Quote:
Originally Posted by June
I don't know, Snowy. I kind of get it and have seen it. The whomevers out there that are always looking for "The Next Best Thing" who will make every attempt to discredit their Ex or assign blame without taking responsibility for any of their own actions in the relationships. Some of them will even project their own behavior onto others and infer or assign a deeper relationship or even an inappropriate one onto others. This is not Femme/Trans/Butch, masculine or feminine, this is, as has been noted, human behavior.
I've had it happen to me. Once I was telling someone how nice I thought their partner was for being so thoughtful towards me and I watched her face turn stone cold with anger over it, as though I was trying to make her jealous or steal her partner, instead of what was actually happening, which was that I was saying "Hey, you picked a good one there!". It was both sad and telling about the level of insecurity she had. Sidenote: I was also partnerned when it happened, so I wasn't even "Suspect by being single".
It's interesting to correlate this back to evolution and competition for food/mates/shelter and how that may affect our little microcosm, even though the majority of us are unable to create progeny together in the "usual" way.
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Actually, it was your post, June, about not feeling responsible for the tensions among butches and transmen that inspired my thoughts. I don't feel responsible for those tensions either, and I don't think that any femme should, except when she has deliberately participated in a kind of negative in-group behavior that spurs intolerance and dissension. Perhaps we've all been party to this kind of thing at one time or another. Still, I think the basis - the foundational cause - for most intergroup tensions is competition and that it does have an evolutionary source. Like I mentioned, even though we are unlikely to add to the surplus in population, it is a benefit to our survival to mate, and ironically, to find and build community.
Snow, even while some of us overcome our more basic (and base) instincts (and I hear what you're saying definitely) some of the time, others have to consciously work to continue to do so (provided they ever select to do so). Not everyone has a competitive nature, sure, and not all people are given to behaving in ways that are derisive, but most people enact these behaviors at some point, and the larger question becomes not just one of the personality clash, or an inability to sort differences, but whether there is a deeper motivation for this need for establishing groups and even hierarchies.
I just happen to think there is.