[betenoire]

I do think (and see) that there is some weird system in place where whenever people are talking about identity x people from identity y tend to take all the talk about identity x as a personal affront to identity y.

In fact, I have had more than one person pm me to say that they feel like every time they try to honour people from identity x that people from identity y take that as some sort of an insult or a dig. When in reality the two aren't related in any way at all. I can give respect to identity x all I want, and resent the implication that my respect for identity x is a presumed dislike of identity y. That's simply not the case.

And before anybody thinks that I'm talking about them personally - I'm not. I've heard/seen it both ways. The males on this site think they're being dissed when people talk about how awesome the females are, thin people think they're being dissed when people talk about how awesome fat people are, Conservatives think they're being dissed when Democrats talk about how proud they are to be Democrats. It's really very silly.

I get that sometimes people DO put a "what I am is awesome because what I am is not what you are" spin on celebrating who they are. But that is not always the case. In fact, I would wager that that is frequently NOT the case.

When Dylan (for example) says that he does not want to be viewed as female, formerly-female, female-ish, reminiscent of female, female with facial hair, etc....he is not saying that female is bad. He's simply saying that he is not female by any stretch of the imagination. If he is offended by being seen as some sort of female - it's not because he thinks that female is bad...it's simply because he's not female. It's because the person isn't seeing HIM but rather seeing the version of him that they would prefer to see. Get it?

If this were another thread and I was to say that "Big Is Beautiful" that does not imply that I think that thin is grody. It just doesn't.