harmalade:

gender is like the sun and the moon. the sun is the opposite of the moon because, well, there they are. 

then when you get older, and you find out that the sun is a star, and that there are so many of them, too many to count, and many of them larger than our sun. And moons, too, and now it seems ridiculous that we call the moon “the moon” when many planets have moons, not just one either, but lots. And there are planets we don’t even know about that have suns and moons that we don’t even know about.

and still, even knowing this, it’s hard to let go of the sun and moon being opposites, because the sun and the moon are the most visible, and now almost all of the starlight at nighttime has been stifled by light pollution and smog.

but gender is more like—if we did blot out all the stars as a byproduct of “progress” and then we said “Yes, the sun is a star, but there is only one star. Look at the sky, all there is is the sun and the moon. Don’t make things up.”