6 tweets · December 2023 · 8 likes · 0 retweets · read on Twitter
the crux here is whether expectations are: - anticipations/negotiations vs - something to be enforced I would expect_ANTICIPATE a left-hander to write with their left hand (I might therefore sit to their right!) but I wouldn't expect_DEMAND that they do so twitter.com/sentientist/st…
we're getting better, but for the last 10k years or so, society has done a lot of its expectations in a non-negotiated, enforced manner which, in the case of left-handedness, used to involve a bunch of traumatizing ppl into doing something unnatural & unnecessary
but sex is very complex, compared to left/right-handedness! and how can we know what's innate? it seems that forcing boys to be girls is bad, & vice versa but also forcing everybody to an absurd average is bad but so is forcing trans or gay boys to be "[straight cis] boys"
so maybe the issue is not the expectations but the forcing! trying to do away with expectations is not really viable—part of the nature of society is that we expect things of each other, & if these expectations aren't based on what's biologically realistic, that spells trouble!
given that, it seems it would be good to have roughly appropriate expectations of variation among & between the sexes, given that there is uhh at least as much bio difference there as with left/right-handedness which includes respecting the reality of girly boys & boyish girls
all of this is very hard to reason about because human behavior doesn't come genetically encoded, for the most part. needs do, and some impulses, but like, my hunger sends me to the fridge and the grocery store, not out to hunt