The Gender Unicorn

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Thanks to having a couple of American conservatives as FB friends, my day has been brightened by reading about this:



Apparently this is the latest thing in the culture wars, being used as a teaching aid in schools in North Carolina (and presumably elsewhere very soon) to help the young people explore their gender fluidity. I'm not sure why it has a boiled sweet glued to its crotch. My immediate reaction is to think that anyone taking an interest in the sexual orientation of schoolchildren should probably be on the Sex Offenders Register, but possibly I'm just an old reactionary dinosaur. I can't help thinking that being a teenager is confusing enough without being given nightmares about purple unicorns. (I assume this is aimed at teenagers, not primary school kids. But the "unicorn" does look a bit like the kind of thing you would use to teach a five year old to say no to strangers, especially ones holding sweets in dubious places.)

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GroundEffect said:

There is some validity to this effort as I when I were a lad - being bisexual - I found it very, very difficult. Someone who is straight cannot possibly imagine the pain and complete head-fkery that comes with being 'different' in this way. I was on the verge of suicide for a very long time because of this. Real, mental, torment.

So I think whilst a lot of this is far too militant, it does ring true with me that the support needs to be there for the kids that are struggling that it doesn't matter who you are or who you like. If you consider as well that if you add up all that fall under the banner of 'queer', you've got over 10% of the population. That's a big chunk. And they need help.

Point taken, I was more fascinated by the total naffness of the purple unicorn than anything else. When I was at school I had a friend who was gay and didn't try to hide it. He got a really hard time although he was the most decent, warm-hearted person you could meet. But I'm not sure a gender unicorn would have helped him. He changed schools at 16 and I lost touch with him: I hope his life turned out OK. I'm not sure where I stand on this whole idea of promoting gender fluidity. As you say, some of it seems militant, aggressive and designed more to annoy conservatives than actually help people. There aren't many fixed points left in society now, and it looks like gender could be the next one to go.

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Nanook said:

230TE said:

My immediate reaction is to think that anyone taking an interest in the sexual orientation of schoolchildren should probably be on the Sex Offenders Register, but possibly I'm just an old reactionary dinosaur.

Yeah, I agree.

With the 'old reactionary dinosaur' part.

I said it was my immediate reaction - not the same thing as saying that it is the correct response. I didn't just start this thread so that people can make fun of the purple unicorn (although it deserves it) - gender fluidity seem to be emerging as a major topic and I was interested to hear some views on the subject, as I don't really know much about it.

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Mark Benson said:

Referring to the bit I bolded (emboldened?); Not these days, my (16 year old) niece is currently 'gender fluid' after being heaven knows how many other labels in the last 12 months or so. Her irritating friends are all the same, male and female, none (currently) identify as cis-gendered.

She's nothing of the sort, she's as cis as I am. But that's just not what the cool kids are doing at the moment, what we called experimenting and kept behind closed doors, they shout from the rooftops (or at least on social media) and this month gender fluidity is in. Got to be a member of a 'special' group when you're a special snowflake and unique and special in your specialness.

Which of course does nothing for those that genuinely are wrestling with those kind of issues but strident campaigners can point to a big increase in non-cis self-identifiers and claim that ever since they made up some lovely new names, all the previously oppressed non-cis people are now freed from tyranny.

When in fact all that's happened is that it's become just another trend for teens to acquire for a while then drop when they grow up.

On the other hand, for the first time in their mostly miserable lives, the trans kids are at the cutting edge of fashion, and authentic in a way that the cool kids can never be. That's a happy thought.

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FredClogs said:

Anyway it all falls over when you get to these people...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furry_fandom#Sexual_...

"Plushophilia". Poor old Eeyore.

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It seems there are some people who find the term cisgender offensive. Specifically, some LGB (but not T) people object to it on the grounds that cis/trans is binary and their own gender identity doesn't neatly fit into one or the other category. Which makes some sense, but probably wouldn't be such a big issue, except the trans activists have now come up with the term "cisgender privilege" to describe the supposed unfair advantages that society confers on non-transgender people. So you have transgender activists shouting "Check your privilege!" at LGB activists with predictably messy consequences. If nothing else, identity politics is very entertaining if you are a moderately liberal conservative who doesn't read the Bible or the Daily Mail.

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TeamD said:

Wow! This whole subject is a complete warzone. Not that I am a fan of radical feminists because their agenda has never been about equality.

I seem to have started a culture war on PH by accident. Sorry about that.

Regarding "transgender", and taking into account my cis-privilege and the fact that I don't have a dog in this particular fight, the term seems to be so broadly defined that it probably includes me (I like to cook at home) and my sister (who is into extreme sports in a big way). Which possibly makes it a bit meaningless. You could have a form with thirty tick boxes under "Gender" and people would still complain that they can't find a box that suits them. Perhaps we should stick to "legally recognised gender", if it is actually necessary to record it at all. That should annoy everyone equally.

And would "normative" work for people who don't like being described as cisgender? It seems a little less judgemental than "normal".

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TeamD said:

I prefer to refer to myself as "Me"
Anything that doesn't upset or hurt other people is fine in my book. BTW my eldest son identifies himself as Bi at the moment, do I beat him for that? No!

That's fine, but I think this argument started over how trans people should refer to non-trans people, rather than how individuals refer to themselves. The problem some people have with "cis-" might subconciously have something to do with this:

http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/englis...

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plasticpig said:

Why do you need to tick a box in the first place? You mention ethnicity and that is a good comparison. In several European countries it's illegal to collect statistics on ethnicity. This is very much to do with equality. To be treated equally a persons race / religion / ethnicity / gender / sexuality is irrelevant.

Primary identity documents for starters. If you strip out every bit of information that someone somewhere might find offensive, the only bit you'll be left with is your name.

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ATG said:

Do you mind if I call you a massive arse?

I'm not sure that kind of language is entirely respectful towards the amply proportioned posterior community. And there are plenty of them in Norfolk. Especially Thetford.

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ATG said:

Is true. Grimes Graves is not a series of neolithic flint mines. That's just a PC cover story. In reality it is the bum prints left by a community picnic.

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I was a bit surprised to find that the incidence of "intersex" births in humans is estimated at around 1.7%. That's about ten times higher than I would have guessed.

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mph1977 said:

Exactly Randy - this is one of the key areas that the bigots refuse to accept the facts accepted by and position of the Scientific and Clinical communities on , when confusing and conflating anything to do with gender identity and sexuality in creating their world view of 'Normal' ( cis, hetero, 'nilla) and 'Perverts' ( LGBT and /or any kind of kinky )...

Possibly part of the confusion is due to a rather Victorian reluctance to use the word "sex" to describe the biological distinction between male and female. The OED defines gender as, among other things, "a euphemism for the sex of a human being". Certainly I did not understand the difference between sex and gender when I started this thread. I thought the two terms were interchangeable, and would particularly like to thank Flying Meeces for helping me understand a bit better what this whole debate is about.

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Einion Yrth said:

Indeed. Cubicles for the embarrassed, everyone else just gets on with it.

Unisex open plan changing rooms? No thanks. I don't want to be waving my chopper around in front of the ladies. Apart from anything else, they'd all laugh.

Probably the most practical answer is unisex toilets / changing rooms with individual cubicles for everyone, no shared spaces such as urinals or washing facilities. Then everyone can be as private as they like and gender issues don't arise. Problems are cost and capacity (your gym changing rooms are going to end up bigger than the gym, and the fees will go up), but people said the same thing about provision for the disabled.

Cue howls of outrage from the cottaging and voyeurist communities...

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ehonda said:

I honestly don't care how someone refers to themselves or how they refer to me, the thing that I don't understand is that it seems to me that people who define themselves outside of hetero/cis etc seem to be aiming for more pigeon holes. To my mind more pigeon holes = more exclusion and I can't see how that is in any way progressive or positive.
What's wrong with Person, surely that should be the goal?

I can't see that. I'm a man, sex male, gender masculine. It's fun. I do stereotypical man stuff like failing to light barbecues (where did I put the petrol can?), and electrocuting myself (sure I can fix this broken fusebox, just watch me). If I was born a woman and had made the effort to become a man (and by all accounts its a pretty epic effort) I would probably feel even more strongly about my gender identity. So being androgynous, neuter, "it", that doesn't really appeal.

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FlyingMeeces said:

Okay, basics first.

L, B and G stand for lesbian, gay and bisexual. They are terms which describe the gender of the person's preferred partner, in the context of their own gender. None of those are 'shifting' categories, and the people who fit into them number in the high hundreds of millions.

I thought I was starting to understand this, but now I'm confused again, as I understood the LGB thing to be based on sex rather than gender (having finally grasped the distinction between the two). Hence the bitter (and entertaining) war of words being fought between some of the nuttier LGB activists, TQ activists and radical feminists over which group is the most oppressed.

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I don't think it really needs explaining. But if you take the view (as argued by some animal rights philosophers) that "species" is just an artificial human construct used to oppress sentient beings who don't look like us, all bets are off and no sheep is safe any more. LBGTQIAAF? It's probably not a bad idea to draw the line at the boundary of our own species, but who gets to draw that line, and how? After all, seventy years ago homosexuals were about as well regarded by society as people who interfere with animals. You could go to prison for either.

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At a guess, both. The two aren't mutually exclusive.