, or "outside" yourself.

speaking as a normal woman who just happens to prefer dating and sex with women and think the idea of dating or having sex with a man in real life is unappealing, i

You could also have a look at #gold star lesbians interact! Featuring lovely posts like this one:

How insulting must it feel for lesbians in ‘third world’ countries to hear fakebians from the west say they slept with men because of ‘pressure’ or ‘comphet’ or what have you when some lesbians from other countries get kicked out of their house, estranged from their families, sent to psychiatrict wards and ‘correctively’ raped and arranged marriages whilst women from the west have gay marriage legalised and most here people tolerate gay people now. I feel so bad for lesbians in countries where homophobia is rife and they have to hear this bullshit from women in the west. Be real, you slept with men because you WANTED TO, none of this comphet bullshit.

let's tell women who were pressured into unwanted sex that they secretly wanted it because it wasn't literal maximally violent rape! #feminism

or this one:

As gold star lesbian discourse is going viral I thought i’d talk about what it means to be a gold star (aka a lesbian) and the discourse surrounding it. […] Another argument I see about gold stars is that the notion of calling yourself a gold star and being proud of it is uplifting purity culture. So riddle me this. Do lesbians practice chastity? Do they wait until marriage to have sex? Most lesbians don’t. It’s almost as if you don’t see lesbian sex as real sex because most lesbians are not virgins.

it's not about purity culture! btw a gold star is the same thing as a lesbian.

or this one:

Dating bisexuals as a lesbian can put your life at risk. I’m not exaggerating. Not to mention the STDs lol. How many stories have you heard of bi women going on a date with a lesbian and then surprising her with a bf reveal and trying to get her into bed with her to have a threesome? These men are dangerous and rapey, and so are their bisexual girlfriends.

with charming replies like

Apparently not wanting to get raped by their jakeys or getting STDs is biphobic

Also the bi woman psycho male ex wanting to kill not only her but her current lesbian partner too.

yes this is multiple posts by the same person. i am being lazy here. please feel free to browse other tags.

i just wish the radfem lesbians who are like "if you could ever imagine yourself maybe experimentally trying to date the most beautiful waifish man in the world, or you like transgender women, don't call yourself a lesbian" had some decent alternate terminology here. i think it is very stupid to call yourself a bisexual if you are like "well, i'm attracted to multiple kinds of women, and maybe in principle some kind of imaginary man who i've never met".