a lot of (leftist) ppl seem to have this overriding impulse to fix things into rigid categories, and then moralise about them. which is ofc such an *easy* way to view the world but it will always do violence to the margins

like we can see this in astrology or other personality tests, rigid views of sexualities, the facile views of media ive talked abt before, moralising of identities ("im trans so i couldnt be a bad person"), the SJ obsession w using "correct" language

i always wonder when people say things like "clothes arent inherently gendered" what is "inherent" doing here? what does it mean for a social category (i.e. all categories) to be inherent? this is an aspirational, political statement made in the language of natural kinds.

i find "natural" arguments for transgenderism extremely suspect; the "we have always existed" kinda thing. It's a rehash of born this way. we should not need to justify ourselves, an existence now is meaningful, a political aim is a reason to exist

transgenderism is not a historically established category but a call to arms; we should not naturalise ourselves but revel in our perversity. we cannot be a natural kind bc we must seek the end of gender, our own disestablishment

(if someone has a good quote from the cyborg manifesto bc i still havent gotten round to reading it)

and i also see this moral categorisation & naturalisation in how ppl respond to critiques of identity. ppl see a criticism of a rigid identity as a personal attack, they cannot separate the sign from the referant

consider say, this passage abt realism in media

(chandler, semiotics: the basics, quoting Tagg, The Burden of Representation)

and we see, with ppl's self-identification, ppl thinking that a critique of disability or psychiatry is a critique of being disabled, or mad. but it is capital that made these systems in the first place "Power [is] the ability to set the context in which choices [are] made"

(Seth Dickinson, The Monster Baru Comorant)