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Gender could be a benign or even beneficial social construct, if that’s what it is, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad thing.
How would a lack of choice and the ability to self determine be positive?
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Sex != Gender
Biological sex and gender are the same thing. Doesn’t mean a minority of people _feel_ differently, but the science is beyond any question that XX and XY are distinct genders. They come with different hormone levels, XX can carry babies and lactate, etc.
What about XX with, say, Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia? They have excess androgens and sometimes ambiguous genitalia. Estrogen insensitivity syndrome also comes to mind, where the body is unable to process estrogen. Those XX individuals have the body shape usually associated with an XY.
Or perhaps XY individuals with 5α-Reductase deficiency? They cannot process androgens and are sometimes born with genitalia that look like one typically associated with XX. They used to be mistakenly raised as individuals of the female gender. In a similar vein, there's Aromatase excess syndrome where the XY individual has male genitalia at birth and female secondary sexual characteristics at puberty. What is their gender?
Are XXY females and XXY males their own separate gender? Then what about XYY and XXYY syndrome?
Even ignoring those rarer genetic differences, what about women with polycystic ovary syndrome who are unable to conceive and have high testosterone levels? Or XY who went through menopause and have their estrogen and progesterone production limited or even halted, do they stop being women?
There's a reason both the words "gender" and "sex" exist.
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That's a really interesting description, thanks. It seems like a very difficult condition and a constant source of anxiety. I struggle to think this is something anyone would choose for themselves. It makes me very worried for the three year old I know who's mother insists he/she is transgender. That this shouldn't be a trendy thing - but a serious struggle.
One can choose whether they want to begin a social & hormonal transition but they cannot choose to not have the genetic and biological factors that are at play[1]. I doubt anyone take the decisions lightly. It is a huge burden on your life. In my case, I have decided to transition after 25 years of successfully living as a male. The burden of not transitioning was compounding with interest and I felt as if waiting an…
Interesting position that we're in as a society where you can't be trusted to make decisions about almost anything thing until you're 18 but would allow a child and help them stunt/alter their physiological growth process because the they insist this is the correct thing for them.
Right or wrong, mental illness or suffering or natural variance aside, it's an tough problem of doing the right thing for the child.
ah the rules of gender stereotyping: virtuous when it's pro-trans, misogynistic otherwise, and of course, misandry doesn't exist.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Biological sex and gender are the same thing. Doesn’t mean a minority of people _feel_ differently, but the science is beyond any question that XX and XY are distinct genders. They come with different hormone levels, XX can carry babies and lactate, etc.
> but the science is beyond any question that XX and XY are distinct genders. They come with different hormone levels, XX can carry babies and lactate, etc. What about XX with, say, Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia? They have excess androgens and sometimes ambiguous genitalia. Estrogen insensitivity syndrome also comes to mind, where the body is unable to process estrogen. Those XX individuals have the body shape usual…
"Gender roles", in contrast, are by my understanding more what society expects men/women to behave like, including how to present themselves.
> I have a friend who does drag. It's a lot of work! I'm excited for technology like this, because it will make it easier for makeup & drag artists to experiment with new ideas and identities cheaply and quickly. Similarly, I'm transgender and use those applications to come up with new ideas on how to make little changes to my appearance to feminize my features. Sometimes coming up with makeup ideas is hard since I l…
>Similarly, I'm transgender and use those applications to come up with new ideas on how to make little changes to my appearance to feminize my features. Do you ever feel like these applications are re-enforcing physical gender stereotypes? Like "you selected female, here is what females should look like." If gender is a social construct, tech like this is clearly maintaining that construct, yet nobody seems to have a…
If "gender" just means that you put on a dress and makeup and now you're "a girl", or you put on a suit and cut your hair and now you're "a dude", then "gender" isn't really anything to be afraid of, because anyone can put on or take off a gender any time they like, and it's no longer an inherent property of a person. It's just a word describing voluntary roles that anyone can assume at any time—archetypal character profiles that one can choose to "wear" to indicate that people should identify them with that archetype (like wearing a mask in an opera; or "disneybounding.")
We're not there yet, mind you, but that's the direction the LGBTQ movement has been trying to push things for decades now: making it less about "am I female?" and more about e.g. "am I a dainty princess?" where anyone who wants to play the role of "a dainty princess" can do so; and anyone who wants to opt out of that role can do that, too, and nobody in particular is expected to take that role upon themselves.
But if-and-when we have all that, then there would be nothing wrong with wanting to conform to the stereotype of "a dainty princess", or to any other gender-based stereotype; and there wouldn't even be anything wrong with gatekeeping such roles, insisting that "a dainty princess" has a particular look and behavior, being picky about who does or doesn't fit the mold of "a dainty princess", etc. If nobody is already slotted into any gender by default, then "gender" becomes a matter of finding the gender that perfectly suits you; rather than something where you're stuck with a gender whether it suits you or not, and so have to fight for the mind-share required to deform your gender's definition to ensure it includes you.
Physical gender stereotypes? The differences in physical appearance, like the shape of the bones in your face and the fact some people have penises and other people have vaginas, caused by activation of the SRY gene (the sex determinism gene), are not social constructs.
Sex != Gender
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One can choose whether they want to begin a social & hormonal transition but they cannot choose to not have the genetic and biological factors that are at play[1]. I doubt anyone take the decisions lightly. It is a huge burden on your life. In my case, I have decided to transition after 25 years of successfully living as a male. The burden of not transitioning was compounding with interest and I felt as if waiting an…
>If there is a diagnostic of gender dysphoria which increase as their body develop, they might choose to use puberty blockers at the start of adolescence to stop the body from going through a puberty that increases this distress. Interesting position that we're in as a society where you can't be trusted to make decisions about almost anything thing until you're 18 but would allow a child and help them stunt/alter the…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Similarly, I'm transgender and use those applications to come up with new ideas on how to make little changes to my appearance to feminize my features. Do you ever feel like these applications are re-enforcing physical gender stereotypes? Like "you selected female, here is what females should look like." If gender is a social construct, tech like this is clearly maintaining that construct, yet nobody seems to have a…
There's nothing inherently wrong with maintaining the construct of gender, if it has been defanged to do no harm to anybody. If "gender" just means that you put on a dress and makeup and now you're "a girl", or you put on a suit and cut your hair and now you're "a dude", then "gender" isn't really anything to be afraid of, because anyone can put on or take off a gender any time they like, and it's no longer an inhere…