[Oddey]

I typically try to stay out of this kind of debate, because I feel like all the problems that people bring up, while they do concern me, are difficult for me to have a meaningful opinion about. But I'll say a few words, if only just for the sake of speaking my mind.

When it comes to gender identity, I've met three people who would, as I understand it, felt they had a different gender than their sex and actively pursued ways to change that: (two of them were on hormones, the last one insisted being called Sandra rather than his given name.) I never questioned their beliefs or why they wanted to do. The main reason I didn't was because their reasons were obviously very personal and even if I could understand them, it would not be something I could relate well to. And besides, apart from having to remember to say Sandra, they didn't cause me any grief, so why start any trouble over it?

Myself, I don't think a lot about my gender or my sex. Mostly because I find it difficult to understand the want to identify at all. So when someone tells me they identify one way or the other, my usual response will be along the lines of "That's nice" and move on. I've had it previously misconstrued as disagreeing, but it's more that I just don't know what to make of it and try to carry on with life as it was before.

I will say this though, if someone looks like a man, but wants to be addressed as a woman, or vice versa or some other permutation of that which requires a different pronoun than what I immediately judge appropriate, I hope they don't get upset if I get it wrong every once in a while, because I probably will. Not out of hate, but out of a mix of forgetfulness and force of habit.

So that's all I have to say about gender. Now the next topic, feminism.

It's difficult to talk about feminism for the same reasons it's difficult to talk about Christianity; it's very much about the person more than it is the group.

My experience with feminism is limited to a few people and the internet, where, more often than not, the word feminist means a person who hates men, uses Tumblr, is obese and all those other negative connotations. I have never personally interacted with one of these. All I've seen is people who talk about them, laugh at them, explain to me how feminism isn't needed and link me videos that mock them.

Somehow, I doubt these "feminazis" are as omnipresent as they are made out to be. My experience with people I've actually met who identified as feminists or who I'd describe as feminists, is much less exciting. Very few people I've met have ever described themselves to me as a feminist, but one that I remember was a girl who I never remember hearing anything unreasonable from. The closest thing was a class discussion about a girl in an American college who made a pornographic video or something to fund her way into college and was promptly expelled for it. She, naturally, did not think this was terribly fair. "It's her decision, it's her body, she can do what she likes, it's not affecting them." was the gist of her argument. The only argument I heard against it was that if they didn't expel her, it might send the wrong impression about the college. Myself, I don't really think it's the school's business, but I was undecided and still am somewhat.

My personal experience of interacting with feminists is fairly limited, as I said. It seemed to me that she pursued feminism as Sybil describes it, so for me, I'd say that's not too far off what your average feminist wants. I would like to see a new word for this pursuit though, since I feel that might help gain some distance from the emergence of the more extreme views that are sometimes seen on the internet.

I don't identify as a feminist. I don't really know if I support the idea of equality between sexes, since that seems impossible to me, due to inherent differences. I support both having access to the same opportunities, because I don't see any significant downside to allowing it. It seems unlikely to me that both sexes are going to be just as good at all of them though, but I guess that's obvious.

I think it would be wrong to say there is no place for a feminist movement these days. I don't want to say what they should be doing, because all the issues that I think are important, I find extremely difficult to put into words that don't sound contradicting. There is, in my experience, a significant difference between how men interact with other men and how men and women interact with women and men (leaving out how women interact with women, because all I know is what I've eavesdropped on and what I've seen them do). I understand why this is and I would say that there's always going to be a difference, but I also think that it's understandable to want to change that, at least to some degree.

I'm currently hungover, so I think I'll stop for now, maybe say some more about this, or talk about nationalism.