What's Makes A Man/Woman?

[Programmed_For_Damage]

http://www.shavemagazine.com/women/10-Psychological-Differences-Between-Men-and-Women

https://stanmed.stanford.edu/2017spring/how-mens-and-womens-brains-are-different.html

There's that for starters.

Social constructs aside, there's plenty of psychological differences between men and women. But, basically, my view is that "a man/woman should be able to do as they please (bar causing harm to others), and while certain interests/activities/careers will appeal more to one gender than the other, either gender should be able to do as they will." So, for instance, stands to reason there'll be more male than female soldiers, or more female nurses than male nurses, but there should be no shame or barrier to anyone in doing what they want to do. And I say this as a hetrosexual male who had a phase of collecting skydancer and sailor moon dolls as a kid alongside other action figures, and likes MLP, while also loving stuff like James Bond.

I've never see a /thread worthy post so fast.

There are some biological differences whether people want to admit it or not, and there is nothing wrong with that. I personally think difference in the sexes should be at least accepted and ideally celebrated. There's nothing wrong with acknowledging that some professions, interests, or hobbies might be more widely liked by one sex or another. That being said, people should be free to express themselves in any way that want without fear of retribution regardless of their sex or gender.

I totally concur with the above. I really can't abide by the "everyone is equal and everyone is as good as everyone else" type philosophy. It's simply not true from a biological and physiological standpoint. Why is the trend to try and pretend these differences don't exist and just celebrate them? The historical problem is more that what were considered "feminine" qualities have been undervalued and belittled, rather than being encouraged and accepted. Case and point "pussy" being used as a derogatory term for someone who is "weaker than". When I was a boy growing up there was no greater insult than being told "don't be a girl". I tell both my daughters regularly to not let anyone tell them they're "just a girl" and to show them what girls are capable of. Sorry, I think I'm soapboxing and have gotten off topic.

Anyhoo as a 100% assure of myself heterosexual male, this song have always stuck with me on an existential level as to what it means to be a "man". It was written back in 1982 and it is as current as it was back then.

 

[Drathnoxis]

And I say this as a hetrosexual male

Wait, what?! Oh man, this is like when I found out erttheking wasn't black. I could have sworn your profile said female all this time.

OT:

I think gender is mostly a social construct and is pretty unimportant to me, personally, but these discussions are borderline politics and never turn out well.

 

[demoman_chaos]

Then biologists are uniformly SJWs because they'll tell you what I did. I learned this shit in middle school bio back in the 90's. Didn't you?

Your lack of imagination is not Kissing Sunlight's fault or responsibility. Don't take your hang-ups out on her because that's not cool.

Pretty sure you are talking out of your ass about that. The 90's was a time well before all the "Transgender" stuff got any attention, back before the idea of "gender is a social construct" was a thing. "I identify as ____" wasn't a thing. That shit didn't start until this decade.

As for "lack of imagination" I have to wonder what the hell you are on about. This isn't a matter of make-believe, but one of demonstrable evidence. Unless you are so deluded that you think that Bruce Jenner can suddenly give birth now and that having your reproductive bits reshaped also changes the chromosomes in every cell in your body then what are you trying to dispute here?

 

[demoman_chaos]

Certainty is not the same thing as correctness.

Good science changes over time and remains certain of nothing because every model is inherently falsifiable. Your rhetoric treats science as scripture: rigid, unchanging, and not to be questioned. If you can't conceive of your pre-existing notions being mistaken, then you lack imagination.

Correction: Kaitlyn Jenner. You said earlier that you wouldn't dead name trans people. That was either a simple slip-up just now or you outed yourself as a liar. Pick one.

Funny how you didn't address WHY I call your claim out as nonsense.

Funny how you don;t address any of the facts I presented or provide any reason why we should doubt them.

Funny how you are trying to call me a liar for calling Bruce Bruce when I specifically said, and I quote myself directly here:
"People should be polite and refer to the person as the other gender (Unless they are a bitchy **** about it, at which point I'm calling them their birth gender out of spite)."
Bruce has done quite a lot of making an ass of himself over him trying to be "Kaitlyn" so because of that I call him Bruce out of spite for his cuntiness. It is the same reason I am respectful towards religious folks until they start making an ass of themselves over their religion (at which point I go into full piss-take mode).

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Man: courage, strength, generosity, the act of competition.
Woman : kindness, beauty, softness, the act of soothing.


There, solved!

Except that there are plenty of men who are kind, or care about their appearance, or "soft", or soothing. And there are plenty of women who are courageous, or strong, or generous, or competitive.

So, except for how you're wrong, you're right!

 

[demoman_chaos]

Alright, you want to make it like that, I think we're done here. Thread's been derailed enough.

OT: Kissing Sunlight, to make up for the last few posts of off-topicness, here's [https://www.glaad.org/transgender/resources] a link to GLAAD's directory of trans resources.

Funny how you carved just that line from the post and ignored the rest. Could you at least TRY to be even a little honest for once?

If you are being a **** I will find the thing that pisses you off most to exploit because "Fuck you." For example, I have told several cunty Muslims that Mohammed takes pig-dick in ass specifically because it is the way to rustle their jimmies to the max. If you are being a shit about being "trans" I'm going to call you what you were born as specially to piss you off. Bruce was a twat, so he can bite a gorilla's gonads.

You cut out the explanation, which clarifies that I am not calling you a **** but explaining that I optimize insults based on what the jerk I am insulting would find most insulting.


Funny how you literally ignored every single point I made. Here is the complete list.

Quite a lot. Humans are a sexually dimorphic species. That means men/women are quite different, and this stems from them have different roles in the family which compliment each other to make a greater whole that the separate parts.

Physically men are generally taller, shoulders are broader, they have about 50% more upper body strength, 30% more lower body strength, and are all around simply more physically capable. Men mentally are more object focused (studies with babies show the male babies spent more time looking at objects while the females looked more at faces) and are better at physical work and tasks "outside the camp" while women are far better in terms of the social hierarchy and tending to issues "In the camp." The "Social constructs" are embedded in our DNA and exist for a very good reason.

One thing you need to understand though, you will never be a woman. No matter how much surgery you have you will never have a womb, never have eggs, never have a period, never get pregnant, your physical body will still be male, and even if you spend millions on cosmetic surgery to get all of the above your DNA will still read Male. Gender is genetic, it is physical, and it is mental. Don't delude yourself into thinking you will ever be a true woman, because you genuinely can't.

Bear all that in mind, because a lot of people refuse to acknowledge this fact. However, if you take the time to factor in all of the above and truly spend the time you HAVE to for something this major and still feel like you are in the <0.03% of people (assuming you are a Yank and accepting the "1 million trans" stat I saw somewhere at face value) who are truly Trans, do what your heart tells you.

-

No doubt genetics is a complex subject, and often plays a large role in sexuality as well as transgenderism (though upbringing also plays a huge factor in the development of the brain, fetishes often have roots in childhood experiences). The brain is a curious thing, but mental issues are not physical ones (While the brain is entirely physical, mental and physical health are separate issues). Physically and genetically speaking someone born male is and always will be male (unless they start REALLY young, at which point they may have the physical build of a woman but will still be genetically male and won't develop female reproductive organs no matter how soon after birth you start treatments).

That is the main point I want to make and that so many people refuse to accept. People should be polite and refer to the person as the other gender (Unless they are a bitchy **** about it, at which point I'm calling them their birth gender out of spite), but the transgender person needs to bear in mind that they are and will always be their birth gender.

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"Gender Expression" doesn't change your genetics or your physical make up. Your skeleton doesn't change because you put on a dress. Wearing a wig doesn't make your shoulders suddenly less broad.

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The 90's was a time well before all the "Transgender" stuff got any attention, back before the idea of "gender is a social construct" was a thing. "I identify as ____" wasn't a thing. That shit didn't start until this decade.

-

Funny how you have to resort to a microscopic organism (Freshwater Ciliata) which reproduces asexually normally to find something with more than 2. Furthermore the 7 "sexes" amount to little more than a single gene difference and the only thing that makes that gene matter at all is that two of the same type cannot mate (An A can breed with B-G but not another A). This hardly compares to any multi-celled organism, let alone a sexually-dimorphic species like humans.

Cut a few bits of fluff out, but otherwise everything is intact. You addressed literally nothing I said.

 

[Trunkage]

snip

So this is how I've read your discussion with Beetle. Take into account that I'm distilling paragraphs into a couple of points. You say that your chromosone are the determinant of your sex. Beetle says that your genitalia is also a determinant (as the can be different, natural and surgically.) You say gender expression isn't real and is determined by your sex only.

Putting what you said into practice - if a man transitions to a woman. Has a vagina and breasts and not a womb or eggs. That makes them a man. Beetle says that makes them a woman. Does that some up your message?

 

[demoman_chaos]

So this is how I've read your discussion with Beetle. Take into account that I'm distilling paragraphs into a couple of points. You say that your chromosone are the determinant of your sex. Beetle says that your genitalia is also a determinant (as the can be different, natural and surgically.) You say gender expression isn't real and is determined by your sex only.

Putting what you said into practice - if a man transitions to a woman. Has a vagina and breasts and not a womb or eggs. That makes them a man. Beetle says that makes them a woman. Does that some up your message?

Not even remotely close. Read my last post again, it has everything compiled together. There are FAR more differences between males and females besides what reproductive bits they have.

 

[RedRockRun]

What makes a man or a woman? Different chromosome, different hormone balances, different bone structure, different muscle and fat distribution, different reproductive organs, and so on.

I used to be of the belief that gender dysphoria was a biological disorder, but the more I looked into studies on the differences in male and female neurochemistry, the less confident I felt in my belief as the body of research - small as it is - seems inconclusive. I shifted my opinion to one of gender dysphoria being a mental illness like depression, and like depression it alters the way one feels, thinks about and sees one's self, and acts.

That being said, I believe that it should be treated as a mental illness and not normalized, as the studies I have read suggest high rates of suicidality in transgender people regardless of background or personal experience. In other words, suicide rates are not mitigated by gender reassignment and hormone therapy.

It is a mystery to me why mental health is still a taboo subject in this day and age of legal gay marriage - more so when it's seen as socially acceptable for children to undergo gender reassignment.

OP, I suggest you go to Psychology Today and look for a therapist who has experience helping people with gender dysphoria and later, a psychologist who can administer a psychological evaluation to determine a diagnosis which will aid a psychiatrist in prescribing medication.

The statistics show that you have at least a 1/5 chance of attempting suicide, and though I don't know you, I do not wish to see you add to that statistic.

 

[Souplex]

1. Gender is a social construct.
2. You do not feel like you are a man.
3. If woman is a social construct, do you feel like it?

That's a good question. The answer is "Yes". One thing I have done is to look back in the past and realized all the different things I had gravitated to that was feminine. Then I scolded myself for doing it and stopped doing it.

Well I think you have the answer then.

 

[KissingSunlight]

If you are being a **** I will find the thing that pisses you off most to exploit because "Fuck you."

Alright, you want to make it like that, I think we're done here. Thread's been derailed enough.

OT: Kissing Sunlight, to make up for the last few posts of off-topicness, here's [https://www.glaad.org/transgender/resources] a link to GLAAD's directory of trans resources.

First, thank you for the link. I am going to check it out after I finish posting here.

I am looking for a variety of opinions about this. Demoman_Chaos is technically correct. Regardless of how much hormone treatments and surgeries, my DNA would reflect that I was a man. However, there is a reason why transgender people say that they feel trapped in a body that's not their's. It is a more mental/emotional issue. Should it be considered a mental illness? I'll refer to something that my psychology professor once told the class: "It's not a problem. Until it becomes a problem." If body modifications and hormone treatment helps someone with gender dysphoria, I don't see any reason why that person shouldn't receive it.

Please keep the responses coming. Hopefully, I won't be the only person learning something from it.

 

[KissingSunlight]

1. Gender is a social construct.
2. You do not feel like you are a man.
3. If woman is a social construct, do you feel like it?

That's a good question. The answer is "Yes". One thing I have done is to look back in the past and realized all the different things I had gravitated to that was feminine. Then I scolded myself for doing it and stopped doing it.

Well I think you have the answer then.

Actually, this response was something I was thinking about all day, after I posted it. Right now, I am thinking how far should I go. If all I am doing is conforming to society's standards and constructs.

 

[Trunkage]

So this is how I've read your discussion with Beetle. Take into account that I'm distilling paragraphs into a couple of points. You say that your chromosone are the determinant of your sex. Beetle says that your genitalia is also a determinant (as the can be different, natural and surgically.) You say gender expression isn't real and is determined by your sex only.

Putting what you said into practice - if a man transitions to a woman. Has a vagina and breasts and not a womb or eggs. That makes them a man. Beetle says that makes them a woman. Does that some up your message?

Not even remotely close. Read my last post again, it has everything compiled together. There are FAR more differences between males and females besides what reproductive bits they have.

I did read it. That is what I got from it.
This is how you come off from that post. You are born a sex and you stay that sex. Let me be clear. I wouldn't be arguing that a transitioned woman can do everything a cis-woman can.
What I got from what you are saying, that becuase you can surgically add mammory gland or a womb, they can't be classed as female.

Now if I've got this incorrect, specifically point it out. Becuase I'm trying really hard to read it any other way, and I don't see it.

 

[Terminal Blue]

I am going to attempt to crowdsource my existential crisis.

If you don't know, I recently accepted that I was transgender. Right now, I am figuring out I am just simply gender nonconforming or I am a woman in a man's body.

So, first things first, well done for getting this far. I know everything seems overwhelming and terrifying now, but it will get better and there is a loving community out there who will support you. Don't worry about being uncertain either, it is a long journey whichever road you chose, and you will have plenty of time to figure things out.

So, you've asked a very complex question, to answer in detail let's break down some of the different ways of defining a man and a woman, starting with sex (that is to say, the physical differences between male and female bodies).

Chromosomal Sex - Whether or not a person has the special gene (SRY) which usually causes the body to develop into a male body. Normally, the SRY gene is found in the Y chromosome, but not always.

Gonadal Sex - Whether or not a person has testes or ovaries (or neither). Since these produce most of the hormones which masculinize or feminize the body, they are usually (but not always) associated with being male or female.

Morphological Sex - What the doctor decides you are when you pop out of the womb or appear on the ultrasound scan, based on what your external genitals look like. They might decide you are male, female or intersexed, and this will be recorded on your initial birth certificate. We sometimes call this being "male bodied" or "female bodied". If you want, or feel it is necessary, you can change some parts of your morphological sex with hormones and surgery to better match your gender identity or help you to be accepted in society.

In our society, only the last one is really important to anyone except doctors and scientists. It's just important to realise that even sex, which seems very simple, is actually quite complicated and things don't always line up smoothly. At the end of the day, we all end up looking a little different even from people of the same sex as us, and that's because we have slightly different things going on in our bodies.

Legal sex - In most developed countries, people are allowed to change the sex on their birth certificate. There may be certain requirements for this to happen, but once it does happen they are legally of the sex on their birth certificate (even if they are morphologically different). The only time it's legal to treat them differently is when it is directly relevant to their physical bodies.

Sexual Identity - Some people believe that gender identity is caused by differences in the body (that there is a physical part of the brain which makes a person feel male or female) and thus that people have a sexual identity rather than a gender identity. This theory is a little questionable now in the scientific world, but there is still some evidence to back it up and some people still very much feel that it describes their lives and experience. If you're one of those people, more power to you.

Now let's move onto gender, which is a lot more complicated.

Gender Roles - The set of prescriptive rules which govern what men and women are "supposed" to be like. The script which tells a person how to be a man or a woman in any given society. The concept of roles is a bit outdated in academia, but it's useful here as a shorthand to describe the way in which gender is imposed on people as an arbitrary standard they have to live up to. A lot of people now see gender roles as just another part of gender expression.

Gender Identity - The internal feeling of being one gender, the other, both, or neither. This is often the hardest thing to explain to people who aren't transgender because they don't experience it in the same way. Basically, our current understanding is that as children grow up they become aware that the people around them are either men or women and they unconsciously start to see themselves as men or women too. This identification is very deeply rooted in a person's psyche, like sexual object choice (being gay or straight).

Gender Expression - How a person appears and behaves in public. How they dress and look, and whether they are recognised as male or female (or as neither) by others. Gender expression doesn't necessarily line up with gender identity, people can cross dress while still identifying with their birth sex, or people can be gender non-conforming. Also, transgender people who have transitioned to another gender won't necessarily be gender conforming, a transwoman might still wish or feel comfortable presenting as very butch or masculine, just like a cisgender woman might.

The important thing to remember is that even if gender is a social construct, that doesn't mean it's not "real". Lots of social constructs are "real". Money is a social construct, for example, and yet it impacts all our lives every day. I personally don't believe there is enough scientific evidence to suggest that sexual/gender identity has a physical cause, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist as a feeling which you experience acutely and which affects your life (and indeed everyone else's life, although they may not be aware of it since they never experience it as a "problem"). Also, gender being a "social construct" doesn't mean that gender identity (or any other part of gender) is a choice. If gender is a social construct, then it was here before you were born, you didn't choose to be born into a world with gender, you didn't choose to identify with one gender or another (because most of that happened before you were fully conscious). What you can do is choose how to live, just like a gay person can choose to live in the closet all their lives, to be openly and outspokenly fabulous, or anything in between. Your "choice" is to decide what kind of life is going to feel most enjoyable and authentic to you, and then try to live it.

A lot of people are going to have opinions on that, and sometimes it will hurt to hear them and make you doubt yourself. The thing to remember is that no cis person actually understands what you're going through or what this is like, the vast majority have as much knowledge on the subject as I do on how to operate a nuclear reactor and those who have learned anything have done so by listening to trans people talking about their experiences. The rest, you can safely ignore.

 

[renegade7]

I think at one point in our history the difference could pretty clearly have been explained in terms of physical abilities and reproductive differences, because our societies so strongly depended on having a ready supply of people who were able to fill the roles implied by those differences, ie, people who were strong enough to fight and perform hard labor on a regular basis, and people who were able to focus on having and raising children.

But I think that as our society gets further and further away from the state of nature, it becomes increasingly anachronistic. We don't need to set aside half the population to be dedicated to child-raising when children that are born have a near perfect chance of surviving at least into adulthood, and we don't need to set aside another half of the population for hard labor when most of that can be automated, and in a world with baby formula and IVF - and in particular where having children has become a liability at both the individual and social levels- we're on a pretty clear trajectory to a point where we won't really need the biology at all.

But that's enough waxing philosophical, let's get into debunking some evopsych!

Quite a lot. Humans are a sexually dimorphic species. That means men/women are quite different, and this stems from them have different roles in the family which compliment each other to make a greater whole that the separate parts.

The modern construction of the family is only a few thousand years old, being a product of the agricultural era. For most of our biological history, humans were promiscuous. The idea of a family unit simply wasn't present in our evolutionary background.

Physically men are generally taller, shoulders are broader, they have about 50% more upper body strength, 30% more lower body strength, and are all around simply more physically capable.

I know what statistics you're referring to, and keep in mind that those tests were done with athletes, so the results are a bit skewed. In non-athletes, the difference is smaller.

As for extending a difference in ability to provide force into "physically more capable", that's something that's much less certain among sports scientists and basically falls down to how you want to define "physically capable": https://www.livestrong.com/article/286883-muscular-endurance-men-vs-women/

Still, while it's an interesting biological curiosity, it doesn't have a lot of relevance in a world where the vast majority of the population is sedentary and doesn't appreciably rely on physical ability.

Men mentally are more object focused (studies with babies show the male babies spent more time looking at objects while the females looked more at faces)

Nope. While some older research did reach these conclusions, more recent research has contradicted them. These differences exist from toddler years onward, but do not exist in babies less than a year old https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3766397/

The infant results showed no sex-related preferences; infants preferred faces of men and women, regardless of whether they were real or doll?s faces. Similarly, adults did not show sex-related preferences for social versus non-social stimuli, but, unlike infants, they preferred faces of the opposite sex over objects. These results challenge claims of an innate basis for sex-related preferences for toy and real stimuli preferences (Connellan et al., 2000) and suggest that sex-related preferences result from maturational and social development, which continues into adulthood.

and are better at physical work

Again, "physical work" needs to be defined. There are pretty clear differences in very specific tasks, generally favoring strength in men and dexterity in women. But this doesn't translate well to real-world performance on a realistic task.

Mathematical skill is one such task that gets brought up often by people who want to make this point (curiously, I've yet to see it brought up by a person who actually does possess any mathematical skill of their own), with the justification being that men can outperform women at tasks involving recalling strings of data (numbers and syllables) and spatial reasoning. However, no significant difference appears when it comes to performance on actual math tests, because math is an activity that involves all of a person's faculties and deficits in one area may be made up by strengths in others.

And just to drive the point home while I'm on the subject, I teach basic physics and calculus at the college level. I've yet to have a class where the average female score was lower than the average male score.

And none of that is to say "Women and men are exactly the same in every single way", my point is that if you want to gain any meaningful understanding of male/female sex differences you need to approach the issue with a lot more nuance and context.

and tasks "outside the camp" while women are far better in terms of the social hierarchy and tending to issues "In the camp."

What does that even mean?

This is the major problem with evolutionary psychology: since its predictions are often vague, people can read into it whatever they want, and that's how you get people making evolutionary arguments about modern gender politics while ignoring much more proximate influences.

The "Social constructs" are embedded in our DNA and exist for a very good reason.

Except when they aren't. The problem with this biological argument is that it can't account for counter-examples. For instance, if women evolved to nurture children, then why do fewer women than men want children: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/actually-men-have-always-wanted-children-more-than-women/article23681771/?arc404=true and furthermore, why do so many women lack interest in having children at all, and why is interest in having children so dependent on social factors like education and wealth? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_childlessness#Statistics_and_research

No matter how much surgery you have you will never have a womb,

Unless that surgery includes implanting a womb? There's no biological reason that it shouldn't be possible. The scientific community doesn't just spend all their time banging rocks together, you know.

never have eggs, never have a period, never get pregnant,

See above. This will be true up and until the moment someone successfully implants a working uterus into a transwoman. Then what will the goalpost-movers say, I wonder...

Also, there are plenty of women who don't menstruate (either voluntarily or otherwise) or will never be pregnant (again, voluntarily or otherwise).

your physical body will still be male,

How so? If it does everything a female body does up to whatever point OP desires it to, then the difference is just semantic.

and even if you spend millions on cosmetic surgery to get all of the above your DNA will still read Male. Gender is genetic,

Geneticists would disagree with you. The current understanding is that gender identity is genetic, but gender itself (ie the way that gender identity manifests in terms of behavior) is socially dependent.

Basically, gender identity is not controlled by a single gene like an on/off switch, it's determined by an entire hierarchy of genes, starting with the basic sex determination gene (the one that determines if you develop testicles instead of ovaries during prenatal development) and then going down from there. Usually, the lower genes in the hierarchy will all match the sex-determination gene, but each gene in the hierarchy can nudge the entire gender system in the other direction, with the result being that the gender identity falls on a spectrum.

https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2017/01/02/sex-gender-spectrum-genetics-help-determine-gender-identity/
http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2016/gender-lines-science-transgender-identity/

The World Health Organization explicitly states:

Gender, typically described in terms of masculinity and femininity, is a social construction that varies across different cultures and over time.

http://www.who.int/genomics/gender/en/index1.html

it is physical, and it is mental. Don't delude yourself into thinking you will ever be a true woman, because you genuinely can't.

If you circularly define "woman" as "person who was born biologically female" then sure, that's true, but I kind of thought we were talking about science here.

(assuming you are a Yank and accepting the "1 million trans" stat I saw somewhere at face value)

Okay, this is just a little pet peeve of mine, but don't go around insisting that your arguments are based on science while at the same time insisting without evidence of your own that the scientific consensus is wrong. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender#United_States_2