Hey all,
So I’m looking to take an active step here to understand better some things that my straight/white/cis/middle-aged male brain has had a tough time wrapping itself around, particularly in the gender identity front.
I’m working from the understanding of physical sex as the bio-bits and the expressed identity as being separate things, so that part is easy enough.
What’s confusing to me though is like this. If we take gender as being an expression of your persona, a set of traits that define one as male, female, or some combination of both then what function does a title/pronoun serve? To assume that some things are masculine or feminine traits seems to put unneeded rigidity to things.
We’ve had men or women who enjoy things traditionally associated with the other gender for as long as there have been people I expect. If that’s the case then what purpose does the need for a gender title serve?
I’ll admit personally questioning some things like fairness in cis/trans integrated sports, but that’s outside what I’m asking here. Some things like bathroom laws are just society needing to get over itself in thinking our personal parts are all that special.
Certainly not trying to stir up any fights, just trying to get some input from people that have a different life experience than myself. Is it really as simple as a preferred title?
Edit: Just wanted to take a second to thank all the people here who took the time to write some truly extensive thoughts and explanations, even getting into some full on citation-laden studies into neurology that’ll give me plenty to digest. You all have shown a great deal of patience with me updating some thinking from the bio/social teachings of 20+ years back. 🙂
Among other social constructs such as gender, as useful as they can perhaps be when looking for a generalisation of “what are the terms for you to be understood in?” I have recently been questioning sex. Sex is often referred to as the biological bits, but is that true? No, because it’s an incomplete picture.
Biologists seem to currently accept sex is a mosaic of sexual characteristics. This includes but is not limited to genitalia and chromosome—the two most thought about elements I’d wager—and your chest, your hormone balance, but also measurements like around the hips, waist, shoulders… And of course, your role in reproduction, especially if you can reproduce.
Many of these characteristics are mutable, especially in today’s society with hormones and surgeries. Functionally speaking, they don’t matter, we as a species are not at risk of extinction and simply do not need to care about it. Sex was fraught even as a measure of reproductive capabilities anyway. We should care for each other’s happiness first and foremost.
But even mutability aside, sex isn’t consistent between men and women, with different hormone balances and even some variations in chromosomes or the capacity for sexual reproduction. Also, see the existence of intersex people, who, by their existence alone, shatter the binary.
I don’t believe sex is a useful categorisation. Sex and gender and expression and the things you enjoy are different, but they’re also both still constructions with your presumed gender being extrapolated from the most visible elements of your sex and huge variability for each person therein, but the correlation is starting to feel weak.
Sex and genders, as structures, are the product of cisheteropatriarchy, ie sexism. Even in sports. Social constructs generally arise as a necessary division for societies to make given their material conditions, and it was used to increase populations. I would say it is time to leave such vestigial logic behind.
For purposes of conversing with people who don’t share the same life it is useful to have terms differentiating they physical and the psychological though. It seems recently that people have finally moved away from the ‘gender is what’s in your pants’ narrative when dismissing trans people out of hand, why muddy that when all the traits you mentioned regarding sex are physical markers?
I think I can see the point of confusion- the reason for illustrating physical sex as a spectrum is that it’s easier to lay out the concept of gender identity as an analogue.
It’s also possible that gender identity is structural but brains are complicated and linking mechanisms to behavior is hairy.
It’s less the notion of it being spectrum based, but more in identifying the difference between the tangible/measurable things of the physical body, and those that are created of the mind and societies expectations. My understanding coming into this is that sex=physical / gender=emotional/mental/social, but some comments here have me questioning that understanding.
People have not moved away from the “gender is what’s in your pants” narrative. Transphobes still misgender based their victims’ (presumed) genitalia.
I didn’t muddy it, you misunderstand what social construct is, and “sex” is muddy in and of itself. As I said, sex is not so firmly binary.
Well, those acting without bad intentions I guess would be better said. Haters gonna hate and all do those folks opinions are subject to the bin.
When talking about muddy it was more referring to physical vs mental matters just from a terminology standpoint. While sex is not a binary thing, the measures and markers you mentioned are all physical designations rather than social or psychological.
I don’t think my mom is acting with bad intentions when she says things like “gender is the parts you’re born with, nothing more.” Its just what she happens to believe. I suspect its an important belief for her because that’s her only connection to being a woman. Without that, she’d probably have more self-reflection to do. OTOH, I don’t think she’s arguing in good faith when she complains about things like singular they when she wRiteS lIKE THis. I try not to assume people are just acting with bad intentions.
I second this. It’s a little solipsistic to dismiss everyone you don’t like as “bad intentions” because you simply can’t know their intentions. All I know is some people do their best to make me feel good about myself and my identity and some either don’t or can’t and there is functionally little difference for me between those latter two camps.
So I don’t know how old your parents are but I’m in my mid 40s. When I was a kid being gay was a punchline, Cpl Klinger on MASH tried to get out of the army on a mental illness grounds by dressing as a woman, and there where shows like ‘Bosom Buddies’ which I’ll leave you to look up again making fun of cross dressing, which in itself is a term I don’t hear anymore.
Given that history, the change to sex and gender being separate things, and not only that but they can change and merge over time, is a pretty rough thing to try and recognize. So depending on who they are I could see it as “I just don’t want to get into that”
There are certainly some though that use it maliciously, the ‘you will never be a woman’ crowd.
She’s in her 50’s. In my mom’s case, I think its mostly just lived experience. If she was trans, she’d be less gay. She dresses in clothes from the men’s section exclusively (including to her weddings), has shortish hair, is regularly mistaken as a guy (both in person and over the phone and I’ve never seen her correct anyone and she seems to be pretty happen about guy men thinking she’s cute), is the only woman in her position at her jobs, is often treated more like a guy by friends and family while her fairly tomboyish wife is still treated as a woman, etc.
Her experiences of being a woman has basically just which sports teams she’s allowed to play on because of the genitals she happened to have.
Granted, I have no clue what her opinion of her own body is. Personally, I always kept things like jealousy of girls or wishish I could just wake up in a different body to myself (until I started to seriously question my gender at 28yo). Mostly because I tried to avoid thinking about that kind of thing and pretend it didn’t exist. Maybe she would still just consider herself a butch woman even if she had grown up in a different environment that was more accepting of trans people and had more understanding of non-binary/agender identities.
There are certainly some though that use it maliciously, the ‘you will never be a woman’ crowd.
My mom is a bit transphobic like that, but I think that belief came first and the transphobia came later partly as a result of that belief (and then she’s adopted stupid talking points to further justify the transphobia). She only said that when asked about her own gender though: I’ve never seen her use it against trans people. Honestly, I haven’t tried talking about gender with my mom (the closest thing I can think of is when she was complaining about singular they/them in bad faith, but I approached that as a discussion about the history of language, not gender… although my stepmom asked if I was in a woman in the middle of that conversation).
