Almost as if dictionaries are supposed to be descriptive and not prescriptive.
Oh no oh dear don’t make me chronicle the progression of the natural miracle that is the evolution of language as I swore to do when I solemnly took my Lexicographer’s Oath oh no that’s my least favorite thing.
Yeah, this has serious “don’t threaten me with a good time” vibes. The fuck do they think a dictionary does?
A shocking amount of people think that the dictionary is what dictates definitions and not that it records the meaning of words commonly used
Can’t help but to point out that gender identity is not the same as sexuality.
Good luck getting @dinafor2 to understand that.
If someone is using a word I don’t know, I’d like to be able to look it up. That’s the point of dictionaries.
An entry in dictionary proves the existence of something. Those people want to deny queer people’s right to live, so they’re upset if an objective medium acknowledges them.
Technically an entry in a dictionary only proves the existence of a word. “Unicorn” is in the dictionary, after all. But as some of these social justice issues gain more mainstream traction, more relevant terms will be added to the dictionaries and probably have more favorable definitions as well.
For most of my life I was a gender abolitionist. I just didn’t care, really, about my masculinity. I’d still be down for GA except I recognize that trans folk get so much out of being their true gender. It makes them really happy, so there’s obviously something there.
I’d identify purely as enby (undefined) except I’ve become repulsed at how maleness is represented in society. With examples of masculinity like Donald J. Trump, Matt Walsh, Ben Shapiro and Joe Rogan, I’ve given up on maleness, and have proverbially burned my man card.
(Oh, I recently learned my levels of T are atypically low and probably have been all my life. I am seeing an endocrinologist in December to see if I’m a candidate for hormone replacement. I’ll try it so long as I don’t become a sex pest or a Republican or violent. I may be sad if I lose my hair.)
So now I’m Enby (undefined, but absolutely not a man).
That’s an example of genderqueer.
ETA I’ve deliberated at length at what masculinity looks like, and expressed my sentiments here – sorry about the messy link.
If it helps comfort you, I’m an enby, phenotypically male, bald as a cue ball, and my natural testosterone is so high I’m practically a teen despite actually being three times older. I am and always have been left AF and a fierce supporter of human rights, including bodily autonomy. I had an incident earlier in life which led to my testosterone temporarily dipping by about half for a few months and nothing about my behavior or beliefs significantly changed. I did nap more but that might have been coincidental. That’s about it.
I think most people like the guys you mentioned are just assholes regardless of their testosterone levels.
I hope I’ll just be the same, only happier and with sexual interests (or lack thereof) that match my circumstances. As I mention elsewhere, I really don’t want to turn into my dad, who is a full MAGA disciple and football fanatic who loves Trump with all his heart.
Considering the men on my mother’s side of the family tree all usually lose their hair in their thirties, I may also lose mine, and I’m not thrilled with the idea.
My father also was a MAGAt, up until his death. I’m pretty sure it’s not genetic, thankfully.
If you do start to thin, there are a ton of treatments to prevent and reverse it. As long as you get on them early, you’ll likely not notice much of a difference. I was just super poor when I started balding, so I didn’t have a choice. Now those poor follicles are toast.
I was going to say something similar. Testosterone levels don’t make beliefs more likely…there are plenty of Female MAGA’s.
I have very high natural testosterone; I sit adjacent to the general left right politics; preferring policy that has quality evidence to back it up. Scientifically oriented most of my political ideas land squarely on the “left”; because being good to people generally leads to better outcomes for everyone.
I’ll try it so long as I don’t become a sex pest or a Republican or violent.
That’s just a really messed up view, and very terribly exclusionary. Even if we did abolish the concept of gender about 50% (+/- .05%) of that population will have elevated testosterone, and you’ve already decided the whole lot is bad just due to their bodies natural proccess.
It’s like saying estrogen better not turn me into a TERF like JK Rowling or a conservative like Margaret Thatcher. It’s simply a nonsensical view.
I can’t speak to how hormones affect people generally, but looking at how my father behaves (and is a MAGA disciple and Trump worshipper) I’m terrified of becoming more like him.
Every person is different, and based on my heritage, I have some scary ideas of who I might have been via small nudges of destiny or biology.
We’re so much more as people than our biology.
My father is a “MAGA disciple” as you put it. I’m not, my uncle isn’t, and his father wasn’t either. Seems like neither ancestry or testosterone mattered there. Frankly I don’t think anything short of a absolutely debilitating head injury could change me enough to support Trump.
I’ve had a few friends transition, and they’re still themselves. Still the people I’ve always know. Sure little things can change, but your core identity as a person isn’t measured by hormones.
Also worth considering you’re doing this under a doctor’s care. You’re not an pro-athlete or bodybuilder buying testosterone from the back of a van and absolutely slaming the stuff. That’s basically the only scenario where taking testosterone would really change you, but even then you’d just be angry not have a complete shift in ideology.
Either way testosterone doesn’t make you or anybody else a Republican. One area Trump gained a lot of votes last year was from white women specifically.
I guess this is all to say trust that you are you and don’t let Republican shitheads convince you that roughly half of the population is terrible
The facets about your father than you find bad are not about being “male”, even as I wager he asserts it to be.
I’ve realized that IRL there are no character traits we want a man to have but not a woman, and vice versa. This is the train of thought that leads me to gender abolition, at least for myself.
Masculinity no longer means anything positive, and the popular folk who assert that it means something insist that it means things that I find objectionable, and who behave in ways that are objectionable, themselves.
With examples of masculinity like Donald J. Trump, Matt Walsh, Ben Shapiro and Joe Rogan, I’ve given up on maleness
Yeah, male here (born as male, identify as male), I don’t think most of us see any of those guys as very masculine. I think every single one of those, but particularly DJT and Joe Rogan, have some really deep insecurities that cause them to be the way they are. Joe Rogan probably has body dysmorphia and a whole host of other issues. I think DJT is an asshole because his own family saw him as a failure and so he’s been trying to prove himself to everyone, but nobody gave a fuck, no matter how big he made his public image.
Real masculinity is something else entirely. Our elevated T levels are because we’re supposed to be providers and protectors by nature. This doesn’t mean that in modern day you should still financially provide for the entire family alone (women work too now, and that’s fine), it means that if you see someone pushing a car that ran out of gas before reaching the gas station, you offer to help, regardless of the other person’s gender identity or skin color. It means that if your elderly neighbor can’t shovel snow off their driveway anymore, you offer to help. And most importantly, you stand by your family and others close to you, and help them protect their own rights (particularly children who don’t know how to stand up for themselves yet).
And some men are not masculine, that’s fine. Some women are masculine too, that’s fine too.
And you know what, I WILL toot my own horn now. I may not be an example of peak masculinity either, but thinking about it, the above mostly describes me. I help anyone I can - especially with physical things, because I’m a force of nature. When I can of course - I still have to put myself and my family first. I take care of my child without any real involvement from my ex - because she wasn’t really capable of being a loving mother. When we were together, I slept 2-3 hours a night to provide for her and the kids (one being my stepkid). I probably did more at home than she did, and I also worked more than full time. Other than two of my exes being physically abusive because they knew I wouldn’t hit back, I haven’t been in a fight since middle school. Not because I’ve pussied out - because I got so big through powerlifting that nobody dares try anything anymore, and I NEVER start a fight. The one thing that I guess is not particularly masculine about me is that I’m not assertive enough. I let people push me around and then erase them from my life, rather than immediately telling them off.
The manosphere will probably call me a beta. I don’t sleep with a bunch of different women, I don’t fight people, I let my ex sleep around without immediately dumping her or hitting her or whatever because I didn’t want to break up the family, one of my best friends is a trans woman. Etc. But fuck that noise, they don’t know what being a man is.
So keep this in mind when you re-evaluate what you think of gender identities. Feel free to stay undefined if that’s what floats your goat, but if TRT makes you feel like you identify as a male, don’t be ashamed of it just because of some noisy ass idiots. Realize that most men, just like most women (and enbies), are just quietly working away at improving the lives of people around them, as well as their own lives. You never hear from those men (or women or enbies) because they don’t have any desire to be public or spread some kind of message.
We’re just in a period right now where male loneliness is a huge issue and unfortunately as a result, a lot of young men do look up to some warped ideas of “masculinity”, while the real issue is that they don’t have enough female friends (and friends in general) in their lives. And of course that’s not anyone’s fault in particular, but I suspect that fans of Andrew Tate or Ben Shapiro would have more luck finding female friends if they weren’t fans of Andrew Tate or Ben Shapiro.
I’ve deliberated at length at what masculinity means to me, which I explain here – sorry about the sloppy link.
tl;dr: My early perspectives of manhood come from the cold war: the capacity to hold onto immense (⚛☢) amounts of power and not use it inappropriately, and never in aggression. In time it became taking care of business; to man up is to pony up and pay bills and make sure adult stuff is managed. But in the 1990s that became adulting and was expected of everyone who was of majority.
Now, manhood is about using grandfathered presumptions of masculinity to preserve old power structures and oppress women and minorities, and I want nothing to do with any of it.
What sort of symptoms do you have from the low levels of T, if you don’t mind sharing?
There’s a strong possibility my major depression is related. I was a very late bloomer, and was antagonized by school sports teams and their coaches when in primary school. (It was the eighties). My body hair has always been thin. Only in my fifties have I been able to grow a moustache, and then with no small amount of cultivation. I have a full head of hair at 58 even though the men on mom’s side of the family go bald in their thirties.
I’ve also been a meek, gentle soul, all my life, and for multiple partners, was able to be the one who didn’t rampage with lost tempers. My passivity may have to do more with ASD and not having the impetus to assert my soft boundaries.
Curiously, I was conservative in my early twenties, which was all undone as the premises my ideology was founded on were demonstrated to be false. Actual facts and studies pushed me to the left with the rise of the internet and access to more factual information. I research out of habit.
ETA Questions about low T rose in my fifties when my libido bottomed out leading to the end of my relationship of twelve years (it wasn’t the only factor but it was a factor). Now I look at porn and my brain doesn’t understand what the curves mean but knows they’re important. Now I have yearnings for some kind of ambiguous contact maybe more than cuddling… though I’m also touch starved right now, so that’s a factor. I’m not yet at the garlic-bread threshold and wish my brain would make up its mind.
I highly agree with your first statement, i used to be a strict gender abolitionist. That changed when my aunt came out and was willing to have a discussion about what gender meant to her. I still definitely do not understand gender, it seems alien to me to identify with something so restrictive, but I now understand that for some people it does seem to be important to them. Thats all anecdote though, heres my question:
What is enby? Ive always identified as agender ever since i discovered that gender is important to some people. Is there a difference? Also thanks for your comment, ive always suspected that my refusal to participate in masculinity might be tied to low t, now it seems i should definitely get checked. Also is agender genderqueer?
Enby or NB (non-binary) is just a catch-all category for those of us who are genderqueer, whether two spirited, neither, alternating, both, third-gender or whatever, it all falls under enby.
OH enby = nb makes it click for me. Appreciate it
Enby (from NB, from non-binary) is kind of an umbrella term to refer to anyone who doesn’t strictly identify with one of the binary genders (male/female). Agender would certainly fall in that category, as would other identities such as genderfluid, pangender, and many more. There are also plenty of people who don’t want and/or care to have a more specific label, and just refer to themselves as non-binary, full stop.
To the best of my understanding, genderqueer is also an umbrella term which means pretty much the same thing as non-binary, but has a somewhat more “radical” nonconformist connotation. There is significant overlap between the two terms and whether someone identifies with one term or the other or both is pretty subjective. Is agender genderqueer? If you identify with both terms, then it is :)
Ah cool, that makes sense. Appreciate it!
I don’t know when these tweets are from, but they added genderqueer back in 2016.
Hello fellow batman
Hell yeah.
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I forget the exact quote, but one goes something like “the key to successful communication is an agreement on the definition of terms/words”.
You can’t discuss something if the word were using for it means different things to both of us. If I use dopehead to mean just an idiot and you use it to be someone who smokes weed excessively, we’ll sound similar but then communication will break down.
So people do use more specific terms for more specific definitions when the other definitions don’t fit, but I don’t think the response should be “stop making new words.”
That’s a big point in 1984! It’s basically the exact point where doublethink and doublespeak work.
