Kulturkampf

[HeavenIsAPlaceOnEarth]

Scholar makes case for moving beyond sexual labels

In a new book, sociologist Brandon Andrew Robinson calls for abolishing sexual identities.

Robinson, an associate professor of gender and sexuality studies at UC Riverside, knows it’s a provocative thesis. But they argue that discarding these labels is a critical step toward giving people the freedom to relate to one another on a deeper, more respectful, more meaningful, and more pleasurable level.

Deeper? This bullshit is shallow as fuck. People don't come up with these labels to accurately describe who or what they are attracted to, they do it because they want others to see them as more interesting than they actually are. It's entirely performative. See: boring straight people identifying as "queer", which doesn't actually tell you anything about them. May as well as identify as being "not like the other girls/boys".

“Identities limit us,” Robinson writes in “Trans Pleasure: On Gender Liberation and Sexual Freedom.” “And the fact that we keep creating new identities — such as gynosexual, finsexual, sapiosexual, asexual, or pansexual — shows how these categories fail to capture the full complexities of gender, sexuality, and desire.”

We? Don't define the vast majority who have been perfectly fine with the standard labels, by the people so desperate to appear interesting that they invent new labels to "come out" as.

Secondly, these categories often rely on gender essentialism. If being “gay” means being a man attracted to men, it assumes “man” is a stable, inherent category, when history shows the definition of manhood is constantly changing.

It's actually very simple - a "man" is an adult human male. If you are an adult human male who is exclusively attracted to other adult human males, then you are gay.

"What" a man actually is never changes as it's just simple biology. "How" a man should be can change based on society and culture but it doesn't actually change what a man "is". Seeing someone as more or less "of a man" is just sexist stereotypes. One individual may judge and another individual more positively or negative based on how that person is, but if that person is an adult human male, they are a man no matter what anyone thinks.

A truly progressive society would abandon the "how" (gender) and base identification solely on "what" (sex). A man is simply an adult human male and a woman is simple an adult human female. They can do act and look and dress and do and be whatever, none of how they are changes what they are.