Today, I’ve been thinking a lot about what has been said recently in the push-up bra thread. I think it is worth exploring the connection between our acceptance of others versus our acceptance of ourselves. Whether a person is perceived as being a man with breasts or as a woman with a beard doesn’t matter to those of us who don’t differentiate between gender, color, religion, sexual preferences etc. I think that humans are humans, and acceptance of others is an important step towards acceptance of ourselves.
I will go further and suggest that for those of us not suffering from but enjoying our ‘pink brains’, acceptance of others and ourselves is far far easier compared to the stereotypical male. Men, generally, seem to be more discriminatory and look for differences to exploit for their own feel-good benefit. Some women do that too, unfortunately. I’d like to relate a story about something that I experienced years ago, long before I knew that I had pink brain.
Back in 2008 I joined a home builders forum when we were going through that process. It was a wonderful place to share pics, tips, ideas and experiences, and also to de-stress. It was a constant in my life for several years even after our home was completed. The forum had a very active Lounge area and it didn’t take long for bonds to form amongst the banter. We even had a couple of group meet-ups in real life! I am proud to say that some of those friendships and links remained. Very recently, through tragedy, those links have shown their importance once more - it is for this reason that I think that this story is relevant. What I didn’t care about at the time when I was active on that forum was that probably 90% of the active members were the wives or female partners. I felt completely at home amongst their presence. I only realized after several years that I was deemed by some to be an outlier there when a certain posh bitch commented in a condescending manner that I was acting like one of the girls, complete with a laughing emoji. That actually hurt me, because until then I thought that I fitted right in as a male by just being me. Point is, even though 90% of the members there were women, I only saw them as people…and as friends. I make no apologies for that.
It's probably a no-brainer, but can anyone else see the connection between pink brain/acceptance of others/acceptance of ouselves?