I don't know how to update certain categories. If someone is constantly going to parties and around people 24/7 but tells me they're introverted, I can't just... *stop* viewing them as extroverted. I can view them as having a self-identity as introverted!
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But my brain is like 'Oh, they pattern-match onto 'takes actions to be around other people a lot'", and I can't *un*match that pattern just because they tell me they're different. I don't have control over that level of processing the world.
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I understand it taking a while to make the adjustment - when I learn things about people I've known for a while that correct an assumption I had, I don't necessarily collate it right away. But I also don't reject it, which is what it sounds like you want to do.
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I don't have a particular desire around it, I just notice that my brain isn't updating based on the information.
Some assumptions do update over time! But the gender thing feels like it belongs in a special category, very close to the way identifying objects feels.
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It definitely takes time to cast off some of the things we grew up with. I spent a long time, when I met a trans non-binary person, subconsciously thinking about how they must have looked before transitioning.
I sympathize with that being a difficult abd slow process.
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The distinction comes between whether it's a frustrating process that we're still working on or one that we've decided NOT to do.
I got the impression from your original thread that you were in the latter camp.
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I feel extremely self-accepting towards myself. I try to notice how I work and not judge it. Often how I work changes! Sometimes it doesn't. Both are okay. If the way I process gender changes, that's fine. If it doesn't, that's also fine. The thing I'm wary about is-
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trying to force myself to view something that i don't. This has happened to me a ton of times in tiny little ways, where I rewrite my perception on myself in order to fit what I think people want from me. I notice incentive to do that here, and I'm being careful not to.
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That makes sense to me, and I certainly wouldn't advocate for the extreme opposite, taking everything other people tell us at face value without evaluation.
Ultimately I think the important thing is, as much as possible, to let others be the authority on who they are.
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I had to spend a lot of time in a nebulous place as I listened to many people to slowly update my understanding of gender. It took some vulnerability to let go of things I had assumed before.
A key to that process was accepting people's personal accounts as sincere and true.
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I'm sympathetic to this - I know how shitty it is to have people think they know me when they really don't (as happens a LOT on the internet lately).
But as with most rules, this rule also isn't really that cut and dry? Like, there's a spectrum here-
On one hand, having preconceptions about the ways minds work can keep you from expanding or having empathy.
On the other hand, accepting people's self-reporting as an absolute indicator of reality is kinda stupid if you do it uncritically. Extreme: trump
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A lot of what I write about is the subtle ways we believe things about ourselves to be true that aren't really consistent - about ways society gives us stories that we internalize, about frameworks that we identify with in ways that lock us into stasis.
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