Gender is not a social construct

[Relish in Chaos]

Or at least, they should specify that they mean gender roles and behaviour, rather than just gender itself.

Alright, so here's how it started. I was basically doing some research for a piece in English Language that I'd intended to do on the deconstruction of gender roles, when I came across this old thing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer

John Money: What the fuck? I would've thought such logical people as scientists would know not to mess around with people's lives like that, in the pursuit of an incredibly risky scientific theory. Not to mention the more-than-questionable stuff he made those twins do...

Anyway, I think this "experiment" essentially proves that something like bringing up as a child as a gender different to what they were born as proves (in transgendered people's favour, I might add; they don't have that condition because they happen to "just be an effeminate men", otherwise the majority of effeminate men and butch women would be transgendered) that, whether or not we lived in a world where gender was broken down to its most basic elements or done away all together, transgendered people would still exist. I mean, we already know that male and female brains are different, and that, on average, they can process things in different way (e.g. men are more likely to take risks than women, while women are better at multitasking).

For a relevant video game example, see Bridget from Guilty Gear: http://guilty-gear.wikia.com/wiki/Bridget

So what was my point? Well, I'm no psychologist (unlike others, I just don't have a good deal of prejudice clouding my judgement on things like this), but basically, I believe that all of gender and sex is on a scale, with androgyny being the medium between masculinity and femininity, while intersex is the medium between male and female. As reference, a micropenis in males and an enlarged clitoris in females can be intersexed characteristics. This is how I see it:

Gender: Mind

Gender identity: Mind & personal expression

Gender roles & behaviour: Social construct

Sex: Chromosomes and hormones (body & genitalia)

I hope I didn't offend anyone (although it shouldn't be that controversial an opinion), but I would greatly encourage others to participate in this thread and offer their viewpoints.

 

[Psykoma]

How I always saw it was a little bit different, but still (I think) overall similar:

Gender/Gender Identity (they were always synonymous to me): The sex your brain tells you that you are
Gender Expression: Personal expression.
Roles and behaviors: Social
Sex: Socially it's entirely what your primary and secondary sexual characteristics (penis, vagina, boobs) look like. Scientifically its a clusterfuck.

 

[Relish in Chaos]

How I always saw it was a little bit different, but still (I think) overall similar:

Gender/Gender Identity (they were always synonymous to me): The sex your brain tells you that you are
Gender Expression: Personal expression.
Roles and behaviors: Social
Sex: Socially it's entirely what your primary and secondary sexual characteristics (penis, vagina, boobs) look like. Scientifically its a clusterfuck.

Yeah, I always thought gender and gender identity were pretty much synonymous too, but personal expression was relevant to include in gender identity rather than just gender as a base concept itself. But I see sex as a mixture of chromosomes and hormones, although in practicality (or, let's just say, socially), people only seem to care about the genitalia and the general outside appearance. But like you said, scientifically, it's a clusterfuck; even the most womanly of women can have some kind of testicular remnant or something down there. My Science teacher told me that his friend had something like that; I can't quite remember all the details.

But just because a trans women doesn't have 100% female chromosomes doesn't mean I wouldn't consider her any less of a woman. She's a woman; she was just born with different genitalia. She had the hormones of a female, therefore she'd class as a female. I wouldn't even have to take into account the fact that her gender had told her she's female from the beginning, but that would only further prove my point.

Besides, when you think about it, no-one has 100% male or female chromosomes (or is it hormones), do they? We all start out as female in the womb, and then it's just a sliding scale from thereon. When you hit about three, you become aware of just what makes a boy different from a girl, and when you reach puberty, your gender identity really comes to the fore (in terms of personal expressions, thought processes, etc).

I believe someone else posted this here, and I agree with it:

 

[Relish in Chaos]

Also, I have a question. If a third gender and/or sex exists in some societies, what is it? I always considered "intersex" as something that just happened to fall in between male and female (as shown in the diagram above), rather than a new sex altogether. I mean, if that was the case, we'd have to consider "androgyny" another gender in and of itself.

Then again...we consider bisexual a seperate sexuality, and you could argue that, similarly (or not) to "intersex", it just happens to fall in between heterosexual and bisexual. But, as has been reinforced many times by experts, gender and sexuality are distinctly different concepts. And androgyny, in particular, is specifically a combination of masculinity and femininity, rather than gender neutrality (or, lack thereof, of gender = agender) - hence "andro" (male) + "gyne/gyno" (female) = "androgyne/androgyny".

Oh, and I only learned about this last week. Apparently, "transvestite" is falling out of use among the LGBT community because of the connotations to prostitutes and people that do it for sexual gratification (even though there's not necessarily anything wrong with the former if they do it out of their own free will, or the latter, since sex and legal fetishes are nothing to be ashamed of), gradually being replaced with the more common term of "crossdresser". Which is probably why numerous people have just started using "trans*", with the asterix representing transgender(ed) people and everything else related to breaking gender "norms" and whatnot.

But there are so many terms and definitions that can vary from person to person, I can sometimes understand how some people have trouble keeping up with them all, like the ever-expanding LGBT+ initialism. Language, eh?

EDIT: If you want to know what I am, I'm a cisgendered, gynosexual (as in, I'm attracted to femininity, regardless of their underlying genitalia) male. I guess I'm fairly masculine in my behaviour and thought processes (for one, most of my friends are male), but I don't really take any effort in asserting any kind of identity. I'm one of those people that could, but don't have the motivation to do so (e.g. picking a different hairstyle, experimenting with crossdressing).

 

[TWRule]

Sex is a arbitrary biological/scientific designation based on certain physiological features, DNA structure, etc. (that is to say, it is only a theoretical scientific category based loosely on the common-sense fact that some people have different body-types and genitalia than others.

Gender is very much a social construct that individuals can choose to buy into when constructing their own identities or not (though it is to some extent imposed upon us of course - I don't think of myself in terms of 'man' or woman', but I can't escape that most others will identify me as a 'man'). Even the fact that there are 2 commonly-recognized genders is a long-running social construct born from common-sense superimposing of gender/gender roles atop sex differences. This holds for gender roles as well, except that those are easier to step outside the mold on because they are so based around actions. Sexual orientation is just an outgrowth/development from the concept of gender. Again, anytime I say something is socially constructed, I mean anyone can choose to (or not to) take on the conceptual resources society provides to make up part of their own identity.

Personally, I simply acknowledge that science and society will label me as a male and a heterosexual man respectively, without ever telling myself that I really *am* those things; nor do I subscribe to any of their other categories as commonly defined. I am just myself, and I develop relationships with the persons (as such) I choose to.

 

[Angie7F]

I agree with the OP.

My guess is that intersex people are the ones where the parameter all meet around the middle?

 

[Batou667]

I agree with almost all of this, but surely sex is a binary in 99% of cases? You're either a man or you're a woman. Before anybody jumps down my throat about my "rigid" and "prescriptive" views, I don't thing sex necessarily says a damn thing about your orientation or gender role. You're still at perfect liberty to decide on those for yourself.

I think it's for that best that the view of people has moved away from the "gender is destiny" view that meant your genitalia informed what you could and couldn't do in life, how you were expected to behave socially, and limited your profession, voting rights and choice of sexual partners. But In claiming that EVERYTHING is arbitrary and on a sliding scale, I feel we've gone too far.

Sex is a binary. It also affects gender more than some progressives would be comfortable admitting. I'm willing to bet that in a future utopia where we have gender-neutral pronouns and all walks of life are equally available to everyone, people who are sexually male will still tend to as a whole exhibit more masculine traits as a result of having more testosterone, and will as a whole continue to be more suitable for physically demanding roles due to their on-average higher muscle mass and physical strength. Similarly, until we perfect test-tube baby technology, 100% of children will be born to sexually female people.

So to answer the OP, I think society polarises gender roles to an unnecessary and rigid degree by drawing unrealistically stark lines in the sand. But however subverted gender roles have become, they were based on the empirically correct notion that a) men are stronger than women and b) only women can give birth.

(As an aside, I recently saw a version of that "Gingerbread person" that suggested each of the axes should have a vertical "intensity" component as well, to take account of, for example, completely asexual people, or androgynes as opposed to hermaphrodites, and so on.)

 

[ClockworkPenguin]

I agree with almost all of this, but surely sex is a binary in 99% of cases? You're either a man or you're a woman. Before anybody jumps down my throat about my "rigid" and "prescriptive" views, I don't thing sex necessarily says a damn thing about your orientation or gender role. You're still at perfect liberty to decide on those for yourself.

I think it's for that best that the view of people has moved away from the "gender is destiny" view that meant your genitalia informed what you could and couldn't do in life, how you were expected to behave socially, and limited your profession, voting rights and choice of sexual partners. But In claiming that EVERYTHING is arbitrary and on a sliding scale, I feel we've gone too far.

Sex is a binary. It also affects gender more than some progressives would be comfortable admitting. I'm willing to bet that in a future utopia where we have gender-neutral pronouns and all walks of life are equally available to everyone, people who are sexually male will still tend to as a whole exhibit more masculine traits as a result of having more testosterone, and will as a whole continue to be more suitable for physically demanding roles due to their on-average higher muscle mass and physical strength. Similarly, until we perfect test-tube baby technology, 100% of children will be born to sexually female people.

So to answer the OP, I think society polarises gender roles to an unnecessary and rigid degree by drawing unrealistically stark lines in the sand. But however subverted gender roles have become, they were based on the empirically correct notion that a) men are stronger than women and b) only women can give birth.

(As an aside, I recently saw a version of that "Gingerbread person" that suggested each of the axes should have a vertical "intensity" component as well, to take account of, for example, completely asexual people, or androgynes as opposed to hermaphrodites, and so on.)

I think the problem is that people hear "it is a scale" and assume it must also be an even distribution. My gut (I have no data) tells me that something like sex probably has two massive peaks at either end of the scale, with tiny tails towards the centre. So close enough to binary in most peoples everyday experience, but not actually binary.

 

[Korenith]

The bit I'm having trouble with in the OP is the separation of gender, gender behaviour and gender identity. I'm not sure where the lines between these things can be drawn considering how nebulous the entire concept is. In particular defining gender as "mind" seems to suggest that the mind develops somehow separately from social influence which I don't believe is the case and "personal expression" would at least be partly a social construct because of subconscious conformity. The difficulty on the subject is working out where social construction begins and inherent personal characteristics end.

The bit about the sliding scale I think is probably true though and stamping binaries on the whole world is an outdated way of doing things.

 

[TWRule]

The 'scale' or spectrum models are misguided in my opinion - they were only conceived in reaction to the conventional binary system to vindicate the possibility of escaping rigid designation of one gender of the other (because of undesirable gender roles or expectations). That's not to say the conventional binary system, especially not it's usual content, is best, but even in a binary system you can allow for oscillations (perhaps I'm a woman in the context of one relationship or situation, and a man in another) between pronounced qualitative differences (say one's broad attitude/way of interacting with the world could be characteristic of a new definition of man or woman). The same applies for possible systems with more than 2 genders, where the 3rd (and/or 4th, and so on) gender is qualitatively unique and not merely some kind of mix or mean between the other 2. None of these necessarily need to be coupled with 'gender roles' as traditionally understood. If we were going to genderize ourselves at all, that seems like a more desirable way of conceiving of it so we aren't left with the choices of "man, woman, or 'something in-between'" (or an endless list of nebulous additional pc terms).

 

[tahrey]

/thread

Or in other words, "oh god not this again".
Also, purely in response to the headline, "no, of course it's not, if you're talking in pure, overly precise and binary black-and-white terms". Gender expression is PARTLY a social construct, but there's also quite a big genetic, instinctive, hormonal element. Otherwise you wouldn't get discernable differences in behaviour between the sexes in animals with comparitively very limited social structure, and certainly nothing resembling culture which is probably what you actually meant (as in "gender is not a cultural construct") - but yet you do.

However the core elements of inbuilt masculinity and femininity certainly do not share a 100% overlap with the typical human society or culture's idea of it, which piles all manner of other stuff on top... and said ideas are both different on various levels between different cultures, and even can be seen to shift a fair bit over time, including in some cases which sex is the more culturally dominant... or how many distinct spiritual sexes there are (i.e. it's not always just two).

And you do get the occasional "gay" and/or seemingly gender-confused animal, it's not just a human thing. So it's not even defined so much by your bodily sex.

 

[Headdrivehardscrew]

Also, I have a question. If a third gender and/or sex exists in some societies, what is it? I always considered "intersex" as something that just happened to fall in between male and female (as shown in the diagram above), rather than a new sex altogether. I mean, if that was the case, we'd have to consider "androgyny" another gender in and of itself.

Then again...we consider bisexual a seperate sexuality, and you could argue that, similarly (or not) to "intersex", it just happens to fall in between heterosexual and bisexual. But, as has been reinforced many times by experts, gender and sexuality are distinctly different concepts. And androgyny, in particular, is specifically a combination of masculinity and femininity, rather than gender neutrality (or, lack thereof, of gender = agender) - hence "andro" (male) + "gyne/gyno" (female) = "androgyne/androgyny".

There's this political spiel going on that pretty much rapes language and ruins people's brains with all sorts of politically correct drek that isn't quite scientific or anywhere near properly worked out or otherwise useful for anything other than to promote a certain way of thinking. At best, it empowers individuals that would otherwise fall through the grid, give up and die; at worst, it enables horrible cuntmuffins into acting as spokespeople for folks that would actually prefer to think and speak and act for themselves.

I am not sure where you're going (or coming from) with your 'third sex/gender' (AAAH MY LANGUAGE!!! IT HURTS ME BRAIN!) question, but, if sincere, I'll gladly add my tuppence.

In a number of cultures all around the world, the 'third sex' label is being slapped mostly on men acting like women and choosing to live as women. Most of the time it's really just effeminate men that, for whatever - personal, psychological or whatever - reason, choose to live their lives as women. Then there is this particular school of superficial thought that either outright rejects anything outside societal/cultural norms and just throws pretty much anything in the '3rd sex' drawer. It mostly contains effeminate males, but 'gay' and 'transwhatever' also get thrown in there, as the host culture does plain not care about scientific or politically exploitable facts, and it also does not care about the individuals in question. Public stances on this subject are usually openly hostile, but in the cover of the night, every freak gets a lot of attention, be that of a sexual or violent nature. It's pretty random, really. In India, you got the hijra, which might contain individuals with 'differently' appearing genitalia (i. e. intersexed conditions), or they might start out as perfectly healthy boys that then get their junk cut off in an 'initiation rite'. Last time I checked hijras tend not to live much of the good live, living off prostitution (pardon me, 'sex work') or superstitions to pay their bills. "Give me de monies or I'll show you my mutilated junk, bringing years of bad luck to you and all your loved ones!" sort of something along those lines, methinks.

We've been fiddling with plants and drosophila fruitcake flies for a while now, but that doesn't serve us much when addressing the very same fascinating subject with mammals (which includes us). X0 humans and mammals are usually females with ovaries, uterus and oviducts all in place, but generally no (or very little) eggs to make dem babies. XO drosophila will turn out as sterile males, which is a shitty and useless life, I hear. Still, we're engineering the crap out of them little buggers. It's of little to no use to us, since there are no sex hormones in insects. Yeah, I know. Bummer, that.

In our enlightened and evolved cultures, somewhat aesthetically pleasing individuals like Andrej Pejic can earn good money while looking all pretty made up, but, alas, it also allows them to spread stupidity and nonsense. I don't mind if he gets laid or what makes him happy, I think he's a fascinating creature. His views on communism, however, are ignorant at best and BOOMSHAKALAKA 'splosive at worst. Technically speaking, he's quite probably the most successful transvestite of our times. Most transvestites, though, are sexual deviants, some of them just desperate in getting it on and being happy, others are scary beasts. I don't care much what the LGBT crowd thinks on these issues, as long as it's not posing as scientific and as long as they don't mess with the DSM or the ICD, I am a happy camp camper.

Then there's God's special places on Earth, like Iran. Iran claims to have no gays, which is, of course, ludicrous. Based on way backwards (ever so slightly modified) Sharia law, males can (and will) get hanged from cranes or bridges, which is quite an evolution since I believe to remember it used to be just behadings, stabbings, stonings or having walls toppled on top of them. The non-existant gay men are supposedly allowed to 'become women', but I have severe issues taking anything uttered from behind or within a beard of war at face value or for granted. Since I have no first person experience on that one, and no matter what source for information you manage to open up, there's a lot of looney beard talk in just about no time at all. Funky all the way.

Then there's the actual intersex condition, which, from what I can gather, is generally not much fun at all. Think of an organism being indecisive on a cellular level, with some cells opting for the male route while others merrily remain female. Oh, yes, just in case you don't know this one already: Basically, we all start out being female, with the XY bunch of us mutating into hairy male manbeasts. That's very basic, but it tends to stick with people and their funny brains.

And that's just the very basic set of XX and XY, excluding the variety of things that can go wrong at that stage already. There's a number of things that can go wrong from the very beginning. And, yes, mutations in this bit are 'wrong', as they tend to come with a wide range of issues, infertility being the least harsh, all before judgement from outside is even considered. Go figure.

Then there's the phenomenon of little girls suddenly popping out balls and mutating into men at the onset of puberty. Yeah, that's not a surprise that goes well for most of the people involved. Less civilized societies can always resort to magic and miracles for weird ass stuff like that, and they seem to be coping nicely. Our more... complicated societies tend to mess with things and people and their heads until all our heads explode and everything turns to shit.

Then there's 'fake' girls which are absolutely XY, but they suffer from being 'immune' to their own man juice. So, that would be a proper 'man trapped in a woman's body' right there. But since we lug around those big brains of ours, a lot of how these things play out depends solely on a) loving people with brains around, b) professionals with hearts around and c)actually bothering with and taking care to raise the kid and provide for, not just selling its ass for the freak value - here's looking at you, India, China and plenty more countries, regions and places crawling with the pest that is the human race.

Most dogs we (want to) perceive as 'gay' are just following very primal urges. They don't think about it, as in 'at all'. There's no bigger plan. Just stick it into something or rub it against something until the urge goes away for a little while. I love dogs, but we, our societies and our brains don't quite work the same way. There are minor similarities we can exploit for better interaction and usefulness to each other, but a gay wolf would either just get expelled, shunned, ignored, killed or die happily after a fulfilled life with no directly genetically related offspring. For pretty much any organism, that is a real bummer and a problem. For us big-brainers, we can always live decent lives and try to adapt and adopt some other little human, in the hopes of raising it in the image of whatever happens to float around in our brain. Whatever floats our boat.

Hey. Stop wanking. I'm trying to contribute here.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Numerous problems with this.

Firstly, saying "gender isn't a social construct" is a contradiction in terms. If you want to invent new terminology, then fine, but don't expect anyone else to agree.

Anyway, I think this "experiment" essentially proves..

It proves nothing.

Dr. Money sexually abused Reimer because of his bizarre idea that being a girl meant his patient had to want to be passively receptive to boys. Also, Reimer was completely aware that he wasn't a normal girl, because at one point he had to urinate through a surgically constructed hole in his abdomen, and also because Money kept telling him, kept turning this slightly revolting brand of femininity into this overwhelming pressure which Reimer (quite naturally given what was being done to him) openly resented..

Doctor said "it's gonna be tough, you're gonna be picked on, you're gonna be very alone, you're not going to find anybody (unless you have vaginal surgery and live as a female)" And I thought to myself, you know I wasn't very old at the time, but it dawned on me that these people gotta be pretty shallow if that's the only thing they think I've got going for me ... If that's all they think of me, that they justify my worth by what I have between my legs, then I gotta be a complete loser.

Words to live by, if any were spoken..

I know people get obsessed over that case, but really.. I think most are just seeing what they want to see. It's nice to be told things you think you already know about yourself, even when it's a blatant lie.

We do have numerous examples of people who actually do grow up with "male brains" in female bodies, in the form of women with total androgen insensitivity syndrome, almost all of whom continue to identify socially as heterosexual women after their condition is revealed. It's very, very obvious that whatever differences do exist between male and female brains don't correspond to an understanding of gender identity. That is produced by socialization.

I'm glad that the controversy around David Reimer reduced the use of sex reassignment on intersexed children and those with genital injuries, but really.. people read way too much into the case. Money's methods were monstrous in retrospect, but at a time when medical professionals generally still believed therapy could cure homosexuality they probably made a degree of sense.

 

[Sandernista]

snip the big words

Bro, your mind is a social construct so everything that falls from that is therefore a social construct as well.

I see no problem in classifying gender as a social construct.

Herculine Barbin is a better case to study btw.

 

[BiscuitTrouser]

Most dogs we (want to) perceive as 'gay' are just following very primal urges. They don't think about it, as in 'at all'. There's no bigger plan. Just stick it into something or rub it against something until the urge goes away for a little while. I love dogs, but we, our societies and our brains don't quite work the same way. There are minor similarities we can exploit for better interaction and usefulness to each other, but a gay wolf would either just get expelled, shunned, ignored, killed or die happily after a fulfilled life with no directly genetically related offspring. For pretty much any organism, that is a real bummer and a problem. For us big-brainers, we can always live decent lives and try to adapt and adopt some other little human, in the hopes of raising it in the image of whatever happens to float around in our brain. Whatever floats our boat.

Hey. Stop wanking. I'm trying to contribute here.

For a closer to home example the bonobo is an interesting primate. It treats sex as a social activity for ALL situations. A male fighting you for a mate? Hormones making a fight inevitable? Have gay monkey sex until that feeling goes away and then take turns! One female accidentally hits another females baby while playing? Have lesbian monkey sex to release the anger and reaffirm the social bond. For the Bonobo sex with any other Bonobo is acceptable. Unlike the dog however it carries meaning. You do it to show a group bond, only with those you want to befriend or release tension from, ANY tension, aggressive or otherwise. Its like our version of conversation or talking it out as well as for reproductive purposes. The Bonobo is truly the most direct example of a hedonistic society. Pleasure is the tool to solve all problems. Making everyone happy and worn out solves a lot of their inter group problems. Its a closer strike to home than the dog since for them sex does carry emotional meaning. They just assign it one of "A good friend would make me feel good!" and extend "feel good" to sexual as well as emotional. Its quite interesting.

 

[Revnak_v1legacy]

Numerous problems with this.

Firstly, saying "gender isn't a social construct" is a contradiction in terms. If you want to invent new terminology, then fine, but don't expect anyone else to agree.

Anyway, I think this "experiment" essentially proves..

It proves nothing.

Dr. Money sexually abused Reimer because of his bizarre idea that being a girl meant his patient had to want to be passively receptive to boys. Also, Reimer was completely aware that he wasn't a normal girl, because at one point he had to urinate through a surgically constructed hole in his abdomen, and also because Money kept telling him, kept turning this slightly revolting brand of femininity into this overwhelming pressure which Reimer (quite naturally given what was being done to him) openly resented..

Doctor said "it's gonna be tough, you're gonna be picked on, you're gonna be very alone, you're not going to find anybody (unless you have vaginal surgery and live as a female)" And I thought to myself, you know I wasn't very old at the time, but it dawned on me that these people gotta be pretty shallow if that's the only thing they think I've got going for me ... If that's all they think of me, that they justify my worth by what I have between my legs, then I gotta be a complete loser.

Words to live by, if any were spoken..

I know people get obsessed over that case, but really.. I think most are just seeing what they want to see. It's nice to be told things you think you already know about yourself, even when it's a blatant lie.

We do have numerous examples of people who actually do grow up with "male brains" in female bodies, in the form of women with total androgen insensitivity syndrome, almost all of whom continue to identify socially as heterosexual women after their condition is revealed. It's very, very obvious that whatever differences do exist between male and female brains don't correspond to an understanding of gender identity. That is produced by socialization.

I'm glad that the controversy around David Reimer reduced the use of sex reassignment on intersexed children and those with genital injuries, but really.. people read way too much into the case. Money's methods were monstrous in retrospect, but at a time when medical professionals generally still believed therapy could cure homosexuality they probably made a degree of sense.

Oh thank God. I was worried I'd have to explain this. Yeah, you're completely right here. This case proves absolutely nothing for so many reasons. First, David was still treated as a male for the first year or so of his life. That is long enough for a person to develop a gender identity. Second, it's one person. Third, all of the terrible methodologies this guy used must be taken into account. He did a piss poor job of raising someone to be a girl.

 

[Epic Fail 1977]

Gender expression is PARTLY a social construct, but there's also quite a big genetic, instinctive, hormonal element. Otherwise you wouldn't get discernable differences in behaviour between the sexes in animals with comparitively very limited social structure, and certainly nothing resembling culture which is probably what you actually meant (as in "gender is not a cultural construct") - but yet you do.

However the core elements of inbuilt masculinity and femininity certainly do not share a 100% overlap with the typical human society or culture's idea of it, which piles all manner of other stuff on top... and said ideas are both different on various levels between different cultures, and even can be seen to shift a fair bit over time, including in some cases which sex is the more culturally dominant... or how many distinct spiritual sexes there are (i.e. it's not always just two).

Thank you, internet person who is not talking shite. You give me hope.

 

[Brad Shepard]

Why is this the hot topic right now? Look, if you want to define yourself, dont make it with gender or sex or what the hell ever, find something OTHER then trying to say you are a male lesbian or whatever and have a hobby you can define yourself with or something.

 

[Cecilo]

All I really will say about any of it is that if you feel you are something other than you are. Then maybe it is as you think it is. No one can tell you what you are or aren't. If you let those people do so. It is on you, not them. You decide for yourself, you don't need people's approval.

Particularly not random people who barely know you or don't know you at all.

 

[Darken12]

The David Reimer case is held as a support of gender constructs as a biological thing, but it suffers from a very, very glaring fact: a child raised as female without hormonal replacement therapy will never develop female secondary sexual characteristics, and even a child raised as male but with no testicles will also never develop male secondary sexual characteristics (which is the entire point of castrati). Without developing secondary sexual characteristics in a society that is rigidly divided into binary gender constructs, depression is almost a foregone conclusion. David Reimer wasn't depressed because he somehow knew he was originally male, he was depressed because his body didn't comply with the rigid standards of neither masculinity nor femininity, and had no sexual hormones to speak of, and therefore he was instantly Othered by society. This is very, very common with intersex patients.

Gender constructs are arbitrary, but they are built upon biological factors (on purpose, to lend legitimacy to the whole idea), and as such they are extremely hard to change or destroy. Sex is what is biological. Gender is all the things we pile on top of sexual characteristics, and all the harmful social baggage we associate to the sexes.