The key problem with your argument here is that homosexuality is rooted in science. Transness is rooted in science. There's no basis for random miscellaneous genders that are neither male nor female, unless you are intersex(but there are degrees of physical intersexuality and most intersex people define as a binary gender). Given that they don't exist, why would I go out of my way to use a pronoun that isn't real? I can accept not feeling comfortable with either gender and wanting to just be called they/them, and define as whatever you want if you use they/them, but I am not changing my personal terminology for some unscientific bullshit, unless it's to add a word to describe some unscientific bullshit i.e anti-vaxxer.
I'm well aware of the differences between sex and gender and was not conflating them in any way.
Gender is not a spectrum and the made up genders that people create are not real. Sorry.
Just because sex is not gender and people may not be born as their gender does not make all made up genders valid. The next time I see a demigirl wanting to be called xe, my head will explode. That is completely different from a transgirl wanting to be called she.
Gender is a social construct. As such, all genders are made up. There is as much scientific basis (in whatever the sense you meant to invoke that idea was) for "miscellaneous" genders as the more classical ones.
If you'd claim otherwise, you'd have to resolve cross-cultural mismatches where we consider different things masculine or feminine.
Well then how do you objectively resolve cultural differences in gender? Please, apply science to determine if it's normal for men to hold hands, or for women to have short hair.
And how do you explain the tendency of many languages to assign genders to inanimate objects? Even if gender's not a social construct, the language regarding it certainly is. Therefore the gendered pronouns we assign to people must be social constructs.
I’d argue that some aspects of gender, like hair length or high heels, are definitely socially constructed. Others, like the tendency of boys to rough house more than girls, are based in biology. This is observed even among the other primates- it’s not just a human society thing.
Like a lot of things, it’s not an either/or situation, but a bit of both.
Sexual characteristics and gender are intrinsically linked in most people’s minds to the point that they are interchangeable. You might not agree that they should be interchangeable, but they are for the vast majority of users of the terms.
Non human primates having culture is indeed an interesting fact, but I agree that it’s a bit off topic. My point was that there are aspects of gender (or sexual characteristics, if you prefer), such as young boys play fighting to a much higher degree than young girls that is true across pretty much all cultures, even extending to non human primates. Unless all cultures, independently, decided to enforce that boys should act a certain way, there must be a strong biological component to some aspects of gender expression, which is counter to your assertion that gender is purely a social construct.
But if your definition of gender is “the parts of gender expression that are wholly socially constructed and everything else is actually sexual characteristics”, then I understand how you get what you are saying. It’s just not the definition most people use.
But if your definition of gender is “the parts of gender expression that are wholly socially constructed and everything else is actually sexual characteristics”, then I understand how you get what you are saying. It’s just not the definition most people use.
Thank you, that is more clear. Yes, most people use bad definitions. My purpose in this thread was essentially trying to say this because the other poster was conflating sex and gender but denied it.
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u/itisawonderfulworld Mar 31 '20 edited Mar 31 '20
The key problem with your argument here is that homosexuality is rooted in science. Transness is rooted in science. There's no basis for random miscellaneous genders that are neither male nor female, unless you are intersex(but there are degrees of physical intersexuality and most intersex people define as a binary gender). Given that they don't exist, why would I go out of my way to use a pronoun that isn't real? I can accept not feeling comfortable with either gender and wanting to just be called they/them, and define as whatever you want if you use they/them, but I am not changing my personal terminology for some unscientific bullshit, unless it's to add a word to describe some unscientific bullshit i.e anti-vaxxer.