Topic: What is gender?
started by: Leisher
Posted by Leisher on Aug. 05 2013,09:22
This seems to be the progressive movement's next campaign. Here's an image I saw on the twitters this morning that'll explain:
This is what one of the Penny Arcade guys got in trouble over. He dared say that women have vagina, and was immediately attacked by multiple people calling him ignorant.
Posted by TPRJones on Aug. 05 2013,09:36
I think there's some truth to that. Defining someone only by what is in their pants is pretty limited and not very useful in terms of understanding people, because there are a lot more than just two types of people in the world. Adding in homosexuality into the mix is a little more detailed, but not very much. How do you account for a man that acts like and desires to be a woman who loves other women? That example doesn't fit into any of that, but it does if you expand things a bit.Really, though, it depends on what you are trying to do. If you are trying to build bathrooms, then sure, lets just limit it to physical plumbing. But if you insist everyone must fit into some little definitional box, then you'll need to have a whole spectrum of boxes ready to shove them into or some of them just won't fit.
As with most things in life both "sides" of this are wrong. On the one hand there's a whole lot more in the world than just the simple man/woman divide. On the other hand some people get really fucking whiny about this stuff and need to chill the hell out and not fly off the god-damned handle if someone refers to you as "her" when you want to be referred to as "xir" or some other ridiculous made up pronoun.
Posted by Malcolm on Aug. 05 2013,09:57
Anatomical gender is worlds different than the analog of "gender" in your psyche; they are two distinct things. Though they can influence each other, nothing says they have to.
Posted by TheCatt on Aug. 05 2013,11:51
I look at it as chromosomes. If you're XY you're male. If you're XX, you're female. Which pretty much equates to pieces and parts.If you're those other things (XXY, etc),well, I haven't thought about it enough.
Posted by TPRJones on Aug. 05 2013,12:03
(TheCatt @ Aug. 05 2013,13:51)
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If you're those other things (XXY, etc),well, I haven't thought about it enough.
You'll also need to figure out what to do about things like < AIS >.
The problem is that genetics are not a blueprint, they are a recipe. Just like baking a cake, the same recipe can result in very different cakes. There are many many environmental factors that are just as important to fetal development. Often the results are not what genetics would tend to imply all on their own.
Posted by TheCatt on Aug. 05 2013,14:33
That's 0.005% of people. They can call themselves whatever they want.
Posted by Paul on Aug. 06 2013,14:58
If you don't define it as biological then it loses meaning. There's no clear definition/identification of what gender you are, because there's probably going to be some overlap. Unless there is some standardized test to see where one falls (as if that'd ever happen) it's going to be a matter of personal opinion, which means it can be anything, which means it has virtually no meaning.You might as well just say "I'm human."
Just because you're one gender doesn't mean you can't identify more with the attributes of another gender.
Posted by TPRJones on Aug. 06 2013,17:34
I agree on the basics there, Paul, many people take it too far. I don't fully agree with that graphic up above: there aren't as many genders as there are people in the world.On the other hand, the strict gender binary has hurt a lot of unfortunates in our history. Newborns of indeterminate gender being sliced into one or the other and forced into a role they may not feel is right. Kids forced by their parents to "stop acting like such a girl" and even adults that have been persecuted for failing to be manly or womanly enough. We need to relax these definitions a bit, or at least as a society stop bothering with them so much.
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You might as well just say "I'm human."
That right there would solve most of the problems, if we could just go with that in general.
Posted by Malcolm on Aug. 06 2013,17:38
(TPRJones @ Aug. 06 2013,19:34)
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You might as well just say "I'm human."
That right there would solve most of the problems, if we could just go with that in general.
Bah. I question the definition of human. Like the biological species or what?
Posted by TPRJones on Aug. 06 2013,18:45
(Malcolm @ Aug. 06 2013,19:38)
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Like the biological species or what?
Sure, that should work if we need to spell it out. How about "able to breed with another accepted 'human' or the offspring of beings so capable."
Posted by GORDON on Aug. 06 2013,19:36
define BREEDdefine CAPABLE
define ACCEPTED
dont put your genetic-normative definitions on my double helix