u/Puzzleheaded-Leg7018

So, folks, I've recently found some difficulties in finding MUNs and similar events, run on the social media I have (Only Discord and Reddit). I've decided to try running one soon, making a new subreddit for it, and the like, but first, I'd like to see the demand for these types of, well, "conferences" in the community.

My ideal model would be a session every month or so; like a Crisis Committee one month, UNHRC the next. I'd also consider text-based MUN proceedings as an experiment sometime.

https://preview.redd.it/ga7i4b42wn9h1.png?width=1080&format=png&auto=webp&s=64f7424ae3aed78378f45cc24ebe6bed60c11f5b

So, my life has been marked significantly by acting like a fool, in order to gain recognition of some sort, or to "stand out", and now, I just can't seem to conform anymore.

It makes me mad when people say being gay is "something that you're born with" and "can't be learned". I personally subscribe to the existentialist school of thought, which emphasizes personal agency. Here's a quote from a philosopher, Simone De Beauvoir: *"One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman." (*This philosophy asserts that humans are completely free to define their own meaning, identity, and essence through their choices and actions, rather than being defined by biological determinism, as per Gemini).

This kind of choice is not a "wrong" doesn't need a "cure". These choices are the way you exert control over who you are. Even if you could choose your attraction, it's a valid choice and it's essential to your autonomy and the way you determine your identity.

I feel that gender identity is NOT determined at birth, or even during childhood, it's a fluid thing which changes overtime. Someone may feel attraction to males in their teens, both men and women in their twenties, and then females in their thirties. If you label them "confused" until they make a defined identity, then it feels like you're invalidating their identities they held in the past. You may fill one gender role at one point of life, and another at a different point of life. Labelling these changes as "realizations" ticks me off.

Identity can change. I also believe in gender performativity, which can be summarized in the line: "gender is not something you are, but something you do". Gender is built upon thousands of thousands of daily choices; whether you prefer skirts over pants, long hair over short, tough physical work over creative mental work, and anything in between. The beautiful thing is, all these change. (As per this school of thought, gender identity is a continuous "performance" built out of a lifetime of daily choices, actions, clothes, behaviors, and speech patterns.)

Biochemistry is something you're born with, yes, and it does play a major role in how you choose to identify, and who you're attracted to, but imprinting in childhood, and experiences you have as your sexuality develops in your teens influence how you will identify. Life experiences change the way you feel about gender roles.

TL;DR,
I think gender identity can be learned through life experiences, but not forced or influenced by someone wanting to "convert" you into a straight or gay person, it's based on hundreds of daily choices, and our ever-changing feelings. Yes, being one gender or the other is a choice, but it's not a frivolous one, it's not a wrong one, it is a valid choice. I mean this in the way that a choice is a part of self-determination.

The "born that way" narrative washes over the role people play in their own development, and I do not accept that.

(By the way, these are all personal opinions. I support anyone's choice to identify in whichever way they feel comfortable, unless they want to force their own identity on others [cough transphobes cough homophobes cough]. )

(as a side-note, it's surprising how a piece of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric is that they're "converting" people to be gay or something while homophobes and transphobes and even just regular straight people do it more often and to a worse extent [cough conversion therapy cough]. )