Hey all,
So I’m looking to take an active step here to understand better some things that my straight/white/cis/middle-aged male brain has had a tough time wrapping itself around, particularly in the gender identity front.
I’m working from the understanding of physical sex as the bio-bits and the expressed identity as being separate things, so that part is easy enough.
What’s confusing to me though is like this. If we take gender as being an expression of your persona, a set of traits that define one as male, female, or some combination of both then what function does a title/pronoun serve? To assume that some things are masculine or feminine traits seems to put unneeded rigidity to things.
We’ve had men or women who enjoy things traditionally associated with the other gender for as long as there have been people I expect. If that’s the case then what purpose does the need for a gender title serve?
I’ll admit personally questioning some things like fairness in cis/trans integrated sports, but that’s outside what I’m asking here. Some things like bathroom laws are just society needing to get over itself in thinking our personal parts are all that special.
Certainly not trying to stir up any fights, just trying to get some input from people that have a different life experience than myself. Is it really as simple as a preferred title?
Edit: Just wanted to take a second to thank all the people here who took the time to write some truly extensive thoughts and explanations, even getting into some full on citation-laden studies into neurology that’ll give me plenty to digest. You all have shown a great deal of patience with me updating some thinking from the bio/social teachings of 20+ years back. 🙂
I’m working from the understanding of physical sex as the bio-bits
In a purely physical perspective, sexual characteristics don’t always fit in a neat binary though, and they can also change.
It’s not that simple though, because there’s a whole social structure attached to it. The social structure insists that sex is binary, and enforces roles and rules based on perceived sex. Another part of the social structure is the importance placed on sex. Left and right handedness is also a physical characteristic, but it’s not something you use to categorise people in your mental rolodex. If I ask you about your friend Alex, without thinking about it, you’ll be able to tell me Alex’s sex, because it’s something you are taught matters, but it’s a flip of a coin as to whether you can tell me whether Alex is left or right handed. And that reason for that is all down to the social importance placed on sex.
So yeah, sex is “bio bits” but probably not in way you’re thinking, and it comes with a whole bunch of social stuff too.
If we take gender as being an expression of your persona
It’s not.
then what function does a title/pronoun serve?
The pronouns people use to talk about you, are indicators of the social aspects I was talking about before, and a direct line in to how people perceive and “categorise” you.
We’ve had men or women who enjoy things traditionally associated with the other gender for as long as there have been people I expect. If that’s the case then what purpose does the need for a gender title serve?
I’m a trans woman. I don’t particularly enjoy things associated with women. I’m don’t understand femininity, and most of my interests are masculine coded.
Which is to say, this stuff has nothing to do with my gender.
It does relate to the social expectations of sex and gender, which means that they’re important to many folk, but they aren’t gender.
I’ll admit personally questioning some things like fairness in cis/trans integrated sports
Don’t. The whole conversation is driven by transphobes trying to use overly simplistic and misleading representations to normalise the exclusion of trans folk as a wedge tactic, before they move on to exclusion in other areas. If you don’t know much about it, it’s impossible for you to have an informed opinion on the subject, and that can lead to a lot of very real harm and exclusion to trans folk.
So yeah, sex is “bio bits” but probably not in way you’re thinking, and it comes with a whole bunch of social stuff too.
So this starts into my lack of understanding of terms then. From what I’ve gone with sex being the XX or XY and the sexual organs that go with that. I recall that all start with XX and then develop different traits based on that chromosome pair. Persona and gender expression of the self and societies expectations being entirely separate. Are those not as distinct as I was thinking, or maybe I have them reversed?
I’m a trans woman. I don’t particularly enjoy things associated with women. I’m don’t understand femininity, and most of my interests are masculine coded.
Terminology again, so you ID as woman (MTF) but don’t prefer traditionally feminine things? It goes to one of my other replies then of what differentiates a ‘boyish woman/tomboy’ from a MTF transgender?
Don’t. The whole conversation is driven by transphobes…
That part has a more specific distinction for me. It really has nothing to do with identity but more for things like someone who grew up male, with all the associated hormonal traits to that, most specifically testosterone and the typically associated muscle difference transitioning and then competing with cis women in something like weight lifting or other mass-centric sports before any HRT has put them more on par with their cis counterparts. Much the same as how steroid use is not allowed in sports rather than it being anything to do with what they where born, it’s a fairness concern rather than ‘trans bad’. I’m all for people in the early parts of HRT competing, but in which division and for how long that takes to be more on more ‘equal’ terms I’m not versed enough in the bio matters to say.
XX and XY don’t come in to it. You almost certainly don’t know yours, just like most people don’t. They assume them based on sexual characteristics. Which is to say, when “evaluating” someone’s sex, it’s just sexual characteristics that come in to it.
And they change. If you looked at my sexual characteristics, you’d assume I’m XX, but I’m almost certainly not.
And again, the fact that you are placing so much relevance on what sex is and how it’s determined so that you can categorise people according to the rules of that classification? That’s purely social…
It goes to one of my other replies then of what differentiates a ‘boyish woman/tomboy’ from a MTF transgender?
One is cis, one is trans…
It really has nothing to do with identity but more for things like someone who grew up male, with all the associated hormonal traits to that, most specifically testosterone and the typically associated muscle difference transitioning
As I said, if you don’t understand it, don’t get involved, because you end up spouting stuff like this. Content that “makes sense”, but is misleading and used to harm
You don’t understand it, so exactly why do you need to have an opinion on it? The harm done by people who don’t understand a topic, but push for exclusion because it “makes sense” can’t easily be undone. It’s going to take us decades to undo the hurt caused by people driving this conversation. Until you can speak from experience on the topic, just stay out of it, rather than being part of the harm machine
I agree with Ada. The competitive sports issue is fraught and often used in bad faith as a rhetorical wedge in discourse. Also, given its vanishingly small practical relevance to the vast majority of trans people, in nearly every case it is legitimately “in the weeds.” But to avoid leaving you hanging, and since I’m rather partial to weeds, I’ll bite.
First, can we say the prohibition of anabolics in competitive athletics has succeeded in eliminating them?
The answer is relevant because popular arguments against trans athletics tend to hinge on athletes’ hormonal advantage in womens’ athletics being unfair on account of prohibition, which can only be true if the prohibition itself is fair, which can only be true if the correct answer to the question above is unequivocally “yes” (because unenforceable restrictions are effectively a handicap to rule-followers alone, which is demonstrably unfair and unjust).
I suspect most with even passing familiarity would admit that prohibition in sports has, at best, only made the use of anabolics and other PEDs a more complicated and expensive logistic of elite programs, and that their use persists to a certain degree in virtually every competitive tier. There are of course numerous potential topical implications here (and of course the complication of intersex athletes like Edinanci Silva or Caster Semenya) but since the popularly established rhetorical crux is fairness based on hormones, we must attend to the reason hormones introduce unfairness to a sport.
My opinion is that arguments against trans athletics are disingenuously filling a grievance against what is, in reality, a preexisting unfairness in most sports that fans often prefer not to talk about.
Steroids or other enhancements are of course still a problem. The reasoning that they substitute chemical advantage over dedicated training and hard work is still sound though. To be fair it’s something of a one-issue and one-sided dilemma so far as I can think since I can’t think off hand of any particularly differentiating trait that’s so heavily influenced by hormones other than muscle mass. Most sports it wouldn’t make a hugely notable difference one way or another, trans or cis.
I think it’s more a case of regardless of gender, cis/trans or intersex that just trying to make things as competitively fair as possible is the goal. There are plenty of people of any gender that excel beyond their peers through natural talent and hard work. As mentioned I’m sure the prevalence is such a miniscule thing that it hardly counts as an issue, but a lot of sports of the type I’m thinking have weight classes for a reason. There are few women who would be suited to compete in boxing, weightlifting, wrestling or the like against someone well past 200 pounds regardless of their gender. Most other aspects of competition like speed, balance, coordination, endurance and such are pretty well indifferent to physiology.
I think it’s more a case of regardless of gender, cis/trans or intersex that just trying to make things as competitively fair as possible is the goal.
No, that’s not the goal of most people having this conversation.
The majority of conversation currently in the media is driven by transphobia, being portrayed as “fairness” to make it palatable.
If it were about fairness, the discussions would be about real world sporting outcomes, and the lack of any evidence showing sustained advantage by trans folk in literally any sport…
But the discussion isn’t focused there, because that wouldn’t support the arguments of the people that are interested in transphobia rather than fairness. Those folk talk about things that can’t easily be tied to real world sporting outcomes, but sound unfair. “Muscle mass”, “bone density” and “testosterone is a steroid” are all examples of that. None of that matters.
The only things that matter, are real world sporting outcomes, and the consequences of excluding incredibly marginalised and vulnerable folk. If the conversation isn’t about either of those things, it’s not a helpful conversation
Ok, to clarify I was speaking for me, not the larger media discussion.
Steroids in themselves are a synthetic testosterone so it seems fair to compare the differences between cis men vs steroid users and the levels found in trans women vs cis women. Not being familiar with HRT to know if it ever truly stabilizes things to a more typical level with what would be expected in cis women is a part of it.
By all means, if you can enlighten me on how long or if that ever happens I’d like to hear it. There’s a reason why I only noted this part as a passing thing though, because I didn’t want to touch off any nerves when trying to learn more. Figured it better for a later discussion.
Ok, to clarify I was speaking for me, not the larger media discussion.
You say that, but the only reason you’re even talking about it is because of larger media discussion, and the things you’re talking about and questioning are the exact talking points raised in the media to drive the exclusion of trans folk.
Steroids in themselves are a synthetic testosterone so it seems fair to compare the differences between cis men vs steroid users and the levels found in trans women vs cis women
“It seems fair…” is the problem.
If it were unfair, it would lead to systemic advantage by trans people in sports, but trans people under perform compared to their cis peers. There are less trans people at every level of sport than you would expect given their participation number. If there were advantage, you would expect to see over representation at higher levels for their participation levels, not under representation.
Which is exactly my point. You jump to “steroids” and “seems unfair” because it sounds reasonable. But it’s not. And as a result, you’re empowering the conversation that leads to the harmful exclusion of trans folk from community sports, and to the visibility of trans role models for young trans folk.
By all means, if you can enlighten me on how long or if that ever happens I’d like to hear it
I just did, and you skipped over it, without acknowledging it, to talk about a topic I explicitly flagged as a side issue used to muddy the waters.
There is no evidence of trans folk having sustained advantage in any sport at any level. Trans people are under represented at every level, even after accounting for their reduced participation numbers.
Steroids in themselves are a synthetic testosterone
This is an extremely outdated understanding of steroids. While forms of testosterone are often still used for performance enhancement, the vast majority of anabolics are not testosterone at all. There are a variety of different classes of anabolics and they are often used in junction with each other. But modern doping goes much further than just that, with all kinds of new drugs such as SARMS (selective androgen receptor modulators) acting upstream to androgen receptors, drugs which affect HGH or thyroid function, erythropoeitin (EPO) and other interventions to increase blood oxygen efficiency, beta-blockers and other drugs to enhance recovery and performance through other means as well as stimulants and other drugs to increase performance in the moment.
In general I would say it is best to avoid any discussion about performance with respect to gender because any level of sports where there is money and reputation at stake is going to involve more kinds of doping than you could possibly imagine and the performance of these individuals is entirely based on how well they can hide how much they are doping and avoid testing. As a fun little anecdote, about a decade ago the Olympics changed its policy on blood tests, allowing them to hold onto blood to be retested in the future as new techniques to detect doping were developed, and there is one year in which the gold medal for a specific weightlifting event is now in the hands of the 8th or 9th place individual as all other individuals have been disqualified since.
I regret that I have but one vote to give…
This makes for a lot of new considerations actually since I’m neither a doctor or a sports fan to keep up on such things in the least. It takes a lot of the chemical advantage issue off the table. One possible avenue would be to simple integrate the sports and let who wants to join.
As I’d mentioned in another place in the post, my thoughts are more with regards to mass-centric sports. Personally, I’m 6’3" and around 250 pounds currently, if I had the inclination to transition and then joined a women’s football league say (speaking in the American sense, not what we call Soccer) I’d be afraid of hurting someone, similarly with any other high contact sport like that. Obviously there are some particularly large women, a few of them have been in the WWE and similar ventures, but they’re rather the exception and weight classes exist in a lot of the types of sports that I think of.
a MTF transgender
Just a little quibble here: Trangender is an adjective, not a noun.
Trans woman then? Sometimes the phrasing to specify is a bit clunky to me without going into some unnecessarily long descriptor.
Sometimes the phrasing to specify is a bit clunky to me without going into some unnecessarily long descriptor.
I get where you’re coming from. This is usually a habit that people develop with no ill-intent.
The trouble with using people’s descriptors as nouns is that in English, it has the tendency to sound disparaging, or at least “othering” (as in those people and us vs them), so as a general rule if you’re unsure it’s best to avoid it; e.g., “white person” is preferable to “a white,” “straight person” is preferable to “a straight,” etc.
If “____ people” or “people who are ____ ” sounds overly-formal/delicate/“PC,” one trick I see a lot is “____ folks.” You can see a few examples of it in this thread actually.
Similar to the ‘person first’ language that’s started to be used recently 'a person with autism’c rather than an ‘autistic person’, but backwards Yeah, just maintaining that balance between sounding like a clinician describing a subject and something overly familiar/informal that might offend. Using that person first to say ‘a person who is a transexual’ would make it sound like a medical condition but take out the ‘a’ and it sort of works since it doesn’t make them an ‘object/things’…
It does get a bit frustrating in general use though, particularly when some people can get really upset quickly if you phrase things wrong.
Hmm yeah person-first is tricky. Personally I would only default to that in specific situations. In conversation it might sound too careful and make someone feel like they were being handled or patronized. But if someone asks me to refer to them that way, then I’ll do my best to remember. Not to avoid offense really, just because it’s considerate.
IMHO it’s not worth worrying too much about accidental offense. An accident is an accident. If you listen to others, care how they feel, and are doing your best to be respectful and kind, that’s all that matters. The rest is just practice.
If someone gets mad at you for an honest mistake, or just refuses to believe you didn’t know and will do better next time, then that person is being unreasonable. You could choose to talk it out with them if you wish, but you’re definitely under no obligation to suffer abuse from anyone, no matter what they’re going through.
Not a common thing to be sure, but I’ve come across a couple people who one might call ‘aggressively correct’ in the way they speak and expect others to follow suit.
Yeah, that’s right! You didn’t know(and it’s great that you’re trying to learn!), but bigots like to call us “transgenders”, so it’s common for us to dislike that.
A few thoughts on subjects that haven’t been touched on a ton or framing which might help you understand some of the points you’ve brought up:
- I think it’s important to note up at the top that all words are made up and definitions are merely attempts at society to agree on what a word means so that we can communicate with each other. The presence of slang, the creation of new words, and the shift of the definitions of words over time are all important factors when we talk about the deep specifics of a particular topic or idea.
- Nearly everything in this thread is about a topic which broadly falls into the category of “loosely defined social concepts” more formally known as social constructs. Examples of loosely defined social concepts include: gender, romance, beauty, family, race, wealth, trendiness, class, art, and status.
- Social constructs exist on a spectrum, with some having stricter definitions. For example, dictionaries exist in languages because additional structure is useful. Currency is often defined by governments to help more directly understand wealth or money so that individuals can exchange on equal terms and so that individuals can be taxed.
- Sex and gender used to be interchangeable words in western society, back before we understood any “modern” science which delineated the two.
- Over time sex became a legal and medical term, to describe people who were assigned female at birth generally by genital inspection of the doctor or whatever was recorded on the birth certificate
- Gender theory, or at least the modern roots of it, emerged during women’s suffrage in the united states as a way to separate the social factors from the biological ones - to provide framing to examine social pressures, social norms, social ideas as a construct and not innately biological
- Modern gender theory importantly separates gender identity from gender expression. Much of the discussion in this thread about gender nonconforming individuals such as tomboys being different from trans masc individuals comes down to this framing and their assigned sex at birth. Strictly speaking, having a gender identity which does not match the assigned sex at birth can be considered trans. I say “can be” because labels should never be forced on someone else
- Labels are personal, and therefore messy, and do not always neatly match with definitions for words that are in dictionaries or generally accepted in whatever social circles. For example, a person who has a gender identity of non-binary, who presents very feminine, could still identify as a transmasc individual as an explicit recognition of their internal sense of gender or the steps of transitioning they may have taken.
- Titles and pronouns and honorifics are individual preference and are not strictly gendered. Take, for example, the historical use of words such as lord, king, grace, duke, doctor, baron, viscount, jester, chief, lieutenant, esquire, the honorable, elder, sensei, the wise, acolyte, apprentice, etc. - these are used to signify a specific role in society or someone’s personal preference. Unsurprisingly, people can often have feelings about the use of these words
- If you or someone you know happens to have a nickname or another name they go by in certain contexts or overall, it might help to reflect upon these names and the reason they are used. In some cases, they are forced upon people and undesirable, such as nicknames that come from hazing or bullying. In other cases they are adopted for any number of reasons, including that the person just doesn’t like their name or prefers this one. Think about how the person who uses or has these names used on them feels about their usage - this same framing can be used when it comes to pronouns or just general perception by others in a society.
- A lot of the framing in this thread is on the gender binary, or genders created out of the sex binary (importantly, not a true binary in any science… nature is messy). Attempts to understand non-binary individuals through a binary lens will necessarily fall flat as these individuals do not see themselves as existing within the binary.
- Gender identities which are non-binary are often based on one’s gender identity - which is also a loosely defined word. A sense of self ultimately likely comes from feelings, and just like some people feel strongly that being a mechanic is a masculine trait, people might feel that literally anything is gendered and their gender identity is composed of those feelings. Thus even things which binary folks don’t generally consider to be gendered may be an important part of one’s sense of their non-binaryness.
A lot of that does help, at least as a reminder in some cases of the mutability of things between different people. For myself (and plenty of others I’d guess) the fixation on binary association helps serve as a reference point if nothing else. Trying to describe something without some kind of anchor to relate it to, kind of has the feel of untethered ambiguity.
You know this meme?
This is essentially true because (we) trans people have to spend a ton of time into thinking about what gender and sex are. What may be helpful is thinking not about how trans or even queer people deviate from the norm but how sex, gender and sexuality work in general.
You may want to look into Judith Butler’s revelatory “Gender Trouble” (or at least summaries of it) that was kind of the birth of Queer Studies and where they discuss how gender/sex are “performative” (not in the sense of literally performing but rather how it is repeated and maintained). Butler explains how the category of sex is not descriptive but instead a constructed one. Even a newly born baby is put into a constructed (made-up) category that doesn’t necessarily reflect physical reality.
Sex as a physical reality actually crumbles the moment you have a closer look at it. Medicine has been trying to correct it by mutilating intersex people for ages now, trying to put them into neat categories. Like someone already said here in the comments, you probably don’t know your karyotype, right? You just assume it. There are various factors playing into sex, like chromosomal, hormonal, genital sex (plus some more!). All of them can show variations.
How sex is constructed can be made even more clearly when looking at animals. Biologists have always been very eager to put animals into sexual binaries because they tried to replicate their own view of the ‘natural’ man vs woman binary. But this is far from true. There are some animals with two genders, but also some with three or more and there are some with only one. Intersex, “trans” and queer animals are very common among animals as well. E.g. there are female deer with antlers etc. Science has just been too busy with projecting their own ‘truth’ to realize this. In recent years we have been catching up though. There is this great book called “Evolution’s Rainbow” where the author Joan Roughgarden goes into much more detail.
Another interesting point is that while it feels “natural” to us that there is a gender binary, this is actually a pretty modern view. Gender and sex as we know it have only been around for a few hundred years. Just like homosexuality and in response heterosexuality are very recent phenomena. Likewise, our concept of “love” is also a very recent invention and probably a product of the emergence of capitalism.
But you can see how the performative nature of sex and gender leads to scientists and generally people trying to impose/project sex and gender onto very arbitrary traits or phenomena. And by doing so, the perceive differences between sexes/genders is even stronger which leads to repetition of the imposition/projection. We probably cannot know how our species would express itself without these social constructs interfering.
So, that is why some people here in the comments gave you the wise hint not to try to rationalize gender/sex. Those are social constructs all the way and won’t really ever make sense. Where does the feeling to be any gender come from? No idea! But it definitely is there (or not haha).
Lets see if I can explain this clearly enough on the first try.
So your question is, “If we take gender as being an expression of your persona, a set of traits that define one as male, female, or some combination of both then what function does a title/pronoun serve?”
Well, this is both weirdly complicated and absurdly simple. Gender isn’t just a set of personal traits, but also a social concept. In that framing, titles and pronouns are a signal that one gets from other people in society that tells them how their visible presentation is being perceived and interpreted.
One can relate this to the social distinction between the nobles and commoners of yore. Even though the only visible differences between the two groups are their attire, for a person that sees themselves as a member of the aristocracy to be spoken to as if they were a commoner can be a grave insult.
Likewise, most people find it discomforting when their innate sense of their own gender is contradicted by the people around them. Specifying our pronouns/titles when we introduce ourselves can provide context for folks who might have otherwise assumed someone’s gender incorrectly.
Elder millennial trying his best to improve. I had issue with a friend, who identified as queer, who recently married a trans man and wanted me to use the pronoun “thier” for this person. I mean, I’m supportive, but I don’t want to butcher the English language. I mean it’s even uncomfortable for me to type that out as I feel like walking on eggshells to accommodate, and someone seems to be pissed off.
I don’t want to butcher the English language
Singular they/them/their is a concept brought to English in the 14th century. It’s not butchering the English language to use they/them/theirs to refer to one person. You probably do it automatically without realizing it when referring to people wholly unknown to you when nothing can cue you in about their gender, like when referring to somebody that somebody else is talking to on the phone: “Who was that? What did they want?”
No, I’ve always 100% of my entire life used they/them unless someone referred to themselves is he/she or otherwise. Always thought it was weird when people used masculine pronouns when writing and there’s zero indication of traditional female/male.
My friend would want me to say something like, “Do you and Their want to go out later?” when referring to her trans husband, I’m the asshole if I say, “Do you and Alex want to go out later?”
That is indeed a new one. It’d take me a while to get that right too. It’s odd that your friend and her husband are wound up by you using her husband’s name
Have you asked her husband how they want to be referred to? It may be a miscommunication. Other ways to approach this would be to use other words like “y’all” or “you two” or “you and your husband”. English is a pretty flexible language so you can probably find another way to avoid this, but it sounds like they are using “their” as a name and want you to never give this person pronouns and only use the name “their” as a point of reference.
Yet you use the singular you? Singular they has been a normal part of English longer than singular you, which is why you used “are” with you even when it is used as a singular and “are” is plural. Edit: noticed later that their want you to use their/their/their, not they/them/their. Edited some of it of the comment.
“Do you and Their want to go out later?”
Interesting. Weird using possesive form for everything. Still hardly seems like something to get upset about.
I’m the asshole if
you intentionally refer to people with names they don’t want. Its not like they asked you to call them something like “cunt” or something and you have some moral opposition to ever saying that word. Showing clear disrespect for no reason is kinda asshole behavior. Especially if they’re the spouse of someone you claim to be your friend.
Read above the friend wasn’t asking to use they/them/their which would be completely reasonable and something I do by default 100% of the time. The only pronoun my friends husband wanted to be referred to is “their.” I don’t request people use “Lord” as my preferred pronoun because that’s fucking stupid and I’m not a titled Lord. I’m not using a determiner improperly.
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That’d be a “neopronoun”, typically used by folks who feel like none of the standard pronouns fit them.
They’re rather uncommon for the reasons you’ve described, even I have trouble remembering to always use xie/xir or fae/faer for my queer friends that identify as such.
Fortunately, the folks that do use neopronouns are aware of this and most are quite patient about it. So long as you show your friend and their husband that you’re making an effort to recognize thier unusual gender, such as by quickly correcting yourself and moving on if you catch yourself using the wrong pronoun, then they won’t think any less of you for it. 😄
I mean, I’m comfortable with using what you describe as neopronouns for people asking to use fae, Xi, and others, but I have a problem butchering established grammar. Her husband doesn’t own or possess me. I’ll use “husband” as that’s an identifier my friend used or the name “Alex” they chose but to make it a point, I have to use “their” is a bit much.
Edit: I’m leaving my comment below for posterity and in case others are confused, but it actually isn’t what the above is about. See jarfil’s reply to this for context.
The use of “they/them/their” in the singular is a long established part of the English language. It’s not new, and you’re not butchering anything by using it. People who claim otherwise may either be poorly informed or intentionally being malicious. Hope this helps!
@apotheotic@beehaw.org @knightly@pawb.social
The problem seems to be asking to use the posessive determiner “their”, as a personal pronoun. That’s a weird one, and contrary to the established meaning of “their” that you mention.
bingo
If that’s the case, I apologise. So, the person is asking you to say like…
“Alex had an appointment today. Their said it went well”?
As opposed to “Alex had their appointment today”?
The singular “they” is actually a couple hundred years older than using “you” instead of “thou” as a second person pronoun.
I’m sorry to say that your English teachers were pulling a fast one on you when they told you “they/them/their” couldn’t be singular.
I believe that isn’t the issue here, rather that they seem to be using the possessive ‘their’ in all cases of the use of that pronoun.
Oh! Well that is interesting!
It’d take me a while to get the hang of that. 😺
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Admitting a lack of knowledge is a first step. Queer has been another aspect confusing to me. Aside from the old use as a slur (kids around my area back in the 80s used to play something of a reverse tag game they called ‘smear the queer’ where they tried to tackle the one who was it) it always seemed like a catch-all for not fitting into the base mold.
I suppose my followup to that would be what gives someone a specific sense of gender? To say ‘I am a woman’ is taking societies interpretation of woman as being right. What differentiates that from ‘I am a man who likes womanly things’?
What separates the ‘tomboy’ woman from a trans-masc?
(Please excuse any terminology missteps if I use things wrong too)
We’re not sure about the neurological mechanism behind the innate sense of gender as of yet, but we have been able to confirm that there are structural differences between masculine and feminine brains that are more consistent with people’s reported gender identity than their genitalia.
And that’s the fundamental difference between tomboys and trans men, the former are gender-nonconforming women and the latter are men’s brains in female bodies.
It’s difficult to explain what gender dysphoria feels like to someone whose gender identity is consistent with their sex. There’s a sense of “wrongness” that can suffuse through everything from one’s interactions with other people in society to one’s own thought processes under the influence of the wrong set of sex hormones.
We’re not sure about the neurological mechanism behind the innate sense of gender as of yet, but we have been able to confirm that there are structural differences between masculine and feminine brains that are more consistent with people’s reported gender identity than their genitalia.
Actually, there’s almost no differences between masculine and feminine brains at all. The book delusions of gender by Cordelia Fine goes into this in detail, but the long story short is that just about all science on the difference between men and women is actually just bias of the researchers or poor study design. Honestly it’s a super interesting read if you’re curious about how the brains of men and women are different (spoiler alert, the difference is pretty much entirely social convention and those social pressures can be overcome in very interesting ways) and just how pervasive gender is in our society (babies start to recognize social patterns of gender before even one year of age) and just how deeply it shapes all of our lives.
Actually, a recent study contradicts that:
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2024/02/men-women-brain-organization-patterns.html
The differences aren’t in terms of gross anatomy, but activity levels in the default mode, striatum, and limbic networks.
Yes I caught that study! It’s a fantastic foray into how existing brains which have already been influenced by social pressures interact in the real world. Unfortunately, however, it isn’t explanatory and there’s a lot of methodological considerations which still need to be explored. Of note, much of what I’m going to bring up below are also brought up by Cordelia Fine in the fantastic book I mentioned above as they are considerations often overlooked when designing studies to find differences between sex or gender.
It should be noted first and foremost that most brain imaging data is not a reflection of structure itself, it’s a reflection of activity in specific areas of brains. But even that is circumspect for a number of reasons, most notably that you can reliably detect brain activity in individuals which are not alive. Ignoring some of the technical issues with detection of activity itself, in the context of activation patterns, we should expect significant difference from individual to individual in how thoughts are processed, and we likely should see patterns amongst individuals which share commonalities such as social identities. We can, for example, see reliable patterns of activity amongst world class athletes as compared to those with no training. Patterns of activity in the motor cortex based on physical requirements of one individual isn’t quite comparable to a social identity, however, and for a closer analogy we could look to language or social status to see that patterns of activation are rather malleable and can denote all kinds of social roles.
Applying that to social roles, such as gender, it is not surprising in the least that we can detect gendered differences based on how society treats us and what roles it provides and gives us access to. For example, ignoring brain imaging studies for a moment, we can detect reliable differences between the sexes when we give them math tests. However, a deeper analysis on this difference reveals that this can be easily reversed and influenced merely by priming the individuals. In fact, when we go a step further and look at brain imaging and activation patterns, we also see that there are sex differences in how the math areas are activated. Unfortunately, however, I have yet to see a design which combines those two concepts together - how do brain activation patterns differ when an individual is primed with a narrative which runs counter to that which they have internalized from society?
To take this point even further, I think it’s important to note that the study you are linking includes exactly zero transgender individuals. It also doesn’t attempt to investigate nor discover differences in gender expression or conformity to social roles. The patterns that they have detected could very easily be a reflection of internalizing the values which society instills in us based on our gender roles - there is simply no way to separate the two with this existing literature. But to take that a step even further, even if we did find that there were reproducible sex-based differences which persisted even across a representative sample of gender diverse individuals, we would need to also conduct this kind of imaging at different points in these individuals lives (especially early on and through childhood where one’s concept of gender evolves) to understand just how much is biological and how much is an influence of nurture. Even then we would still only have at best an understanding of brain activation profiles which happen to meet statistical significance, a trait shared with brain activation profiles of completely dead individuals, which calls into question the statistical validity of the precision at which the imaging technology is calibrated - we would need to redo all of that research with more precisely tuned imaging to be sure it’s an accurate reflection of brain activation… and we still would not be able to make any definitive statements about structural differences because activation is a reflection of action potentials at a specific point in time (notably all action potentials, not just the ones used in the cognitive process of the task at hand, but also those involved in living and perceiving an environment and thinking about other things) and not a true understanding of the underlying architecture which supports these action potentials (two very different circuit boards can produce the same electrical current in the same spatiotemporal area).
That dysphoria is the part I really hope to understand I guess. It seems to me that would be a lot of social pressure to conform to an expectation, but to my cis-brain it would seem easier to just say who cares what the ‘norms’ are and just do what you like.
The best analogy that I can imagine is this: Imagine that you went to go get fitted for a suit. You go to a seamster, get fitted, and they make you a suit. You put the suit on and it doesn’t feel right. You tell the seamster and they insist that the suit was made to your measurements and that it is correct (they even have patterns and measurements to prove it.) You shrug, pay the fee, and leave with your new suit. Wearing it out, you confide in your friends that the suit doesn’t fit, but they all tell you that you look great. Despite your insistence that the seams on your shoulders don’t line up and that the waistline is far too off-center, your friends insist that your suit is well-fitted and you look great-- that you should be happy and grateful to have such a fine suit. Meanwhile you feel awful; dreadful. You just know that somebody is going to notice and call you out on your bad suit. You’re trying your best to accept and maybe even show off your expensive, non-refundable, sold as-is attire, but the weight of it and off-balance feeling it provides is a latent part of every move you make and every word out of your mouth. Furthermore, present circumstances have made it impossible for you to have another suit made. Even if you did, they’d just use the same measurements, come up with the same patterns, and make the same mistakes-- No, you’re the one that has to wear the suit; they don’t. You have to feel the fabric against your skin. You have to feel its seams snaking over your body. After wearing it all night, you know what’s wrong with it (or at least what will make it feel right.) Your only recourse is to find a tailor willing to help you alter it to your specifications or to alter it yourself. Let the opinions of everyone else be damned. After all, they’re happy in their suits.
Probably about as close to a direct understanding as I might get. Kind of puts me to a philosophical thought, if society didn’t have any kind of gender norms somehow, would that disquiet still exist?
So, I’m a trans woman.
Lets say I was raised on an island of men. I had no idea of the concept of women, and all of the people I’d ever seen were male.
In this world, clearly, my self perception would be different. I wouldn’t have a crystalised identity, I wouldn’t be able to tell you my gender. What I would have, is a life long discomfort that I could never identity or address. My body would have been wrong, but I couldn’t have told you why. I’d have been different to the men all around me, but I couldn’t have told you how.
It’s similar to how I processed my trans identity before I had exposure to trans people or and understanding that transition was a thing.
For some of us yes, and for others no.
It’s difficult for me to even imagine the complexities of such a world that lacks gender norms. Would there be fewer trans people? Possibly. But in such a world, there would still be trans people like me that feel a strong need for surgery.
Edit: Forgot to mention HRT, which many of us would still need.
That makes me wonder what personal expression would look like. Clothing might have been developed completely differently if certain garments were made to fit more body types.
You kind of described how I’ve been feeling about having a flesh body, instead of a robot one… I don’t even care about its gender, all of it feels “wrong”. sigh
My body is a machine that coverts nutritional input into society challenging thought patterns, and sometimes small bits of energy I guess…
I hate the experience of not being able to turn off and on again; of not keeping a backup; of not being able to upgrade pieces, or even to replace the broken ones; of not being able to quickly download or upload, both data and software; of not being able to migrate my processes to other bodies, or to create multiple copies to process stuff in parallel.
I’ve always felt trapped, and it’s getting much worse with age.
What separates the ‘tomboy’ woman from a trans-masc?
One identifies as a woman; the other does not. It’s really that simple.
I find that the less you try to intellectualize gender, the better because it’s something that’s deeply personal to each person. What I view as being a man is undoubtedly different from what you do, yet we both identify as men.
I’ve found that the easiest way to deal with gender is to simply respect other people’s identities because it’s frankly none of my business why anyone identifies the way they do.
I suppose my followup to that would be what gives someone a specific sense of gender?
I’m 7 years transitioned and I can’t answer that question for you.
It’s not something I rationalised myself in to. It makes no sense. It just is. It’s important to remember that you don’t need to understand to accept.
A lot of these comments have also muddied my understanding of terms now which originally took on a neat physical/psychological = sex/gender split. Looking about the web that still seems to be the common delineation but like the range of people on the planet there are personal interpretations and flavors to such things too.
I get the suspicion that some of the more spirited discussions so far came with a tinge of suspicion that I’m one of the bad folks looking to invade spaces and sow discord, but that’s not the case. For me it’s not a question of acceptance, but really of understanding something foreign to me. I’m a hyper-logical type, does engineering things for fun, ‘feels-like’ for me could be pretty directly translated as ‘makes rational sense’ to the point where many get frustrated.
I get the suspicion that some of the more spirited discussions so far came with a tinge of suspicion that I’m one of the bad folks looking to invade spaces and sow discord,
Yeah, we generally have to have our guard up, especially in these types of threads. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the “just asking questions” type of transphobe, but it is a very real problem for communities like this one. The topic or phrasing of a question can raise red-flags for sure.
But I believe that you’re being sincere.
Yeah, never watch them but I hear of the ‘just asking questions’ frequently from a lot of the far right. Say something wretched and then a ‘just asking, but what do I know?..’ kind of disclaimer.
For me it’s coming from a place of just not knowing better, or processing late. I have a friend who’s Korean and at one point we started talking about new year celebrations there and I asked ‘so does that follow with the Chinese luner new year’ and only later realized that it probably sounded pretty presumptuous like ‘all is China in Asia’, when it really was just because it’s next door and I expect a big culture has influence on neighbors.
The psychological is rooted in the neurobiological. Psychological can rarely be cleanly separated from the physical. For example, autopsies show some parts of the brain that were thought of as reliable predictors of sex actually correlate much better with gender. And its not just a matter of hormones changing it: trans people who never medically transition are the same as cis people of their gender. Likewise, trans people sometimes experience phantom limb syndrome for parts they’ve never had. And trans women who have bottom surgery basically never had phantom limb syndrome, despite cis men who lose their member often do. Medical transitioning is largely about changing one’s sex to match one’s gender. Additionally, physical markers are part of how people initially gender people. You don’t need to medical transition to be trans, or even want to transition medically, but its an extremely common desire.
I think you also are misreading some peoples comments For example: https://lemmy.socdojo.com/comment/1596353 What you replied to was focused on the social construct that is sex, yet you bring up gender in ways that seem unrelated to the comment you replied to and seem to be conflating the two constructs more than anyone else I’ve seen in the thread.
Also, a lot of mainstream discussion does a bad job at representing a lot of trans people. For example, a lot of trans people don’t want you to ask their pronouns: they want to be at the point where people instinctually gender them correctly. And some closeted trans people don’t want to be asked their pronouns because it either forced them to misgender themselves or come out of the eggshell when they may not be ready for it. Yet the mainstream discussion by allies often misses such nuances. Another example is the “trans people know they’re a [boy/girl] since they were a toddler and fit childhood gender expectations” narrative, which is quite harmful to a lot of eggs who assume they’re not trans just because they didn’t fit that narrative and also leads to people being confused about trans women who are tomboys, trans men who are femboys, and/or why tomboys and femboys aren’t all just trans. But it helps sell a narrative emotionally, so that’s what a lot of people repeat.
I’m a hyper-logical type
IMO, that’s part of the problem. I’m generally the same way, which is why I often get annoyed at myself for being happy about things that make no rational sense. Gender isn’t something that can be understood logically yet in my limited experience.
I think you also are misreading some peoples comments…
That would be part of it, or more aptly that a bit of the commentary on sex refers to it as a construct. When I think of constructs it brings to mind more the social expectations and acknowledged norms. While the notion of sex as being a binary thing might be taken as a construct in itself, how I’ve been approaching it is that sex is a set of largely fixed (short of external intervention) tangible and measurable traits, physical things. How we might interpret them is perhaps another matter. So some of it is I guess just a missed communication on some of what I’m asking.
I often wish I could shut off the rationalizing and analytical part of my mind, though at least I make active efforts to counter balance it with more free-form things in the off time.
I’m a hyper-logical type, does engineering things for fun
That’s totally cool! Many so far have presented philosophical answers based more in application of reason than empirical inquiry when you might perhaps prefer an answer based in biological science.
Very neat stuff there. Some here have talked a bit about the neuro formations differentiating things, but he gives a nice condensed format for it.
On the whimsical side though since he used music from Super Mario in the citations it ended up making me wonder if mushroom people would have gender and sex, or just spores…
I suppose my followup to that would be what gives someone a specific sense of gender?
As a binary trans woman my very being in and for myself imparts upon me a capacity for directly revealed self-knowledge regarding my gender, which is to say how I wish to be as a presence and present myself to others within the world.
To say ‘I am a woman’ is taking societies interpretation of woman as being right.
Perish the thought! In general however I might reveal my gender it is as an invitation to others for them to interact with me and understand me as a woman. Try to think of this as less a matter of being right or wrong and more one of how you and another might best both enjoy your interactions together.
What differentiates that from ‘I am a man who likes womanly things’?
Gender does! It is literally that simple.
What separates the ‘tomboy’ woman from a trans-masc?
They would through their understanding of their own genders which grants truth or grants falsehood to statements regarding their gender.
To me it seems like the important question is:
Why wouldn’t one do something that makes others feel valid/happy/comfortable for so little effort?
It’s easy to respect name and pronoun preferences and admit when mistakes are made. One needn’t to dive into the full nuance and complexity of trans experience to understand that.
I fully agree with this sentiment. People should be able to put forth what makes them feel comfortable in a social situation and it’s polite for the other parties to adhere to it.
However I’d like to point out that there is a relevant spectrum here: how much a person stresses out about social queues like these. On one side we have folks who don’t sweat it, they know if they make a faux pas they’ll just ask for forgiveness. On the other side we have socially anxious people who are constantly in a panic in social situations. These more and more complex social rules put a lot of stress on people on that side of the social spectrum.
This is exacerbated for people that don’t pickup and adapt quickly to social queues naturally, like old people or autistic people.
My friends and I used to play a drinking game where you’d have to drink if a certain designated person asked you a question and you answered. It was surprisingly difficult to remember in conversation to adapt your behavior from the norm for a particular person. I think about this when I see someone like my mom trying her best to be polite to someone with a pronoun preference that is different from what she’s used to. She’s stressing out because to her this isn’t a fun drinking game, it’s whether someone will like her or potentially consider her a bigot.
None of this is to say that someone doesn’t have the right to a pronoun preference, or really any social boundary they wish to ask for. But just that it might not be “so little effort” for some. It can be stressful and people express stress in weird ways, like frustration. I think it’s good to be compassionate and patient around that.
Hm, I don’t know how I feel about that. It’s obviously an ambiguous social situation where we could think of all parties involved feeling and behaving in all kinds of ways.
It kind of feels obvious to me that if people make a mistake and misgender me and feel genuinely sorry for it, that I won’t rub it in.
And I get your point that it might be harder for some folk to get new pronouns and not everyone has even heard of what that means. I wonder why you focus so much on the person not getting the pronouns right and not so much on the trans person themselves. Many trans people, especially people with non-binary pronouns, feel anxious about their pronouns being disrespected already. I don’t think your comment has much to add to the conversation. It’s not like trans people had a lot of power in society and could will people to respect their pronouns. So why caution against being too harsh on the other person?
What I feel uncomfortable about in your comment is that you tell trans people, who are oppressed, get discriminated against and made feel shit about themselves by society, to be more patient and compassionate. Now way! We are supposed to go through this transphobic world, try to survive it and also empathize with people who disrespect our pronouns? I strongly disagree with that. Yeah sure, if a person is generally nice to me I give them the benefit of the doubt. But they are not the ones who have to go through a dysphoric day afterwards.
I think this position of being “compassionate and patient” with people who are dominant in society is rather apologetic of oppression. Oppression doesn’t need to educate itself but lets oppressed people do the job for it. We shouldn’t fall for this fallacy of “neutrality”. There is a huge power imbalance in society that you miss if you want oppressed people to behave to society’s norms. Trans people already do so much to accommodate society’s backwards rules every day they live. It is already a great burden on most trans people to try to get along with society, telling them to also be “compassionate and patient” about their identity not being seen is not as understanding as you think it is.
I know you probably meant well with your comment, but I think it is important to caution against such apologetic behavior.
Oh, and btw in my experience autistic people are the ones who get pronouns much easier/faster because social norms feel more arbitrary to us anyways and because a much larger proportion of autistic people is also trans.
Thanks for the response and critique! I focused on the non-trans perspective specifically to add to the conversation because that’s the outsiders perspective for this community. Here, there’s a lot more understanding around the trans perspective. If I were to leave a comment for someone who was being transphobic or something, I’d try and foster the same patience, compassion, and understanding on the other side.
It’s not “who does the burden lie with” – it lies with all of us. But if we encounter someone struggling to carry their weight, I think the first response being one of patience and understanding is a great foundation for progress. Now I am not advocating for a trans person, or anyone, suffering in silence. If someone made you uncomfortable, let them know. Just try and meet them where they’re coming from and be understanding.
Of course if someone is being hostile the strategy needs to change a bit. I still believe in compassion and understanding here. But priority one is letting the other person know where your boundaries are, that they’re crossing them, and that’s not ok.
None of this means you should conform. It’s not “Oh you want two refer to me by my dead name? Well I guess I’ll be compassionate and let you.”
It is [without anger] “Again, remember, my name is X, that’s important to me. […] Hey, you called me X, I appreciate that.”
I think in general the trans community has been amazing about this and really gets it. But I thought I’d share my perspective seeing as how it was relevant to the original comment. I welcome any other opinions or perspectives, maybe I’m missing something.
I think you didn’t understand what I was trying to say. No, what you commented on is not an outsider’s perspective. You see, everyone who deviates from societal norms has their own perspective but is also forced to be familiar with the normative perspective. Every single one of us gets bombarded from birth to their death with the cis perspective. Because it is the norm you have to adapt to. So the cis perspective is nothing new to anyone here. Just as queer people also have to accommodate the straight perspective and black folk have to live with the white perspective as default.
I know you mean well, but it feels rather patronizing to me.
Oh no, no patronizing intended! Thanks for understanding my intentions. I agree with all that. It’s very true that the societally normative perspective will always be more widely understood. Even by people who deviate from that norm. Not disputing that one bit. And the struggle of having to work around a society that’s not set up for you, is some real bullshit. I feel for anyone here who has to deal with that. The onus should really be on society to change.
But practically speaking it’s extremely useful to gain new insights into different people’s perspectives. You never truly, completely understand someone who lives a different lifestyle from you. That’s ok. We don’t all have to be omnipotent, but filling in those gaps can help. I noticed the gap in that understanding when the original commenter referred to changing the way someone speaks to a trans person who’s come out as easy. I’ve heard that sentiment a lot, and even echoed it myself when talking to someone I felt like needed to hear it. In many cases they’re not wrong. But I’ve actually seen how difficult it can be for some people, leading to unnecessary tension.
Should it be on them to figure out how to be respectful to other members of their society? Sure. But I think in practice, understanding on both sides can help bridge the gap.
I’ll ruminate on what you said about patronizing. I must have implied undue ignorance or responsibility on the side of tans people. Which was not my intention, my bad. Sorry if there’s something I’m still not getting. I’m trying to understand more about the world every day 😅
I’m non-binary, meaning I am neither a woman nor a man. I find it deeply uncomfortable when people call me a man because it assigns a bunch of expectations onto me that I know I don’t fulfill and that I don’t want to be associated with.
To assume that some things are masculine or feminine traits seems to put unneeded rigidity to things.
I completely agree, which is why I have broken free of the shackles of gender. (being hyperbolic here, but it’s kinda how I feel). If the world were perfect, everyone could do what they want and you could meet a new person on their terms instead of assigning a gender and expected behaviour onto them based on their length of hair and style of clothing. But, we live in the world we live in, and so there are certain things that are deemed to be masculine or feminine.
EDIT: I’ve been thinking of how to explain this to someone who doesn’t feel the same way I do. Hopefully you are a car driver, because it’s the best analogy I can come up with. Imagine you’re watching dashcam footage and the car you’re riding in is speeding when a young child runs out from a parked car. For me, my right leg would immediately jerk to try and hit the (non-existant) brake pedal. My gut tenses. I grunt mentally and can see everything ending in disaster. All of this happens instantly before I can process or think and realise I’m just watching a recording. This is kinda how it feels when someone calls me a man. It’s just a visceral immediate dislike and feeling of deep uncomfort in a very similar way
rather than talk about my experience, i tend to think it’s more helpful to have cisgender people imagine themselves in similar hypothetical situations:
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imagine everyone in your life started using she/her pronouns for you. how would this make you feel? how does this affect how you react to them? how does this affect how they react to you?
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imagine you woke up in a female body. how would you feel? imagine you had to adjust to it for a week. then a month. then a year. then ten years. what adjustments to your life would you have to make? how does this affect how people treat you? how does this affect your behavior? how would you feel about this situation? what would you miss about your previous body?
the second experience is essentially what it’s like to be a transgender man, except it’s from birth and you don’t (necessarily) get to start with the knowledge you’re a guy (some people more intuitively figure it out than others)
these questions hopefully help you develop a sense of what gender means to you, which should help you understand what gender means to us (obv it’s not the same for everyone, and it’s pretty binary, but it’s a decent starting point)
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My favorite part about the Dunning-Kruger is that so many people get it wrong.
This graph isn’t even close.
Meh, it demanded a picture so it seemed to somewhat fit.
Oh yeah, no worries. If it was actually a big deal I might have into-dumped about what DK actually is, but it’s not important. Especially next to the gender identity question, for which I cannot meaningfully contribute.
I’m sure other people in this thread have done a great job talking about the mainstream stuff, so I’m gonna get weird.
Nonbinary identities aren’t all combinations of male and female gender traits. There are also nonbinary genders. They’re called xenogenders. And nonbinary identities can be any combination of male, and/or female, and/or any number of xenogenders. Xenogenders have traits that you may not typically believe are gendered, or that take the stuff you know in unexpected directions. But what are you expecting from a gender that isn’t like anything you know? It’s gonna seem weird.
Xenogenders are common among otherkin and alterhumans. Otherkin are people who don’t identify as human. They may identify as a real animal, or a mythical or fictional creature, which may be sapient or nonsapient, though nearly all otherkin are themselves sapient. Alterhuman is a broader category that also includes people who only identify partially as human or nonhuman. Perhaps someone who remembers a past life as a wolf, for example.
Sometimes a brain contains more than one person. The brain contains a mechanism for creating a person, an identity, a consciousness, and usually it uses that mechanism once. Sometimes it’s used more than once. It’s called plurality. Plurality can be the result of traumatic mental disorder, but it can also be healthy.
Among other social constructs such as gender, as useful as they can perhaps be when looking for a generalisation of “what are the terms for you to be understood in?” I have recently been questioning sex. Sex is often referred to as the biological bits, but is that true? No, because it’s an incomplete picture.
Biologists seem to currently accept sex is a mosaic of sexual characteristics. This includes but is not limited to genitalia and chromosome—the two most thought about elements I’d wager—and your chest, your hormone balance, but also measurements like around the hips, waist, shoulders… And of course, your role in reproduction, especially if you can reproduce.
Many of these characteristics are mutable, especially in today’s society with hormones and surgeries. Functionally speaking, they don’t matter, we as a species are not at risk of extinction and simply do not need to care about it. Sex was fraught even as a measure of reproductive capabilities anyway. We should care for each other’s happiness first and foremost.
But even mutability aside, sex isn’t consistent between men and women, with different hormone balances and even some variations in chromosomes or the capacity for sexual reproduction. Also, see the existence of intersex people, who, by their existence alone, shatter the binary.
I don’t believe sex is a useful categorisation. Sex and gender and expression and the things you enjoy are different, but they’re also both still constructions with your presumed gender being extrapolated from the most visible elements of your sex and huge variability for each person therein, but the correlation is starting to feel weak.
Sex and genders, as structures, are the product of cisheteropatriarchy, ie sexism. Even in sports. Social constructs generally arise as a necessary division for societies to make given their material conditions, and it was used to increase populations. I would say it is time to leave such vestigial logic behind.
For purposes of conversing with people who don’t share the same life it is useful to have terms differentiating they physical and the psychological though. It seems recently that people have finally moved away from the ‘gender is what’s in your pants’ narrative when dismissing trans people out of hand, why muddy that when all the traits you mentioned regarding sex are physical markers?
People have not moved away from the “gender is what’s in your pants” narrative. Transphobes still misgender based their victims’ (presumed) genitalia.
I didn’t muddy it, you misunderstand what social construct is, and “sex” is muddy in and of itself. As I said, sex is not so firmly binary.
Well, those acting without bad intentions I guess would be better said. Haters gonna hate and all do those folks opinions are subject to the bin.
When talking about muddy it was more referring to physical vs mental matters just from a terminology standpoint. While sex is not a binary thing, the measures and markers you mentioned are all physical designations rather than social or psychological.
I don’t think my mom is acting with bad intentions when she says things like “gender is the parts you’re born with, nothing more.” Its just what she happens to believe. I suspect its an important belief for her because that’s her only connection to being a woman. Without that, she’d probably have more self-reflection to do. OTOH, I don’t think she’s arguing in good faith when she complains about things like singular they when she wRiteS lIKE THis. I try not to assume people are just acting with bad intentions.
I second this. It’s a little solipsistic to dismiss everyone you don’t like as “bad intentions” because you simply can’t know their intentions. All I know is some people do their best to make me feel good about myself and my identity and some either don’t or can’t and there is functionally little difference for me between those latter two camps.
So I don’t know how old your parents are but I’m in my mid 40s. When I was a kid being gay was a punchline, Cpl Klinger on MASH tried to get out of the army on a mental illness grounds by dressing as a woman, and there where shows like ‘Bosom Buddies’ which I’ll leave you to look up again making fun of cross dressing, which in itself is a term I don’t hear anymore.
Given that history, the change to sex and gender being separate things, and not only that but they can change and merge over time, is a pretty rough thing to try and recognize. So depending on who they are I could see it as “I just don’t want to get into that”
There are certainly some though that use it maliciously, the ‘you will never be a woman’ crowd.
She’s in her 50’s. In my mom’s case, I think its mostly just lived experience. If she was trans, she’d be less gay. She dresses in clothes from the men’s section exclusively (including to her weddings), has shortish hair, is regularly mistaken as a guy (both in person and over the phone and I’ve never seen her correct anyone and she seems to be pretty happen about guy men thinking she’s cute), is the only woman in her position at her jobs, is often treated more like a guy by friends and family while her fairly tomboyish wife is still treated as a woman, etc.
Her experiences of being a woman has basically just which sports teams she’s allowed to play on because of the genitals she happened to have.
Granted, I have no clue what her opinion of her own body is. Personally, I always kept things like jealousy of girls or wishish I could just wake up in a different body to myself (until I started to seriously question my gender at 28yo). Mostly because I tried to avoid thinking about that kind of thing and pretend it didn’t exist. Maybe she would still just consider herself a butch woman even if she had grown up in a different environment that was more accepting of trans people and had more understanding of non-binary/agender identities.
There are certainly some though that use it maliciously, the ‘you will never be a woman’ crowd.
My mom is a bit transphobic like that, but I think that belief came first and the transphobia came later partly as a result of that belief (and then she’s adopted stupid talking points to further justify the transphobia). She only said that when asked about her own gender though: I’ve never seen her use it against trans people. Honestly, I haven’t tried talking about gender with my mom (the closest thing I can think of is when she was complaining about singular they/them in bad faith, but I approached that as a discussion about the history of language, not gender… although my stepmom asked if I was in a woman in the middle of that conversation).
I think I can see the point of confusion- the reason for illustrating physical sex as a spectrum is that it’s easier to lay out the concept of gender identity as an analogue.
It’s also possible that gender identity is structural but brains are complicated and linking mechanisms to behavior is hairy.
It’s less the notion of it being spectrum based, but more in identifying the difference between the tangible/measurable things of the physical body, and those that are created of the mind and societies expectations. My understanding coming into this is that sex=physical / gender=emotional/mental/social, but some comments here have me questioning that understanding.
I personally don’t think it makes sense. That’s not to say it isn’t real (its just as real as sex is). But it would be good to at least know that gender isn’t generally about following social expectations. OTOH, conforming to social expectations can be a way to signal one’s gender if its not as clear, so some overemphasize those traits for that reason. And others have felt the need to suppress their own self-expression when they were eggs and have lost time to make up for. For some, the social aspect of gender is very important and for others, its not. For others, its much more focused about making their body match their brain’s expectations.
For some, the social aspect of gender is very important and for others, its not. For others, its much more focused about making their body match their brain’s expectations.
So with that would it be fair to say that there are different ‘types’ of trans then? IE: some that are fine with the hardware they where given but not with the expectations on their persona that go along with it?
I would say that’s the case. As Emma pointed out, trans is an umbrella term. It includes everything from binary trans men to binary trans women to agender to multigender and gender fluid and more. If for any reason your gender doesn’t match the one assigned by society, you can consider yourself trans.
And I don’t mean that to imply some people are only “technically” trans but not really trans, but rather there are also people who don’t consider themselves cis or trans. Seems pretty common among some people in the agender (which is also a bit of an umbrella term with lots of diversity within it) communities. Granted, some of that seems to be internalize transphobia or a fear of being seen as trying to take attention away from “real” (their words, not mine) trans people. But another reason is the trans label comes with some expectations that many agender people want to avoid. Either way, I think its good to recognize people’s self-determination of whether they are trans or not. A lot of agender people express confusion at gender and lots wish to be freed of gender in society. Of course there are binary trans people who are also gender abolitionists, but the sentiment seems to be expressed with less frequency. Even without gender, many trans people would still need services currently labeled “gender-affirming care”.
We’ve had men or women who enjoy things traditionally associated with the other gender for as long as there have been people I expect. If that’s the case then what purpose does the need for a gender title serve?
(This is not a co-sign of Emma’s views on the subject)
