It’s no secret that Lemmy is shaping up to be a viable alternative to Reddit. The issue it faces however is that it’s still relatively niche and not many people know about it. I propose that we change this. By contacting the mods of large subreddits and asking them to make and promote relevant Lemmy communities we could substantially increase the amount of people who discover the fediverse. What’s more, I don’t think this is would be a hard sell considering many mods are already pissed off with Reddit due to their API changes. I believe that this is the time to act, so this is a call to arms, to help grow the fediverse into the future of social media!
I did not know about this term, so let’s take a look.
Wikipedia says: “In the Indian subcontinent, hijra is the generic term for trans women and may include eunuchs and intersex people […] Hijras are officially recognised as a third gender throughout countries in the Indian subcontinent”
It goes on to say: “Some hijras may form relationships with men and even marry,[32] although their marriage is not usually recognized by law or religion”
So the institution of marriage did not entertain the idea of “hijras”, that seems pretty significant to me! It begs the question which other norms, customs, practices and laws pertaining to sexes were not taking this idea into consideration. Again, you can make up a sex ad-hoc for specific purposes (fetishes, guarding harems, etc.) but you will not find it being truly recognized as another sex.
If we forward to today, you see the same thing. Medical doctors, architects, clothing designers, etc. all mostly operate according the concept of two sexes. Because that’s what’s practical, and that’s what’s most in line with reality.
Doctors will switch to “person with prostate” type of categories as soon as an intersex person walks in. “Man” and “Woman” are just convenient short-hands for “the common configuration”. We can also usually sort pieces of cutlery into “spoon” or “fork” (let’s ignore knives and chopsticks) but once upon a while you come across a spork and it’d be nonsensical to insist that there’s only spoons and forks while you’re straight-up looking at the exception in your very hand.
And fuck clothing designers they think all men are storks meaning I have to buy pants for overweight people then hem arse and waist. They also think that women never carry stuff around and thus don’t need pockets. Seriously, fuck them.
You’re not understanding what I’m trying to say. This ideology attacks the very idea that the conceptualization of things is bound to reality, ad-hoc, to justify fetishes, making money or other limited personal gains. Outside of these limited gains, these people must deal with reality, so they reintroduce concepts as if nothing happened. That’s why it’s ad-hoc. It’s hypocritical, anti-truth and illogical. Your example, just like other attempts to dismantle the idea of a sex binary (male and female) is fundamentally flawed. A “spork” has the function of being compact and easy to carry & distribute. Being an intersex person has no benefit, it’s a disability. It’s like being born blind or deaf. It’s unfortunate, and should not be fetishized or compared to being a transexual. It’s also highly uncommon to be intersex, so uncommon that redoing how society functions is simply too impractical. Introducing sporks has no such burden on society, and can be easily referred to in terms of a spoon and a fork, because it combines the function of both (albeit lackingly).
It doesn’t end there. They claim that there is a spectrum, not 3 sexes. So they further muddy the waters, and any attempt to categorize things can be waved away in a similar fashion to satisfy some people’s personal whims and desires. Not practical, not acceptable.
Whatever grievances we have with clothing designers or fashion, the point still stands that we will never move away from naturally putting things into boxes, especially when it comes to sex. We naturally see two sexes, and doing so turns out to be what is most in line with reality.
That’s a lot of words to justify calling people “unnatural”, “mistakes”, and “wrong”, for the way they were born.
Have you ever tried accepting people as they are, without disgust? To accept in your heart that exceptions are not abominations, but precious opportunities to make sure we did not close ourselves off to see wonder of the world?