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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • Feels like to a degree, at some point you just have to accept reality as facts and no fancy language is going to get around that.

    Some people are white, some are tan, some are olive, some are black. We have different colored skin. In an area predominantly of white folk, asking for a black or colored man just makes sense.

    Frankly the only problem with color in the situation at hand is it could also refer to a tan or maybe a darker olive toned man.

    It’s just a descriptor of obvious usefulness given the context.

    Plenty of words are bad given history as it is. And best avoided with out reason. But we do still need some words to use and using the simplest words is best. Leaves little room to brook an argument over the intention.








  • Context and intention matter, a great example to learn from on this topic is the boondocks. Gives a great insight into a community with one of the most well known slurs to have been reclaimed in America.

    Even “reclaimed” it can still be used to hurt, just like any word.

    In reality there’s no such concept as reclaiming a word. The very idea is nonsense. There’s nothing to reclaim as there was nothing lost in the first place.

    A word, is a word. They have no weight or power with out intention. In Korean niga means you, in French removed is the color black.

    With out the context and intention they are just words. To be hurt by words means you are being hurt by the intention, not the word it self. You can’t “reclaim” others intentions, you have no power over others and part of learning to deal with the trauma of abuse and the association of that abuse with those words. Is to learn the words hold no power over you.

    So to move on from the hurtful nature of the words means you must come to grips with the fact you can’t control other people. And if you can’t control other people there’s nothing to reclaim.

    Words, are just piles of definitions. If you use them to harm then it is an act of hate. If you use them to band together as brothers then it is an act of kindness.

    How you act, your intentions are all that matter. Words, can not break you.





  • Assuming race, As a white person you are going to struggle to get others to see you as black. Cause those are social constructs. YOU do not get to decide what others see you as when it comes to a social construct. Because the very point of a social construct is that it’s the general social frame work used to see others as.

    Ethnicity on the other hand, as a white skin tone person if you grew up in Africa in a tribe of indigenous people then you would be an indigenous person. Ethnicity only cares about the facts.

    To mirror that to transgender.

    Gender is a social construct, it’s what others see you as and how you categorize into a given communities framework. This differs between communities. For example what defines a male gender in ancient Rome is different then ancient Scotland. Both having male genders that quite literally just do not exist in one or the other.

    While sex is the physical only caring about the factual biological. The actual flesh and reproductive organs. You either have them, or you don’t. Primary or secondary. You can alter them with modern medicine sure, but even after alteration. It still only matters what you have. Are you a male producer or female reproducer. Are you functional or not. Do you have both sets? That’s basically it, sex just cares about the facts it’s not socially constructed. You can’t argue that someone with a penis does not have a penis.

    Ethnicity tho, doesn’t have a modern medicine equivalent. It just is what it is. You can’t change facts, so your rather stuck with it. Unlike a penis.



  • Social constructed concepts are applied by others to you. Those concepts and frameworks are build up by the community over time. So where your born matters a lot as what framework your raised in is going to be the one you adopt naturally and use to also see yourself though.

    That’s fundamentally the problem. Race and gender both, it doesn’t matter what you choose or think of for yourself. You don’t get to decide what others see you as. And since it’s communal you as a single person can’t change it for everyone. It takes many people working together over long periods of time to change.

    Which is why it’s such problem, humans are fundamentally a social animal. We WANT to fit in, so when our self perception doesn’t align with what others see us as we become distressed.

    So with in the social framework others see us as, we try to realign ourselves to be perceived as what we want. This removes the misalignment of self perception with social perception.

    Fundamentally this is one of the biggest aspects of transgender body dysphoria. That social misalignment vs transsexual body dysphoria and it’s physical misalignment.

    Tho transsexual body dysphoria can also play a role here or none at all.

    As transsexual body dysphoria tends to be rather detached entirely from the social construct. People are able to have one or the other and both. Transsexual body dysphoria is very self driven and almost if not entirely based on ones own perception of their own body.

    Remember gender is made up and fluid based on the culture. Sex is biological and rooted in the physical.