The Gender Stuff is Good Actually

[Intrusive Horce]

I'm trans and this game changed how I think about my own gender. Here's my take:

The Horse/Clown gender spectrum bit is intentionally written to raise red flags and look at first glance like just another "attack helicopter" joke but it's actually exactly the opposite. Sort of. Think about it. Why horses and clowns specifically? Well, I mean obviously the real reason is because Hussie wrote it, but in this story it's because clowns and horses are personally important to the characters of Zhen and Abby respectively.

The point it's making, WITHOUT GOING INTO MUCH DETAIL, is that gender is way more personal and subjective than we let on when explaining it to others. We sit through Bill Nye explaining it by pushing balls around on The Gender Abacus and none of us complain because we all know the cishets can't handle the unbridled truth. You know, the truth that absolutely every label humans have tried to put on nature have all been entirely arbitrary from the start. The truth that even this thing called "biological sex" that the cis like to gesture at is a fluctuating blurry fractal in thousands of overlapping dimensions and nobody on Earth has any idea where they fall in that. The truth that the most any of us can ever do is shrug and pick a label that seems close enough. That truth.

Zhen is clown gender. Abby is horse gender. That's valid. Don't be a CHERF. It's just a label and, say what you will, it describes their experience of their own genders a million times better than Bill Nye ever could.

I think the fact that it's presented in a way that sets off so many alarms is making a different but also important point. It took me weeks of introspection and some really hard conversations to come to the conclusion that my own hypervigilance to transphobia, while well founded in a long history of dealing with very real bad actors, was making me hostile to someone just for being honest about their gender in a way I wish I could be. This game made me realize how that otherwise justified defensiveness could manifest as throwing other queer people under the bus. And that, in doing so, I was no different from cis lesbian TERFs, drawing the line of what's acceptable at exactly myself and no further.

That, in my opinion, is the genuine and heartfelt take on gender this game is putting forward. And I love it. It's rad as hell.

<3

[ddchdrn]

👍

Normalize "they/them"!

[TheRealCyclo]

I dont think that "biological sex" is as undefinable as you say. Out of any abstract idea, human anatomy is something we can study and measure, find out what processes go inside it and so on. And there are pretty clear patterns to it.

[Intrusive Horce]

Oh I totally agree it's definable. It's definable in the same way color is definable. It's describing very real and measurable ranges of frequencies of electromagnetic radiation. So if you choose to state that red wine and red pandas are the same color, you'll be doing so on firm scientific grounding.

Or you can choose to reject labels because color is a spectrum, everything is a spectrum, dualism itself is an infinite regress, and language is ultimately incapable of describing reality.

Or you can choose to embrace labels but attempt to classify every color in infinite granularity on a case-by-case basis and beg the mods on the r/ColorTheory subreddit to ban that one guy for saying tennis balls are Safety Green when they're clearly Optic Yellow.

Or you can just choose not to think about it that much because oh my ♥♥♥♥ who cares??

Up to you *.

(* assuming you have the privilege of not having the decision made for you and aren't put in the potentially life threatening position of having to perform one particular choice for your whole life to people who are probably just gonna keep hating you either way.)

[TheRealCyclo]

Uh, no? How person sees own gender is a spectrum, or even whatever-it-is, because there is literally no bounds to mind's imagination. But biological sex range is very limited: it is either XX or XY, in short.

[SGDS_WP_USMailman]

"You know, the truth that absolutely every label humans have tried to put on nature have all been entirely arbitrary from the start" You are dumb as rocks.

[Intrusive Horce]

It's okay. You're not really supposed to get it yet. That part isn't due to be amended to The Gay Agenda for another decade at least. I truly don't know what I was thinking dropping it on you prematurely. You should probably just put it out of your mind for now, you'll have plenty of time to be mad about it in the future.

[Spark7979]

Publicado originalmente por Intrusive Horse:

It's okay. You're not really supposed to get it yet. That part isn't due to be amended to The Gay Agenda for another decade at least. I truly don't know what I was thinking dropping it on you prematurely. You should probably just put it out of your mind for now, you'll have plenty of time to be mad about it in the future.

Ha you're having a laugh right? Do you think what you're blabbering about is profound wisdom or something? "Labels we put on nature" are necessary for the classification of biology. Biological designations are static, peer reviewed facts and when new biological facts emerge they're also static. Labels aren't arbitrary whatsoever. You're a man or a woman unless new physical genders emerge.

[Intrusive Horce]

That's cute. Cute like a cat checking under its paw to see if the laser pointer dot is still there. Like, oh, honey, sweetie, no, this is beyond your comprehension in ways that are beyond your comprehension. But please, do keep chasing it. For my amusement.

[Intelligensaur]

I only learned about Psycholonials today and came to the forums to get a feel for what to expect. From the sound of this, I can look forward to the same over-the-top satire founded on sincerity that I enjoyed in related works.

As for your personal thoughts, I've had a lot of similar thoughts over the years. I think it takes a lot of personal reflection to be able to approach such ingrained, everyday concepts like gender from such a skeptical angle.

For all I know, it could take some special stimulus to even get started in that direction. I'm colorblind, and grew up constantly doubting my own perceptions and taking 'truths' from others with a grain of salt. I was also born in the mid 80's, was a bit of a computer nerd, and watched just how much the rise of the internet and related technology changed the way we live and think. Also, way too much gaming and science fiction for a developing mind. I wouldn't be surprised if you have analogous circumstances that led you to where you are now.

Or maybe you just gave too much of yourself a very challenging work of "art" (or got really high one day? No judgment), wrote this in a short-lived state of delirium, and now, months later, your post sounds to you as if it was written by a lunatic. And that's fine, too, cause it was still a fun and thoughtful read.

So thank you for sharing, Intrusive Horse! I hope you have good friends and a good support system.

And thank you, comments, for the laughs.

[Intrusive Horce]

Well, I guess if you're looking for a "challenging work of art" then that's definitely something you could call Psycholonials. It definitely goes out of its way to obfuscate every point behind a million arms length of ironic detachment. You kinda have to bring your own sincerity to the reading, any that's there is purposely hard to find and honestly could all just be wishful thinking on my part. But yes, that certainly makes it challenging to engage with.

As for my points about gender, no, it definitely isn't "a short-lived state of delirium" or anything like that. In fact I'm basically just defining the term "social construct." I'm doing it in less academically rigorous terms but it's a pretty uncontroversial philosophical concept about which there has been probably hundreds of books written. I'm just being snarky in the replies because I know how futile it is to try to get The Gamers to click with ideas like that.

Basically, if you don't know what a social construct is, all you need to understand about it for my point is that a label being associated with measurable science does nothing for the legitimacy of the label itself. Birthdays are quantifiable, the relative positions of stars are measurable, and none of that lends any of its scientific rigor to, for example, horoscopes. If you understand that the scientific measurability of star positions doesn't trickle down to mean "Aquarius" and "Scorpio" are scientific terms, then you already understand why the measurability of chromosomes or gametes or whatever doesn't make "male" and "female" into scientific terms either.

These terms, the ones we construct around parts of reality, are called "social constructs" and, yeah, they're all totally arbitrary. You could imagine an infinite number of labels that could easily exist in reference to a part of reality but don't simply because they... don't really feel important enough to deserve labeling. You could call everyone taller then 5-feet a "big" and everyone shorter a "little" and if anyone ever says "you're not a big, that's not a thing, you literally just made that up" you could be reassured that you have hard science backing up your label. Your height is a measurable, observable fact and you'd be right to point out that is simply what the word means. The question is why would you? Why do we?

It's really is all arbitrary and subjective so what difference does it make if what you call yourself is made up by someone else or if you made it up yourself? Which is basically all I'm saying.

[Intelligensaur]

♥♥♥♥, I'm really sorry, I definitely mixed something up while writing that.

I didn't mean to and would never say that about your beliefs/feelings/insights on gender. You're absolutely right about it being a social construct, and a personal, blurry one at that. As much as I'd like to take another pass, I'd almost certainly just dig a deeper hole.

... I said that, and minutes later I'm still stopping myself midway through typing more excuses and explanations, so I'm just gonna shut up right after saying that I really enjoyed the snark.

[worlds3rpent_]

♥♥♥♥ yeah and you're completely right

[Aradia Megido]

i agree with everything here and have for many years 0.0 im so glad everyone is catching up

[nearbear]

The hyper-vigilance is very relatable a trans person :) I can appreciate how this story helps me chill out about my gender

[i know kung fu]

Can i play this game or is it woke?