Why does virtually every "non-binary" gender go back to m/f?

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Gender is a human construct on how such placement in breeding means you have to look, behave, dress, work, and live or else get ostracized by the rest of society who are too small-minded to accept anything outside the stupid rules society puts up to keep everyone in line.

No, it really isn't. You are either male or female. How you dress, or act isn't going to change that. If you were born 'John' and want to be called 'Jane", I will respect your wishes. You can make cosmetic alterations all you want, but it won't change your DNA. That decides what your gender is.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

Gender is a human construct on how such placement in breeding means you have to look, behave, dress, work, and live or else get ostracized by the rest of society who are too small-minded to accept anything outside the stupid rules society puts up to keep everyone in line.

No, it really isn't. You are either male or female. How you dress, or act isn't going to change that. If you were born 'John' and want to be called 'Jane", I will respect your wishes. You can make cosmetic alterations all you want, but it won't change your DNA. That decides what your gender is.

No, it provably doesn't. This is a known medical fact. Also yes, there is a difference between gender and sex ... because we see it everyday. Whether through social norms, enculturation, early childhood associations, or neuroscience. Gender is not sex, that is plain enough to see by walking outside.

If you go travelling, different gender norms and enculturation of ideas of gender. Historically in the same culture ... different gender norms. Women are not like women in Victorian society, and Victorian women aren't like Elizabethan women, and so on. Unless you'd like to make a convincing argument how your genetics informs the correct and proper way to sidesaddle. Pretty sure having two X chromosomes doesn't inform one that they should take their drinks in the parlour. So as not to be seen drinking in the company of men. That would be most unbecoming and a bane against one's anglocentrimosome.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

This is a known medical fact.

Site your sources please. I could quote a thousand different texts and journals that demonstrate how your DNA determines your gender. Physically and mentally you can be anyone you want, but genetically, that is something you can't change.

 

[Silvanus]

Site your sources please. I could quote a thousand different texts and journals that demonstrate how your DNA determines your gender. Physically and mentally you can be anyone you want, but genetically, that is something you can't change.

No, you couldn't, unless perhaps you substituted gender for sex.

You cannot change your genes. When was the last time you inspected somebody's chromosomes when determining their gender? Or did you, perhaps, use other signifiers-- body shape, voice, biological characteristics, even self-identification?

Sex (not gender) is primarily determined by chromosomes. Note, "primarily"; this is not absolute or uniform. However, how something is defined is quite different from how it is determined at birth: it is primarily defined by body shape, body function, chemistry, brain structure, and dozens of other characteristics. Not a single one is present 100% of the time, and many of them can be changed.

I can imagine people observing those frogs, lizards or other organisms that can change biological sex, and insisting that they haven't done so because they haven't changed DNA. Nonsensical rubbish.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

Site your sources please. I could quote a thousand different texts and journals that demonstrate how your DNA determines your gender. Physically and mentally you can be anyone you want, but genetically, that is something you can't change.

That's not what you said. You said your genes determine your gender. They do not. Plenty of cases where even in non-trans individuals where a person may have always thought they were either male or female until determined to be intersex. Moreover, your genome does change. It's called horizontal gene transfer. Believed to be one of the key components of evolution.

 

[Terminal Blue]

when i hear the large form gender discussion and the variations on the subject it boggles the mind because it doesn't really make sense to me.

This much is clear. However, that doesn't mean it makes sense to noone else. Remember that personal incredulity is not an effective measure of the explanatory power of theory.

I refer to sex often because SEX is far more grounded and reasonable then money's idea

Okay, so we're off to a pretty bad start already.

Firstly, Dr. Money did not invent the concept of gender or of a sex/gender distinction. The concepts of sex and gender are at least a few centuries old in English (you can draw the line in several places, personally I'd go for the early 17th century).

Secondly, Dr. Money's conceptualisation of gender was an essentialist, Freudian one based around heterosexuality and activity/passivity. He did have an essential concept of gender grounded in biology, specifically, the presence or lack of a penis which he believed would determine a child's psychological view of the world. This resulted in a fundamentally insulting view of women in which the process of becoming psychologically female revolved around abuse and learning to "bottom" in sexual play.

And we are the product of evolution, adaptation and mutation are implacable to our survival, though just as were were once related to chimps, dogs and dandelions we can still see where origins shift and change.

We are also, however, fundamentally different from chimps and dogs. Chimps and dogs can learn to communicate using signals and, in the case of chimps, can even develop some rudimentary language abilities, but they will still lag behind even a small human child. Humans are the only animal for which complex language use and thus symbolic thought is natural and indeed essential. Unless we are socialized and introduced to language, our brains physically do not develop properly.

Biologically reductionist explanations of human behaviour do not work because they ignore one of the most important features of human neurobiology, that we are inherently wired for socialization and learning. Without it, our neurology and our behaviour ceases to be recognisably normal for a human being. Sociobiology is mired in this Hobbesian conceit that there exists a state of nature in which humans, without socialization, will express purely natural instincts. Such a state is impossible, the state of nature for humans is always, always, a socially mediated state.

for instance, i would be floored to find a woman who suffers from paternal uncertainty or follows the handicapping principle to the level men do.

Would you say that a woman who did follow the handicap principle at levels exceeding a determinant point on a hypothetical scale of handicappingness would actually be a man, then?

Even if your reductionist understanding of human behaviour was correct (which I cannot disprove because it is an unfalsifiable claim, there could always be some invisible God of the gaps hiding in the microscopic recesses of human neurology, but I will point out that those gaps are far smaller today than they were in the past and yet God mysteriously fails to manifest within them) in what sense does it not merely evidence the complexity of gender expression, which I'm perfectly fine saying may or may not include the results of anatomical or hormonally produced tendencies. That does not mean gender itself can be reduced to simple essentials.

Simply put, folks, mostly social so-called science student refer to the things as a binary in order to show that it doesn't exist as one. the truth is it's closer to a spectrum.

Not necessarily.

You can theorize it as a spectrum, but you can also theorize it as an orthagonal matrix, or as a multiplicity. Since it is, ultimately, a human concept none of these is definitive, although we can certainly debate the explanatory power (and I will explain some of the descriptive limitations of theorizing gender as a spectrum if you want, but I'll save it for now).

Like ASD if you can point to inimical parts of the male psyche or determine A % of aggregated behaviors to be determine masculine then you can deem something to be masculine even if some social morays are broken.

How would you go about doing that, though?

We being a sexually Dimorphic species intuitively it follows that we could have quantifiable differences in ingrained responses and perceptions.

How would you figure that?

Mind you i believe we are both laymen (my pet peeve is people who do not know etymology of the suffex man) on this subject but assuming you can find difference between male and female, or aggregate patterns brains then how does this shift into gender

I would hesitate to say that I'm not a layman, but I have spent several years in active research so I would say that the assumption of ignorance is one I'm not comfortable with.

As for how it shifts into gender, I think it's up to you to demonstrate that it does. After all, you are arguing that the definition of gender can be essential despite complex expression (unless you've misunderstood and were just replying to me for the hell of it). In what way does pointing to aggregate differences in brains reconcile the complexity of gender expression to an essential nature?

 

[NemotheElvenPanda]

Is it...really hard to believe that there might be people out there that aren't men, women, either, or neither? That there might be people that could genuinely identify as something other than "he" or "she"? Even if there isn't some science behind this, does someone using a different pronoun and identity really that big of a deal? Maybe this is because I know a lot of genderqueer people personally, but everyone is making a way bigger deal out of this than it needs to be.

 

[cleric of the order]

I would hesitate to say that I'm not a layman, but I have spent several years in active research so I would say that the assumption of ignorance is one I'm not comfortable with.

well boss that's rather hard to determine at first glance. Given how dense the response is I'll just concede, i have no more technical knowledge then a splash of psyche and liking gad saad.

[edit] also i just straight don't have the time, sorry[edit]

 

[MHR]

Yeah, I'm a 4-slotted sexual toaster. And my "girl"friend identifies as cartoon toast. It's a match made in breakfast heaven.

And all other identities are 100% as valid as ours. So you can take that for exactly as much as it's worth.

Also if all you guys wanted to avoid all these timeouts and warnings, you could have just posted it in the Wild West. That's what it's for. And memes.

 

[BeeGeenie]

When discussing cultural gender, as opposed to biological sex, it's not so much Male/Female, but Masculine/Feminine.

Technically, a "tomboy" (female who exhibits certain behaviors or interests traditionally seen as masculine) could legitimately be considered a distinct gender, depending on how narrowly we want to divide up and categorize people.
Gender is, after all, a social construct (just like the idea of a tomboy) so it is whatever society says it is, and there can be as many genders as any given social group decides.

There are three genders built into English grammar (Masculine/Feminine/Neuter) so the possibility of androgyny is built into our language system.

Yeah, I'm a 4-slotted sexual toaster. And my "girl"friend identifies as cartoon toast. It's a match made in breakfast heaven.

In Old English, toaster you and your toaster girlfriend would have been the same gender, regardless of your genitals, because the word 'toaster' would have had a gender. (In German, all toasters are masculine, so your toaster girlfriend identifies as a dude.)

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

No, you couldn't, unless perhaps you substituted gender for sex.

Sex and gender are somewhat interchangeable terms. Specifically I meant gender; Male or Female. I was speaking from the point of identifying a persons gender based off their DNA. Besides, frogs and lizards are much more simpler organisms than humans, they do not posses the intelligence to differentiate between what would be classified as a female or male personality. As for how I identify if someone is male or female, I will use commonly accepted norms such as body shape, biological characteristics such as facial architecture to identify someone as male or female. However, such assessments are usually done in the blink of an eye. I don't make it a point of analyzing every single person that enters my field of view.

 

[Zontar]

Is it...really hard to believe that there might be people out there that aren't men, women, either, or neither? That there might be people that could genuinely identify as something other than "he" or "she"? Even if there isn't some science behind this, does someone using a different pronoun and identity really that big of a deal? Maybe this is because I know a lot of genderqueer people personally, but everyone is making a way bigger deal out of this than it needs to be.

Yes, given the fact there is literally no evidence to support the idea coupled with the fact that if it held any truth to it then the some of the very fundamentals about biology upon which the entirety of our civilisation's understanding of the human body would need to be rewritten makes it hard to believe.

It also isn't helped that this whole "there's more then two genders" stuff came about at the same time as social media did. The term "trans trender" doesn't exist without reason. You have people today who genuinely think that if you aren't an impossibly stereotypical image of masculinity then you aren't a man, but since you aren't a woman that means you're something else. It's actually quite ironic that those who claim to oppose gender roles are the ones who believe in them the strongest.

 

[Satinavian]

As humans, we are a binary species. It's how we have evolved, it's who we are. Genetically, we are one or the other, there's no middle ground, there's no third option. We fall back on M/F terminology because it's what we created to identify the differences in our genetic makeup.

You're confusing sex and gender. Sex is what part in human reproduction we are on. Gender is a human construct on how such placement in breeding means you have to look, behave, dress, work, and live or else get ostracized by the rest of society who are too small-minded to accept anything outside the stupid rules society puts up to keep everyone in line.

Wearing a dress isnt going to suddenly make a male infertile.

If it only was that easy.

But for some strange reason most clothing styles associated with a gender do accentuate characteristics of a sex

And quite a lot of other customs/ideas related to gender are somehow linked to procreation and how the mother of a child is always certain but the father is not and how to strengthen the link between father and child so that the child is provided for by both parents and the father can know it is really his child.

While one can agree/disagree with cultural customs, those too are inherently linked to the sex.


Which is why it is so difficult to decouble gender from sex. Gender only exists because of sex. Gender is how societies incorporate the existance of sexes.

Someone of pure 100% European Caucasian background can choose to not identify with the fact they're white, that won't change the fact they're white even if they deny it.

I know that this is supposed to be a ridiculous idea, but there actually are groups out there, where skin colour/race is only seen as a mindset and cultural role and does not have anything to do with the actual colour of the skin or the ethnicy of a person. This race equivalence to gender does exist but does not yet have the same kind of traction as transgender does.

It's called Klinefelter's and it does have various symptoms. Some of which are kind of noticeable.

Well I was genderfluid

Yes but it's not a sex, it's a disorder, hell I wouldn't even call it a gender since there's nothing about it that detracts from the male/female brain dichotomy. It's a mistake in genetics and unlike XYY Syndrome isn't something that one would want to keep if one could get rid of it (unless one was a sadist, but hey I'm not one to judge).

Actually those things are nowadays classified as intersex, not as male sex or female sex. And countries have started to use the "intersex" variant also as assignable sex at birth. So humans come in three sexes : male, female, intersex (everything else).

Has nothing to do with gender. Intersex people are rare enough and different enough that culture did not develop gender roles that are expected to be filled exclusively by them. Most intersex people are either male or female genderwise and most people who don't conform to a gender have either male or female sex.

 

[09philj]

Is it...really hard to believe that there might be people out there that aren't men, women, either, or neither? That there might be people that could genuinely identify as something other than "he" or "she"? Even if there isn't some science behind this, does someone using a different pronoun and identity really that big of a deal? Maybe this is because I know a lot of genderqueer people personally, but everyone is making a way bigger deal out of this than it needs to be.

Yes, given the fact there is literally no evidence to support the idea

There is no evidence that in any way refutes it though. Leucippus couldn't prove that everything was made of atoms, but he was right. Also their existence throughout recorded history and is multiple cultures around the world doesn't exactly suggest that it's not a thing.

 

[Saelune]

As humans, we are a binary species. It's how we have evolved, it's who we are. Genetically, we are one or the other, there's no middle ground, there's no third option. We fall back on M/F terminology because it's what we created to identify the differences in our genetic makeup.

You're confusing sex and gender. Sex is what part in human reproduction we are on. Gender is a human construct on how such placement in breeding means you have to look, behave, dress, work, and live or else get ostracized by the rest of society who are too small-minded to accept anything outside the stupid rules society puts up to keep everyone in line.

Wearing a dress isnt going to suddenly make a male infertile.

If it only was that easy.

But for some strange reason most clothing styles associated with a gender do accentuate characteristics of a sex

And quite a lot of other customs/ideas related to gender are somehow linked to procreation and how the mother of a child is always certain but the father is not and how to strengthen the link between father and child so that the child is provided for by both parents and the father can know it is really his child.

While one can agree/disagree with cultural customs, those too are inherently linked to the sex.


Which is why it is so difficult to decouble gender from sex. Gender only exists because of sex. Gender is how societies incorporate the existance of sexes.

Women's pants exists because women wore men's pants and eventually clothes makers decided to capitalize on the trends. Like...in the 50's.

Nowadays I see more women in pants than skirts or dresses.

Something to think about.

 

[Satinavian]

Yes, because pants are basically unisex and have been unisex originally. They only became mens clothing when women started to wear something else.

Pretty much all the clothing that does not do a lot to emphasize primary or secondary sexual characteristics has been worn by both genders in history and was at most locally or for a time restricted to one.

 

[Zontar]

I know that this is supposed to be a ridiculous idea, but there actually are groups out there, where skin colour/race is only seen as a mindset and cultural role and does not have anything to do with the actual colour of the skin or the ethnicy of a person. This race equivalence to gender does exist but does not yet have the same kind of traction as transgender does.

I know that there are people who think that race can be just a state of mind, but it's widely seen as the ludicrous notion that it is.

Is it...really hard to believe that there might be people out there that aren't men, women, either, or neither? That there might be people that could genuinely identify as something other than "he" or "she"? Even if there isn't some science behind this, does someone using a different pronoun and identity really that big of a deal? Maybe this is because I know a lot of genderqueer people personally, but everyone is making a way bigger deal out of this than it needs to be.

Yes, given the fact there is literally no evidence to support the idea

There is no evidence that in any way refutes it though. Leucippus couldn't prove that everything was made of atoms, but he was right. Also their existence throughout recorded history and is multiple cultures around the world doesn't exactly suggest that it's not a thing.

Positive claims require positive evidence, and I'd actually like to point out that there is evidence that it is not the case. While it isn't enough to disprove it (after all nothing ever is) as it stands it remains after about 60 years a hypothesis with absolutely no evidence to support it and a bit that opposes it. Not something that should be taught in schools, that's for sure.

Gender, assuming it does exist beyond simply being the characteristics of sex (an assumption that cannot be made when making a factual analysis) is still biological in nature, hard coded at birth and cannot be socialised out of people. Given the near total correlation between sex and gender (99.7%) and the fact that no evidence exists to support the claim they aren't just one and the same when seen through a different lens (how we are vs how we act) I'm not going to sit here and pretend that there's something about it that makes it so exceptional that it should be treated differently from the countless thousands of similarly unproven ideas that are dismissed out of hand because they have nothing to support them and evidence that contradicts them.

To put it simply, if you want me to believe something that will completely change the very basics of human biology as we as a civilisation understand it, do what no one has done between Dr. Money's initial conception of the idea and today has done and actually prove it.

 

[Saelune]

Yes, because pants are basically unisex and have been unisex originally. They only became mens clothing when women started to wear something else.

Pretty much all the clothing that does not do a lot to emphasize primary or secondary sexual characteristics has been worn by both genders in history and was at most locally or for a time restricted to one.

Quote me next time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_and_trousers

Rules for gender and clothing have been around forever. But clothing is just fabric, but people restrict, ostracize harm, beat and kill because of people wearing fabric that offends their strict ideas of gender.

It should not be a big deal for anyone to wear this clothing or that, but it is, and pretending otherwise is disingenuous.

 

[Satinavian]

Yes, because pants are basically unisex and have been unisex originally. They only became mens clothing when women started to wear something else.

Pretty much all the clothing that does not do a lot to emphasize primary or secondary sexual characteristics has been worn by both genders in history and was at most locally or for a time restricted to one.

Quote me next time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_and_trousers

Rules for gender and clothing have been around forever. But clothing is just fabric, but people restrict, ostracize harm, beat and kill because of people wearing fabric that offends their strict ideas of gender.

It should not be a big deal for anyone to wear this clothing or that, but it is, and pretending otherwise is disingenuous.

if you insist on quoting.

And as i said. Trousers were originally unisex when they were used mainly by Germanic and Scythic tribes and only some time after the big migration period when they spread to western and southern Europe they became mens clothing there. In central Europe and Eastern Europe they were still common worn by women too until with Christianization the traditional use became less common. I don't think it is fair to say that trousers were really seen as masculine in most areas which used them until around 1000 AD. So it is a pretty late development.


And yes, rules for clothing and gender have been around forever. But the thing is those rules are arbitrary and changed often. If it was not linked to sexual characteristics, the association with a certain gender could easily get lost with a new fashion influence. Many things are only linked to a gender because some trendsetter VIP used it and it was immitated by the same gender.

Look at the colour pink which is considered ultimately feminine. But just for a little over half a century now. Before it varied by reagion and often wa associated with masculinity

And now look at a peace of clothing that is considered feminine : the corsett. Nearly all the time it existed, it was used nearly exclusively by women. It does help emphasize the female curves, by creating a stronger contrast between waist and both breast and bottom.
But for the very short period in the early 19th century where a small waist somehow entered the beauty ideal for the male sex, the corsette for men was nearly instantly adopted, no one cared about how it was supposedly feminine.

If something is not linked to the sex, then the link to the gender is incredibly weak.

 

[Saelune]

Yes, because pants are basically unisex and have been unisex originally. They only became mens clothing when women started to wear something else.

Pretty much all the clothing that does not do a lot to emphasize primary or secondary sexual characteristics has been worn by both genders in history and was at most locally or for a time restricted to one.

Quote me next time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_and_trousers

Rules for gender and clothing have been around forever. But clothing is just fabric, but people restrict, ostracize harm, beat and kill because of people wearing fabric that offends their strict ideas of gender.

It should not be a big deal for anyone to wear this clothing or that, but it is, and pretending otherwise is disingenuous.

if you insist on quoting.

And as i said. Trousers were originally unisex when they were used mainly by Germanic and Scythic tribes and only some time after the big migration period when they spread to western and southern Europe they became mens clothing there. In central Europe and Eastern Europe they were still common worn by women too until with Christianization the traditional use became less common. I don't think it is fair to say that trousers were really seen as masculine in most areas which used them until around 1000 AD. So it is a pretty late development.


And yes, rules for clothing and gender have been around forever. But the thing is those rules are arbitrary and changed often. If it was not linked to sexual characteristics, the association with a certain gender could easily get lost with a new fashion influence. Many things are only linked to a gender because some trendsetter VIP used it and it was immitated by the same gender.

Look at the colour pink which is considered ultimately feminine. But just for a little over half a century now. Before it varied by reagion and often wa associated with masculinity

And now look at a peace of clothing that is considered feminine : the corsett. Nearly all the time it existed, it was used nearly exclusively by women. It does help emphasize the female curves, by creating a stronger contrast between waist and both breast and bottom.
But for the very short period in the early 19th century where a small waist somehow entered the beauty ideal for the male sex, the corsette for men was nearly instantly adopted, no one cared about how it was supposedly feminine.

If something is not linked to the sex, then the link to the gender is incredibly weak.

What point are you trying to make, cause Im not sure if we are even having the same argument or even actually disagree.