Je peux prendre ta douleur

trashydyke:

so there’s this thing in the queer community where a lot of dialogue is rooted in testimony, and those testimonies are usually about family and childhood and things that our mainstream society considers “foundational” and often cites as justification or reasoning for our current gendering, i.e. the “born this way” website that posts pictures of queer people as children to say “look, here i am in heels and a stereotypical gay pose even though i am six! or here i am in hiking boots playing sports because i was a tomboy! due to the socially constructed ideals of homosexuality that are attributed to certain postures and behavior, here is proof to you, the viewer, that i am homosexual.” this is frustrating to me because i feel that these dialogues of “proof” are a) beside the point and b) limiting us to already constructed ideals for what masculine and feminine can be and that gender identity is not fluid, but instead something that can be seen as a static position we show signs of even as children. which is bullshit, obviously, and not something we need to promote.

i am a masculine-presenting dyke. this is me as a kid. i loved the color pink and lisa frank was my shit. i was all about being a princess. i don’t think i loved these things because i believed they were “girly,” i think i loved them because i loved anything that was bright and shiny - i just really loved sparkly things. i also loved running around outside and pretending to be a jedi and coming up with fantasy worlds where i was the warrior-hero. i was never without a sword or bow and arrow (i had lots). i was into a lot of things not because they were boy things or girl things, but because they were things that made me happy. looking at images of myself as a child, i think most people would consider me a “girly girl,” and there’s nothing wrong with that. i can be a masculine-centered person now, and i don’t need to apologize for any other way i have ever presented in my life. i am completely unapologetic about all the ways in which i have ever been *not* masculine-presenting, because there is no need for me to prove to you that i am a queer person, that my gender presentation is masculine, or that it is something in need of justification or outside approval. 

- babydyke evolved into trashydyke! 

This is pretty much my critique in a nutshell of the “born this way” argument.

Really we shouldn’t even have to justify the “it’s besides the point” part because it really just is. It’s out of scope, it isn’t relevant, we don’t need to explain why just know that it is. And it definitely is.

Childhood gender socialization isn’t where everything stops or starts, and just because it chronologically precedes our further gender socialization in life doesn’t mean that we can view it as an origin. Genders change, they’re fluid. If it was suddenly decided that the most hegemonically masculine thing in the world was to wear high heels and leggings, you better believe that people would respond to that (not that high heels and leggings aren’t already masculine for some people).

Basically, I have a lot of feels about this, but OP brought up some really good points.