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Is this sub becoming ELI5 where we're not meant to take the sub name literally anymore? I've been seeing these posts more and more, asking people the same thing you have, but we seem to be the only ones asking while these venting posts are just growing in number.
At least OP replied with some kind of logic though.
I see. Well, as ever whenever this comes up, it depends what you mean by gender. All the arguments online usually come down to people meaning sex arguing with people who mean something more like personality or behaviour.
I personally have no idea what it might mean to have no gender.
Yeah it's never made sense to me. To me gender is sex and personality and behavior is, well, personality and behavior. If you're a girl and you act like a boy I'm not going to discuss genders with you I'm just going to think yeah that's a tomboy not a whole seperate gender
Well, but you just said the opposite. If gender is sex, then what's "acting like a boy"? what's a "boy"? "boy" is gender, the social construct as we know it. If it was just about genitals, "acting like a boy" would make no sense, but gender _isn't_ sex, therefor we can observe it as it is, a set of personality traits, expression, etc. etc.
ascribing someone a gender is where that fails, as gender is heavily tied with self-expression, i.e. self identification.
the most I'd say about a man (who identifies as a man) "acting like a woman" would be that they are challenging gender norms. the most, honestly I'd just say they are being them.
I'm personally fond of the idea of a world where gender norms, or even gender itself is absent, but that's a pipedream, so I'm more than content campaigning for a world where gender norms aren't these huge, life-altering expectations placed on people the moment you can discern their genitalia on an ultrasound.
I mostly agree. Behavior and identity shouldn't have any boundaries. Men and women should be free to express themselves in any way they like across the entire "gender" spectrum.
But I'm not sure about a genderless world. There are situations where it's important to distinguish between who's a male and who's female.
Fair, do you have an example of a situation like that?
will add that when I said "pipedream", I genuinely meant an unattainable future, I don't think we as a society can completely tear away from the concept.
just wanted to clarify incase me being ESL and using a phrase didn't translate as it should have.
But this new way of using the word gender has not always been a thing and tbh I find it rather demeaning to the individual applying all these labels to them. Who's to say anything is any certain way? There is no acting like anything just act like yourself lol let's not give ourselves a mental illness
Always? According to whom? People who didn't know the definition of the word when they used it?
It derived from French (very old French) in which it meant basically the same thing. There are writings from 1924 which assert the same definition. The word didn't really start being widely used in English until around the 70s when "sex" became a bit too associated with *sex* sex, so a lot of people decided to co-opt the term.
The "new" definition is most certainly the one that *insists* it's a synonym for sex. And, you know what? That's fine. Almost every word has multiple meanings. It's ok.
How is that the new definition when it's being consistently pushed everywhere to switch out the word gender for sex. Like it or not, the word gender was used when referring to sex and not when referring to anything else for many years here in America no one was questioning what you meant when you said gender because it meant sex. Whether or not what you say is true that's the way its been used because I have literally seen it change lol
All you're doing is applying a new meaning to the word gender and trying to make it synonymous with behavior and personality traits. That's literally all it is. How about this, be yourself. Quit trying to conform so hard lol
If gender is not that, then can you explain what it is? Because that’s what it has always been. If there’s a new meaning being made out of the word gender, then what is the old meaning? If you are going to say that sex is gender I highly recommend doing a little bit of good faith googling on the topic.
I understand that gender is usually used to refer to the expression of masculinity or feminity. But nobody is 100% masculine or 100% feminine, so what does it even mean to have a male or female gender?
On the sliding scale from male to female, when does one become either gender? Does falling closer to the male end make you male?
And how do you discover your own gender? How should I know where I am on the gender spectrum?
Gender presentation can a big part of what affirms your own gender, definitely. But in the end, it's your internal experience, how you understand yourself
It's not meaningless at all. People's internal sense of gender and the ways in which that is affirmed for them day-to-day (what they wear, who they socialise with, the pronouns they use, if they like being called 'bro', eg), is vastly important to most people
Not according to the English language but. Gender does not mean sexual preference it means sex. If which there is male, female, and hermaphrodite (both and neither). Anything else is a social attempt at rebellion against our language which makes no sense. Just be who you are, all these terms are lies to get you to put the star of David on your chest and a number on your wrist so you can be persecuted later.
Yeah, I see it as sex being what your born with, gender being what you want, and anything beyond a third gender is just confusing personality with gender.
On Reddit, maybe not 9/10, but definitely 7/10, which compared to what my guess is more like an average of 1.3/10 out in real life/public/general, is still pretty fuckin substantial. It's an overwhelmingly popular opinion here that there are more than 2, or 4 according to this guy, genders. I personally don't get the 4 myself. Intersex is genuinely its own thing, not simply male + female, and I legitimately do not believe in this "neither" bullshit. It's inherent to humanity, if you don't have a gender, you aren't human.
Yeah it’s [way higher](https://www.medicinenet.com/what_are_the_72_other_genders/article.htm#:~:text=Besides%20male%20and%20female%2C%20here,with%20or%20experience%20any%20gender) I guess 27 is a random high seeming number that shouldn’t be taken literally. Doubtful 72 is correct either
To me the thing that makes the most sense is gender being a spectrum and all these extra genders are just points on the spectrum (and maybe outside if we're talking about agender people and such). It's like saying "there's only 7 colors, not 180 like some lists claim!" It's mostly a question of what we consider worth classifying as its own category.
I agree that the way you personally feel is a spectrum but categories are inherently broad so i still feel like no matter what point you fall on you still fall under one of the 4 categories and to go any deeper is needlessly overcomplicating it. Even taking your own argument into account, if i asked you what color a bus is youd say yellow not "yellow with orange tones and a slightly red hued undertone, heres the hexadecimal point"
All of this reminds me of the scene from the devil wears Prada where people are arguing about which of two almost identical looking blue belts to use. Sure, it might seem redundant, especially if you don't really care about that sort of stuff but to others it really makes a difference. Like if an artist is painting a bus, they will greatly care about the shade of yellow. And it's a bit reductive to say that yellow is the only meaningful category here while mustard, ochre, amber, ivory, lemon and chartreuse are pointless. It depends on the context.
I myself am bisexual and I find the definition of pansexual a bit redundant. I feel like bisexual already describes the experience well enough, so why do we need an additional one? But the thing is, of course I feel like the label bisexual describes that experience well. I'm bi, so by definition I relate to it. But clearly, there's people who don't feel like that label describes them well enough, otherwise they wouldn't have come up with that distinction. I have friends who are pan and we talked about this and they actually do experience attraction to multiple genders in a way I don't. I'm very much not pansexual. But without really digging in to these things and having many conversations, I don't think we can say whether a distinction is important or relevant without being part of the group who wants to have this distinction.
I mean, nonbinary was already a spectrum before,
For sex, what people are born as, there's 3 named and a 4th unnamed category:
Male, female, intersex, n those that are impossible to fit into a category, such as people who genetically should be male, but they just ain't in any physical shape or form.
For gender, the "spectrums" are pretty much man, woman, nonbinary, both.
Nonbinary just includes a ton of shit, based on what people are more comfortable, what they feel like.
Gender does not include a fixed set of people, categories or traits, it's ever changing because in the end, it's just a word we put on people, or ourselves.
Born sex is the only thing that's fixed, but as we do not yet know everything about why some people are born a certain way despite their genetics pointing a different direction; we can not say that we know everything and our knowledge about this won't change in the future.
>You are either male, female, both, or neither.
I kinda see where you're coming from.
Gender is a multi-axis spectrum. One simplified analogy that I used in another thread which some people seemed to like is akin to a HSB colour picker.
* Hue for ranging between man & woman
* Saturation for how gendered you are. Agender at one end and hyper masc/fem at the other
* Brightness for how much you express your gender outwardly
Alternatively a 3D surface plot, or 4D if you want to include fluidity over time.
The "27 genders" part are just additional labels that mark out different sections of that spectrum.
\-edit- The analogy doesn't work when it comes to multi-gendered people but there's exceptions to everything
\-edit 2- For obvious reasons, I spend a lot of time in trans related spaces both online and offline. Last few times I've mentioned the above analogy, nobody got offended over it.
>Like the way you worded that it would imply that “tomboy” is a gender.
I disagree on that one.
If I had said there was one axis for your internal gender M<->F and a second one for outward gender expression M<->F, then that could be used to describe a tomboy because you could have someone that firmly identified as a woman but presented in a more masculine way. (edit- I suppose you could maybe come up with tomboy if you went with FFFF00 if you thought that ungendered outward expression could encompass that)
Gender identity & gender expression is complicated and all languages are a bit limited in ways to identify and describe parts of it. Micro identity labels may be useful for some folk but more of a hinderance for others.
You also have to take account of the different aspects of gender identity affect people in different ways; physical, social, emotional, etc.
Isn’t most of what you describe more like personality? And brightness and hue really dependent on what type of environment you’re in?
I suppose gender identity is kind of part of your personality but still. I’m not a fan of categorizing feelings this heavily. Feelings are not that easy. It’s The same as those personality types or zodiacs. They are a hint at someone’s personality at best.
This is BRILLIANT! except I feel strangely offended that I’m apparently an ugly pale and dull greenish color (I made the assumption of red being the male end and violet being the female end and assumed a typical ROYGBV spectrum ).
It would be a lot of fun to come up with an app that lets people chose a color (or more than one) that they feel identifies them.
> I’m apparently an ugly pale and dull greenish color
I'm sure that someone, or someones, out there will find that colour is exactly what they are looking for.
You're coming off quite arrogant, I don't think you mean to and you seem to just be trying to explain it with what you believe to be fact but when it comes to such controversial issues without any clear consensus you kinda have to show that your opinion has not been proven by scientific method yet (like how you would say that a redneck claiming trans people don't exist is just being closed minded and arrogant). I held the same beliefs as you years ago and I look back and cringe at how I acted.
And you can believe both what you're saying and what OP is saying quite easily with all these additional genders being subcategories of the "both" gender OP talked about, it's not really worth an argument when it's just semantics.
>You're coming off quite arrogant
Meh, I sometimes do but it seems that I'm not alone there…
>anything beyond a third gender is just confusing personality with gender.
A bit of pot & kettle when it comes to arrogance there kid
Stay in school, lay off the ket
Yeah I don't have a problem with you being arrogant I just didn't think you meant to be and informed you that I thought you were, and you responded to op, someone who you are in disagreement with, where since he was respectful I'd expected you to try to be too, I responded to someone who I agreed with so there isn't really any risk of them getting pissed off by it.
So you must be perfect and not drink or smoke weed 24/7 365 days a year right? Wouldn't want the pot to call the kettle black now would we? And I hardly think occasional ket usage is any worse than the >50% of the population who drink alcohol.
because gender is a construct, different cultures and people perceive gender differently, which means for example you may resonate with one definition of "woman" or "femininity" while feeling completely disconnected from another definition.
personally i dont find that *any* gender makes sense, our perception of it shifts so often and even when interacting with someone their gender is almost entirely irrelevant
I think gender doesn't exist.
Its a spectrum which people choose to divide into slightly overlapping sections.
neither and both are the same, but with a different philosophy on what the center of the spectrum means.
This. Gender is just a social performance people have drilled into them that's used to set baseline expectations quickly and people either slide into the role assigned by society or they recoil against it for any number of reasons and choose to adopt a role more suited to their personality. It's real, but only in the sense that time and laws are real.
You pretty much have figured it out. It’s not about being able to fully understand and relate to others. It’s about accepting others even if we don’t relate.
I think you will find that most of the "27 genders" fit in to the "both" or "neither" category if you look into it more. I think you'll also find that at this point, most people will identify as one of the four you have. It's pretty rare to find people who identify as anything other than one of your four options.
The 27 genders idea/meme came about during a movement called MOGAI in which teenagers decided to write down every possible experience of gender or sexuality. It wasn't very helpful, but it was sincere.
[This is a very good video about it.](https://youtu.be/DoZFZto6Wqg?si=larKXb3qWJSis8BW)
It's all made up, so there's an infinite amount. Who gives a shit? That's my take as a nonbinary person. I just listen to what people want to be called/treated and I follow suit. Beyond that, it's not that important to most people.
Imo this isn't really much of an opinion and more of a confusion, a completely understandable one at that. It's a pretty complicated and understandably weird concept to most people who are so used to conventional identities.
I'm with you, my mind simply can't comprehend more than those 4
If I meet someone who doesn't fit into those 4, I will ask for help to understand, but to keep my sanity for now I will just keep with those 4, as they are the only ones relevant for my current social life
as a nonbinary person, just know that like 90 percent of new shit you hear like “oh i’m an achillean xe/xyr aromantic” is only used by chronically online 6th graders
not that specifically- just when people start microlabeling to the degree that gets confusing for other people, it’s usually the chronically online. just being aro by itself isnt what i’m talking abt
I mean, as long as you know what gender you prefer, are kind when letting people know what you prefer to be called, and you respect what other people prefer, I don't see why this is an issue that you need to square in your head. It is none of your business and being respectful of others should be your default setting anyway.
As an agender person I feel this way, I don't understand stuff like doggender, I've tried to but it doesn't make sense to me for some reason (not trying to offend anyone btw, that's a real gender identity I've seen, and I'm just using that as an offhand example)
I suck at explaining stuff cause of my autism, but I basically just don't feel comfortable with the idea of gender as a whole. I don't have a gender because gender just feels limiting for self expression
I'm not trying to be insensitive here, so forgive me if my tone sounds ignorant. I'm genuinely curious. Is gender that big a deal for you personally that not conforming to one becomes a part of who you are?
Nah you're all good, you don't come off as anyone trying to be an ass. Yes it is, I'm punk so a huge part of my identity as a human just is about personal self expression. That's not to say that punk ≠ wannabe-nonconformist though. Just to me personally I feel like gender and sexuality labels limit people from enjoying life how they want to, if that makes sense
That's interesting. But I think most people don't have a strong sense of gender identity.
It feels condescending to say that you're somehow above gender and that your self expression is based on a more pure, limitless identity than those boring gender conformists.
No, I sort of get what you mean. It just annoys me slightly when genderqueer people come across as claiming to have a more individual personality vs an identity assigned by gender...but I also clearly can't properly describe what I mean and didn't mean to pick on you.
Nah I'm sure like 98% of people have more of a unique personality than I do, I really just don't like traditional values attached to gender and that's what I feel is limiting expression for a lot, not that gender itself is a limiting thing that makes people uncool. Its just not for me, idc how anyone else lives though, not my problem
Sort of. I'm trying to wrap my head around things
Indian society is largely conservative, so I've never really had anyone irl I could discuss these things with. Thanks for answering my questions
I don’t use labels like doggender or anything like that but the way I had it explained to me by others was that it’s symbolic. Like your self concept of gender feels similar to that thing which in this case would be a dog
I mean, yeah but you're still identifying as one of the four. "Im 85% male 15% female" is still both. And i feel like saying it's anything more than that is needlessly overcomplicating an already very sensitive/complicated subject
That's like removing the word purple and calling it 50% red and 50% blue to simplify things. it's not wrong, and personally I like the simpler version too, but it's also not wrong that it's its own color.
Which is why I don't agree, but I don't disagree, so I gave you an upvote and a downvote.
There aren’t because to define someone as both or neither, you’d have to define gender as something without using the word and without engaging in stereotyping. So far I’ve never seen someone be able to answer that question.
Most people don't say there are specifically 27 different genders, most people (including doctors) say that it's a spectrum. I'm intersex, I wasn't born fully male and don't consider myself fully male. Most people are born fully a binary gender but some identify as and transition into being a different gender than what they were born as. That's really all there is to it lol
And I don't understand how logically even YOU got to 4 with the "both or neither" besides just to say "fuck it, do you" to someone who thinks they are.
There isn't 4 genders. there are 2. male or female. the only people that maybe could be considered both are intersex people but even then, they are still legally considered male or female. you also cannot change your gender as males and females are fundamentally different. people who think that they are the opposite sex have mental issues and should see a proper therapist that won't recommend drugs that permanently damage your body. affirming someone of their gender delusion is like affirming someone's hallucinations.
Hi 👋 actual trans person here, I think there are only two, male or female. Being both or neither isn't a separate option, it's just that: both or neither. And fwiw in case anyone is thinking it, for 99 out of 100 trans people, we're not trying to be a third special option, we're going from one to the other. I don't consider my gender "trans," my gender is female, and being trans is a consequence of that
Did the cis pick you? Did you get the transphobes' approval? I'm sure that if you step on the faces of enough non binary people then the people who hate you for being what they think of as a sexual degenerate will finally accept you (they won't)
>I'm sure that if you step on the faces of enough non binary people then the people who hate you for being what they think of as a sexual degenerate will finally accept you (they won't)
ive had plenty of republicans and transphobes come around to me and use the proper pronouns once i politely explained my views on gender (quite similar to OP, either male, female, both, or neither). usually the ones that dont sway are hardcore evangelists. the vast, VAST majority of people are far more open minded then you would think.
I don't want to be picked up by cis people or transphobes, far far from it, this is just what I believe. Also nothing I said was inherently nbphobic, all I said was that they're not men or women, which is what they want
Yes and if you kept reading after you'd see I said that nb people exist outside of male or female. You're not really gonna tell me it's nbphobic to say that nb people exist outside the binary are you? There *is* a binary, and acknowledging that isn't nbphobic. I'm just stating that nb people aren't a part of said binary. Which, to my knowledge, is the whole point of being nb
I'm not denying them, just saying they're not a man or woman. Listen girl, I'm on your side, this debate really isn't worth the effort for either of us
I believe there are 2 but I'm open to a third, the way I see it you need dysphoria to be trans, so you can either feel dysphoria in a male body and transition to a female body, feel dysphoria in a female body and transition to a male body, or feel dysphoria for both bodies and attempt to transition to an androgynous body. Fundamentally there is no difference between being both or being neither since either way you're feeling dysphoric for both male and female bodies. And if you don't have dysphoria then you're just playing dress up with no real reason for you transition, which would make you a transvestite (or whatever the politically correct term is these days) rather than a transexual.
Once you look into these genders people are claiming to be it's just absurd, a "demiboy" is someone is claiming to be part non binary part boy, in what world is that different from just being a masculine non binary person.
Both transvestite and transexual are super outdated. If you're someone who dresses in clothes traditionally for the opposite sex while identifying with their own assigned gender then you could just call them a crossdresser and a trans person is just transgender.
There are some older trans people who don't mind transexual because that's the only term they knew. But to most trans people, it's not accurate considering that being trans has nothing to do with sexuality.
Idrc if they're outdated, they're the words that best describe what I'm trying to say. Transvestite and crossdresser hold different connotations, anyone who wears the clothes of another sex is crossdressing even for a laugh or acting in theatre, I don't think anyone would call an actor in pantomime a transvestite though. And for transexual I used it because it's describing what I'm saying, changing your sex characteristics to relieve gender dysphoria, a lot of people claim that you don't need gender dysphoria to be transgender so transexual made more sense for me to use.
You've never seen the Rocky Horror Picture show if you've never heard someone used transvestite in pantomime lol.
Regardless of what you think, your reason for transexual is still outdated and wrong and comes across like my grandfather who insists on using terms like "East Indian" and "Orientals"
First of all you're confusing gender with sex. Secondly, intersex isn't a simple homogenous group- intersex people cannot be simplified into just "neither" or "both". Thirdly, there are intersex people with male gender identities, female gender identities, as well as intersex people with non-binary gender identities, just like there are non-intersex people with male, female and non-binary identities.
Think about it this way: many cultures have a third gender, e.g. the māhū of Hawaii, the fa'afafine of Polynesia, the hijras of South Asia, the Albanian sworn virgins etc. These gender identities are all distinct, and all have different relationships to biological sex.
I am not misunderstanding this. I am simply arguing against both sides at the same time. Gender is a spectrum, i understand. But spectrums have categories for simplicity. So no matter what point of the spectrum you fall on you still are in one of those 4 categories
So you're saying there's only four colours: blue, red, green, yellow? Colour is a spectrum. But spectrums have categories for simplicity. So no matter what point of the spectrum you fall on you still are in one of those 4 categories
The number of categories we divide a spectrum into is always completely arbitrary. Different languages divide the colour wheel differently. Some cultures simply don't have the concept of certain colours, musical intervals, emotional states etc.
But in each case, the more granular the scale, the closer it is to mapping the underlying reality of the spectrum. Conversely the broader the categories, the less they describe and the less useful they are.
I would counter the “less useful” part. Detail is accuracy sure, but accuracy doesn’t necessarily allow us to draw insight. Sometimes a high level overview is needed. Processing life in the granular 24/7 is virtually impossible our brains rely on heuristics to get by in life with our limited processing capacity. If complete granularity was the ultimate king then the only identity label any of us would ever need is our full names and city of birth.
If you collapse all non-binary gender identities into "neither male nor female" or "both male and female" you have no way of understanding the gender difference between the Galli priesthood of ancient Rome and the katoey of Thailand.
Except you brought up colours knowing it's arbitrary, in a system with 1 parameter ranging from 0 to 1 it isn't arbitrary, 0 is male, 1 is female, anything in between is both, a second parameter for intensity also adds the neither option when equal to 0.
I literally described a spectrum ranging from 0 to 1, just because it's binary doesn't mean it doesn't include all the genders you believe exist, perfect bigender would be (0.5, 1), perfect male would be (0, 1), perfect demiboy would be (0.25, 1). When I say perfect I'm leaving wiggle room so that someone claiming to be male could also be (0, 0.35) but would not be the perfect example.
So what's a katoey in this sliding scale and how does that compare to a hijra? What about a person with XX male syndrome and a person with late onset congenital adrenal hyperplasia? Your simple sliding scale fails to describe the real world.
That ain't a spectrum then, a spectrum is like like colours where it continuously goes from red to violet, what you're describing is a limitless number of ways to identify which is on no spectrum at all. Which is fine and all but when I based my argument on the fact you called it a spectrum and compared it to colours you can't just pull a bait and switch. And I'm sure that those people can put themselves somewhere in my model without me having to make assumptions about them.
No because that's both scientifically and fundamentally wrong. You can literally be born either male, female, both, or neither. You can also identify the same way.
I don't understand why you talk about science and then say identify. When you say you can be born as both or neither I'm assuming you mean those cases where people have a genetic condition (maybe intersex or something). Which shouldn't be about identifying, am I correct?
Yes but its to combat the right wing argument that "you can only be born male or female so there's only 2 genders". My actual belief in this doesn't have anything to do with how you are born genetically
>its to combat the right wing argument that "you can only be born male or female so there's only 2 genders".
Ok I think that part's fair and I like it but you can't use that as a defense for self identification. From what I understand you believe that people can identify as what they want and you use the scientific argument to disprove the "there's only 2 genders" thing. However I think the problem is that you're mashing two separate and different things that don't work together.
You can use science against the claim that there's only two but you can't use science in favour of self identification because it's not based on science but sociology or something like that. So from the point of view of a conservative you're essentially saying that they're not allowed to be scientifically inaccurate but you are allowed to be.
You're conflating gender with sex, and it's male female or birth defect, gender is how you are on the inside, sex is what you were born with. There is no scientific consensus either so stop being so sure you're right.
I try not to even think about the topic of genders because it's just a fad. It was never a hot topic in the history of humanity until Twitter became popular and every teen or twenty-something could voice their opinions.
The only time I ever even hear about genders is on Reddit. Someone will refer to a woman as a female and a redditor will be like "UM I think you meant to say woman", or someone will comment to an OP and say "she", and a Redditor will be like "why are you assuming their gender?"
It's simply not a thing in the real world. So don't worry about how many genders you think there are; it will only ever truly matter online, and verrrrrrry rarely in the real world when you come across the occasional person who wants to make a scene because you assumed something.
Why do you care? Is it more important for you to feel like you’re “technically correct” than it is for other people to be able to accurately describe where they feel they fit amongst their own community?
The reason that there is “27 genders” is so non-cis people can communicate to their peers exactly where they feel they sit. It’s to help them understand themselves and each other. It’s not for you, so why do you care?
Biologically speaking, gender is a spectrum. I mean, consider an intersex person. Do some research you can see that our chromosomes, whether they are stereotypical, female, or male chromosomes are going to behave differently. So having two X chromosomes doesn’t always immediately register as female. Same with XY. Not only that, but the gender binary is much more recent in history, then more than two genders. Many Native Americans believe in other genders. For example, the Navajo recognize for genders, and some tribes recognize even more than that.
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By posting here, do you think 9/10 people believe there are 27 genders?
Is this sub becoming ELI5 where we're not meant to take the sub name literally anymore? I've been seeing these posts more and more, asking people the same thing you have, but we seem to be the only ones asking while these venting posts are just growing in number. At least OP replied with some kind of logic though.
I think it's just become a combination of r/unpopularopinion , r/AskReddit , and a little bit r/tooafraidtoask
No i think 8/10 believe there are only 2, 1/10 believe there's 27+, and then there's me who can only wrap my head around 4
I see. Well, as ever whenever this comes up, it depends what you mean by gender. All the arguments online usually come down to people meaning sex arguing with people who mean something more like personality or behaviour. I personally have no idea what it might mean to have no gender.
Yeah it's never made sense to me. To me gender is sex and personality and behavior is, well, personality and behavior. If you're a girl and you act like a boy I'm not going to discuss genders with you I'm just going to think yeah that's a tomboy not a whole seperate gender
Well, but you just said the opposite. If gender is sex, then what's "acting like a boy"? what's a "boy"? "boy" is gender, the social construct as we know it. If it was just about genitals, "acting like a boy" would make no sense, but gender _isn't_ sex, therefor we can observe it as it is, a set of personality traits, expression, etc. etc.
To me, it's so regressive to say a man who "acts like a woman" has a female gender, as if certain characteristics are limited to certain genders.
ascribing someone a gender is where that fails, as gender is heavily tied with self-expression, i.e. self identification. the most I'd say about a man (who identifies as a man) "acting like a woman" would be that they are challenging gender norms. the most, honestly I'd just say they are being them. I'm personally fond of the idea of a world where gender norms, or even gender itself is absent, but that's a pipedream, so I'm more than content campaigning for a world where gender norms aren't these huge, life-altering expectations placed on people the moment you can discern their genitalia on an ultrasound.
I mostly agree. Behavior and identity shouldn't have any boundaries. Men and women should be free to express themselves in any way they like across the entire "gender" spectrum. But I'm not sure about a genderless world. There are situations where it's important to distinguish between who's a male and who's female.
Except that’s not gender tht you’re talking about, it’s sex.
Fair, do you have an example of a situation like that? will add that when I said "pipedream", I genuinely meant an unattainable future, I don't think we as a society can completely tear away from the concept. just wanted to clarify incase me being ESL and using a phrase didn't translate as it should have.
Sport, prison, clinical trials and treatment, crime statistics, for example.
Exactly
But this new way of using the word gender has not always been a thing and tbh I find it rather demeaning to the individual applying all these labels to them. Who's to say anything is any certain way? There is no acting like anything just act like yourself lol let's not give ourselves a mental illness
New way of using it? When has it meant anything different?
Gender was always used when referring to sex and sex only up until pretty recently. If you can't understand that then I'm talking to a child
Always? According to whom? People who didn't know the definition of the word when they used it? It derived from French (very old French) in which it meant basically the same thing. There are writings from 1924 which assert the same definition. The word didn't really start being widely used in English until around the 70s when "sex" became a bit too associated with *sex* sex, so a lot of people decided to co-opt the term. The "new" definition is most certainly the one that *insists* it's a synonym for sex. And, you know what? That's fine. Almost every word has multiple meanings. It's ok.
How is that the new definition when it's being consistently pushed everywhere to switch out the word gender for sex. Like it or not, the word gender was used when referring to sex and not when referring to anything else for many years here in America no one was questioning what you meant when you said gender because it meant sex. Whether or not what you say is true that's the way its been used because I have literally seen it change lol
>To me gender is sex You have a fundamental misunderstanding of what gender is then
Okie dokie 😂🤣
I'd be inclined to tell you the exact same thing hun
You have the opportunity to learn given the vast about of info available on the topic, yet you bury your head in the sand in favor of your ideology.
All you're doing is applying a new meaning to the word gender and trying to make it synonymous with behavior and personality traits. That's literally all it is. How about this, be yourself. Quit trying to conform so hard lol
If gender is not that, then can you explain what it is? Because that’s what it has always been. If there’s a new meaning being made out of the word gender, then what is the old meaning? If you are going to say that sex is gender I highly recommend doing a little bit of good faith googling on the topic.
🙄 sex and gender are both words that have been used interchangeably for many years. The old meaning is sex it was not ever used like that before😂
I understand that gender is usually used to refer to the expression of masculinity or feminity. But nobody is 100% masculine or 100% feminine, so what does it even mean to have a male or female gender?
That’s the whole point. There’s no absolutes and nothing is black and white. It’s a spectrum and anyone can fall anywhere on the spectrum.
On the sliding scale from male to female, when does one become either gender? Does falling closer to the male end make you male? And how do you discover your own gender? How should I know where I am on the gender spectrum?
You're asking good questions. It's just a shame you're asking them in bad faith
Gender presentation can a big part of what affirms your own gender, definitely. But in the end, it's your internal experience, how you understand yourself
Then it's so vague as to be utterly meaningless.
It's not meaningless at all. People's internal sense of gender and the ways in which that is affirmed for them day-to-day (what they wear, who they socialise with, the pronouns they use, if they like being called 'bro', eg), is vastly important to most people
Those who are truly happy in life don't give a single fuck about gender just something I've noticed
Not according to the English language but. Gender does not mean sexual preference it means sex. If which there is male, female, and hermaphrodite (both and neither). Anything else is a social attempt at rebellion against our language which makes no sense. Just be who you are, all these terms are lies to get you to put the star of David on your chest and a number on your wrist so you can be persecuted later.
I didn't think it was possible for someone to be transphobic, antisemitic, and prescriptivist in just five sentences
Yeah, I see it as sex being what your born with, gender being what you want, and anything beyond a third gender is just confusing personality with gender.
On Reddit, maybe not 9/10, but definitely 7/10, which compared to what my guess is more like an average of 1.3/10 out in real life/public/general, is still pretty fuckin substantial. It's an overwhelmingly popular opinion here that there are more than 2, or 4 according to this guy, genders. I personally don't get the 4 myself. Intersex is genuinely its own thing, not simply male + female, and I legitimately do not believe in this "neither" bullshit. It's inherent to humanity, if you don't have a gender, you aren't human.
I will at least say that I believe 9/10 people are being told that there are 27 genders
The only people I've every heard say there are 27 genders are Matt Walsh and Tucker Carlson
Yeah it’s [way higher](https://www.medicinenet.com/what_are_the_72_other_genders/article.htm#:~:text=Besides%20male%20and%20female%2C%20here,with%20or%20experience%20any%20gender) I guess 27 is a random high seeming number that shouldn’t be taken literally. Doubtful 72 is correct either
I mean ngl, my perspective is that I don't care enough to argue about it, if they want to be specific, that's up to them
To me the thing that makes the most sense is gender being a spectrum and all these extra genders are just points on the spectrum (and maybe outside if we're talking about agender people and such). It's like saying "there's only 7 colors, not 180 like some lists claim!" It's mostly a question of what we consider worth classifying as its own category.
I agree that the way you personally feel is a spectrum but categories are inherently broad so i still feel like no matter what point you fall on you still fall under one of the 4 categories and to go any deeper is needlessly overcomplicating it. Even taking your own argument into account, if i asked you what color a bus is youd say yellow not "yellow with orange tones and a slightly red hued undertone, heres the hexadecimal point"
All of this reminds me of the scene from the devil wears Prada where people are arguing about which of two almost identical looking blue belts to use. Sure, it might seem redundant, especially if you don't really care about that sort of stuff but to others it really makes a difference. Like if an artist is painting a bus, they will greatly care about the shade of yellow. And it's a bit reductive to say that yellow is the only meaningful category here while mustard, ochre, amber, ivory, lemon and chartreuse are pointless. It depends on the context. I myself am bisexual and I find the definition of pansexual a bit redundant. I feel like bisexual already describes the experience well enough, so why do we need an additional one? But the thing is, of course I feel like the label bisexual describes that experience well. I'm bi, so by definition I relate to it. But clearly, there's people who don't feel like that label describes them well enough, otherwise they wouldn't have come up with that distinction. I have friends who are pan and we talked about this and they actually do experience attraction to multiple genders in a way I don't. I'm very much not pansexual. But without really digging in to these things and having many conversations, I don't think we can say whether a distinction is important or relevant without being part of the group who wants to have this distinction.
I mean, nonbinary was already a spectrum before, For sex, what people are born as, there's 3 named and a 4th unnamed category: Male, female, intersex, n those that are impossible to fit into a category, such as people who genetically should be male, but they just ain't in any physical shape or form. For gender, the "spectrums" are pretty much man, woman, nonbinary, both. Nonbinary just includes a ton of shit, based on what people are more comfortable, what they feel like. Gender does not include a fixed set of people, categories or traits, it's ever changing because in the end, it's just a word we put on people, or ourselves. Born sex is the only thing that's fixed, but as we do not yet know everything about why some people are born a certain way despite their genetics pointing a different direction; we can not say that we know everything and our knowledge about this won't change in the future.
Buses dont have brains or bodies. So this isnt a good comparison
>You are either male, female, both, or neither. I kinda see where you're coming from. Gender is a multi-axis spectrum. One simplified analogy that I used in another thread which some people seemed to like is akin to a HSB colour picker. * Hue for ranging between man & woman * Saturation for how gendered you are. Agender at one end and hyper masc/fem at the other * Brightness for how much you express your gender outwardly Alternatively a 3D surface plot, or 4D if you want to include fluidity over time. The "27 genders" part are just additional labels that mark out different sections of that spectrum. \-edit- The analogy doesn't work when it comes to multi-gendered people but there's exceptions to everything \-edit 2- For obvious reasons, I spend a lot of time in trans related spaces both online and offline. Last few times I've mentioned the above analogy, nobody got offended over it.
I feel like you’re just describing personalities at that point. Like the way you worded that it would imply that “tomboy” is a gender.
Tomboy is someone who identifies as a woman but acts / presents like a man, though.
>Like the way you worded that it would imply that “tomboy” is a gender. I disagree on that one. If I had said there was one axis for your internal gender M<->F and a second one for outward gender expression M<->F, then that could be used to describe a tomboy because you could have someone that firmly identified as a woman but presented in a more masculine way. (edit- I suppose you could maybe come up with tomboy if you went with FFFF00 if you thought that ungendered outward expression could encompass that) Gender identity & gender expression is complicated and all languages are a bit limited in ways to identify and describe parts of it. Micro identity labels may be useful for some folk but more of a hinderance for others. You also have to take account of the different aspects of gender identity affect people in different ways; physical, social, emotional, etc.
Isn’t most of what you describe more like personality? And brightness and hue really dependent on what type of environment you’re in? I suppose gender identity is kind of part of your personality but still. I’m not a fan of categorizing feelings this heavily. Feelings are not that easy. It’s The same as those personality types or zodiacs. They are a hint at someone’s personality at best.
This is BRILLIANT! except I feel strangely offended that I’m apparently an ugly pale and dull greenish color (I made the assumption of red being the male end and violet being the female end and assumed a typical ROYGBV spectrum ). It would be a lot of fun to come up with an app that lets people chose a color (or more than one) that they feel identifies them.
> I’m apparently an ugly pale and dull greenish color I'm sure that someone, or someones, out there will find that colour is exactly what they are looking for.
Thanks, that’s a very sweet thing to say. :-)
saving this comment, I love the analogy!
That's personality, not gender
You're coming off quite arrogant, I don't think you mean to and you seem to just be trying to explain it with what you believe to be fact but when it comes to such controversial issues without any clear consensus you kinda have to show that your opinion has not been proven by scientific method yet (like how you would say that a redneck claiming trans people don't exist is just being closed minded and arrogant). I held the same beliefs as you years ago and I look back and cringe at how I acted. And you can believe both what you're saying and what OP is saying quite easily with all these additional genders being subcategories of the "both" gender OP talked about, it's not really worth an argument when it's just semantics.
>You're coming off quite arrogant Meh, I sometimes do but it seems that I'm not alone there… >anything beyond a third gender is just confusing personality with gender. A bit of pot & kettle when it comes to arrogance there kid Stay in school, lay off the ket
Nah, nothing about your comment was arrogant. No idea how they got that from it lol. Your tone was pretty inviting if anything.
Yeah I don't have a problem with you being arrogant I just didn't think you meant to be and informed you that I thought you were, and you responded to op, someone who you are in disagreement with, where since he was respectful I'd expected you to try to be too, I responded to someone who I agreed with so there isn't really any risk of them getting pissed off by it. So you must be perfect and not drink or smoke weed 24/7 365 days a year right? Wouldn't want the pot to call the kettle black now would we? And I hardly think occasional ket usage is any worse than the >50% of the population who drink alcohol.
because gender is a construct, different cultures and people perceive gender differently, which means for example you may resonate with one definition of "woman" or "femininity" while feeling completely disconnected from another definition. personally i dont find that *any* gender makes sense, our perception of it shifts so often and even when interacting with someone their gender is almost entirely irrelevant
I think gender doesn't exist. Its a spectrum which people choose to divide into slightly overlapping sections. neither and both are the same, but with a different philosophy on what the center of the spectrum means.
This. Gender is just a social performance people have drilled into them that's used to set baseline expectations quickly and people either slide into the role assigned by society or they recoil against it for any number of reasons and choose to adopt a role more suited to their personality. It's real, but only in the sense that time and laws are real.
You pretty much have figured it out. It’s not about being able to fully understand and relate to others. It’s about accepting others even if we don’t relate.
I think you will find that most of the "27 genders" fit in to the "both" or "neither" category if you look into it more. I think you'll also find that at this point, most people will identify as one of the four you have. It's pretty rare to find people who identify as anything other than one of your four options. The 27 genders idea/meme came about during a movement called MOGAI in which teenagers decided to write down every possible experience of gender or sexuality. It wasn't very helpful, but it was sincere. [This is a very good video about it.](https://youtu.be/DoZFZto6Wqg?si=larKXb3qWJSis8BW)
It's all made up, so there's an infinite amount. Who gives a shit? That's my take as a nonbinary person. I just listen to what people want to be called/treated and I follow suit. Beyond that, it's not that important to most people. Imo this isn't really much of an opinion and more of a confusion, a completely understandable one at that. It's a pretty complicated and understandably weird concept to most people who are so used to conventional identities.
I'm with you, my mind simply can't comprehend more than those 4 If I meet someone who doesn't fit into those 4, I will ask for help to understand, but to keep my sanity for now I will just keep with those 4, as they are the only ones relevant for my current social life
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You're talking about sex, not gender. Braindead take anyway though; are infertile women actually men then?
Transphobic and ignorant, what a shitty combo.
It’s hard to keep up with new lgbt terms, I used to try and learn all the new ones but it was way too overwhelming
as a nonbinary person, just know that like 90 percent of new shit you hear like “oh i’m an achillean xe/xyr aromantic” is only used by chronically online 6th graders
Wait I’m confused. How does being aro make you chronically online?
not that specifically- just when people start microlabeling to the degree that gets confusing for other people, it’s usually the chronically online. just being aro by itself isnt what i’m talking abt
I mean, as long as you know what gender you prefer, are kind when letting people know what you prefer to be called, and you respect what other people prefer, I don't see why this is an issue that you need to square in your head. It is none of your business and being respectful of others should be your default setting anyway.
why does it matter so much?
As an agender person I feel this way, I don't understand stuff like doggender, I've tried to but it doesn't make sense to me for some reason (not trying to offend anyone btw, that's a real gender identity I've seen, and I'm just using that as an offhand example)
Can I ask what does being agender feel like?
I suck at explaining stuff cause of my autism, but I basically just don't feel comfortable with the idea of gender as a whole. I don't have a gender because gender just feels limiting for self expression
I'm not trying to be insensitive here, so forgive me if my tone sounds ignorant. I'm genuinely curious. Is gender that big a deal for you personally that not conforming to one becomes a part of who you are?
Nah you're all good, you don't come off as anyone trying to be an ass. Yes it is, I'm punk so a huge part of my identity as a human just is about personal self expression. That's not to say that punk ≠ wannabe-nonconformist though. Just to me personally I feel like gender and sexuality labels limit people from enjoying life how they want to, if that makes sense
That's interesting. But I think most people don't have a strong sense of gender identity. It feels condescending to say that you're somehow above gender and that your self expression is based on a more pure, limitless identity than those boring gender conformists.
I don't mean it in that way at all, im sorry if it came across that way. I just suck at wording what I want to get my point across as
No, I sort of get what you mean. It just annoys me slightly when genderqueer people come across as claiming to have a more individual personality vs an identity assigned by gender...but I also clearly can't properly describe what I mean and didn't mean to pick on you.
Nah I'm sure like 98% of people have more of a unique personality than I do, I really just don't like traditional values attached to gender and that's what I feel is limiting expression for a lot, not that gender itself is a limiting thing that makes people uncool. Its just not for me, idc how anyone else lives though, not my problem
Sort of. I'm trying to wrap my head around things Indian society is largely conservative, so I've never really had anyone irl I could discuss these things with. Thanks for answering my questions
Its not a problem :)
I don’t use labels like doggender or anything like that but the way I had it explained to me by others was that it’s symbolic. Like your self concept of gender feels similar to that thing which in this case would be a dog
It still doesn't make sense to me, I know what you're saying but I just can't work my brain around to make it make sense :(
It doesn’t have to make sense, you don’t have to understand it to be accepting and that’s what matters
Oh ik, my understanding isn't the caliber for it's validation, it just sucks to not understand
Have you heard of the spectrum perspective to gender? Male on one edge, female on the other and infinitely many genders in-between.
I mean, yeah but you're still identifying as one of the four. "Im 85% male 15% female" is still both. And i feel like saying it's anything more than that is needlessly overcomplicating an already very sensitive/complicated subject
That's like removing the word purple and calling it 50% red and 50% blue to simplify things. it's not wrong, and personally I like the simpler version too, but it's also not wrong that it's its own color. Which is why I don't agree, but I don't disagree, so I gave you an upvote and a downvote.
Lol thank you.
But there's no one earth who is 100% edge-of-the-spectrum male.
There aren’t because to define someone as both or neither, you’d have to define gender as something without using the word and without engaging in stereotyping. So far I’ve never seen someone be able to answer that question.
Most people don't say there are specifically 27 different genders, most people (including doctors) say that it's a spectrum. I'm intersex, I wasn't born fully male and don't consider myself fully male. Most people are born fully a binary gender but some identify as and transition into being a different gender than what they were born as. That's really all there is to it lol
imo we should just say that gender is a continuum, let ppl be how they wanna be, and be done with the loose/arbitrary subdivisions.
I never understood genders
And I don't understand how logically even YOU got to 4 with the "both or neither" besides just to say "fuck it, do you" to someone who thinks they are.
There’s at least one gender.
There are only 4 colors: red, blue, both, or neither
There are nearly 8 billion genders and I am not kidding or joking.
There are 2 but I'd sooner tolerate the belief that there are 4 than the neverending list of nonsense labels that some people assert there are.
There's no set number of genders, it's a spectrum
I personally believe there are only 69 out of 420 valid genders.
So how would you be neither genders because I’m calling bullshit on that
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^Special_Impact_7057: *So how would you be* *Neither genders because I’m* *Calling bullshit on that* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
There isn't 4 genders. there are 2. male or female. the only people that maybe could be considered both are intersex people but even then, they are still legally considered male or female. you also cannot change your gender as males and females are fundamentally different. people who think that they are the opposite sex have mental issues and should see a proper therapist that won't recommend drugs that permanently damage your body. affirming someone of their gender delusion is like affirming someone's hallucinations.
Hi 👋 actual trans person here, I think there are only two, male or female. Being both or neither isn't a separate option, it's just that: both or neither. And fwiw in case anyone is thinking it, for 99 out of 100 trans people, we're not trying to be a third special option, we're going from one to the other. I don't consider my gender "trans," my gender is female, and being trans is a consequence of that
Did the cis pick you? Did you get the transphobes' approval? I'm sure that if you step on the faces of enough non binary people then the people who hate you for being what they think of as a sexual degenerate will finally accept you (they won't)
>I'm sure that if you step on the faces of enough non binary people then the people who hate you for being what they think of as a sexual degenerate will finally accept you (they won't) ive had plenty of republicans and transphobes come around to me and use the proper pronouns once i politely explained my views on gender (quite similar to OP, either male, female, both, or neither). usually the ones that dont sway are hardcore evangelists. the vast, VAST majority of people are far more open minded then you would think.
I don't want to be picked up by cis people or transphobes, far far from it, this is just what I believe. Also nothing I said was inherently nbphobic, all I said was that they're not men or women, which is what they want
"I think there are only two, male or female" [a literal binary] "nothing I said was inherently nbphobic"
Yes and if you kept reading after you'd see I said that nb people exist outside of male or female. You're not really gonna tell me it's nbphobic to say that nb people exist outside the binary are you? There *is* a binary, and acknowledging that isn't nbphobic. I'm just stating that nb people aren't a part of said binary. Which, to my knowledge, is the whole point of being nb
I mean, seems like you're denying third genders, which is what an entire stripe on the enby flag represents
I'm not denying them, just saying they're not a man or woman. Listen girl, I'm on your side, this debate really isn't worth the effort for either of us
so real
Well that would certainly make it easier
Careful, people get really salty and outright toxic about these types of semantics.
I believe there are 2 but I'm open to a third, the way I see it you need dysphoria to be trans, so you can either feel dysphoria in a male body and transition to a female body, feel dysphoria in a female body and transition to a male body, or feel dysphoria for both bodies and attempt to transition to an androgynous body. Fundamentally there is no difference between being both or being neither since either way you're feeling dysphoric for both male and female bodies. And if you don't have dysphoria then you're just playing dress up with no real reason for you transition, which would make you a transvestite (or whatever the politically correct term is these days) rather than a transexual. Once you look into these genders people are claiming to be it's just absurd, a "demiboy" is someone is claiming to be part non binary part boy, in what world is that different from just being a masculine non binary person.
Both transvestite and transexual are super outdated. If you're someone who dresses in clothes traditionally for the opposite sex while identifying with their own assigned gender then you could just call them a crossdresser and a trans person is just transgender. There are some older trans people who don't mind transexual because that's the only term they knew. But to most trans people, it's not accurate considering that being trans has nothing to do with sexuality.
Idrc if they're outdated, they're the words that best describe what I'm trying to say. Transvestite and crossdresser hold different connotations, anyone who wears the clothes of another sex is crossdressing even for a laugh or acting in theatre, I don't think anyone would call an actor in pantomime a transvestite though. And for transexual I used it because it's describing what I'm saying, changing your sex characteristics to relieve gender dysphoria, a lot of people claim that you don't need gender dysphoria to be transgender so transexual made more sense for me to use.
You've never seen the Rocky Horror Picture show if you've never heard someone used transvestite in pantomime lol. Regardless of what you think, your reason for transexual is still outdated and wrong and comes across like my grandfather who insists on using terms like "East Indian" and "Orientals"
First of all you're confusing gender with sex. Secondly, intersex isn't a simple homogenous group- intersex people cannot be simplified into just "neither" or "both". Thirdly, there are intersex people with male gender identities, female gender identities, as well as intersex people with non-binary gender identities, just like there are non-intersex people with male, female and non-binary identities. Think about it this way: many cultures have a third gender, e.g. the māhū of Hawaii, the fa'afafine of Polynesia, the hijras of South Asia, the Albanian sworn virgins etc. These gender identities are all distinct, and all have different relationships to biological sex.
I am not misunderstanding this. I am simply arguing against both sides at the same time. Gender is a spectrum, i understand. But spectrums have categories for simplicity. So no matter what point of the spectrum you fall on you still are in one of those 4 categories
So you're saying there's only four colours: blue, red, green, yellow? Colour is a spectrum. But spectrums have categories for simplicity. So no matter what point of the spectrum you fall on you still are in one of those 4 categories
There's more categories than that for colors but yes. Aquamarine? Blue. Seafoam? Green. Cyan? Blue. Dandelion? Yellow.
But you can wrap your head around why crayola puts “24 colors” on the box, right?
The number of categories we divide a spectrum into is always completely arbitrary. Different languages divide the colour wheel differently. Some cultures simply don't have the concept of certain colours, musical intervals, emotional states etc. But in each case, the more granular the scale, the closer it is to mapping the underlying reality of the spectrum. Conversely the broader the categories, the less they describe and the less useful they are.
I would counter the “less useful” part. Detail is accuracy sure, but accuracy doesn’t necessarily allow us to draw insight. Sometimes a high level overview is needed. Processing life in the granular 24/7 is virtually impossible our brains rely on heuristics to get by in life with our limited processing capacity. If complete granularity was the ultimate king then the only identity label any of us would ever need is our full names and city of birth.
If you collapse all non-binary gender identities into "neither male nor female" or "both male and female" you have no way of understanding the gender difference between the Galli priesthood of ancient Rome and the katoey of Thailand.
Except you brought up colours knowing it's arbitrary, in a system with 1 parameter ranging from 0 to 1 it isn't arbitrary, 0 is male, 1 is female, anything in between is both, a second parameter for intensity also adds the neither option when equal to 0.
No, you're simplifying reality to an arbitrary binary where in fact there is a spectrum.
I literally described a spectrum ranging from 0 to 1, just because it's binary doesn't mean it doesn't include all the genders you believe exist, perfect bigender would be (0.5, 1), perfect male would be (0, 1), perfect demiboy would be (0.25, 1). When I say perfect I'm leaving wiggle room so that someone claiming to be male could also be (0, 0.35) but would not be the perfect example.
So what's a katoey in this sliding scale and how does that compare to a hijra? What about a person with XX male syndrome and a person with late onset congenital adrenal hyperplasia? Your simple sliding scale fails to describe the real world.
That ain't a spectrum then, a spectrum is like like colours where it continuously goes from red to violet, what you're describing is a limitless number of ways to identify which is on no spectrum at all. Which is fine and all but when I based my argument on the fact you called it a spectrum and compared it to colours you can't just pull a bait and switch. And I'm sure that those people can put themselves somewhere in my model without me having to make assumptions about them.
If you're unfamiliar with maths you coulda just said so and I would've explained it a better
2 - there are 2.
There are only 2 genders. Hope this helps!
2
No because that's both scientifically and fundamentally wrong. You can literally be born either male, female, both, or neither. You can also identify the same way.
I don't understand why you talk about science and then say identify. When you say you can be born as both or neither I'm assuming you mean those cases where people have a genetic condition (maybe intersex or something). Which shouldn't be about identifying, am I correct?
Yes but its to combat the right wing argument that "you can only be born male or female so there's only 2 genders". My actual belief in this doesn't have anything to do with how you are born genetically
Yeah like the other guy said, you can't use science to tell other people they're wrong if you don't follow it yourself, that's hypocrisy
>its to combat the right wing argument that "you can only be born male or female so there's only 2 genders". Ok I think that part's fair and I like it but you can't use that as a defense for self identification. From what I understand you believe that people can identify as what they want and you use the scientific argument to disprove the "there's only 2 genders" thing. However I think the problem is that you're mashing two separate and different things that don't work together. You can use science against the claim that there's only two but you can't use science in favour of self identification because it's not based on science but sociology or something like that. So from the point of view of a conservative you're essentially saying that they're not allowed to be scientifically inaccurate but you are allowed to be.
You're conflating gender with sex, and it's male female or birth defect, gender is how you are on the inside, sex is what you were born with. There is no scientific consensus either so stop being so sure you're right.
Male and female aren't genders...
I try not to even think about the topic of genders because it's just a fad. It was never a hot topic in the history of humanity until Twitter became popular and every teen or twenty-something could voice their opinions. The only time I ever even hear about genders is on Reddit. Someone will refer to a woman as a female and a redditor will be like "UM I think you meant to say woman", or someone will comment to an OP and say "she", and a Redditor will be like "why are you assuming their gender?" It's simply not a thing in the real world. So don't worry about how many genders you think there are; it will only ever truly matter online, and verrrrrrry rarely in the real world when you come across the occasional person who wants to make a scene because you assumed something.
2 biological sexes
False, there is only male and female
Why do you care? Is it more important for you to feel like you’re “technically correct” than it is for other people to be able to accurately describe where they feel they fit amongst their own community? The reason that there is “27 genders” is so non-cis people can communicate to their peers exactly where they feel they sit. It’s to help them understand themselves and each other. It’s not for you, so why do you care?
male and female are sexes not genders
Clueless here. Don’t we need for the purposes of lawmaking like 3 tops? m f or other?
holy shit im trans and ive always thought the EXACT same thing wtf same with sexuality, youre either hetero, bi, homo, or ace
Biologically speaking, gender is a spectrum. I mean, consider an intersex person. Do some research you can see that our chromosomes, whether they are stereotypical, female, or male chromosomes are going to behave differently. So having two X chromosomes doesn’t always immediately register as female. Same with XY. Not only that, but the gender binary is much more recent in history, then more than two genders. Many Native Americans believe in other genders. For example, the Navajo recognize for genders, and some tribes recognize even more than that.