My issues with all these additional gender identifications are that:
1. The concept too easily lends itself to a 'aren't I special?' tendency which can rapidly get overblown and annoying.
2. The basis is mere conjecture and for the most part superflous and strained.
3. Part of me can't shake the thought of how much of it might actually be an insidious effort by reactionaries to create more fodder to jump on and complain about in their constipated everything-that-I-don't-do-is-hellbound-cuz-I-is-forgiven-for-my-trespasses agenda.
4. People call themselves what they will, that's what words are for - to define whatever as we wish, not for us to define ourselves solely by the parameters of labels assigned to us.
Ultimately it's just wordstuff, no more relevent to who we truly are than we wish them to be.
But while they serve a purpose in describing, they are also limiting, and can serve to pigeonhole us into one dimensional blips that ignores the breadth of who we are and limits our identification as an actual person that is part of the whole, as oppossed to an apendage shunted to the side.
I noticed in the 1980s how people where defined in general discourse.
News story: "Two youths were involved in a...."
Gender, race, orientation are automatically assumed to be what?
"Two black youths were..."
"Two black Jewish youths..."
"Two black Jewish homosexual youths..."
"Two black Jewish homosexual female youths..."
etc,,,
So I went about dropping the extra adjectives, and it confused the frick outta people:
"That friend of yours from Calc class said to tell you hello"
"Who?"
"The one with the long curly hair, dresses in blue jeans and..."
"Who?"
"She's a little taller than you, the one that stopped by our table in the caf the other day..."
"Oh, Brenda? Why didn't you say the "black one"?"
I really had that convo, 'twas hilarious.
Anyways, the point of this long winded drivel is I ain't sussed by anyone identifying say, as "Gay," but to me, that's just "Joe," not "my gay friend Joe." Sounds lame to say, but how we look at and discuss others is so peppered with this. If pertinent, I might mention that they're into men, or are of same sex orientation, but otherwise,,,
k, I'll shut up now,,,
