Are gender terms missing the point

[Greenflame133]

This are just my thought and perspectives, feel free to share yours. At worst we should be able to agree to disagree.

There are 2 sexes, and if wikipedia is to the trusted John Money was first one introduce terms of gender with is spret mental and physical. Starting with 2 gender equivalent of sexes with main change that one is not depended on the oder.

Then stuff went.. Well I would call in down hill. Of course it is impossible to sort peoples into 2 groups. As much as some try
https://img.memecdn.com/there-are-two-types-of-people---which-one-is-you_fb_1230076.jpg
Fast forward to moder they we got more terms for gender including joke such a attack helicopter and ghost pirate.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/7eldQuhWF3vMvubcLqzT-0Ll3S9b4v0TJXg7nq6gh7m9evf0OeBBJ0Mhg26SDP_EzWdVmFC RkrxQ3QCPr_8-XMcy_c3qQtOErf0QnjbZ6rv5QObB31sjY9haoxWNVsXzI4BhiY v18jDv3VGWhSl_2Ibu1ldgsLuJvLg2jITI12MvGKjZt4DVnjQM j1j5a-cBrpjVYWDwF2h6ZZgqB7eOCqH9zjnuuBnTDQdIEyb5DgkD7_5I mOjHNhDhUpRKa5_J_BMYVNcXWTZqd6N2HGBf9a38-TYE91bc-VJQLVR4IDcMcvJSpYOc-IR-xnwVlc9jMM-kjK5T_izrCaoxkTCscbab08eewm1T4nwLsMNaW04ywrW05Tj1j NOH2GqEcx6jV_163szf0VPKNKHghCV9xljsoWzpwQejJ8C11Le 0Sm-L-7lngDo9rmjbGBC-2N4TE9xKIwGbBAck5FE6Ok3ps734aMSjFPOp-VWrDZS2SRw7-0ZKEslvXfJ4EP_PWRIa6SnrBTi2h7W8F3oVIlZ2Rl4cMVZIxhS p0_n9TdnofcCHXU4zMbT8pcKM7eq9jcK3xEZJ7l_TdtN5IGNES OdJ_NjxGW81CxS3Opf43Ypn=w577-h677-no
So what is the point? I don’t think most peoples know what most of more obscure genders mean making it rather pointless as the terms (and I talking about any terms such, including color names) is to communicate thing faster than you can describe them. “Such a using blue” rather than “color of the shy”.

Having this is mind calling yourself using any gender term, whatever it is universally understood male/female or more obscure ones such as Irish Alien Lute. Mean peoples we assume certain things about you, just because role of the term is to describe.

With that in mind I feel very comfortable being able to not specify a gender as I sounds myself engaging in activities that stereotypically associated with either gender and ability to be sesaly 100% gender flexible is something that I enjoy or even better not have any assumptions based on gender

But then gets real life, where you got body what while can be changed it’s not something one would do regularly if at all. While there are way of dressing to changed it a lot of effort and it’s not perfect. Honestly I myself find it easier to stick to what I was born with a just hoping people will just don’t care to question my interests which actually the cases most of the time.

So, all in all I feel like it’s best to say, everyone is their own gender making it equivalent to saying there is no gender

On a side note physical aspect maybe more useful as it can be used when talking about sexual orientation

[Jormengand]

This are just my thought and perspectives, feel free to share yours. At worst we should be able to agree to disagree.

We don't need your "Thought and perspectives". The science is already there.


There are 2 sexes, and if wikipedia is to the trusted

Wikipedia: Intersex. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex)


John Money was first one introduce terms of gender with is spret mental and physical. Starting with 2 gender equivalent of sexes with main change that one is not depended on the oder.

Then stuff went.. Well I would call in down hill. Of course it is impossible to sort peoples into 2 groups. As much as some try

Of course it's impossible to sort people into two groups in terms of gender, because there are more than two genders (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genderqueer).


Fast forward to moder they we got more terms for gender including joke such a attack helicopter and ghost pirate.

Yes, because there's a kind of person who can't resist making jokes about trans people. This, incidentally, sucks.


So what is the point? I don’t think most peoples know what most of more obscure genders mean making it rather pointless as the terms (and I talking about any terms such, including color names) is to communicate thing faster than you can describe them. “Such a using blue” rather than “color of the shy”.

Having terms for things makes it easier to communicate among people who know even if most people don't. If I talk about the "Vindicare" no-one who doesn't play Warhammer 40,000 or at least have an awareness of it is going to know that I'm referring to a particular kind of futuristic sniper, but it's a word I used multiple times today because I was playing Warhammer 40,000 earlier today.


Having this is mind calling yourself using any gender term, whatever it is universally understood male/female or more obscure ones such as Irish Alien Lute. Mean peoples we assume certain things about you, just because role of the term is to describe.

I mean, yes, people have stereotypes. No duh.


With that in mind I feel very comfortable being able to not specify a gender as I sounds myself engaging in activities that stereotypically associated with either gender and ability to be sesaly 100% gender flexible is something that I enjoy or even better not have any assumptions based on gender

I mean, that's fine. You can do that. No-one's stopping you.


But then gets real life, where you got body what while can be changed it’s not something one would do regularly if at all. While there are way of dressing to changed it a lot of effort and it’s not perfect. Honestly I myself find it easier to stick to what I was born with a just hoping people will just don’t care to question my interests which actually the cases most of the time.

You could actually do some research into transitioning to find out why people do it.


So, all in all I feel like it’s best to say, everyone is their own gender making it equivalent to saying there is no gender

Well, some people are male, and some are female. That's around 99.7% of humans, so...

"5% of the genders have 99.7% of the humans #OccupyTheGenderBinary"

Uhm, sorry, anyway, the point is that that there are genders which multiple people are in. Plus, if everyone was their own, I dunno, age (even twins arguably have different ages by a few seconds or even minutes) or colour (not all white people's skin technically is exactly the same colour), that wouldn't mean that age or colour flat-out didn't exist.


On a side note physical aspect maybe more useful as it can be used when talking about sexual regression

What?



Look, I'm going to be quite honest here: I think that I speak for a fair number of trans people when I say that we're fed up with cis people not bothering to do any real research, armchair-philosophising for a bit, and then using their flawed understanding of psychology, sociology, and even biology ("Only two sexes", I ask you) to try to critique our existence. So no, gender terms aren't missing the point. You are.

[Anymage]

I'm a fan of using plain english instead of neologisms whenever possible, but there's a lot to be said for having a vocabulary as a framework early on. It can be as much of a hindrance as a help (see every time a boy felt that liking boys meant that he had to be decked out in rainbows, or a girl through that liking other girls meant that she had to add in flannels and a weird haircut), but for a lot of people simply knowing that there's a word helps them feel like other people have gone through what they're going through.

In practice I find that the loudest voices focusing on obscure gender differences tend to be full of it, in ways that would get pretty flamey if called out. But then, the loudest voices tend to be more about drawing attention to themselves than they are actually making any coherent points. Train yourself to pay attention to the less noisy folks - especially the folks on the other side who tend to be drowned out by the loudmouths. You'll have a much more productive engagement that way.

Edit to add:

Yes, because there's a kind of person who can't resist making jokes about trans people. This, incidentally, sucks.

Eh. I hesitate to say that trans identities are "real" while attack helicopters or otherkin aren't, because it wasn't that long ago that public opinion was much harsher on trans folk. I'd rather err on the side of a general inclusive habit than focus on what's trendy at this particular moment.

Someone gets a spiky haircut and practices various weapon based martial arts because they think that deep down they're really Cloud Strife? Cool. If they can talk about little other than how much FF7 spoke to them on a deep, personal level, being Cloud is not incompatible with being an overly focused bore.

Someone actually makes a concerted effort to express themselves as an attack helicopter? Cool. They only bring it up when they can ridicule trans folk? Similarly, being an attack helicopter is not incompatible with being obnoxious.

[Knaight]

There are 2 sexes, and if wikipedia is to the trusted John Money was first one introduce terms of gender with is spret mental and physical. Starting with 2 gender equivalent of sexes with main change that one is not depended on the oder.

This takes roughly half of a sentence to start piling up inaccuracies. As is basically always the case in biology when you dig into a topic the basic knowledge generally known turns out to be a simplified model that breaks down in edge cases. This applies to sexes of the same species (where there's a bunch of different methods used as indicators that usually but don't always line up with each other), and even to the species concept as a whole (where there's weird edge cases where it gets artificial.

Understanding this helps with understanding gender. There's a few concepts that tend to get conflated (e.g. gender identity, gender expression), there's an older model* that applies to most people, and which breaks down in some rarer, less obvious cases. As more information has been found and more thinking done the limits of said model are brought into sharper relief, and newer models are developed.

This is to be expected. There's a cycle of knowledge in most fields where models are developed, these models are used to develop and expand knowledge, this new knowledge reveals flaws in these models under certain conditions, and then new models are developed that can handle these flaws. This gets particularly true when looking at the emergent systems that come from lots of interacting parts. Chemistry is less well behaved than physics, biology is less well behaved than chemistry, the neurology of highly complex species (i.e. humans) less well behaved than biology as a whole, and sociology less well behaved than neurology. That's the system we're dealing with here, in social structures that come of large scale human interactions.

That this real system isn't perfectly modeled by a simple categorization scheme with exactly two non-overlapping groups isn't exactly surprising here. It's not reason to give up trying to understand at all.

*Although there are several independently developed older models that don't all line up with each other here; the development and dissemination of human knowledge also being a complex field where simple models get screwy at the edges.

[Jormengand]

This takes roughly half of a sentence to start piling up inaccuracies. As is basically always the case in biology when you dig into a topic the basic knowledge generally known turns out to be a simplified model that breaks down in edge cases.

Not a disagreement, but this certainly isn't biology alone for which that's true: you start off believing that electrons orbit a nucleus like planets about a star and end up trying to figure out what the hell a "Cloud of electron density" is and whether it's a wave or a particle.

[2D8HP]

What?


Well said @Jormengand, I can almost understand what the OP was trying to communicate based on your responses, without which I would've assumed that the OP was a "bot" using random words, or possibly parts of words.

Thanks to you Jormengand I understand that the OP is a person and not a machine that I may ignore.

[Telonius]

I think a big part of the strangeness is because language delineates things into discrete units just by its nature; but actual thoughts and behavior tend to happen on a spectrum. It can be useful to have a new term, if what you're experiencing doesn't fit into any patterns you know of. I think it isn't unreasonable to notice that some people are exclusively attracted to people of the same sex; others are exclusively attracted to people of the opposite sex; others are somewhere in-between; others aren't attracted to anybody at all; others are transgendered or intersex.

It's also true that if you keep subdividing, you end up with 85-letter acronyms for every different possible sex, gender, orientation, and kink.

Sometimes that kind of distinction can be useful, particularly to someone experiencing something they had no idea was even a thing. Sometimes it can muddy the waters and make things confusing for people who are trying to be inclusive but can't keep up with the latest group to self-identify. I'd say, just do your best to try, and don't take it personally. It's only been (at most) a couple of decades that anybody has really been able to even talk about this kind of thing openly. Most people are trying their best to figure things out, but there's a lot of leftover shame and distrust that's complicating things.

[Knaight]

Not a disagreement, but this certainly isn't biology alone for which that's true: you start off believing that electrons orbit a nucleus like planets about a star and end up trying to figure out what the hell a "Cloud of electron density" is and whether it's a wave or a particle.

Like I said, the same thing applies in basically every field - it's just worth emphasizing just how much room for emergent complexity and chaotic behavior there is in this particular system. That you can also start with an atom as a fundamental particle that can't be subdivided and end up with trying to figure out what exactly probability waves even are, and working through elaborate calculations to figure out how they behave as soon as it involves more than one electron.

In this case you just get to stack that same effect up over and over as the system gets more and more complicated, as simplifying models get yet more simplified than reality, for something vastly more complicated than one atom. It's much messier, and responding with "but that's not what the simplest model says, it must be wrong" when faced with a glimpse at reality that doesn't seem to fit the model is just inane. Throwing out the entire concept of simplified models as a thing and giving up on knowledge in the face of that situation is similarly inane.

[Greenflame133]

then I say 2 sexes I mean purely physical aspect most clear one being chromosomes, with majority of peoples beginning either XY or XX, while XXY, XYY, YY, X, Y are possiable this peoples sadly usualy have poor halthy and die at young age. Hiven I did not went into fine detail and there maybe trichology I'm aware of. I can't say if there expesions.

One thing I find interesting is comparing gender themes to Warcraft 40k terms as a group specific. Given that my main exposure is people starting drama over it (clearly bad eggs) and few peoples educating on this terms.

I do also do wonder were you is resonable, place to stop subdividing, for example, maybe leaving kink out is a good idea as sharing it with everyone may not be the best idea.

one example of peoples getting stuff wrong is Sigmund Freud's who is notorious for getting things wrong yet he's findings are offten taught as truths

[Jormengand]

then I say 2 sexes I mean purely physical aspect most clear one being chromosomes, with majority of peoples beginning either XY or XX, while XXY, XYY, YY, X, Y are possiable this peoples sadly usualy have poor halthy and die at young age. Hiven I did not went into fine detail and there maybe trichology I'm aware of. I can't say if there expesions.

One thing I find interesting is comparing gender themes to Warcraft 40k terms as a group specific. Given that my main exposure is people starting drama over it (clearly bad eggs) and few peoples educating on this terms.

I do also do wonder were you is resonable, place to stop subdividing, for example, maybe leaving kink out is a good idea as sharing it with everyone may not be the best idea.

one example of peoples getting stuff wrong is Sigmund Freud's who is notorious for getting things wrong yet he's findings are offten taught as truths

There's so much wrong in this post that I'm not sure where to begin, but I broke down laughing the moment I read "Warcraft 40k".

You might want to try complete sentences and proof-reading among other things if you want to be understood.

[2D8HP]

....spret....

....moder...

....“color of the shy”...

...Having this is mind calling yourself...

....But then gets real life...


.....have poor halthy...

...Hiven I did not went into fine detail and there maybe trichology I'm aware of. I can't say if there expesions....

....few peoples educating on this terms...


Is this a parody?


There's so much wrong in this post that I'm not sure where to begin, but I broke down laughing the moment I read "Warcraft 40k".

You might want to try complete sentences and proof-reading among other things if you want to be understood.


So very much seconded.


....one example of peoples getting stuff wrong is Sigmund Freud's who is notorious for getting things wrong yet he's findings are offten taught as truths


Finally a sentence that I understand!

Still it's "his findings" not "he's findings".

[Frozen_Feet]

Actually it's the other way around: people miss the point of gender terms since they lack knowledge of the phenomena being referred to. Same as with any specialized language. One of the worst is using "intersex" as indicating some kind of third sex. In actuality, intersexuality is not a discrete or natural group at all, it is a broad medical category for various different developmental anomalies which lead to a person's phenotype being in between male and female. It's even worse to use it as indicating a third gender, because a lot of intersexuals have a firm gender identity as either male or female, despite physical ambiguity.

The actual point of the specialized language, is the observation that a person's genotype might be in conflict with their phenotype, and either might be in conflict with their psychological and social identity.

[Knaight]

then I say 2 sexes I mean purely physical aspect most clear one being chromosomes, with majority of peoples beginning either XY or XX, while XXY, XYY, YY, X, Y are possiable this peoples sadly usualy have poor halthy and die at young age. Hiven I did not went into fine detail and there maybe trichology I'm aware of. I can't say if there expesions.

The term "sexes" generally means a purely physical aspect. On that level it's still a heavily oversimplified model. You've got those other chromosome possibilities (which tend to correspond more to marginally increased risks of genetic disorders than nigh guaranteed death at a young age. You've got patterns of hormone expression, you've got several different traits at the level of large scale anatomy, gamete count, so on and so forth. These don't consistently line up with each other. There's high levels of correlation, but those high levels are far from complete, to the tune of exceptions being better measured in terms of percentage than in per million or per billion rates.

Biology is messy. Multicellular organisms with lots of genes, lots of proteins, and absolutely tons of small cellular signalling molecules are particularly complicated. Neatly divided categories can be safely assumed to be simplified models, as a general rule. The particular neatly divided category of sex as two categories is one of those.

Gender meanwhile takes the messy, complicated behavior from biology and adds the messy, complicated behavior of culture to it. Why, exactly, should we expect it to be simple?

[Bastian Weaver]

Ahh, nope. YY or Y0 combinations of chromosomes are impossible. People need their X chromosomes to live long enough to be, well, born.
Thank you. I've been waiting to use this knowledge since I graduated from medical school.

[Greenflame133]

So from everything, I get a feeling I was looking at this all in a wrong way. Given of it's complied raises a question is there big enough reason to care about it? Just like physics nothing pass Newton dosn't seem newsworthy. There should some aspect of gender studies that is useful and some parts that are more for just experts.

So what is gender in the first place? It's it psychological identity in relation to social idea of typical male and female?


Ahh, nope. YY or Y0 combinations of chromosomes are impossible. People need their X chromosomes to live long enough to be, well, born.
Thank you. I've been waiting to use this knowledge since I graduated from medical school.
OK, thanks for correcting me on that one.

[Knaight]

So from everything, I get a feeling I was looking at this all in a wrong way. Given of it's complied raises a question is there big enough reason to care about it? Just like physics nothing pass Newton dosn't seem newsworthy. There should some aspect of gender studies that is useful and some parts that are more for just experts.

Nothing past Newton is newsworthy? Really? Even putting aside little things like relativity and quantum mechanics (both of which are needed to understand any number of current technologies) this includes basic stuff like electricity and magnetism. Those are somewhat important in the modern world.

However, if you're committed to ignorance unless you have a specific big enough reason to know about things, then you can basically ignore all of that. A similar thing applies to gender - sure, you could just completely ignore it, go through life with a bad understanding of things, and hope that you personally never end up in a situation where that knowledge is helpful. An alternate approach would be just thinking of knowledge as a good thing to be embraced instead of resisted until you absolutely have to accept it.

Even if you are going to take the former approach there (which I don't recommend) that doesn't justify an attitude of calling the whole field generally useless, let alone dismissing specialized jargon for experts because non-experts don't understand it.

[Liquor Box]

Language is a funny beast, and I don't think there's necessarily one right way to use it.

For some people it is useful/necessary to use language that distinguishes between what they see as different genders/sexes/ In that case the use of a variety of different words to do so is useful.

For others in many contexts, there is little need to distinguish between genders other than the traditional male and female. For those people, it is fine to use the words in the sense they do (and I don't think they should be labelled ignorant or otherwise villafied for doing so).

A problem does arise where two people each think of the same word as meaning a different thing, which hinders communication, which is why it is preferable (but not necessary) that words carry a uniform meaning. I suppose in circumstances where it becomes apparent that people might be meaning different things, they can simply clarify what it is they mean, with the onus probably being more on the person whose use of language departs from the dictionary definition.


Fast forward to moder they we got more terms for gender including joke such a attack helicopter and ghost pirate.

What genders to attack helicopter and ghost priate refer to? Sorry if this is an offensive thing to say, but they do seem odd words to use to label gender nuances.

EDIT: I googled attack helicopter, and it is just a parody of people who identify as a different gender to the sex that they had at birth. I presume ghost pirate is the same.

[Frozen_Feet]

So from everything, I get a feeling I was looking at this all in a wrong way. Given of it's complied raises a question is there big enough reason to care about it?

If you start adding them together, various anomalies in sex and gender identity occur in roughly 1% of humans.

There are seven billion humans. 1% of that is 70 million. For contrast, the entire population of Finland is a bit over 5 million. In absolute numbers, we are talking about a huge interest group.


So what is gender in the first place? It's it psychological identity in relation to social idea of typical male and female?

"Psychological identity in relation to social idea of typical male and female" is actually a pretty clever summary, but we also know it is influenced by physiology. The exact breakdown on how much a person's gender depends on physiological, psychological and social factors is still in the works.

[Amazon]

There are 2 sexes

This is your problem right there.

Absolute truths.

You see the problem with truths is that it’s always kind of complicated.

That’s the truth about truth, it’s kind of ****ty.

Because of that we create simplified versions of the truth, so that it’s less ****ty.

“Who invented the electric lamp?”

“Thomas Edison of course!”

See? Beautiful, simple and direct, truth.

The problem is that reality is a little more complicated than that.

So when people tell you that there are only two sexes, that’s a ludic simplification, biology don’t care about your dogmas and rules.

[Zen]

Some absolute truths are real.

The sky is blue for exemple.

1+1=2

That sort of thing is real, factual nothing you say will change that.

[Anima]

Some absolute truths are real.

The sky is blue for exemple.

1+1=2

That sort of thing is real, factual nothing you say will change that.

Well the sky isn't blue at night, or at sunrise, or even in a storm.
And 1+1=2 isn't universal either. For example in a finite field with order 2, 1+1=0.

A lot of simple truths actually rely on unspoken assumptions. Kinda like the idea that there are only 2 sexes or genders.

[Amazon]

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/binaries/content/gallery/mohippo/images/migrated-image/p/red_sky.jpg

Also add jello powder to water and you have ONE jello.

1+1= 1

[WarKitty]

a girl through that liking other girls meant that she had to add in flannels and a weird haircut

I assure you the flannels and weird haircut are purely voluntary.

[Lord Joeltion]

Nah, you got it all wrong. The sky is always purple, only the human eye can't see purple in reality (https://deron.meranda.us/ruminations/purple/).



And here I was, foolishly hoping we could engage into a sociolinguistics debate, and how most people usually get language all wrong and misuse it in a lots of funny (but still interesting) ways. Poor me.

I will grant another vote to Jormengand advice for OP to check spelling and proofreading before posting. Or at least do what I do and edit after posting. We non-natives want to know!

All I wanna say is that there's probably a lot of people out there like OP, who never learned about this topic and wonder what's it all about. I think it's good for people like them to ask, at least that's how we all started to engage in anything right? "What's so funny about this silly throwing of dices?"; "What's the point of spending hours reading Harry Potter?" Etc, etc. After all, most people don't have the privilege of first hand experience with, mmmm, let's just say "non-cis people" (?). I mean, at least not during the first stages of life, where your social experience is limited to family and school*. I confess I never really understood the topic because I never felt compelled to read any literature on it. And it's not like Media is generally a good teacher.

I think what's missing the point is people wielding those terms without caring about their definition (whatever that may be). Even words like "man" or "woman" are charged with meaning; just because those are the most common cases doesn't mean they are "neutral". There are no neutral words, only words we get used to; until they someday lose part of the meaning via erosion. And that's the real issue most laymen on the subject fail to perceive to some extent: Gender words are meaningful as long as they convey a message; they only "miss the point" when used in a conversation that doesn't address gender in the least. But when gender is on the table? No, they don't miss the point. They are all we have to create an actual channel of communication. Dismissing them is barring the possibility of talking about it.

[Greenflame133]

You don't need gender terms to disuse gender, just like there is no need for color names to discuss colors as you can often define color by things that are commonly this color or using fewer manes and describe colors in between based on how close they are to either side.

"I sexual identify as attack helicopter [...]" is a copy pasta, poking fun at amount of sup-diving with some peoples treating gender more like OCs or Fan-fic then since.

With that being said sexual identify maybe pointless in the sens that regardless of physical person should be free to express any trait of any gender. Just like sorting by skin color shouldn't be a done was there is nothing stopping one race from being like the other.

We don't here about recital-for identi and that's good because it doesn't so would be crating a artificial difference between the skin colors.

Pushing it to extra and you may start feel a need to identify as different nose shape because one you have dosn't fit your personality.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

So, all in all I feel like it’s best to say, everyone is their own gender making it equivalent to saying there is no gender

There's also no sex, no race, no sexual orientation, no ethnicity and no IQ. See how easy that was? All of our problems gone!

Except they're not. All we just took away was our tools to analyse the problems, as imperfect as those are. If it's taboo to think of race in connection to diseases or cures with genetic factors involved that differ by race, then there are going to be more people dying from those. The same for interactions between cops and people of certain races/appearances. You can't stop shootings by telling an overly nervous prick who has seen too many gangster movies "you can't see that this man has a color". He's still going to see it, and you just lost the tools to weed the guy out of the police before someone gets killed. "Yeah, he gets nervous sometimes around a suspect, putting his hand on his weapon" is a warning sign, but not as much as when you can start specifically analyzing his behavior because you know which suspects are going to make him nervous and you can now tell someone to look at him when he comes across them the next time.

Both sex and gender (individually, as separate systems) can fit, what, well over 95% of the people by only using 2 categories? That's an amazing classification system. That's way better than race or ethnicity, by miles! By allowing for intersex, intergender/genderqueer and agender options we can fit almost everybody. That doesn't mean the remaining people don't matter or can't use help or can't talk about their issues or can't think of themselves as a gender of one. It also doesn't mean anyone who fits has to fit perfectly, or can't ever have doubts, or can't think of themselves as a sub-gender of one.

I'm a dude. There's not a single factor to that. I'm not a dude because I like both lumberjacking and drinking beer, just as I'm not "not a dude" because I don't like talking about girls I want to **** as disposable objects behind their back or because I like furry little animals, and not just on the barbecue. (Although that last addition definitely kind of points to me being a dude.) But I took a long hard look at the world with that amazing multi-factor analysis machine that is our subconscious and I am clearly a dude.

And gender classification overall is a helpful thing. It means we can address gendered problems like the wage gap, the effects on boys and girls of different school systems or caring fathers not standing a chance in custody battles, rather than having to talk about "people who might at first glance come across as harder and less child care oriented", which is just a long, unwieldy and unsuitable weasel word for men. It even helps identify when a problem is not as gendered as often assumed. How are you going to tell people that for instance in the military a large amount of male or otherwise non-female people get raped as well if you don't allow yourself to think in those terms? Because nobody is going to start from the assumption that all genders are raped equally, even if they're officially forbidden from thinking about gender, and even if they did start from exactly that assumption they'd still be wrong, but wrong the other way. None of those issues would disappear if we stop using words for genders, what might disappear is possible solutions.

Classifications are useful for analysis, and this is one of the clearest classifications we have. And that doesn't mean we should force people to fit, tell them they can't like dolls (except when they wear an army uniform, which makes them an action figure) because they're boys, or tell them you can't be non-gendered because it doesn't exist, or tell them it's unnatural or bad to be a women when you happen to have a penis, or out of nowhere tell jokes about my gender identity being an attack helicopter just to scare off any transgender people currently in the room because I am a jerk and I don't need a reason. None of that. But there are differences between humans, and these classifications gives us the tools to try and handle those, to work out problems there might be.

You can't force a utopia into existence by taking away the words needed to think about bad stuff.


You don't need gender terms to disuse gender, just like there is no need for color names to discuss colors as you can often define color

Yes, you do. In fact, the color example is pretty funny, because people researched it, and it turns out the words we are taught for colors as a kid massively influence the colors we actually see. You can make a color wheel with a lot of different shades of green and one to westerners clearly yellow shade, if you show that wheel to a a person from somewhere else (China and Japan have pretty dissimilar words for colors) and ask them to point out the shade that stands out they will point at a seemingly near-random green shade, because that's clearly a different color. Their eyes learned to draw the line at different points than ours.

(EDIT: Okay, so maybe it's not the best analog because I'm basically saying "you could just as easily pick a division for humans where half the women get grouped in with the men and use that" here, if you try to follow the color-analog all the way through. This is probably not really true for gender. My point was more that knowing terms will let you think about things, at least consciously. Knowing terms matters.)

Also, trying to tell a painter your house should be apple colored is dumb. As is trying to stem the loss of above average tall and bald person viewership of your TV station. Just use the terms.

Edit 2: I did miss some of the message of the OP it seems, they're proposing "no genders" as a solution to "there are too many named genders". I already gave my opinion of the solution above, so I have the problem left to discuss. For daily use, I don't think there is a problem really. If someone wants me to know they're genderqueerromantic and I don't get what they mean (being romantically yet not necessarily sexually attracted to people with strong male and female characterisyics, which would not be a gender of course, but it's in the same can of " help what does that even means"s. Also, yes I just made that word up but I doubt I'm the first person to do so), they can just tell me. For things like census forms and third person pronouns I figure we'll eventually reach a point where everyone can be reasonable and say "yeah, this works". Preferably something simple. Like trans-people are allowed to use their gender/trans-identity and maybe have an "other" option for anyone not happy with either. The generations currently living will probably always have some people on both sides of the aisle think any compromise is unacceptable, born either from activism or from not wanting to think about things disguised as douchebaggery disguised as tradition, but for people afterwards who grew up with it being a bit less of a thing already a simple solution should be fine. Or so I'd think.

[Greenflame133]

That dose make sens, tho in any given culture there are peoples who distinguish between more and less different colors and trying to find perfect dose sound radicals. When talking about colors you sometimes will lump tougher meganta and lila, 339966 and 339965 or 124 65 213 and 124 64 213.

Given big companies are rather stick about getting their logo color right. One talking about something like shirt you bought on a sell you may need no more distinction than purple any anyone insisting to call it magenta not purple would generally sound silly, much less arguing about RGB code or amount and lehigh of emitted/reflected weakling. Differ systems co-exist and have different purpose.

[EternalMelon]

"I sexual identify as attack helicopter [...]" is a copy pasta, poking fun at amount of sup-diving with some peoples treating gender more like OCs or Fan-fic then since.

Attack helicopter is a copy pasta used to straight up insult and belittle gender identity and expression by use of absurdism and buzzwords. It's use is generally transphobic and should not be used at all in discussions of gender for it inhabits little to no basis for reality. At best it shuts down and redirects any attempt at discussion to refuting its specific example (as seen here I guess). Using it as a basis for opinion or factual support of ones stance on gender is detrimental due to its inherent history and function of being a joke. One created to delegitimize and insult a group of people.

[Greenflame133]

Attack helicopter is a copy pasta used to straight up insult and belittle gender identity and expression by use of absurdism and buzzwords. It's use is generally transphobic and should not be used at all in discussions of gender for it inhabits little to no basis for reality. At best it shuts down and redirects any attempt at discussion to refuting its specific example (as seen here I guess). Using it as a basis for opinion or factual support of ones stance on gender is detrimental due to its inherent history and function of being a joke. One created to delegitimize and insult a group of people.
I see how you could interpret it as something like that altho I think it's more of aimed at people who are ignorant of nature of gender and make it up as if it was oc

[veti]

You don't need gender terms to disuse gender,

If you want to discuss it, it would be reasonable for others to expect you to ground yourself in the basic terminology first. Or, to admit what you don't know, and seek enlightenment at the appropriate time.

But more fundamentally, why exactly do you even want to discuss it?

It doesn't happen so much now, but there was a time in my life when it seemed I was forever filling out forms that asked me whether I was male or female. I nearly always declined to answer that question - not because I have any problem identifying as one of those things, but because I couldn't see what the other party could reasonably want with that information. If I'm applying for a bank account, or a credit card, or an electricity account, or a college course - what the heck does it matter to you what I am? Mind your own business and I'll mind mine. Thank you.

And you know what? When you put it like that, it's amazing how often the question turns out to be optional.

[Greenflame133]

If you want to discuss it, it would be reasonable for others to expect you to ground yourself in the basic terminology first. Or, to admit what you don't know, and seek enlightenment at the appropriate time.

But more fundamentally, why exactly do you even want to discuss it?

It doesn't happen so much now, but there was a time in my life when it seemed I was forever filling out forms that asked me whether I was male or female. I nearly always declined to answer that question - not because I have any problem identifying as one of those things, but because I couldn't see what the other party could reasonably want with that information. If I'm applying for a bank account, or a credit card, or an electricity account, or a college course - what the heck does it matter to you what I am? Mind your own business and I'll mind mine. Thank you.

And you know what? When you put it like that, it's amazing how often the question turns out to be optional.
One instance were it is useful is when organizing accommodations on summer camp. You generally don't want anyone to have sex or even worst get pregnant as this is a lot of ligal trouble. What you do, you sort peoples but whats between their legs no nobody gets pregnant or come up with other simplification to deal with ton of peoples that need to be sorted to the rooms and groups for activity. Given that's not only factor but it's seems important, even over age. Given I can't recall the camp dealing with non-sis peoples.

Bank may use it for security but likely they won't metter, if it's optional It's probably used for statistics.

[2D8HP]

If you want to discuss it, it would be reasonable for others to expect you to ground yourself in the basic terminology first. Or, to admit what you don't know, and seek enlightenment at the appropriate time.

But more fundamentally, why exactly do you even want to discuss it?.....


One instance were it is useful is when organizing accommodations on summer camp....


??????

:confused:

Um... @Greenflame133, please just thoroughly read the Wikipedia articles on

Gender (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender)

and

Gender identity (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_identity)

then quote relevant sentences from them either asking folks in the Forum to explain further, or citing how you agree or disagree.

I think that will go a long way towards you communicating your questions and ideas.

[Recherché]

One instance were it is useful is when organizing accommodations on summer camp. You generally don't want anyone to have sex or even worst get pregnant as this is a lot of ligal trouble. What you do, you sort peoples but whats between their legs no nobody gets pregnant or come up with other simplification to deal with ton of peoples that need to be sorted to the rooms and groups for activity. Given that's not only factor but it's seems important, even over age. Given I can't recall the camp dealing with non-sis peoples.

Uhm here's the thing, I'm a ciswoman but sex is less likely if you put me in a cabin with a big hairy guy than if you put me in a cabin with a cute girl. And pregnancy isn't likely either way. Your simplification here let's a lot of people through the cracks and not just on gender.

[Greenflame133]

Uhm here's the thing, I'm a ciswoman but sex is less likely if you put me in a cabin with a big hairy guy than if you put me in a cabin with a cute girl. And pregnancy isn't likely either way. Your simplification here let's a lot of people through the cracks and not just on gender.
yes is huge simplification but think how else you want to deal with group on any size anywhere from 20 to few hundred people weh nthere are also other factores

[halfeye]

yes is huge simplification but think how else you want to deal with group on any size anywhere from 20 to few hundred people weh nthere are also other factores

Pardon me for asking, but is English not your usual language? What you write reads as if you speak much more fluently than you write, do you read books in English at all?

[EternalMelon]

I see how you could interpret it as something like that altho I think it's more of aimed at people who are ignorant of nature of gender and make it up as if it was oc
I'm not sure how else to interpret it considering that is literally how its used. And how you continue to use it as a basis of your interpretation.

However, as I said thats besides the point. Although I will ask that you heed lvl 2 Clerics advice and read the linked wikipedia articles. They seem to be decent from my first glance (however, I admit to already having done my research prior to this conversation).

@Greenflame133, please just thoroughly read the Wikipedia articles on

Gender (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender)

and

Gender identity (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_identity)

[S@tanicoaldo]

@Greenflame133.

Why it's so hard for some people to grasp the fact that sometimes people are different from what they are used to, but they are still people and need to be respected.

Just because you don't get it doesn't make it invalid.

A lot of people don't get the apeal of RPGs but they are still great, so don't be the jerk that goes "Are RPG gamers missing the point? Life is about having fun, sex and party not boring nerdy games" have some emphaty.

[Red Fel]

yes is huge simplification but think how else you want to deal with group on any size anywhere from 20 to few hundred people weh nthere are also other factores

The same way you deal with any minority group.

With respect, dignity, understanding, and compassion.

[Greenflame133]

The same way you deal with any minority group.

With respect, dignity, understanding, and compassion.
was it about the accommodation on camp? so how it becomes minorty, if face my nature moust of them are part of majority

[Recherché]

Here's the thing, most people do not need wheelchairs and it would surely be simpler for our society to generalize and assume that no one needs a wheelchair ramp. But to do that would be to deny the humanity of everyone who does. It would isolate them and confine them to their houses preventing them from participating in society fully. So we as a society have decided that having wheelchair ramps and elevators are good and they should be as many places as possible. Same with braille. People who read braille are in a definite minority but we still put up signs for them in a lot of public buildings.

Am I less human and less deserving than someone who needs a wheelchair?

[Kyberwulf]

{Scrubbed}

[Red Fel]

{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

Are you really using the term "deficient" to describe people in wheelchairs and those with vision impairments?


{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

This actually highlights the crux of the problem. A lot of the people who argue against acknowledging or accommodating non-cisgendered1 individuals base their arguments on a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means.

So let's be clear on at least one point: It's not about "your wants and desires." It's about who you are as a person. It's about one of the fundamental building blocks of identity.

Yes. I expect you to acknowledge me, as a person, whomever or whatever I happen to be. I don't expect you to like me, or to be civil to me, or even to tolerate me, but I expect you to acknowledge me as a person.

And no, you don't get a say in what kinds of people there are in the world. You don't. People exist. People with different genders, different ethnicities, different sexualities, different beliefs, and so forth. You don't get to say that they don't or shouldn't exist; you don't get a say in that.

Not you. Not anybody.


{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

An admirable try at diverting the conversation in a direction it definitely wasn't headed. But no. That's the wrong song.

1 For the record, I appreciate the fact that there is a word for this concept, but for some reason the word "cisgender" bothers me. Just, as a word. I feel like we can do better.

[YossarianLives]

snip
As always, Red Fel is on point.

You are welcome to disagree with me, but by doing so you're denying the lived experiences of millions and erasing cultural traditions that go back centuries. I exist, and I don't need your permission to do so.

{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}Trans-exclusionary radical feminism is widely mocked for being reactionary, unscientific, and weirdly obsessed with certain aspects of the female anatomy. Trying to claim it's the only true form of feminism is just incorrect.

[Chen]

{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

But gender identity is almost by definition defined at an individual level. With no real restrictions on that definition. So with that as the basis its objective reality there are more than just the two standard ones. There's no hard definition of female or male GENDER (as opposed to sex). It's not simply a matter of belief but one of the way what is being discussed is defined. There is no hypocrisy there. You are objectively wrong.

Biological sex has much more rigid definitions for male and female (generally based on reproductive gamete size IIRC). Again by these definitions you could put forth arguments there are only 2 sexes though I think that still fails based on organisms that can produce both types of gametes, so presumably there's at least a third category there (maybe a 4th if an organism can't produce any gametes at all).

[S@tanicoaldo]

{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

People in wheelchairs and blind people are just as "normal" as you are.

What happened to this forum? It used to be such an open minded, progressive and chill place now it's kind of attracting some really unsavory people, I wonder why and when such shift happened… :smallconfused:

[Roland St. Jude]

Sheriff: Thread locked.