I spent some time responding to Tessa S because as a woman she wasn’t being knee jerk defensive. In the end I didn’t get into a full blown back and forth because I didn’t think she was interested in what I would say. She seemed to be saying that both she and her mom have defied the gender conventions and so the thing that matters is character and not identity.
On some level hers is the exception that proves the rule. The fact that she talks about her mom breaking through the glass ceiling means that there is a glass ceiling to break through. The whole point of my essay is that we should not be restricted by a gender binary (or a racial binary for that matter) and both her and her mom are examples of what I advocate for all people. But she didn’t want to hear it.
Right now it seems to me that the progressive left is coming to be aware of how our identities shape us. The conservative right is concerned that this will reveal structural inequalities and they want to deny the importance of identities (race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientation, age, body size, religion, urban/rural).
The irony is that even as the right denies the importance of identity, they exploit it for votes and entrench it. And even as the left recognizes identity, they aspire to get rid of it and want to treat everyone the same.
I think both points of view are flawed but I can’t articulate how yet.