Literally everything is just a concept humanity made up, informed by our very specific and limited abilities of perception.
Even numbers are represented differently in different languages, and different cultures teach different methods of interacting with them, and aliens could have completely different paradigms for interpreting physical reality than us altogether.
Anyone who tries to make claims about something being a universal or scientific "Truth-with-a-capital-T" that transcends human definitions is pushing an agenda.
34Absolutist claims about universal truths aren't always driven by personal agendas. In mathematics or some scientific fields, certain truths are universally accepted based on evidence and testing. These truths aren't necessarily rooted in personal biases but rather in the pursuit of understanding the world objectively. So while one has to be careful, not all claims of universal truth or objectivism stem from an agenda.
18Science is a human paradigm for interpreting the universe. Certain scientific truths are accepted by humans, at this time, which constitutes a very small part of the universe.
I'm not saying none of the accepted scientific principles may be correct (and I'm certainly not saying they should be discounted by humans, since after all, it's our own paradigm), I'm just saying that they are only coming from a very small and narrow ability to interact with the universe. If they are universally true, it's not because we exhausted all other possibilities; we literally don't have the means to say we've examined anything in all possible ways that can exist in the universe. We can't know what we don't know, after all.
I do think that saying we have achieved anything that qualifies as definitive, objective Truth, beyond the limited realm of human perception and experience, is not true. Nothing within science is universally, unquestionably settled.
For humans? With the instruments and models we have now? Sure, absolutely.
But once again, that's very narrow.
As a little aside:
These truths aren’t necessarily rooted in personal biases but rather in the pursuit of understanding the world objectively.
That is also an agenda. Agenda doesn't mean something nefarious, it just means an ideologically-driven plan. Wanting to understand the universe better within a certain paradigm (i.e. science) is an agenda.
16
You sound like an antirealist. Are you part of the soulist community?
1No, and I hadn't even heard of Soulism before now. I think I'd probably be considered a Relativist, and I'm definitely an Anarchist.
WRT the above, I just think that humans have a very narrowminded view of the universe around us, where we try to make everything conform to our own paradigms (e.g. our attempts to define animal intelligence based on them exhibiting human characteristics, rather than classifying each of their forms of intelligence by their own behavioral characteristics).
Is the less-intelligent brain the baboon one that doesn't bother trying to tell whether something is a reflection of itself, or is it the human one that can't see a similar-looking human without their mind doing a double-take to avoid otherwise descending into dreadful existential ponderings.
Baboon brains simply can't create Jet Li's The One, is I guess what I'm saying, and I think that really tilts the intelligence definition in their favor.
2
Did you guys know the brain named itself?
15Kind of, gender is a manifestation of sex, and we're sexually dimorphic as a species. Like the people who joke about being an attack helicopter or part fairy and stuff aren't really talking about gender.
The reason trans people experience dysphoria is due to the real link between sex and gender, if there wasn't a real basis then conversion therapy would work.
8Alternatively: gender and sex could be synonyms, and trans people experience dysphoria because of a mismatch between physical gender/sex and their self-perceived gender/sex, through a mechanism not all that different from other kinds of dysphoria.
BTW, I am physically male, but don't perceive or think of myself as of any sex or gender (I think the word is "genderless"), so might as well say I have the "gender" of an inanimate object.
2Xenogenders aren't a joke. While the attack helicopter copypasta is a joke designed by reactionaries to mock the concept of xenogenders, what they are mocking is a real identity held by real people. I don't know any helicopters, but I've met dragons, elves, and gods. Xenogenders are valid identities.
1Yeah, that's a better way of putting it.
1
Gender expression and gender stereotypes are societal constructs. A person's sense of their own gender is (probably) not. There have been many times where people have tried to raise their child as a different gender than the child was assigned at birth, and the child 99% of the time identifies with the gender assigned at birth, at the same rate as the general cisgender population. There have also been studies of identical twins where if one twin is trans, the other twin often is as well, at a much higher rate than fraternal twins.
There is a genetic component and a constructed component to gender.
Edit: wording.
Edit 2: See my comment below with sources on the twins study - it's possible I was misinformed on this. The results of studies are mixed.
7This is really interesting if these stats are true. Just to comment on the raising child as different gender, I personally would put this down to wider societal influence as the parents of course dont have full control of what their child is exposed to - they can only control so much. This could be things like bullying, advertisements, minor subtleties present in society (such as the signs used on gendered toilets) and probably others. But just want to be clear that i dont think your conclusion is invalid by any means, just wanted to give my viewpoint on that specific stat in case you hadn't considered it already and maybe we can learn from each other :)
The identical twin study specifically sounds really interesting and I'd love to read about it if you get the time to link it, thanks!
2I was actually repeating what was said in a video I watched yesterday so I went to look at their sources - here is a relevant study that supports this conclusion - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1743609515339060
However while looking it up in google scholar I did find another study that concluded the opposite, that there's no significant difference between identical and fraternal twins. That study is here. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-17749-0
So it's possible that I was misinformed.
As a bonus, here's an interesting analysis about what even is gender and gender identity in an academic setting. https://academic.oup.com/analysis/advance-article/doi/10.1093/analys/anad027/7204699
6I searched pubmed and I’m pretty sure this is anecdotal, unfortunately. Hard to say how much of the volume of non-straight/trans and trans/trans twins on social media is selection bias since the trans/cishet twins aren’t eye-catching. There seem to be a lot but gosh do folks love to hear about twin similarities. It’s worth noting most are fraternal but that’s consistent with the general population.
I understand where Kamirose is coming from, but it’s not empirical (unless there’s a study that used some really weird terminology and I missed it).
Edit: I found a review and its citations do not converge well due to small sample sizes (hard with trans + twins - two rare things for births).
3
There have been many times where people have tried to raise their child as a different gender than the child was assigned at birth, and the child 99% of the time identifies with the gender assigned at birth, at the same rate as the general cisgender population.
How many is "many"? 100? 1,000? 10,000? Where is the study on this?
1I wonder if @Kamirose@beehaw.org might be thinking of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer
Reimer was an identical twin AMAB who was raised female due to his penis being mangled during circumcision. The gender was then reassigned as female and the infant had surgical procedures done to align the body with the new female gender. The case was overseen by John Money who made a lot of hay over it, publishing all about how this proved gender was a purely social construction. It was a very famous case study. Ultimately Reimar he felt himself to be male and transitioned to male as an adult. However he was very screwed up by the whole thing and my understanding is his death by suicide is attributed to this whole series of events. There was a lot of weird stuff.
5That portion is anecdotal. These stories come from either before there were ethics guidelines in psychology so people were studying their own children, or reviews of child abuse cases where the parent was forcing a different identity on their children. This is not something that is possible to (ethically) run an empirical study on, unfortunately.
3
It would be good if I could pin comments like this on Lemmy.
1
Should we just stop using the word gender then? What's the point?
7i mean just because something is a social construct doesn’t mean it has no real effects on people lives or importance in society. money is a social construct too, but it still affects people and society in major ways, and can be an extremely useful tool.
personally, i think that gender is a useful concept to describe a difficult to quantify/describe part of a persons being, and the majority of people identify with some aspect of gender in some way in their lives. because of that, imo, it’s a good word that should be kept around
8
Gender and Time: Both human concepts I ignore.
5It’s mostly just inane that people discriminate and judge others on the basis of pretty minor dimorphic differences. I.e “durrrrrrr no penis no math…” is a baseless, but disgustingly common sentiment that functions to oppress women.
I don’t necessarily take issue with cis, heterosexual folks wanting to simplify personal routines and finding a compatible partner, but can we get over misogyny and the investment in gender being at all meaningful please?
4If this was a correct idea then there is no need for anyone to transition because their gender isn't real anyway.
This is not a toxic idea if you stay here temporarily on a path to somewhere else but it is actually anti-trans so try to move on to the next brain wave.
3That's...a good point, but not at all what I meant. I am trans, btw.
Other commenters have improved my point and my understanding.
1
Huh, theres 8 billion people. When did that happen, feels like that shouldve been news.
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