#social contructs

It’s amazing how often we forget that people are people. The reason it surprises me so much is “person” is the only label that truly applies to everyone. There are lots of other labels we like to use: Gay, straight, trans, cis, black, white, etc... Labels like these are to be expected. We use them to break down the world into categories, letting us process an incredibly complicated reality in bitesized pieces. Of course, these labels get us into trouble. Transphobia is one such instance. There is a lot of argument about whether gender is a social construct or a biological one. I fall in the middle of that one, though that is a thing for another time. Of much more importance is the fact that we think gender is important. To be specific, that a person’s gender matters more than their basic humanity. 

Trans and non-binary people are assaulted and killed at a disproportionate rate. Why? Because, for some reason or another, some people think it’s okay to hurt another person if their genitals don’t meet your expectations. At this point, it doesn’t actually matter whether trans people are “moral” or not. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a choice or not. What matters is that there are people who care so much about other people’s crotches that they are willing and eager to do violence when frustrated with said crotches.

I guess, when it comes to my gender, I'm very very happy being a girl. I think girls are awesome and I kinda think boys are enh (except I'm still weirdly attracted to men???) and I take a lot of pride in being a girl. But I've always identified more with things that are targeted towards boys or are stereotypically masculine.  I feel mega comfortable wearing my hair short, I love how I look in "men's" or more masculine clothes, I've known how to change the oil/tires on cars before I could even drive, I like fixing things, I've grown the love the fact that my body (especially my face) can be read as super masculine, I get weirdly happy when people mess up my gender (I've been sir'd, dude'd, "you boys...'d" a million times because of the way I look/dress), I feel more comfortable hanging out with men and most of my friends have been dudes for a majority of my life... But I also love feminine things. I cringe at the idea of dressing up on the daily, but I love getting all fancy and wearing dresses and stuff for special occasions or just to feel cute, I love my boobs and my curves and the parts of me that look more feminine than the rest... Anyway, I guess my point is, I remember one of my friends bringing up the idea that it's RIDICULOUS that being cis is considered being "normal" mostly because of this wibbliness that people have about gender (mostly stemming from the fact that the binary itself is a social construct and the fact that we find anything "masculine" or "feminine" is because we love to slap labels on things).  So I my question would probably be something along the lines of "how the FUCK do we talk about this w/o being problematic?" or like "how do we make questioning/analyzing your gender or like deconstructing the binary a thing that cis people do too?" because it's fucking absurd that people who are cis tend to just default to that title instead of ruminating on it at all? Like I guess it's possible to feel 100% on one side of the binary or another but like so innately that you never given it a second thought?