@CobaltVelvet

Privilege outside of a tool to highlight differences of experience is still a sliding scale. Any objective definition or line of what is or isn't oppression is still negating the personal experience. One can always find someone who's been oppressed more, it doesn't make your oppression less. The game of who has it worse or better is no better than the usual rat race society keeps us busy with, ignoring that people are hurt and need support.

@webmind again it's not so much about who is it worse but who has it at all, and the kind of support those who don't bring us. it's too often negative and purposely ignorant all our practical problems.

@CobaltVelvet you can support people, promote support and show people about practical problems, without negating theirs.

Life will never be perfect and can always be worse. I don't have a good day because it could be worse, I have a good day because I manage to experience it as such. Some of my worst days have been over nothing, some of my best the same, while I felt ok when something horrid happened. Emotional experience is non comparable.

Sorry for the walls of text...

@webmind i think the point exactly is comparing practical issues because comparing emotional experiences is endless; transphobia isn't about having your feeling hurt and must not be summed or described by that.

@CobaltVelvet transphobia, the fear of trans and I suppose here the outcome of that.

Why would feelings not come into play? It's about hurting people. Whether that's physical or or not shouldn't matter.

@webmind whether it's a passionate hateful murder or not putting enough precision in a personal title is a huge difference honestly

@CobaltVelvet I'm certainly not saying they are the same. Just saying the experience is personal and non comparable and that making the comparison, by excluding, you are not helping anyone. Quite the opposite I'd say.

@webmind well you're the one insisting about experience, why? I don't and won't care about who has their feeling hurt the more and for whatever reason, and you're right it's non comparable; my priority always will be actions done against people.

people turning a movement for the survival of a group into a petty social game that supports the awful things we were fighting against in the first place

glorifying gender always hurt people, even if you make it rainbow-colored

@CobaltVelvet I don't understand how you can separate action and experience.

An action is wanted or unwanted, problematic or not, not objectively, but because of it's outcome. The experience of it.

Oppression is any action that causes someone to be oppressed. Independent of intent or scale.

What you care about or for. Is up to you, but I don't think it's useful, helpful or considerate to redefine terms to your personal preferences.

@webmind what am i redefining?

it feels so terrible to spend years trying to explain people i can be a girl and that not being a perfect girly stereotype is okay, and it's a spectrum and everyone can be anywhere on it in different ways

for then someday someone who will never do any kind of transition to "identify as" an object and declare it a gender.

*this* destroys everything we're working for and trying to survive. it's turning our education effort into an absurd joke.

@webmind and i think it's just shitty to make absurd jokes about a fight you're not fighting. kind of insulting, even.

@CobaltVelvet hmm you seemed to define what is or isnt oppression based on an arbitrary line.

I not sure I understand what you now refer to.

My take on things is suffering is personal, and I take people serious until it is clearly a joke.

@webmind

consider:
- i have the same problems as the contextual "them".
- i have more problems because of it

i am in a pretty good place to place that line.

@CobaltVelvet my argument is that that line is destructive. It has no good place.

@webmind i know, but it has to be somewhere. if you make things too abstract you end up completely disconnected from reality. You have to make differences between things for anything to make sense. You have to give gender a definition and you can deduce that definition from the society that creates it.

changing the definition while ignoring the society surely won't help anyone.

@CobaltVelvet perhaps there we disagree.

I agree you don't want to be too abstract, but when one talks about oppressions or when someone has a good or bad day. There is only those experiencing it to take into account. Act up on it as you like, but I don't like negating someones experience.

@webmind i don't really negate their experience, i merely affirm they created it for themselves and it's hurting us both.

@webmind people don't need gender, society created it and can destroy it.

if you want to abolish gender you need to break the barriers in society until it's meaning reflects that.

if you "hey let's make gender mean ANYTHING" society will just continue as is and pick a new name for it. and we're back to before people tried decoupling genitals and gender and nothing has changed, except people have a fancy useless abstract title added.

@webmind back to the point: you you really want a custom title?

i don't want it and certainly don't need it. I'll fight to *remove* gender from anything, not to have N labels instead of 2 like glorifying that thing will make anything okay.

@CobaltVelvet I don't do/like labels and think we agree there. Expressing identity is always an approximation and I prefer people to just experience me before they judge.

But I see the plurality of gender as a path towards talking about identity instead of binary genders. Not one I walk, but one perceive as going into a desirable direction.

@webmind i do right until the point where gender is compared literally to animal species or character traits or astronomical events. then it just becomes destructive nonsense to me.

@CobaltVelvet how is that destructive?

@webmind because it has nothing to do with gender and it doesn't make any sense to compare gender to it. i don't see what is accomplished by just fucking up the definition and making it include many unrelated things. we're not gonna get over gender by associating *more* things with it, even if people make many nice labels.

@CobaltVelvet my point is more it doesn't hurt.

It does have to do with identity and moves the gender debate there, what it is actually about.

@webmind well let's get to it then: it is mostly about two social classes with associated codes and people being assigned one at birth and trying to find the right relationship with each pole. I get being both, neither, or anywhere between; other than that it's, well, it's more like personality. gender is a very specific behavior of our society.

@CobaltVelvet

If you look at it form the class perspective, any non-binary approach will be complicating matters. As classically a lot the stereotyping as been towards either of the specific two genders.

There is one the approach of fighting for equality of those genders, or an even more radical one, the destruction of those genders. Neither can happen without first accepting the class-division exists. But largely on a binary level.

@CobaltVelvet

I'm not saying there no problems with NB, but the large gender-class problem largely exists as a binary division due that the binary-gender-approach has been so prevalent or stamped in.

Destroying gender solves both problems, but is vastly more complex. Fighting gender inequality requires accepting the inequality between genders exist, which requires a gendered discourse. Completely destroying genders, hence complicates a gender-equality struggle.

@CobaltVelvet

One attempt could contain the idea of keeping the terminology only for pointing out inequality. But I don't think this would work well considering the lack of control of usage and how common it's usage is.

Another attempt I see is slowly changing it's meaning from a binary male/female divide to one that's about just identity. It opens up the discourse on other topics of struggle such as "race", NB, Trans, and other identity based disadvantaging.

@CobaltVelvet

This provides a broader base for solidarity and places the discourse where it's about. inequality, mistreatment based on stupid stereotyped structures people create in their heads trying to simplify the world.

Adding any identity trait to the topic of gender only brings it more to the core. Yes, less understandable, but more rightly so. I might not understand people's identity choices, but I'm in no position to judge on them. Nobody is but them.

@CobaltVelvet

I'm no social science major, but that's my take on it.