I ask because I feel this would be a great community to reach out to and tell me exactly what they think.
Ok. On another large magazine contributor platform I am in, one of their members shared a non-binary late teenager explaining they were non-binary. I was discussing the video I had seen with fellow members because every-time someone tells me they don't fit into the binary biological make-up of a human body I scratch my head a bit. I just can't see how someone can claim to be genderless. Although, that being said I'm very open to learn more and be schooled on the subject. I do recognise that I'm a bit old school and kids in my days were forced to be binary. Anything else was ridiculed.
That being said, a woman jumped on and said that my thought process was "typical for a hetero-normative person to think in such terms" and that "she found it worrying that a person would want to know about gender and sexuality" - is it me or did my privileged white heterosexual male ego take a bruising? lol. But I do think she was stereotyping me in a way that she thought typical of my group.
That being said it took me into a wider thought process in my mind. I recognise that I'm in one of the most privileged groups in the world. I'm very mainstream when it comes to gender, race, accessibility, sexuality, able, breedability and so on. In life (in real life) I don't find many battles amongst my peers. In the grand scheme of things I never have done. I'm quite lucky in retrospect.
A good friend of mine, another writer once admitted to me that because I was a white man she would believe me over her peers. She viewed me as some sort of authority figure. And that shocked me. That shocked me to the core. The sheer depth of cultural brainwashing it would take for someone to believe this, and yet, I still can't get my head around it. Also, the strange thing was is that I saw HER as an authority figure because she was the one that essentially taught me to write from the heart.
Whilst that knocked me off balance for a few days because I've always considered every human being my equal, and perhaps that's also a privilege I have been afforded. I merged the two concepts today after that discussion with another member and went onto the train of thought - is there reverse prejudice?
Well of course there is.
Look at me and the Queen of England for instance. The Queen is far more privileged than I will ever, ever, ever be, and I look up at her on her podium and see her as an overpriviliged pompous bitch. How dare she sit on her golden throne whilst there are people living in squalor, unable to feed themselves. And then my thought process dived onto another tangent.
I've often encountered this reverse prejudice but I've put it down to people being arseholes, plain and simple. I'm one for diving into communities online that perhaps my archetype isn't very welcome. Forums for women for example, is a big one for me, but that's a different story.
It's a discussion that works me up quite a bit because when people generalise, categorise, stereotype and pigeon-hole, I scream - I'm not fucking like that, that's not me. And chances are not many of us are like that. We've read it somewhere in gross over-simplification of gender or likewise, or something bad has happened to a person and then they categorise every similar person that way too. But people are different.
I am different.
YOU are different.
It's like now that America and USA are at war with Syria, and Russia is threatening to wade in - I can guarantee that our governments views aren't representative of their people. Who the fuck wants a megaton nuclear warhead through their letterbox?
Not me.
You?
I hate my government - that could be considered as reverse prejudice.
And I guess I get back to my roots when I say that it's best to treat everyone at face value, because prejudice at it's core isn't a healthy emotion. It motivates others to act in silly ways based on fear and not the current reality.
I could torch my Muslim neighbours house because of ISIS but then that wouldn't be representative of their views. There's no bombs being dropped on my country and there is no threat anywhere.
I'd like to think I judge others on face value, not from what I know.
Stop a while, get to know someone, find their deeper value.
Everyone has something of worth.
Own yours :)