flexibeast.space - gemlog - 2020-10-06
Re: Does being queer and/or TGD contraindicate STEM? pt 2
This is in response to:
Re: Does being queer and/or TGD contraindicate STEM? pt 2
So it's about fictional portrayals.
Partly, but also about such portrayals reflecting more general cultural beliefs - both inside and outside the queer/TGD communities - as to what queer/TGD people are ‘like’. It's about fellow queer/TGD people, let alone straight/cis people, assuming what one's personality and interests are, based on one being queer/TGD. And it's also about such cultural beliefs having normative tendencies, creating pressures on queer/TGD people who don't match the tropes: that we need to be sufficiently ‘arty’ / ‘flamboyant’ / ‘fabulous’ to be part of the queer/TGD communities.
To the extent that we want to, or are even able to, prescribe what fiction should do (beyond what ink flows from your OWN pen), I would want to see portrayals of women and femininity in STEM over specifically the subset of women that is TGD.
i feel there's again a misunderstanding here. i'm certainly not arguing “there should be more portrayals of TGD women involved/interested in STEM, as a priority over every other marginalised group”! Instead, i'm trying to say: “If you're going to characterise what queer/TGD women are like, can you please consider characterising us as involved/interested in STEM without being ‘arty’ / ‘flamboyant’ / ‘fabulous’?" If a cis black woman wrote something saying “I'd like to see more instances of black women being represented as interested in STEM”, my response would be wholehearted support. Western feminisms have a long track record of deprioritising / ignoring the voices and concerns of various subsets of women, particularly WoC, via racist / colonialist / paternalistic arguments, or the argument that ‘sex/gender is THE issue’. So as a white woman, i want to avoid contributing to that phenomenon.
Finally, I don't want my capsule to become dominated by multiple posts in this thread.
Fair enough - i can understand that! i guess this is one downside of the “commenting on a post by responding in a new post” approach ....
☙