this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2025
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I largely agree with you, however i think the more accurate thing is that no one is truly cis, no one is truly any label. We just have a tendency to force everything in the world into discrete categories, which is very annoying.
Even "biological sex" is a mess and not binary at all, so i see no real reason for the concepts of gender and sexuality to exist. All it does is limit people from being able to explore themselves and their preferences.
A comparison can be made to how no one cares what your diet is unless they're going to serve you food, why should anyone but those near a person care how they identify? Why should we have categories for sexual attraction anywhere other than on pornhub?
I can see where you're coming from and I kind of agree, from my perspective - and perhaps many other people's perspectives - being able to attach a label to myself after some exploration and introspection really helped me get things straight in my head. I felt much better about myself along the way when I was able to say "I'm asexual", then again when I was able to say "oh shit I'm agender too". I struggled more with "oh shit I'm transfem too" but that's partly because of all of the everything going on in the world lately and also because now I'm aware of dysphoria in a way I wasn't before I put a label on it. Overall, mixed result 🤷♀️
I think what we should be aiming at is not clinging rigidly to labels - it should be treated as OK and normal for people to think about their labels and if they still really feel like those labels fit at every point in the process. We treat it as relatively normal for someone to go "I think I'm straight?", "oh no wait, I think I'm bi?", "oh wait no, I think I'm gay", for example, but then we treat that final stage as the final stage, like now you're gay and it's set in stone.
The gender binary is a form of oppression that is enforced by medical doctors, governments, educators and anyone who benefits from it (a gendered society is easier to control). Trans and nonbinary gender labels exist to communicate a certain difference from the enforced status quo.
To say that labels should not be enforced is something many people (especially trans people) would agree with. Sometimes people get the impression that it’s trans people who decide these labels and also enforce them by simply existing. That is false. The labels are enforced by those who enforce the binary gender system. Enforced gender (and gender labels) can only ever be abolished once the binary gender system is abolished.
Also, gender isn’t necessarily bad. It’s only ever bad if it’s enforced without consent. Anyone who would like to describe themselves as woman or man or cis or trans should be free to do so. But it should never be forced upon anyone to choose a label.