My blogroll has been going nuts for days over the Jenner Vanity Fair cover. It might seem weird that people would get so emotionally invested but there is a reason why this happens.
The fluid world has destroyed community. And when community is not there to provide guidelines for one’s conduct and enforce compliance, all that’s left to help people figure out how to live is identity.
When Jenner (or anybody else) demonstrates that identity is as easy to sweep away as community has been, panic sets in. Identity is the very last line of defense against the increasingly fluid world. Without it, there is nothing outside of oneself to grasp for support as one is being carried along and battered by the uncontrollable flows of an insecure world.
Identity will not survive fluidity. But many people don’t know this. All they see is that the very last certainty, the very last set of guidelines they had to orient them in this confusing world is being taken away. And that is too terrifying for them to accept.
Clarissa's Blog 
As a technical profession who has been active in the life extension/transhumanist scene over the past couple of decades, I can tell you I have a very strong sense of self-identity and self-purpose that is not threatened at all by a fluid world. Indeed, I consider a fluid world a good think because it helps to undermine the influence of those who might be opposed to our goals and objectives.
I lived in Japan and other parts of Asia for 10 years. This 10 year period of relative cultural and social isolation helped to reinforce my sense of identity and purpose.
I argue that competent, intelligent people who are internally driven have no need for community as in the context of your post. We create ourselves and our future.
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“I argue that competent, intelligent people who are internally driven have no need for community as in the context of your post. We create ourselves and our future.”
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Of course you are correct. People who feel the need for group identity are free to do so. The problem arises when such people support politics aimed at restricting the freedom of action of those like myself. Naturally, this irritates me to no end.
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I disagree. What bothers people is that it’s now being constantly shoved down our throats.
So Bruce Jenner wants to be referred to as Caitlyn. And referred to as a woman. Okay, whatever. We do not frequent the same circles. It’s unlikely that I would ever cross paths with Jenner or have a conversation about the 1976 Olympics, so I don’t see any particular need to care any more than how James Doe in Sydney, Australia might want to be known as Jim.
But now it’s on the radio. It’s on facebook. It’s on TV. It’s on the internet. I don’t believe that Jenner is a woman today, but I’d be content to just leave it alone and go about my business. But instead, it’s thrust into my face a dozen times a day, and woe betide me as the worst human being imaginable if I’m not inclined to say ‘she’.
Because that is why I it’s all over the place. The point of this current bout of publicity is to ritually commit everyone in America to refer to Jenner as ‘Ms.’ No one, however remote, can be left alone until they have said so. It’s not tolerance, the goal is to humiliate by forcing the opposition to voice, publicly, what they believe to be a lie.
I predict that within five-ten years, much in the way as ‘colored’, ‘negro’, ‘gay’, and ‘special’, the same people demanding the right of the “trans-” community will be decrying “trans” as a dog whistle used by evil bad evil evil oppressing evil bigots, on the premise that its very use creates a recognition of inherent differences between “trans-woman” and “woman”.
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I hear you, Alexander. I’m getting very tired of the whole Vanity Fair cover thing as well. I’m very supportive of transpeople but it does bug me to no end that this magazine cover (featuring a very wealthy person, by the way) is getting a million times more coverage than the recent offensive of the Russian troops in Ukraine that happened at the same time as the cover came out. The public space has been completely destroyed by the aggressive irruption of the private into the public sphere.
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Well, yes.
Perceived biological sex is one the first things other people notice about you if not the first thing. Everyone has a shorthand or a schema as to how they’ll function in relation to others. The more it relies on identity, the more people freak out.”What are you?” is “Why are you flouting my schema? Answer my questions so this anxiety will go away!”
Is it terrible that my overall reaction to Jenner is to yawn?
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“Is it terrible that my overall reaction to Jenner is to yawn?”
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It’s still legal to fire people and refuse to rent to them because they are gay or trans. Even in places where it’s not, good luck proving or fighting it.
I had a friend who had the worst time finding campus housing on a campus that required that you live there as a freshman because she was gay. She was couch surfing and walking outside without her shoes in winter for much of that semester. Finally she was able to find a roommate situation where none of the roommates were homophobes.
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The problem with the Jenner cover is that the discussion is not veering towards these important issues. Obviously, Jenner is not likely to face them.
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A couple of thoughts.
Human endeavors cannot be easily harnassed and once you open the box to DIY identity it’s not going to stop at one dimension. There are already “transracial” and “transablist” people and who knows what else in the wings.
Destroying community is not a good idea unless everybody is going along and so far only a few privileged (in the old fashioned sense) westerners are playing that game.
Competition exists at the individual and societal level and a group of individuals who have created their own identities is going to be washed away by any group with shared goals no matter how dysfunctional they are otherwise (as is happening on several fronts in Europe).
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