erin

Sounds like weaponized incompetence to be honest.

All the labels are made up, there are no rules, and you might identify with multiple categories. I use the labels bisexual, pansexual, and lesbian interchangeably, because they have different connotations and familiarity to most people. Need to communicate that I’m with a woman? A lesbian relationship. Want to make it clear that I’m attracted to all sorts of gender identities? Bisexual/pansexual, depending on who I’m talking to and what terms their familiar with/how specific I feel like being.

The labels don’t have hard and fast rules. I’m attracted to women, I’m gay, I’m lesbian, I’m non-binary, etc. It doesn’t matter. They all apply to me and can overlap to varying degrees. I know a trans guy that calls himself both a gay man and a lesbian. I know trans women that refer to themselves as twinks. Specificity and semantics aren’t as important as communicating what you intend to whoever you’re talking to.

Gender and sexuality aren’t hardwired rules, but influenced by our culture and environment. This is true for everyone. This isn’t to say that someone’s gender or sexuality isn’t intrinsic to that person, but how they think about those and present them are part of an ongoing performance for themselves and others. If you’re interested in learning more on the subject, I can recommend some excellent books on the subject, or feel free to ask followup questions here or in DMs.

Please, do not repeat this, because it’s terrible advice that causes people that otherwise could benefit greatly from antidepressants to avoid them completely. Don’t spread misinformation.

It’s true that antidepressants don’t make you happy, but they don’t categorically make you feel nothing. Every person works differently, and a drug that for some regulates emotion and prevents stress in others suppresses emotional extremes completely. For me, Lexapro made me feel nothing. For my mother, it made her feel normal again. I have a combination of drugs that make me feel normal, but for my wife, might make her feel awful. Antidepressants don’t “make you feel nothing.” Some might have that effect, but it’s the job of a psychiatrist to find the right blend for each person. It took a few tries to find mine. If your antidepressants make you feel nothing, you need different antidepressants.

It’s simply unrealistic and excessive to expect people to stop using one of the most accessible services that comes built in to most phones, and has features that cannot easily be replaced. All my privacy and data options are restricted in maps, but I’m sure they still collect some data. I have no intent though to stop using a service that is incredibly important to organizing and planning my life (traffic, community driven reports of detours, construction, cops, etc, weather specific reroutes, fuel efficiency route selection) because someone online has absolutely unrealistic expectations of others’ data privacy. Navigating to someone in maps is not the same as uploading a picture of them. Google sees my location and my destinations already. All that changes when I turn on my location tracking is that so does my wife. Your argument doesn’t make sense and is unreasonable.

Are you seriously arguing that navigating to someone’s house with Google maps is violating their privacy? When I do share my location, I’m sharing through Google maps, directly to my wife’s Google account. Google can already see my location for maps purposes. They have obtained no new information. If you are in fact arguing that using Google maps violates the privacy of anyone you navigate to, then I just don’t agree and can’t take you seriously. If you’re arguing that somehow sharing my location to my wife’s account in Google maps is somehow fundamentally different for privacy than using Google maps is already, then I just don’t understand you. You’re okay with people using maps but not sharing their location within those maps apps. That’s a very confusing moral stance.

This has nothing to do with the tracking. You should have the same problem with anyone that has location turned on in their phone. Turning on GPS tracking for me and my wife has not given Google new data on our locations, as we use Google maps to navigate as is. I reject the premise that I’m violating someone else’s privacy by doing so. I’ve also opted out of any app using my location without my express permission. You certainly wouldn’t have the right to ask someone to turn something like that off simply because you don’t trust the corporations on the other end, because you have no idea what service, what precautions they’ve taken, and if they’re actively sharing. If you were going to do so, then you should also inspect people’s phones for having location turned on, and check all their apps permissions for location.

Consensually choosing to share my location with my wife is not the same as not caring about my data being collected or sold. I don’t have any intention to break her trust, but that has nothing to do with why we share location. It’s all about safety and convenience. I know when she’s working late. She knows when I made it back to my car safely after a night out. I know when she’s on her way home, even when she forgets to text me, so I can start cooking. As two gay women in a conservative area, it just made sense.

My wife and I share our location. We both trust each other implicitly and neither of us consider it a breach of privacy, but rather a willing sharing of information. I think if this is demanded of someone unilaterally, it would be both a breach of privacy and trust, but it’s just so damn convenient for our lives and makes us both feel safer. If I’m out late in the city to see a friend, my wife can easily see that I’m safe making it to my car and driving home. If my wife is working late and forgets to text, I can easily check and know she’s still in the building. As two gay women, it was a no-brainer for us. I would never demand that of someone. It seems like a lot of people in the comments see sharing location as an intrinsically harmful or negative action, whereas it’s far more context and consent dependent for me. Hell, I even share my location with a friend for a few hours if I’m doing something sketchy.