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[–]Complicated-Spirit 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I personally find it enraging that, right when it seemed like we were on the cusp of “gender roles, stereotypes, and beauty standards are bullshit” - not there yet, but almost, almost - the TRA movement kicks in and starts spouting off with “No, it’s not about acceptance of your body, it’s about changing your identity to fit an assumption of what you’re supposed to look like vis-a-vis what you actually look like.”

It feels like twenty or fifteen years ago, perhaps, we were just about to start accepting, as a society, that it was perfectly fine to be a woman and have a body that didn’t fit some ideal or cultural concept of “feminine”. That also went for your interests and behavior. Likewise, if you were a man and didn’t have features or tastes that were “masculine” enough for standards in the past, we were just about to accept that that was cool, too.

Then, TRAs came out in force, saying that all that was wrong. A woman’s “mannish” body and “masculine” interests didn’t mean that she didn’t give a shit about gender roles; it meant that she needed to accept that she was really a man. A man who lacked a muscular build and enjoyed traditionally “feminine” things didn’t mean that he, too, didn’t waste time on preconceived notions about gender; it meant that he had to accept that he was really supposed to be born in a woman’s body.

How is this progressive? How is this NOT setting us back as a society? How is telling people NOT to accept themselves somehow a positive change?