There are plenty of trans individuals who'd disagree with that. Gender is a made-up concept the same way that 'birds' are a made-up concept - they're a human categorization of actual phenomena.
39Humans just can’t resist categorizing things with fuzzy borders. Just ask any biologists about taxonomy and you’ll see what I mean.
15And there are trans people who believe gender is a social construct too, though. It is an open debate.
4I think this is the point. Maybe? Sorting stuff in categories is a human hobby even if the reality doesn't give a shit about categories. See cladistics: we paste labels on beings and say this a species, this is a genus, and we have to arbitrarily choose when a group is neither one or the other, because life didn't evolve following human rules.
2Species, as an example, are far from strict and static categories, but such categories are still standard in academia because even in a field as precision-oriented as academic and scientific studies, they ARE still useful reflections of real phenomena.
3
You can have desires for different things and you can even be attracted to the same gender but creating a new gender is silly. You can be male or female and dress and act how you want for the most part. Gender doesn't need to define you and can be black and white just like your hair color. You are you, not your gender.
Anyway my option isn't meant to offend. If I've upset you I am sorry but I've just seen a lot of the more wild LGBQ+ be a bit to flamboyant in "gender".
33Exactly? As in, I identify as gender fluid not because my gender defines me, but precisely because the binary "male" and "female" genders don't directly apply to my identity, so a new term that better aligns with how I feel is useful.
So if it's "silly" to "create" a "new" gender, what do you suggest as an alternative?
4Hope this isn't an offensive question to ask - but what do you mean by "how I feel"?
Because, by example, I am a man. I know this because I have the reproductive organs of a man. I am "more manly" than some men, and "less manly" than some other men. But I am a man, regardless of how I feel, dress, act or look.
In my current understanding of gender, being gender fluid would require the hot swapping of your reproductive organs.
So - genuinely (if you want to...) - can you help me understand what you mean by what you said? Perhaps I can become less ignorant without exposing my ignorance to the real world.
4
100% agree but can never get my point across this nicely then I get banned for a few days
4
Gender was invented by Big Bathroom to sell more toilets!
30I wish I had big bathroom at home
3By having more genders, wouldn't Big Bathroom profit more?
1Yes!
2
If you can't trust Big Bathroom, who can you trust?
1Me
1
Yes!!!
0
Yep and I never understood the idea, it just seemed weird to me. People always said to me that you can just feel your gender but I don't feel a gender or know what it would feel like. That's how I found out about being Agender, well it was after I found out about being AroAce and I wondered if the A- prefix could apply to gender, and it does.
12I like to think of myself as a pretty open and accepting person but some of the stuff on that site is fucking stupid. Like I totally "get" and respect the whole trans, NB, Agender stuff but I full stop think the anthro and the catgirl and catboy gender stuff is really fucking stupid and it's setting back the real gender movement for trans and NB and agendered people.
11Remember kids: you can't transition inherited traits. Gender is not an inherited trait–the reason you're a human isn't because society has arbitrarily put you into the category of human, it's because your parents are humans. Gender isn't inherited. Nonbinary folks can have binary kids. Human folks cannot have cat kids.
10
I mean, species are an idea humans made up. See dogs versus dingos.
But it turns out words can mean things?
The problem with idiot bigots is that they're just making mouth noises. The same jackholes who insist men are men and that's that will also have ten thousand fears about random activities and affiliations that make them "less of a man." Pick a lane, fuckwad.
On the other hand - English has only two sets of gendered pronouns. The third choice is not gendered. You don't get to substitute a bad Scrabble hand. Nobody gets their own pronouns... because that's not what pronouns do. Those are just nouns. If it has to be written on a nametag, write your damn name. The parts of speech referring to "yonder rando" are deliberately limited, for cases where you don't know anything about someone beyond looking at them, and don't really need to.
11Yonder Rando is my next D&D character
4Actually, people can and do get to pick their own pronouns. You aren't forced to respect that, but you're an asshole if you don't.
1My gender is God :)
-2Username checks out
-6Wow, never heard that one before.
The best part in this case is having to guess which part you're performatively sneering over. I'm betting it's because your mouth noises were called out as innately hypocritical. Oh - no doubt. You are an outright bastard spitting anti-trans hatred in a variety of threads. What a winner. Get out.
-2
I don’t get the gender conversation. Before you discuss, define what gender means. After you defined it, it should be clear how many types there are or can exist.
If you can’t decide on one definition, then make up several. „Genders A“, „Genders B“, …
It should be very simple.
11Sex is biology, gender is sociology.
It is the spectrum between feminine and masculine, where we as a society decide which traits fall where. This changes per culture.
8Also how much you will earn. I was paid a quarter less than my male colleagues (ICT).
6If it changes by culture, then each culture will have their own definition. So if we ask a Texan Redneck and a Swedish Librarian, we will get two very different answers. But they both might be right in their culture.
Culture does not have borders. You and your neighbour have different cultures. So I believe this is nothing you can argue about, unless you specify a definition first. It does not have to be a global definition, it does not have to apply to all people, it doesn’t even have to make sense.
The definition will make it possible to discuss the topic. When the definition is precise, it will be a very short discussion. The interesting part is coming up with that definition and figuring out what aspects you want to include and what you deem not relevant.
4
Gender is a bimodal distribution between "dude" and "lady"
People are the gender that they are, and it's arrogant to think that we can tell someone "actually, your experience of your own body is incorrect." If someone says they're one gender, the other, or neither, who the hell am I to tell them they're wrong?
3Gender describes your sex. Or at least that's what people want it to be.
There are various reasons why people decide to use no gender at all or what ever. In the end it's a creation of humans to describe how people should act accordingly.
People who say there are only two genders are very narrow minded. Let them explain intersexual people. Checkmate.
There is a specific group that speaks about gender all the time: The people who believe there should be 2 genders. If that was nature's law, have a look at animals. Good luck.
-3Human brains are literal pattern-recognition and classifying machines. It's what they have evolved for millions of years to do. We're hard wired to observe nature, detect patterns, and classify things based on those patterns to help focus on new info and not be overwhelmed by the world.
Gender is just a shorthand that we've developed for classifying people into groups, based on key commonalities about how most of us tend to look and behave.
It's like the names we give to colors. We can all name a handful of main colors off the top of our head, and we've even named a few as "primary" colors because of how they interact together. But someone would have to be an absolute fucking moron to insist that primary colors are the only "real" colors, just because the idea of primary colors has some basis in color theory.
19You're running together gender and sex and then saying gender isn't real. The reality is more nuanced.
1 ) You're born with your sex (biologically determined), 2) you're also born with gender identity, and 3) the way you present your gender is called gender expression. So I can be born a biological male but have a woman gender identity and this would make me transgender. Now whether I choose to dress in masculine or feminine clothes this doesn't change my sex or gender identity.
5We could define two genders: Males are all humans larger than 175 cm Females are all that are 175cm or smaller.
Or we take the degree by what the jaw line is curved and sort it from most masculine with strong curves to most feminine with slow elegant curves.
We could go by genetics. Then we only have a handful of genders (xx, xy, xyy, xxy, … etc)
What I am saying is: define what it is first, and then the discussion is very simple. By my first definition there are exactly two genders, second one has infinite, third definition has a handful of genders.
-3
@hellfire103 What if genders actually have us instead?
8@petrescatraian@libranet.de Now we're asking the real questions
5
There is only one gender
8What is it?
4Right now it's mine. Y'all can wait patiently for your turn I promise not to hog it
the gender officially belongs to the state; I have merely checked it out from the tool-share library and must return it in undamaged condition
11
Ehhh, I get the point, and I know it's exaggerated for the lolz, which it definitely got.
That being said, the fact that gender as a part of language is indeed a construct, the fact that humans have a strong history of making those constructs and organizing around them points to the underlying essence of what gender actually represents does have more of a non ideated origin.
And, generally, for the species as a whole, the binary works for both the body and the mind. The fact that there are a large number of people that don't fall close enough to the ends of the spectrum for it to actually be binary doesn't get rid of the fact that the percentage of people that don't fit the gender norms that are commonly associated with a given "sex" is damn low ratio.
That's why it's vital to protect that minority, mind you. That's why we have to take care of our own, and our own is every human being. I'm just saying that the issues around gender and sex are issues that stem from a pretty small minority. For the rest of the population, gender and sex aren't separate for the individual person.
4Which is why so many people struggle to empathize. But I agree, just because most people can walk, doesn't mean we shouldn't build more access ramps.
2
God damn biology.
3
True.
8
Politics aside, how the hell is this same picture in my Top Six Hour feed seven times in five groups I don't subscribe to? Impressive spam-job.
2I'm swarmgender and Lemmy users hate me for it
2Hahahhahhahhahhahahhhhahahhah
0So we're just posting propaganda now?
0Call me God, that is my gender
-1Why do y'all care so much what you're called then? [Serious]
-3Lolol. You just copy/pasta-ed this ignorant message on every version of this post. Why do you care so much? [Serious]
4What's ignorant? Asking a question? Bunch of y'all upvoted in a matter of min but goes against what y'all preach. I care because people preaching nonsense doesn't help anyone.
-1
No, you're born with gender. Literally the point of trans-gender is they were born with a gender that doesn't match their biological sex.
edit: Can't tell if you guys don't think trans people are a thing or what. Either way, reality isn't determined by up/down votes.
-12Nobody's born with gender, it develops as you age. All newborns are agender.
8I would agree with that. I know there is likely a biological component but I'm not sure if it's as straightforward as "brain-sex" because brain sex either doesn't explain people who don't fall under male or female identities or in the worst case claims they're faking it (Transmedicalists love this argument). Also Brain-sex falls flat on its face when it comes to describing gender fluidity.
1
