No offense to the OP or anyone else, but it seems these days we do an awful lot of navel gazing.
I would dare say most on this board share some stereotypical gender roles and other that are against type.
I am a big bald dude, so no one would ever mistake me for a female. I ride a motorcycle, I fix stuff, I change my oil, but I also cook and do dishes and laundry and I changed diapers and have softened over the years of helping raise two daughters. I like a good musical. I talk a lot. I like action movies, but cry over sappy stuff.
I guess I do not get to caught up in labels because that implies that I have to be a certain way. I am me. I do what I enjoy and screw anyone that doesn’t like it.
It just seems like trying to label yourself or others is mostly a waste of time. If you include all my labels, it would be a really long string and not very useful for understanding me.
Spending time getting to know others on a personal level seems like a much better way of spending what little time we have on this planet.
I think AHunter3 is different. But many of us can be described that way. Many of us have experienced a “coming to terms” with our identity after years of being misunderstood and alienated. Not necessarily in the context of gender or sexuality, but in other ways.
I think everyone should feel free to tell their story if they are so moved. But the truth of the matter is that not stories are 1) interesting, 2) well-told, or 3) lend themselves to a change in mindset or action. Also, even though everyone has a story, most sotries aren’t that different from each other in the broad strokes. Like, there are only so many “tragic mulatto” blog entries I am willing to consume. Not because I don’t sympathize with the experience of straddling different cultures, but because after you read enough of those stories, they all start sounding the same. The same with the stories of people discovering their Aspie-ness. Yeah, the first 50 or so stories of this type are kind of intriguing. But after awhile, they become predictable and yes, start taking on a desperate “me too!” quality. I think this is unavoidable in this day and age of blogs, social media, and self-publishing. If you want to bank on being different, you need to be real different if you expect people to care.
So yeah, I am saturated on “I am different” literature. I love memoirs and autobiographies and stories about people who do interestingand “different” things. But I have grown tired of stories solely about overcoming personal identity conflicts and crises. It is way too easy to portray oneself as the lone all-suffering hero in such a narative.
I’m also having gender category exhaustion, amplified by having taught three sections of gender studies last semester (LOL- BTW, smilies won’t work on my phone version of SD, thus the dorky LOL).
I’m really, really, really fortunate to work and live in uber-liberal spaces and hardly ever think about my sexuality/gender. Sometimes I’m a bit surprised when someone asks me a "from the point of view as a lesbian . . " question – I forget I’m an “L” in the “LGBTQRSTUCX63M” construct.
I hope you don’t take this too personally, AHunter3, because I know this must seem like a pile on. So first let me say that I do appreciate you as a poster here on topics other than gender identity issues. IIRC, you’re some kind of anarchist*, and it’s always good to hear perspectives I’m not familiar with even if I don’t agree with them. But whenever I’ve tried to read one of your blog reposts here, I never get very far before giving up and thinking: Jesus Christ, dude. Get the fuck over yourself. Life should be lived, not over-analyzed.
But… I do hope you find peace in your quest for whatever it is you are questing after. I’ll look forward to reading your posts in the political thread, but no-thanks on the blog stuff.
*I’m surprised spellcheck didn’t change that to Antichrist…
This. I’ve tried, but your posts – to me – are long, dense, pedantic, and self-centered. “Mind numbing” is the phrase that comes to mind. I read the comments, though, because sometimes they’re interesting, and I am always hoping someone will shed some light on what you’re going on about, and that it might enlighten me in some way. I’m not sure if you need an editor or a translator.
I’ll also say that I don’t want to jump on you as a poster. You seem to be a good person, you are just not a good essayist. You mention that these are weekly blog posts. IMHO, you would be much better served if you made them every other week or monthly and took that time to work hard on them to make them tightly written and with a clear and deliberate point. Quality counts more than quantity.
Bingo. And I think that’s going to hurt more than help, because some kid who might not have traditionally masculine interests is going to hear that and think, “but I don’t WANT to be a girl, I want to be a boy!” Part of the problem, of course, is that we don’t really have a term for a male version of a tomboy, but I don’t think saying a non-masculine dude is genderqueer or a male girl is the answer.
And I keep saying this, but I really feel that this practice of every creating new boxes and slapping all these different labels on themselves may be more harmful in the long run. It’s like, “Oh, I’m this this this this and this!”, it’s not going to have any meaning anymore. I think we’ll just end up alienating each other.
Don’t get me wrong – diversity is great. I don’t want to hang out with a bunch of clones. But it seems like every time I turn around there’s a new type of gender, and I ask, “well, isn’t that what X means?” “No no no, X means this! This is Y!” But quite frankly, the explanations all sound the same.
You’re cool and all Ahunter3, but when you keep having to say, “no no no, you don’t get it!” over and over – well, maybe they do, and you’re the one’s not “getting it”, do you know what I mean? Does that make sense?
And I’m very tired of hearing about non-binary this and that. Not only because the people posting about it tend to be highly narcissistic and convinced of their own fascination, it’s maddening how insistent they are that anyone who steps out of lock step with some highly ridged gender ideal isn’t normal, as if the only way to “really” be fully male or female is to ascribe to the mom and dad roles depicted in a 50s sitcom. There are lots of ways to be a man or be a woman and each and every slight variation from the mean doesn’t need its own label.
I’m hoping that society’s next step is to get past this passion for labeling and move on to acceptance that it’s okay for women to do this and men to feel that without meaning that there’s anything remarkable about having varied interests and emotions.
Are you admitting that this your interminable lecture series about Why AChunter3 is Special and Different is solely a bid for attention, then?
You won’t, though, will you? Because if you just came out and said “I like wearing women’s underwear” or “I drive a pink Volkswagen named Felicity”, most people would just shrug and wonder what you were making such a fuss about. As it is, these endless threads about Why AChunter Is Special In An Uncaring World are just a coy fan dance of yours.
I have jury duty (was on it yesterday but then I was in the general waiting area; now I’m in a specific case’s jury pool and more limited in when I can pull the computer out), so I’m limited in how often I can post. (I have to get work done for my primary client in my remaining hours).
In addition, with so many of you weighing in… I do feel a little piled on, but that doesn’t make you wrong, does it? I need some time to consider the things you’ve said.
Doesn’t mean I’m walking away from the conversation. I owe you folks a reply or two. At a minimum I’ll be back to post next week’s blog post, and either way I’ll fill in some specifics.
Do read for comprehension. I already spent a few decades pursuing it from that angle.
Try hard not to see it as a pile on. All of those commenting respect you enough to believe you’ll hear them. If people thought you were truly an awful writer or had nothing of worth to communicate, they wouldn’t even be bothered to remark.
I have read the remarks of others with great interest, they have done a much more nuanced job of speaking to your work than I ever could.
My own take is much less so, I fear. For me, it’s hard to hear anything but ego stroking with something so endlessly self absorbed. But I also think it’s equally hampered by what is a clear love of wordage and precise language, possibly having morphed into a love of hearing your own voice/words.
If I was an instructor I would challenge you to condense each of your last three blog posts into no more than 100 words. It would be a very difficult/useful exercise for you, in my opinion.
Remember all of these opinions are worth exactly what you’re paying for them!
I think AlHunter3’s writing is fine. Yes, it’s verbose, but I understand him just fine. It flows logically. Word choice is thoughtful. Polished in form. It sounds literary enough.
I just think he’s completely misjudged the meaningfulness of his ideas to others. If he was talking about something that truly resonated with others, that was truly thought-provoking and engaging, then his verbosity is something a reader could easily overcome. If his writing didn’t read like someone having a fevered conversation about himself to himself, the verbosity wouldn’t come across so alienating either. Like someone talking at you, not to you, completely oblivious to signs of disinterest.
I don’t see this as pile-on. It’s feedback that is long overdue. I’m impressed by his earnestness, passion, and determination to publish his story, and I hope he finds that the success he’s looking for. But it seems there are valid reasons why it has been a struggle.
So you don’t actually want people to respond to you? All your looooong blog posts talking about nothing but yourself and when people actually give you feedback you feel like it’s a “pile on.” I guess you really do just want to talk *at *people.
Fine. Give me a concrete example. One thing you do which you see as an inherently feminine behaviour which is stigmatised by others because a heterosexual man does it. At the moment, and as far as I can see in all of your posts, you’re talking in grand generalities about yourself, about society, and about supposed masculine and and feminine behaviours.
Anytime I attempt to read one of the OP’s blog posts, I feel like I just tuned in to some obscure show on The Gender Identity Channel. Except I’ve tuned into the middle of the series, and the only thing I know about the premise is he’s a woman in a man’s body but is still attracted to women and is fine with that.
Yet, instead of seeing much in the way of that, the actual plot is some guy talking at a lectern at length about various esoteric concerns, both social and gender-centric, and I can’t for the life of me figure out why I’m watching it, let alone why the show even exists. But I guess I tune in every now and then out of morbid curiosity to see if it gets any better or starts to make any sort of sense, either to myself or with regards to the creator says it’s about and what I’m seeing on the screen.
I have nothing much more constructive than that, but I see I’m not alone. It’s time to change the channel… good luck AHunter3…
Actually, he mentions why it exists earlier in this thread:
(Emphasis mine.) So there you have it. It is marketing for a book that may or may not ever be published and apparently he doesn’t even want to write it but considers it to be work. Sounds like he had a pretty serious publicist, but he dumped his publisher because he didn’t want to make cuts to his book.
I guess what I mean by “why it even exists,” is who is the intended audience? The entire LGBTQ community, the average Joe/Jane, those who identify the same has himself, some other fourth thing?
It’s fine if he’s trying to make and market a product to sell, despite how long of a shot he might have, but does it have appeal to an audience he has in mind, and is he writing for them?
