Going by this metaphor, “using Windows” (ie, presenting as the gender you were assigned at birth) is the best option for most people since most are cis and “using Linux” is only the best option for those who are trans.
Your comment is interesting to me because I had a completely different read on the meme. The tumblr tboy compared using Linux to “being transgender”, so read “using Windows” as being analogous to being cisgender (i.e. identifying as the gender you were assigned at birth). I get why you opted to think of this in terms of gender presentation though, because how does one map “being [transgender/cisgender]” onto “choosing to use [Linux/Windows]”. Indeed, I was confused by this too, at first, but after a moment of pondering, I found a fun interpretation from thinking of “using Linux” as the thing that’s not the choice.
Ubuntu tboy seems to consider using Windows to be an innately bad experience, and whilst he didn’t explicitly suggest this is true for everyone, it’s useful to look at this through that lens. If “Using windows” = universally bad, then that would suggest that “being cis” = universally bad. That sounds ridiculous and is quite an inflammatory statement on its face, but it’s not necessarily attacking cis people, but the concept of cis-ness (or assigned gender at birth) itself. In other words, “existing in a world where Windows is treated as the default option sucks because loads of people hate Windows, but may not even realise that an alternative exists, or switching is (or perceived to be) too difficult”.
At this point, it’s probably useful to situate my perspective here: I am cis, and I’ve found that I feel most free and empowered as a woman in spaces that are super queer — i.e. the kinds of spaces where I forget the construct of gender entirely, or it is thrown into sharp relief and I see the absurdity of the system now.
To bring this back to the Windows comparison, I remember that when I was dual-booting, I had problems with my computer’s system time because Windows assumes your hardware clock (the one you can set in BIOS) to be your local time, whereas Linux (and MacOS) assumes that to be UTC. It would make more sense if Windows could switch over, but that’s not practical in part for the same reasons why they used local time in the first place: backwards compatibility . Of course, Linux has its own inherited contexts, conventions and traditions, but Windows feels far more caged in by the past because of its status as the default. But rather like cis-ness, I wonder what the world could look like if there wasn’t such a hegemonic default option. What might it look like if even people who weren’t “computer people” could be empowered to do cool stuff with their computer? Is that even possible? It’s hard to say, because a world without such a default is highly speculative, but I don’t need to be about to visualise specifics of that to complain about how the assumed default is harmful to more people than realise it.
Going by this metaphor, “using Windows” (ie, presenting as the gender you were assigned at birth) is the best option for most people since most are cis and “using Linux” is only the best option for those who are trans.
Your comment is interesting to me because I had a completely different read on the meme. The tumblr tboy compared using Linux to “being transgender”, so read “using Windows” as being analogous to being cisgender (i.e. identifying as the gender you were assigned at birth). I get why you opted to think of this in terms of gender presentation though, because how does one map “being [transgender/cisgender]” onto “choosing to use [Linux/Windows]”. Indeed, I was confused by this too, at first, but after a moment of pondering, I found a fun interpretation from thinking of “using Linux” as the thing that’s not the choice.
Ubuntu tboy seems to consider using Windows to be an innately bad experience, and whilst he didn’t explicitly suggest this is true for everyone, it’s useful to look at this through that lens. If “Using windows” = universally bad, then that would suggest that “being cis” = universally bad. That sounds ridiculous and is quite an inflammatory statement on its face, but it’s not necessarily attacking cis people, but the concept of cis-ness (or assigned gender at birth) itself. In other words, “existing in a world where Windows is treated as the default option sucks because loads of people hate Windows, but may not even realise that an alternative exists, or switching is (or perceived to be) too difficult”.
At this point, it’s probably useful to situate my perspective here: I am cis, and I’ve found that I feel most free and empowered as a woman in spaces that are super queer — i.e. the kinds of spaces where I forget the construct of gender entirely, or it is thrown into sharp relief and I see the absurdity of the system now.
To bring this back to the Windows comparison, I remember that when I was dual-booting, I had problems with my computer’s system time because Windows assumes your hardware clock (the one you can set in BIOS) to be your local time, whereas Linux (and MacOS) assumes that to be UTC. It would make more sense if Windows could switch over, but that’s not practical in part for the same reasons why they used local time in the first place: backwards compatibility . Of course, Linux has its own inherited contexts, conventions and traditions, but Windows feels far more caged in by the past because of its status as the default. But rather like cis-ness, I wonder what the world could look like if there wasn’t such a hegemonic default option. What might it look like if even people who weren’t “computer people” could be empowered to do cool stuff with their computer? Is that even possible? It’s hard to say, because a world without such a default is highly speculative, but I don’t need to be about to visualise specifics of that to complain about how the assumed default is harmful to more people than realise it.
I guess it doesn’t stretch that far
Yeah, the fact that Windows is a virulently hated thing in the Linux sphere makes not not quite work.