Alright, I'm sorry. I got really upset last night and couldn't think all that well. I do think that it's important to deconstruct what a man or a woman or someone in between is. These are hard questions and concepts for me to grapple with and it's important for me to be able to do so.
I think my sensitivity in this is coming from me constantly having to defend against mis-labeling. That dude on the bus gave me labels of male and gay. I can laugh that off because it doesn't really affect me and the guy acted ridiculously in doing so. I had to spend a month walking home to use the bathroom when I was at work because my HR manager as long as she possibly could before I could use the women's restroom. This is a bit harder to laugh off. Especially knowing that other trans people in my company's employ didn't understand their rights and didn't fight against the false option of using the wrong bathroom or moving to a different store. A less cut and dry example would be that I feel that almost everyone who doesn't know me labels me as a gay male and this ends up seriously killing my chance of getting a relationship.
I hope we reach some kind of common ground on this, since I don't want to lead to some lame agree to disagree scenario, but I just don't see any sort of reality where labels honestly don't matter. My past partner did their best to not apply a label onto themselves and I respected that, but that still didn't stop everyone around us from slapping a female label on her. English language doesn't allow for non-labels (outside of the awkward ze/hir thing or they/them that my past partner preferred). Yes, the queer community has a huge load of labels, but they aren't used to constrict people into stereotype shaped boxes, but to be able to find some group of people with a common characteristic or to organize under some sort of umbrella term like LGBT or transgender in support of rights for everyone under them.
I think my sensitivity in this is coming from me constantly having to defend against mis-labeling. That dude on the bus gave me labels of male and gay. I can laugh that off because it doesn't really affect me and the guy acted ridiculously in doing so. I had to spend a month walking home to use the bathroom when I was at work because my HR manager as long as she possibly could before I could use the women's restroom. This is a bit harder to laugh off. Especially knowing that other trans people in my company's employ didn't understand their rights and didn't fight against the false option of using the wrong bathroom or moving to a different store. A less cut and dry example would be that I feel that almost everyone who doesn't know me labels me as a gay male and this ends up seriously killing my chance of getting a relationship.
I hope we reach some kind of common ground on this, since I don't want to lead to some lame agree to disagree scenario, but I just don't see any sort of reality where labels honestly don't matter. My past partner did their best to not apply a label onto themselves and I respected that, but that still didn't stop everyone around us from slapping a female label on her. English language doesn't allow for non-labels (outside of the awkward ze/hir thing or they/them that my past partner preferred). Yes, the queer community has a huge load of labels, but they aren't used to constrict people into stereotype shaped boxes, but to be able to find some group of people with a common characteristic or to organize under some sort of umbrella term like LGBT or transgender in support of rights for everyone under them.