HA HA! When I was little, me and my sisters played with these plastic animal toys. The adult ones seemed female or male enough, but some of the baby ones were hard to determine, so I invented the term, "goy," (g[irl/b]oy) to give them an inbetween gender. That's right, I started this current trend back in the 1970s! It's all my fault!
But seriously (and please excuse my big word-isms before, 'tis all in good fun), being scolded for simple things that I 'shouldn't do' because I was a boy seemed so weird. Then as a teen getting into Alice Cooper and David Bowie then Punk, androgeny & the Punk mentality further made all that labeling seem so limiting and unnecasary (except for medical records n crap). In the 1980s I even started refraining from referring to people by gender, race, ethnicity, etc, and it confused the heck out of everybody. Two people walking down the street? Adult white males. Add youth, they're now young white males. Add female, they're young white women, add color, they're young women of color, add orientation, they're young lesbian women of color... and so on and so forth...
In terms of sexual orientation, I don't refer to people as gay or whatever, they're people. If need be, then I'll say so-and-so is of a gay nature, or is into same sex, etc, but I never say, "Vincent, my gay friend."
So I totally agree with what you're saying.
It's just that what was meant to help people who feel ostracized by the rest of society accept themselves has ballooned into utter ridiculousness, becoming exactly what it was meant to counteract. Animal Farm, but about sexual identity.
In the meantime, this reactionary pompous militancy also inspires reaction from more repressed types, and BOOM! what steps people have taken for acceptance now gets trashed.
Words are just words, people are and do as what they will. They don't need permission from artificial categories to be themselves.
Caption this Meme
