To put joking aside, I have been trying to make a sort of quilt pattern to add to one of my sweatshirts, but I’m not good at sewing and don’t have a sewing machine. So I would probably listen to her talk about quilts and how to make the edges look good.

Your mom.

“Welcome! What brings you to the homeless shelter today?”

“Well, it’s that bench. You see, I was choosing the unhoused lifestyle, and I was fine with all the other stigma and physical discomforts, until I realized that the city wants to discourage my presence in public spaces. Fuck these armrests, I decided I’d just come to this shelter, get treatment for my addiction, get counseling for my traumatic past that fed the addiction, get an education, get a job, rent a house, save money, then buy a home instead. It’s just not worth trying to get comfy on that bench.”

in all nine species of female snakes they examined

I’m sure they actually did the study in an organized way, but I imagined them checking the snake species one by one. “Okay guys, that’s eight out of eight so far. If the next snake also has a clit, we’re calling it - all snakes have clits.”

I choose guilty sex.

It makes it a little raunchy, without explaining why.

Good points, and I think we generally agree. I definitely didn’t mean to exclude anyone in those real or hypothetical situations you mentioned. To me, those examples are more about showing how gender is, or can be, biologically fluid. There are many “odd” situations that aren’t binary. So amongst the many unusual ways that sex can occur biologically, “male brain in a female body” or “I reject the concept of gender entirely” are valid and believable.

I agree with your last point as well, but in the context of this post, would you tell Rachel Dolezal that she says she’s Black, so she’s Black? I guess I was trying to find some sort of difference between gender and race identity, the way the question was posed.

I’m definitely not claiming to have an unassailable argument, so thanks for responding with good points.

I’m no expert on either topic. But I believe humans basically start off as female in the womb, and either become male or don’t. And there are many intersex conditions. The body responds to hormones typically associated with either sex. So gender is fluid in a biological sense. If someone transitions to male, female or nonbinary, they already kind of contained that potential.

However, race is a social construct, usually based on heritage as well as biological appearance. So it’s hard to say how much biology is really involved. Does the human body contain the ability to be any race? Or to cultivate an appearance that prompts other humans to socially categorize you as one race or the other?

Maybe for people who are mixed race, there is a sort of spectrum available to them. They likely know how to present themselves in a way that gets them categorized as one race or the other.

But otherwise, not really. If you’re White, and you say, “I identify as Black,” the question might be: do you have Black heritage? If you don’t, you can’t really create it out of thin air. There wasn’t a situation while you were in the womb where various hormones could have influenced you to appear more Black than you do. If your parents are both White, they were going to have a White baby, no matter what. Race is a social construct, but it’s based on appearance and heritage. It’s about belonging to a group, not about being an individual, the way gender is.

If you’re assigned female at birth, and you say, “I identify as male,” then cool! Your body already has the capability to become hormonally male. You can socially identify as male. Any human, of any race, has this potential. Any two parents could have a baby that is any sex or gender, depending on various factors.

Yeah, fictional romance is more interesting when it’s forbidden in some way. Otherwise, who wants to read a romance novel about a nice couple who meets at the library when they’re both single, and proceeds to have a wholesome relationship? Great for real life, but boring to read about or watch a movie about.

Many of the traditional reasons for forbidding a romance are gone in the contemporary world. Different race, different social class, same gender, rival families? Not convincing.

So you’re left with stuff that’s plausible but icky, like being in a relationship already, or being teacher/student or boss/employee. Or pornographic stuff like step-family. Those are problematic and people will criticize them.

You could set your story in a historical setting in which the countess and the gardener are truly forbidden from passion, or a fantasy world where the ogopogos and sasquatches are sexy rivals.

Or just have a lukewarm type of forbidden-ness, like “his family’s greeting-card store is in competition with my family’s greeting-card store” or “we’re coworkers.”

It really is. You’d think they’d choose a positive news story.

The eyeballs are a good example. But perhaps an ignorant pro-vag-washing man could retort, "Well, nobody jizzes in my eyeballs!’

Maybe the issue is self-loathing as well as misogyny - they think their cum is disgusting, so they assume it contaminates a vag?