2024.02.08
My friend was talking a bit about a tension between the trans community, who have been fighting a tough fight for a long while, often saying yes, masculine/feminine is the split but you can't make the categorization based on a reductionist view of biology, vs the community of folks finding a non-binary identity working for them, who would like to underplay those endpoints, and who as of late seem to be having a greater amount of cultural acceptance. Many trans folks would feel part of their identity dismissed if they were just lumped into a "they/them" bucket.
(But as my friend Sarah pointed out in FB comments, this is only part of the story/intracommunity relationship... and I'm remiss for not reiterating my view that the main, overarching point is that people should be more trusted and empowered to recognize and claim their own identity instead of deferring to any outside authoritarian force of prescriptivism (especially when attached to a fifth grade health class level of human biology or a sunday school view of society in general))
For some reason I think of that when I see a post responded to with both semi-generic "yellow thumbs up" and flesh-tone-specific hands. Well-meaning folks in the former camp say it's a generic message carrier, same shade as the generic happy face from the 60s. Other folks say no, that yellow is "default caucasian", the same way the Simpsons are drawn a culturally white shade of yellow, and would prefer more specific representation.
(Facebook is probably wise to blue for an inconic thumbs up, and then the more widely accepted yellow-if-it's-a-circle-face for all the others except heart.)
I guess lean to the former camp preferring unity, but I hate being in parallel with folks who are like "come on! we are in a more or less raceblind society"