Special Snowflakism.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

When you walk up to someone, online or IRL, and defiantly or boastfully inform them of every little detail of your personal gender/sexual wiring, you are not "getting the word out".  You were not intending to do so.  You were screaming to the world, "I AM A SPECIAL SNOWFLAKE", and "my portfolio of specialness is larger than yours".

It's not that people have a problem with you being "grey romantic trans-ostrich feminine-expressing emo-sexual".  It's that we don't care.  It is TMI...ie, Too Much Information.  We simply aren't interested.  Call that "privilege" if you like; we don't care if you do that, either.  Because we stopped listening to your complaints ages ago.

It's not that we don't think there are genuine problems; transvestites still get murdered, Gays still get bashed, women still get paid less than men.  These are all real concerns.

But you aren't.  The very fact that you have the time, energy, and electronics to spend 40 hours a week bitching about privilege on the internet carries such a load of irony that, if Bill Hicks were alive today, it would kill him stone dead.  What makes it particularly egregious is that, as terms become "worn out", new terms must be invented to perpetuate the parade of specialness...

"Genderescent", "Demigirls", "Biromantic".

This, needless to say, has marginalized you even further.  And if it were just you, we'd all happily ignore you wallowing in your soiled diapers on tumblr or whatnot.  But it isn't.  It's handing ammunition to the religious whackjobs and bringing a world of shit down on anyone who isn't hetero/CIS/whatever, and who is just trying to lead a normal life.

But you never cared about that.  You care about your SPECIAL SPECIALNESS and shitting on the people closest to you in mindset, rather than the cavemen who still think Matthew Shepard got what he had coming.

So fuck you.  You just stay in tumblr huffing each other's farts, and we'll all stay out here living our lives.

It's win-win.

Or Kill Me.

[LMNO]

In general, I agree, but I do think there are a large enough minority of cases where there is enough gray area to self-define.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

In general, I agree, but I do think there are a large enough minority of cases where there is enough gray area to self-define.

Yeah, and that's awesome.  Because it isn't the self-definition that bothers me, it's the constant & tiresome screeching and preening.

[LMNO]

Preening.  That's the perfect term.

[Eater of Clowns]

You are, of course, right about that crowd being fodder for the persecution fetishists, Roger, but luckily they've ghettoized themselves to such an obscure corner of the Internet they might as well be having their clandestine meetings deep in the jungle. I resent the special snowflake attitude for it being a variation on rugged individualism - separating onesself from the point of reference for its own sake and thus weakening the strength of any significant effort at real change.

And then I look at them and I love them, in an odd way. Here we had a generation told you can be whatever you want to be and they grew up jaded and cynical for the lie, so we told the next ones you can be whoever you want to be and they said, "Okay, I'm butanoisexual. I am only turned on by the rancid butter smell of male ginkgo biloba berries," and the response is a resounding, "BUUUUUHHHHH..."

These people couldn't be invented by even the most warped of minds. They had to grow together naturally, and in an awful and hilarious way.

[LMNO]

Oooh, good point.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I resent the special snowflake attitude for it being a variation on rugged individualism - separating onesself from the point of reference for its own sake and thus weakening the strength of any significant effort at real change.

Just like organic-tards, anti-vaxxers, flouride freaks, and Intelligent Design weirdos are all actually the same thing (anti-rationalist).

And then I look at them and I love them, in an odd way. Here we had a generation told you can be whatever you want to be and they grew up jaded and cynical for the lie, so we told the next ones you can be whoever you want to be and they said, "Okay, I'm butanoisexual. I am only turned on by the rancid butter smell of male ginkgo biloba berries," and the response is a resounding, "BUUUUUHHHHH..."

These people couldn't be invented by even the most warped of minds. They had to grow together naturally, and in an awful and hilarious way.

I loved Old Yeller.  Doesn't mean I wouldn't shoot the rabid fucking brute.

[Ben Shapiro]

Hehehe sending this to binks.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Google "freebleeding".

[The Johnny]

Idk, i think such specific autoclassifications (iow, uniforms) are an attempt at communicational heuristics (a short phrase that tells the world what you are, instead of attempting to explain yourself in say, actual conversation or paragraphs)... but yes:

1st problem: assuming that the way your heuristics (abbreviations) work, that they will be correctly understood and interpreted by everyone (and when you use latin roots or stuff like that, good luck with it)

2nd problem: nobody cares about your self perception categories, they are more interested in the real characteristics you possess... self-perception has the flaw of being innacurate or deceptive... "im such a nice person" usually equates to asshole, so in that case its not self-delusion, but a tactic used socially for other people to assume you are a nice person so they are easier prey for whatever its planned.

Just let your actions speak for themselves, and keep a protocol of "need to know" basis, nobody cares.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Just let your actions speak for themselves, and keep a protocol of "need to know" basis, nobody cares.

QFT

[Cain]

I'm sorta fascinated by it, I have to admit.  In the same way I look at a car crash, or keep touching that weird bit of flesh where my thumbnail used to be.

But that's not genuine interest, I know.  It's more like, well, horrormirth I guess.

[Telarus]

Very salient points ITT. Don't have much to add at the moment, but you can see parallels to this behavior in some very odd places. Those aging bible belt Christians who, having recognized something spiritual in Bob Marley's music, try to sing it live on stage (for example).

[LMNO]

Wait, what?

[Cramulus]

somewhere in the teeming masses of identities being generated at the fringes of the web,
there are probably some identities which will eventually be considered normal and real


At one point, being transgender was laughable fringe identity too. If you were biologically male but FELT female, this was a joke to everybody. Now thankfully it's gradually becoming normalized.

I do think a lot of these constructs just represent the questing phase that kids go through. They're a particular artifact of the stone soup way we construct identity in a media saturated environment. I mean, there are people who identify with Sephiroth. That's clearly not something you can you can carry into adulthood and old age.


I am secretly hoping that there's egg on my face in 50 years. Cybersexual and Doublesexual and such will be officially recognized

and all us 70 year old men will be like "I REMEMBER WHEN THERE WERE ONLY TWO GENDERS AND NOBODY WAS INHABITED BY SPIRITS FROM VIDEO GAMES"

... and the young generation will be praying for our death so they can finally marry a sailor moon pillow.