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Dec. 18th, 2018 07:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormdogA meme suggesting that if I believe progressives really want a gender-neutral or female Santa I must therefore have an IQ of 6 upset me yesterday.
It was the first I'd heard of the idea, but honestly I kind of like it. And the fact that *I* do suggests to me that at least some people are being unfairly tarred with an overly wide brush. I'm not a conservative troll, and while it's been a long time since I had an IQ test (and I'm not convinced that they are as informative as a lot of people assume anyway), I'm pretty sure mine is > 6.
I'm certainly willing to believe that this idea is being spread by some as an intentional attempt to discredit progressive ideas about gender and to enrage social conservatives. In all honesty though, whatever the motivations, the idea is kind of interesting.
Do you remember the picture of a drag queen next to a woman wearing a niqab on a New York City train that was captioned "This is the future liberals want"? I loved the progressive response to that. Hell yeah this is the future liberals want! A social environment where people are free to flaunt gender norms or outwardly express religious devotion in public spaces in ways that don't interfere with other people? Sign me up!
That's how I feel about the genderbent Santa thing too. Like any other fictional character, Santa is open to reinterpretation through new lenses. Why does Santa have to be male anyway? If I had any experience or connections in the relevant area, I'd think about trying to produce a Christmas anthology of gender-bent Santa stories. How cool would that be?
Maybe some of my reaction to that comes from the contrarian streak my therapist pointed out I have, and maybe some comes from a feeling of being attacked as a potential troll or idiot for taking such an interesting idea seriously. But seriously; why not a female or non-binary Santa?
It was the first I'd heard of the idea, but honestly I kind of like it. And the fact that *I* do suggests to me that at least some people are being unfairly tarred with an overly wide brush. I'm not a conservative troll, and while it's been a long time since I had an IQ test (and I'm not convinced that they are as informative as a lot of people assume anyway), I'm pretty sure mine is > 6.
I'm certainly willing to believe that this idea is being spread by some as an intentional attempt to discredit progressive ideas about gender and to enrage social conservatives. In all honesty though, whatever the motivations, the idea is kind of interesting.
Do you remember the picture of a drag queen next to a woman wearing a niqab on a New York City train that was captioned "This is the future liberals want"? I loved the progressive response to that. Hell yeah this is the future liberals want! A social environment where people are free to flaunt gender norms or outwardly express religious devotion in public spaces in ways that don't interfere with other people? Sign me up!
That's how I feel about the genderbent Santa thing too. Like any other fictional character, Santa is open to reinterpretation through new lenses. Why does Santa have to be male anyway? If I had any experience or connections in the relevant area, I'd think about trying to produce a Christmas anthology of gender-bent Santa stories. How cool would that be?
Maybe some of my reaction to that comes from the contrarian streak my therapist pointed out I have, and maybe some comes from a feeling of being attacked as a potential troll or idiot for taking such an interesting idea seriously. But seriously; why not a female or non-binary Santa?
