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Till Kaeslin's avatar

I'll just comment on my own question here, because why not.

I'm not alone in questioning why people get so passionate and heated about another person's gender or sexuality (or identity in general). There's a whole Reddit thread (and probably countless more like it) fueled by this very question – find it here: https://bit.ly/2MgabCC

Taking a scroll through that thread (which I highly recommend) is to see just how many different reasons people can come up with for why we're so pressed about each others' identities (esp. LGBTQ+ identities). From colonialism, to religion, to more secular tradition, to status quo, to what's considered "natural" and what isn't, the path to just accepting and loving someone for who they proclaim themselves to be is littered with ideological landmines.

Personally, I'm of the school of thought that human beings just don't like change. Whenever there's a new idea flung our way, we push back against it because we're uncomfortable with "the way things are" becoming "the way things aren't". What's so ironic about this thinking though is that, when it comes to LGBTQ+ identities, these are not new ideas – diverse identities that don't adhere to binaries have existed for as long as human beings have walked this Earth.

So maybe it isn't that we're uncomfortable with new things, maybe it's that we're just uncomfortable with what we don't know yet.

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