The Gender Unicorn
Discussion
vonuber said:
I'm really hoping my existing and soon to be born daughter both turn out to be lesbians, mainly because I know what us men are like and the thought of them being with a Pher horrifies me 
As long as they're the nice lesbian kind, not the millitant "i hate everything" sort. If you get one of those, you'll end up being fed Quorn when you pop round for sunday roast, and berated until you buy a Prius. Some Gump said:
vonuber said:
I'm really hoping my existing and soon to be born daughter both turn out to be lesbians, mainly because I know what us men are like and the thought of them being with a Pher horrifies me
As long as they're the nice lesbian kind... As for the unicorn, it's a bit crass, but at least it attempts to educate children with the idea that the previous pigeon holes were arbitrary. If, in this way, it helps people to grow up (especially in teenage years) more tolerant, happier and less alienated, then it would be a great success. Life can be tough enough and there are already sufficient restrictions on freedom and opportunity without the narrowly defined gender and sexuality 'norms' being projected onto people.
I thought there would be more of a push to break past labels, rather than just creating new ones.
Gender is a fact. You are born either male or female and that's what you will be for the rest of your life. Same as ethnicity or any other aspect of your DNA.
That fact does not change, no matter what box you tick. So why not focus attention on realising that the box you tick does not define a person in any way. Which is to say, very simplistically, ticking the female box does not mean you can't like football and girls, and ticking the male box does not mean you can't like makeup and boys.
What is the need to create new labels, which again will inevitably exclude the next group..
You are born a gender, that's just a fact and is occasionally required for admin purposes. Changing the box you tick changes nothing about that fact. If you identify as something else, go for it, we live in a pretty open society and ticking one box or another certainly shouldn't hold you back from doing or being anything. If it does you should get counselling or go to support groups to help your confidence to do so, not create a new box to tick.
Kids need to be taught that these boxes don't mean anything, as the boxes become more niche, they come to mean even more, and society becomes even more focussed on labels.
Gender is a fact. You are born either male or female and that's what you will be for the rest of your life. Same as ethnicity or any other aspect of your DNA.
That fact does not change, no matter what box you tick. So why not focus attention on realising that the box you tick does not define a person in any way. Which is to say, very simplistically, ticking the female box does not mean you can't like football and girls, and ticking the male box does not mean you can't like makeup and boys.
What is the need to create new labels, which again will inevitably exclude the next group..
You are born a gender, that's just a fact and is occasionally required for admin purposes. Changing the box you tick changes nothing about that fact. If you identify as something else, go for it, we live in a pretty open society and ticking one box or another certainly shouldn't hold you back from doing or being anything. If it does you should get counselling or go to support groups to help your confidence to do so, not create a new box to tick.
Kids need to be taught that these boxes don't mean anything, as the boxes become more niche, they come to mean even more, and society becomes even more focussed on labels.
sealtt said:
I thought there would be more of a push to break past labels, rather than just creating new ones.
Gender is a fact. You are born either male or female and that's what you will be for the rest of your life. Same as ethnicity or any other aspect of your DNA.
That fact does not change, no matter what box you tick. So why not focus attention on realising that the box you tick does not define a person in any way. Which is to say, very simplistically, ticking the female box does not mean you can't like football and girls, and ticking the male box does not mean you can't like makeup and boys.
What is the need to create new labels, which again will inevitably exclude the next group..
You are born a gender, that's just a fact and is occasionally required for admin purposes. Changing the box you tick changes nothing about that fact. If you identify as something else, go for it, we live in a pretty open society and ticking one box or another certainly shouldn't hold you back from doing or being anything. If it does you should get counselling or go to support groups to help your confidence to do so, not create a new box to tick.
Kids need to be taught that these boxes don't mean anything, as the boxes become more niche, they come to mean even more, and society becomes even more focussed on labels.
This is kind of my mindset.Gender is a fact. You are born either male or female and that's what you will be for the rest of your life. Same as ethnicity or any other aspect of your DNA.
That fact does not change, no matter what box you tick. So why not focus attention on realising that the box you tick does not define a person in any way. Which is to say, very simplistically, ticking the female box does not mean you can't like football and girls, and ticking the male box does not mean you can't like makeup and boys.
What is the need to create new labels, which again will inevitably exclude the next group..
You are born a gender, that's just a fact and is occasionally required for admin purposes. Changing the box you tick changes nothing about that fact. If you identify as something else, go for it, we live in a pretty open society and ticking one box or another certainly shouldn't hold you back from doing or being anything. If it does you should get counselling or go to support groups to help your confidence to do so, not create a new box to tick.
Kids need to be taught that these boxes don't mean anything, as the boxes become more niche, they come to mean even more, and society becomes even more focussed on labels.
My mum was a childminder for many years. Of the many and various toys the minded kids had to play with was a dressing-up box and there was one lad who loved dressing up in 'girls' clothes. Nothing was ever said about it being 'wrong' (which I happen to think is the right way to approach this) and, when the lad grew up he was, well, not macho in the least, but was a very pleasant and happy individual. One of my cousin's sons appears to be on a very similar trajectory and hopefully will also find a similarly happy path through life.
I have a good friend who is an elite athlete. She's also a huge petrolhead - at one point in time she owned both an Impreza turbo and a Suzuki GSXR - and a bit of a tomboy. Though easiest described as a lesbian, I'm not sure that fully defines her outlook and, more's the point, why should it be defined for anyone?
Isn't it better just to accept that people just 'are', that we all have varying degrees of individuality.
sealtt said:
I thought there would be more of a push to break past labels, rather than just creating new ones.
Gender is a fact. You are born either male or female and that's what you will be for the rest of your life. Same as ethnicity or any other aspect of your DNA.
That fact does not change, no matter what box you tick. So why not focus attention on realising that the box you tick does not define a person in any way. Which is to say, very simplistically, ticking the female box does not mean you can't like football and girls, and ticking the male box does not mean you can't like makeup and boys.
What is the need to create new labels, which again will inevitably exclude the next group..
You are born a gender, that's just a fact and is occasionally required for admin purposes. Changing the box you tick changes nothing about that fact. If you identify as something else, go for it, we live in a pretty open society and ticking one box or another certainly shouldn't hold you back from doing or being anything. If it does you should get counselling or go to support groups to help your confidence to do so, not create a new box to tick.
Kids need to be taught that these boxes don't mean anything, as the boxes become more niche, they come to mean even more, and society becomes even more focussed on labels.
Biological sex - as represented by the little double helix DNA image in the unicorn - is a fact, and indeed it is one which for the vast majority of new babies (not all) is readily visible to the casual observer. Gender is a fact. You are born either male or female and that's what you will be for the rest of your life. Same as ethnicity or any other aspect of your DNA.
That fact does not change, no matter what box you tick. So why not focus attention on realising that the box you tick does not define a person in any way. Which is to say, very simplistically, ticking the female box does not mean you can't like football and girls, and ticking the male box does not mean you can't like makeup and boys.
What is the need to create new labels, which again will inevitably exclude the next group..
You are born a gender, that's just a fact and is occasionally required for admin purposes. Changing the box you tick changes nothing about that fact. If you identify as something else, go for it, we live in a pretty open society and ticking one box or another certainly shouldn't hold you back from doing or being anything. If it does you should get counselling or go to support groups to help your confidence to do so, not create a new box to tick.
Kids need to be taught that these boxes don't mean anything, as the boxes become more niche, they come to mean even more, and society becomes even more focussed on labels.
Gender is very probably inborn too although understandably it's a hell of a lot harder to prove that one because it's brain chemistry not organ possession, and a number of people have a very fundamental mismatch between the two.
You maybe need to start by understanding that there are trans boys and men, and trans girls and women, who are not particularly constrained by gender norms, who enjoyed childhoods with the freedom to make their own choices about what to play with and so on, which hobbies to pursue, and guess what - we're still trans. There are camp, effeminate trans men and hench, butch trans women. (You can imagine how much hate those ladies get from many PH types.)
I have a pretty f
king awesome set of parents and I did indeed for the most part enjoy a childhood where nobody was trying to make me be a girl. I watched Star Trek with my dad and played with vast metropoli of Brio and toy cars. My two (cisgender, as far as I am aware) sisters enjoyed the same childhood and had their own interests and hobbies - some overlapped with mine, some didn't. Three basically equal and very similar childhoods, shared by three kids assigned female at birth, one turns out to be a dude. When my folks thought I was just a fairly butch lesbian they were fine with that, and if that's what I actually was, I'd have been fine with that too. But I'm not, and lo and behold someone who was accepted and accepting as a girl 'liking football and girls'… is still not female. I never was, and nothing could change that. I didn't understand what was wrong when I was small and that really, really fked me over - I actually think that friends who were more forcibly being pushed to act their assigned sex probably worked it out faster than I did, and certainly in general terms were more harmed by the experience, but it hasn't made a blind bit of difference to who and what any of us actually were, except that growing up without the words for it, and without anything to protect us from schools getting in on attempts to force children to conform to their assigned gender, has done a lot of harm. sealtt said:
Gender is a fact. You are born either male or female and that's what you will be for the rest of your life. Same as ethnicity or any other aspect of your DNA.
That's not quite right, most obviously by hermaphroditism. Further, some kids are difficult to define at birth and there are many cases where a baby has been classified at M and then turns into, and obviously so, F. And vice versa. It isn't quite binary.Further there are those with some sexual characteristics but not all.
sealtt said:
I thought there would be more of a push to break past labels, rather than just creating new ones.
Gender is a fact. You are born either male or female and that's what you will be for the rest of your life. Same as ethnicity or any other aspect of your DNA.
That fact does not change, no matter what box you tick. So why not focus attention on realising that the box you tick does not define a person in any way. Which is to say, very simplistically, ticking the female box does not mean you can't like football and girls, and ticking the male box does not mean you can't like makeup and boys.
What is the need to create new labels, which again will inevitably exclude the next group..
You are born a gender, that's just a fact and is occasionally required for admin purposes. Changing the box you tick changes nothing about that fact. If you identify as something else, go for it, we live in a pretty open society and ticking one box or another certainly shouldn't hold you back from doing or being anything. If it does you should get counselling or go to support groups to help your confidence to do so, not create a new box to tick.
Kids need to be taught that these boxes don't mean anything, as the boxes become more niche, they come to mean even more, and society becomes even more focussed on labels.
I agree with many of your comments about labels and the hope they are focussed on less as it is mostly unhelpful, but not your quoteGender is a fact. You are born either male or female and that's what you will be for the rest of your life. Same as ethnicity or any other aspect of your DNA.
That fact does not change, no matter what box you tick. So why not focus attention on realising that the box you tick does not define a person in any way. Which is to say, very simplistically, ticking the female box does not mean you can't like football and girls, and ticking the male box does not mean you can't like makeup and boys.
What is the need to create new labels, which again will inevitably exclude the next group..
You are born a gender, that's just a fact and is occasionally required for admin purposes. Changing the box you tick changes nothing about that fact. If you identify as something else, go for it, we live in a pretty open society and ticking one box or another certainly shouldn't hold you back from doing or being anything. If it does you should get counselling or go to support groups to help your confidence to do so, not create a new box to tick.
Kids need to be taught that these boxes don't mean anything, as the boxes become more niche, they come to mean even more, and society becomes even more focussed on labels.
sealtt said:
Gender is a fact. You are born either male or female and that's what you will be for the rest of your life. Same as ethnicity or any other aspect of your DNA.
With the greater understanding we now have, it's just not that simpleJust look at the athlete Caster Semenya - there are still arguments over what her (she describes herself as a woman) gender actually is. Which are separate to the arguments about what category she should compete in (male or female), whether she is eligible for either category and if she competes as a woman, whether it is only permissible if she takes testosterone reducing drugs
She has no womb or ovaries but does have under developed testes internally. She is considered most likley to be intersex
To suggest that 'it's a fact you are born male or female and that's what you will be for the rest of your life' is simply untrue and who knows how that may change over the coming years
The point is you can no longer use DNA to simply in a black and white approach label someone man or woman. Most people probably, but not everyone.
FlyingMeeces said:
Biological sex - as represented by the little double helix DNA image in the unicorn - is a fact, and indeed it is one which for the vast majority of new babies (not all) is readily visible to the casual observer.
Gender is very probably inborn too although understandably it's a hell of a lot harder to prove that one because it's brain chemistry not organ possession, and a number of people have a very fundamental mismatch between the two.
You maybe need to start by understanding that there are trans boys and men, and trans girls and women, who are not particularly constrained by gender norms, who enjoyed childhoods with the freedom to make their own choices about what to play with and so on, which hobbies to pursue, and guess what - we're still trans. There are camp, effeminate trans men and hench, butch trans women. (You can imagine how much hate those ladies get from many PH types.)
I have a pretty fking awesome set of parents and I did indeed for the most part enjoy a childhood where nobody was trying to make me be a girl. I watched Star Trek with my dad and played with vast metropoli of Brio and toy cars. My two (cisgender, as far as I am aware) sisters enjoyed the same childhood and had their own interests and hobbies - some overlapped with mine, some didn't. Three basically equal and very similar childhoods, shared by three kids assigned female at birth, one turns out to be a dude. When my folks thought I was just a fairly butch lesbian they were fine with that, and if that's what I actually was, I'd have been fine with that too. But I'm not, and lo and behold someone who was accepted and accepting as a girl 'liking football and girls'… is still not female. I never was, and nothing could change that. I didn't understand what was wrong when I was small and that really, really fked me over - I actually think that friends who were more forcibly being pushed to act their assigned sex probably worked it out faster than I did, and certainly in general terms were more harmed by the experience, but it hasn't made a blind bit of difference to who and what any of us actually were, except that growing up without the words for it, and without anything to protect us from schools getting in on attempts to force children to conform to their assigned gender, has done a lot of harm.
So let me ask you why it is so important to be able to call yourself a 'male'. Why is a label that fits you so important? What difference would it make if you were a female on paper, but every other aspect of your life remained exactly the same?Gender is very probably inborn too although understandably it's a hell of a lot harder to prove that one because it's brain chemistry not organ possession, and a number of people have a very fundamental mismatch between the two.
You maybe need to start by understanding that there are trans boys and men, and trans girls and women, who are not particularly constrained by gender norms, who enjoyed childhoods with the freedom to make their own choices about what to play with and so on, which hobbies to pursue, and guess what - we're still trans. There are camp, effeminate trans men and hench, butch trans women. (You can imagine how much hate those ladies get from many PH types.)
I have a pretty f
king awesome set of parents and I did indeed for the most part enjoy a childhood where nobody was trying to make me be a girl. I watched Star Trek with my dad and played with vast metropoli of Brio and toy cars. My two (cisgender, as far as I am aware) sisters enjoyed the same childhood and had their own interests and hobbies - some overlapped with mine, some didn't. Three basically equal and very similar childhoods, shared by three kids assigned female at birth, one turns out to be a dude. When my folks thought I was just a fairly butch lesbian they were fine with that, and if that's what I actually was, I'd have been fine with that too. But I'm not, and lo and behold someone who was accepted and accepting as a girl 'liking football and girls'… is still not female. I never was, and nothing could change that. I didn't understand what was wrong when I was small and that really, really fked me over - I actually think that friends who were more forcibly being pushed to act their assigned sex probably worked it out faster than I did, and certainly in general terms were more harmed by the experience, but it hasn't made a blind bit of difference to who and what any of us actually were, except that growing up without the words for it, and without anything to protect us from schools getting in on attempts to force children to conform to their assigned gender, has done a lot of harm. Surely the better goal is to breakdown preconceptions and stereotypes of genders, rather than to create new genders and 'other' categories.
Principally considering kids, if you had grown up knowing that it didn't matter whether you were male or female, you could live life and be exactly the way you wanted, that such labels have no meaning & value in terms of who a person is. Wouldn't that be so much easier than worrying that you are the 'wrong' gender, or what label you fit into?
Derek Smith said:
That's not quite right, most obviously by hermaphroditism. Further, some kids are difficult to define at birth and there are many cases where a baby has been classified at M and then turns into, and obviously so, F. And vice versa. It isn't quite binary.
Further there are those with some sexual characteristics but not all.
Further there are those with some sexual characteristics but not all.
jonby said:
With the greater understanding we now have, it's just not that simple
Just look at the athlete Caster Semenya - there are still arguments over what her (she describes herself as a woman) gender actually is. Which are separate to the arguments about what category she should compete in (male or female), whether she is eligible for either category and if she competes as a woman, whether it is only permissible if she takes testosterone reducing drugs
She has no womb or ovaries but does have under developed testes internally. She is considered most likley to be intersex
To suggest that 'it's a fact you are born male or female and that's what you will be for the rest of your life' is simply untrue and who knows how that may change over the coming years
The point is you can no longer use DNA to simply in a black and white approach label someone man or woman. Most people probably, but not everyone.
Sorry, my comment (and I was aware as I wrote it!) was broad and there is obviously more to it than that. I was more trying to consider the idealogical side of things - i.e., gender is something you are born with, it's a biological fact which can't and doesn't need to be changed for purposes of your identity. Just look at the athlete Caster Semenya - there are still arguments over what her (she describes herself as a woman) gender actually is. Which are separate to the arguments about what category she should compete in (male or female), whether she is eligible for either category and if she competes as a woman, whether it is only permissible if she takes testosterone reducing drugs
She has no womb or ovaries but does have under developed testes internally. She is considered most likley to be intersex
To suggest that 'it's a fact you are born male or female and that's what you will be for the rest of your life' is simply untrue and who knows how that may change over the coming years
The point is you can no longer use DNA to simply in a black and white approach label someone man or woman. Most people probably, but not everyone.
As I said in my very first post on this thread, I'm not debating whether trans men and women are men and women. Funnily enough I haven't much appetite for it.
I'm male - not 'calling myself', and presumably so are you. There exist people who know, just as certainly as we know we're blokes, that they are neither male nor female but something else. I'm not one of those people.
I'm actually not well read enough on gender theory to explain better, so let's leave it at, in this world the vast, vast majority are men or women - and that is how it is, it's not gonna change, in all the changes society has been through in however many tens of thousands of years that's been a constant and is a constant even in isolated communities all round the planet. And among that number are what we now in English call trans people.
Short version: I don't need to unpick gender, cheers, mine is nice and straightforward. But it'd be lovely if those few people whose gender is not binary were treated a bit more like human beings, in general terms.
I'm male - not 'calling myself', and presumably so are you. There exist people who know, just as certainly as we know we're blokes, that they are neither male nor female but something else. I'm not one of those people.
I'm actually not well read enough on gender theory to explain better, so let's leave it at, in this world the vast, vast majority are men or women - and that is how it is, it's not gonna change, in all the changes society has been through in however many tens of thousands of years that's been a constant and is a constant even in isolated communities all round the planet. And among that number are what we now in English call trans people.
Short version: I don't need to unpick gender, cheers, mine is nice and straightforward. But it'd be lovely if those few people whose gender is not binary were treated a bit more like human beings, in general terms.
It debases what it means to be human to suggest 7billion people should fit precisely into 1 of 2 binary genders. That's a fact. Its also factually nonsense, of course our biology and psychology is incredibly complex so I doubt very much that it's black and white.
That said we should also be pragmatic and as a species we should be looking at ways of improving and expanding our culture and understanding to give clarity, not confusion.
And I for one am confused by all this.
That said we should also be pragmatic and as a species we should be looking at ways of improving and expanding our culture and understanding to give clarity, not confusion.
And I for one am confused by all this.
FlyingMeeces said:
sealtt said:
I thought there would be more of a push to break past labels, rather than just creating new ones.
Gender is a fact. You are born either male or female and that's what you will be for the rest of your life. Same as ethnicity or any other aspect of your DNA.
That fact does not change, no matter what box you tick. So why not focus attention on realising that the box you tick does not define a person in any way. Which is to say, very simplistically, ticking the female box does not mean you can't like football and girls, and ticking the male box does not mean you can't like makeup and boys.
What is the need to create new labels, which again will inevitably exclude the next group..
You are born a gender, that's just a fact and is occasionally required for admin purposes. Changing the box you tick changes nothing about that fact. If you identify as something else, go for it, we live in a pretty open society and ticking one box or another certainly shouldn't hold you back from doing or being anything. If it does you should get counselling or go to support groups to help your confidence to do so, not create a new box to tick.
Kids need to be taught that these boxes don't mean anything, as the boxes become more niche, they come to mean even more, and society becomes even more focussed on labels.
Biological sex - as represented by the little double helix DNA image in the unicorn - is a fact, and indeed it is one which for the vast majority of new babies (not all) is readily visible to the casual observer. Gender is a fact. You are born either male or female and that's what you will be for the rest of your life. Same as ethnicity or any other aspect of your DNA.
That fact does not change, no matter what box you tick. So why not focus attention on realising that the box you tick does not define a person in any way. Which is to say, very simplistically, ticking the female box does not mean you can't like football and girls, and ticking the male box does not mean you can't like makeup and boys.
What is the need to create new labels, which again will inevitably exclude the next group..
You are born a gender, that's just a fact and is occasionally required for admin purposes. Changing the box you tick changes nothing about that fact. If you identify as something else, go for it, we live in a pretty open society and ticking one box or another certainly shouldn't hold you back from doing or being anything. If it does you should get counselling or go to support groups to help your confidence to do so, not create a new box to tick.
Kids need to be taught that these boxes don't mean anything, as the boxes become more niche, they come to mean even more, and society becomes even more focussed on labels.
Gender is very probably inborn too although understandably it's a hell of a lot harder to prove that one because it's brain chemistry not organ possession, and a number of people have a very fundamental mismatch between the two.
You maybe need to start by understanding that there are trans boys and men, and trans girls and women, who are not particularly constrained by gender norms, who enjoyed childhoods with the freedom to make their own choices about what to play with and so on, which hobbies to pursue, and guess what - we're still trans. There are camp, effeminate trans men and hench, butch trans women. (You can imagine how much hate those ladies get from many PH types.)
I have a pretty f
king awesome set of parents and I did indeed for the most part enjoy a childhood where nobody was trying to make me be a girl. I watched Star Trek with my dad and played with vast metropoli of Brio and toy cars. My two (cisgender, as far as I am aware) sisters enjoyed the same childhood and had their own interests and hobbies - some overlapped with mine, some didn't. Three basically equal and very similar childhoods, shared by three kids assigned female at birth, one turns out to be a dude. When my folks thought I was just a fairly butch lesbian they were fine with that, and if that's what I actually was, I'd have been fine with that too. But I'm not, and lo and behold someone who was accepted and accepting as a girl 'liking football and girls'… is still not female. I never was, and nothing could change that. I didn't understand what was wrong when I was small and that really, really fked me over - I actually think that friends who were more forcibly being pushed to act their assigned sex probably worked it out faster than I did, and certainly in general terms were more harmed by the experience, but it hasn't made a blind bit of difference to who and what any of us actually were, except that growing up without the words for it, and without anything to protect us from schools getting in on attempts to force children to conform to their assigned gender, has done a lot of harm. The Unicorn represents a legendary fantasy figure of folklore, unobtainable – when you think you have it, with one bound it magically escapes and morphs into banality. It is the misconception of the ideal in a heretical and profane world that doesn’t recognise that the idea of purity of spirit is everywhere if you look for it. In the context of this thread subject – most apt.
The whole problem surrounding this concept of sexuality versus gender is the conflation of those two terms. I mean sexual acts and the ensuing projection of physical desires. We are obsessed with the mundane. The use of a whole lexicon of transient fashionable terms designed to, as well as for and by, appease activists is probably the worst thing for those with personal issues. To have to choose only serves to accentuate the perceived differences. However many terms are manufactured, and acronyms are rather stupid, they all become useless. When the time finally arrives (about 100 years away) and we become genuinely gender-irrelevant (GI?) all the gobbledygook will subside and become as obsolete as spinning wheels. For the record, not that it matters in any way but context, I am an entire male, always have been, and will die without the alleged benefit of transsexual congress. I hope.
The whole problem surrounding this concept of sexuality versus gender is the conflation of those two terms. I mean sexual acts and the ensuing projection of physical desires. We are obsessed with the mundane. The use of a whole lexicon of transient fashionable terms designed to, as well as for and by, appease activists is probably the worst thing for those with personal issues. To have to choose only serves to accentuate the perceived differences. However many terms are manufactured, and acronyms are rather stupid, they all become useless. When the time finally arrives (about 100 years away) and we become genuinely gender-irrelevant (GI?) all the gobbledygook will subside and become as obsolete as spinning wheels. For the record, not that it matters in any way but context, I am an entire male, always have been, and will die without the alleged benefit of transsexual congress. I hope.
FlyingMeeces said:
As I said in my very first post on this thread, I'm not debating whether trans men and women are men and women. Funnily enough I haven't much appetite for it.
I'm male - not 'calling myself', and presumably so are you. There exist people who know, just as certainly as we know we're blokes, that they are neither male nor female but something else. I'm not one of those people.
I'm actually not well read enough on gender theory to explain better, so let's leave it at, in this world the vast, vast majority are men or women - and that is how it is, it's not gonna change, in all the changes society has been through in however many tens of thousands of years that's been a constant and is a constant even in isolated communities all round the planet. And among that number are what we now in English call trans people.
Short version: I don't need to unpick gender, cheers, mine is nice and straightforward. But it'd be lovely if those few people whose gender is not binary were treated a bit more like human beings, in general terms.
My point is not to discuss who is or isn't a male, female, etc - quite the opposite in fact. To me being a male or female really doesn't matter - and I am wondering why gender is important to so many people who struggle with it for many years, yourself included from the sound of things. It is meant to be a question for me to learn something, not rhetorical, and I only ask as you said previously you were open to questions. To me it makes so little difference what I call myself, male, female, whatever. I am 'SealTT', an individual person, I do not identify myself in any way by my gender other than what genitals I was born with, so why does it matter so much?I'm male - not 'calling myself', and presumably so are you. There exist people who know, just as certainly as we know we're blokes, that they are neither male nor female but something else. I'm not one of those people.
I'm actually not well read enough on gender theory to explain better, so let's leave it at, in this world the vast, vast majority are men or women - and that is how it is, it's not gonna change, in all the changes society has been through in however many tens of thousands of years that's been a constant and is a constant even in isolated communities all round the planet. And among that number are what we now in English call trans people.
Short version: I don't need to unpick gender, cheers, mine is nice and straightforward. But it'd be lovely if those few people whose gender is not binary were treated a bit more like human beings, in general terms.
If we were taught that these labels didn't matter, wouldn't that resolve the problem from the start, rather than creating new labels? What do you think?
WinstonWolf said:
Cisgender is an insulting term. You don't like certain terms, I don't like that one. Just refer to me as normal please.
Okeydokey, what is your preferred term for people who are not trans, when that is what I am trying to express? And do your fellow people who are not trans get a vote on which word to use to describe you as a group? 'Normal' does not mean 'people who are not trans'.
WinstonWolf said:
FlyingMeeces said:
sealtt said:
I thought there would be more of a push to break past labels, rather than just creating new ones.
Gender is a fact. You are born either male or female and that's what you will be for the rest of your life. Same as ethnicity or any other aspect of your DNA.
That fact does not change, no matter what box you tick. So why not focus attention on realising that the box you tick does not define a person in any way. Which is to say, very simplistically, ticking the female box does not mean you can't like football and girls, and ticking the male box does not mean you can't like makeup and boys.
What is the need to create new labels, which again will inevitably exclude the next group..
You are born a gender, that's just a fact and is occasionally required for admin purposes. Changing the box you tick changes nothing about that fact. If you identify as something else, go for it, we live in a pretty open society and ticking one box or another certainly shouldn't hold you back from doing or being anything. If it does you should get counselling or go to support groups to help your confidence to do so, not create a new box to tick.
Kids need to be taught that these boxes don't mean anything, as the boxes become more niche, they come to mean even more, and society becomes even more focussed on labels.
Biological sex - as represented by the little double helix DNA image in the unicorn - is a fact, and indeed it is one which for the vast majority of new babies (not all) is readily visible to the casual observer. Gender is a fact. You are born either male or female and that's what you will be for the rest of your life. Same as ethnicity or any other aspect of your DNA.
That fact does not change, no matter what box you tick. So why not focus attention on realising that the box you tick does not define a person in any way. Which is to say, very simplistically, ticking the female box does not mean you can't like football and girls, and ticking the male box does not mean you can't like makeup and boys.
What is the need to create new labels, which again will inevitably exclude the next group..
You are born a gender, that's just a fact and is occasionally required for admin purposes. Changing the box you tick changes nothing about that fact. If you identify as something else, go for it, we live in a pretty open society and ticking one box or another certainly shouldn't hold you back from doing or being anything. If it does you should get counselling or go to support groups to help your confidence to do so, not create a new box to tick.
Kids need to be taught that these boxes don't mean anything, as the boxes become more niche, they come to mean even more, and society becomes even more focussed on labels.
Gender is very probably inborn too although understandably it's a hell of a lot harder to prove that one because it's brain chemistry not organ possession, and a number of people have a very fundamental mismatch between the two.
You maybe need to start by understanding that there are trans boys and men, and trans girls and women, who are not particularly constrained by gender norms, who enjoyed childhoods with the freedom to make their own choices about what to play with and so on, which hobbies to pursue, and guess what - we're still trans. There are camp, effeminate trans men and hench, butch trans women. (You can imagine how much hate those ladies get from many PH types.)
I have a pretty f
king awesome set of parents and I did indeed for the most part enjoy a childhood where nobody was trying to make me be a girl. I watched Star Trek with my dad and played with vast metropoli of Brio and toy cars. My two (cisgender, as far as I am aware) sisters enjoyed the same childhood and had their own interests and hobbies - some overlapped with mine, some didn't. Three basically equal and very similar childhoods, shared by three kids assigned female at birth, one turns out to be a dude. When my folks thought I was just a fairly butch lesbian they were fine with that, and if that's what I actually was, I'd have been fine with that too. But I'm not, and lo and behold someone who was accepted and accepting as a girl 'liking football and girls'… is still not female. I never was, and nothing could change that. I didn't understand what was wrong when I was small and that really, really fked me over - I actually think that friends who were more forcibly being pushed to act their assigned sex probably worked it out faster than I did, and certainly in general terms were more harmed by the experience, but it hasn't made a blind bit of difference to who and what any of us actually were, except that growing up without the words for it, and without anything to protect us from schools getting in on attempts to force children to conform to their assigned gender, has done a lot of harm. Is it a loaded term or like LGBT people calling straight folk breeders or something ?
FlyingMeeces said:
WinstonWolf said:
Cisgender is an insulting term. You don't like certain terms, I don't like that one. Just refer to me as normal please.
Okeydokey, what is your preferred term for people who are not trans, when that is what I am trying to express? And do your fellow people who are not trans get a vote on which word to use to describe you as a group? 'Normal' does not mean 'people who are not trans'.
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