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2025-03-16 19:53 EDT

There's a type of person who needs things to be official before they consider them real. A union has to be recognized by the state to be a real union. A party has to be recognized by the state to be a party. A name has to be recognized by the state to be your real name.

And they often say, "well if there's nothing to make it official, then what's to stop people from just saying it's real?" Yes, what is? Perhaps that's the point, that many things don't have a binary state of existence, that sometimes there are gray areas where things kind of sort of exist but not really, but they actually do. Why is this so scary to people? Why must ambiguities be rooted out or shunned? And of course, why is it the state that is the arbiter of all things?

Tags: social constructs