Answering a WordPress survey this afternoon. Funny that for gender there are options including prefer not to say and space for a custom answer, in addition to male or female. People go out of their way to be inclusive and neutral with gender. To the point where it has become very hard to agree what a woman actually is any longer.
However, race is still very black and white. Age the same. The WordPress survey gave no options to prefer not to answer for age, no option to describe how I feel about my age, what age I identify as. Same for race, though it was not mentioned in the survey, other than asking your country of location.
Why don’t we get to choose the race or age we identify as? What if I identify as mixed race and feel I am about 30 in age? How would that go over with these modern people who don’t want anyone bullied unless they disagree with popular opinions?
I lost an online friend because she refused to allow me to say I am mixed race. Almost everyone is mixed race, it would be really hard to find a pure pred these days. But, race is only allowed to be black or white. She insisted I was white and had to call myself white. It didn’t matter how I chose to identify myself. The irony was that she had never met me face to face. How was she an authority on who I am when she has only spoken to me through text on the Internet? At most I had a cartoon image posted to a site we both wrote for. But, a cartoon does not define who I am. I do. Subject to change without notice. I am contrary that way.
Anyway, why don’t we promote (aggressively like bullies) age and race neutrality? Is it because we like deciding who people are based on these two things and without them we couldn’t define who anyone actually is. Or, does sex just matter so much more than anything else? It could be a combination of the two, or something else I haven’t thought of yet.