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[Fenrir]

Unfortunately, when I try to clarify terms, people usually get annoyed with me and throw around the word semantics.

[Montague]

Why all this obsession with self-applied labels anyways?

[kaijyuu]

Why all this obsession with self-applied labels anyways?

Identity is a pretty serious issue to some, because it's well, them. What they identify with is important to them, because it's what represents them. If they feel their sex doesn't represent who they are inside, then obviously that's a problem.


I could go all existentialist and say none of it really matters (which it doesn't really, to me), but I value what others value. They're important to me, so what's important to them is important to me.

[Kogan Loloklam]

Evolution...

My male breasts work. They do so because of what I did, no medications or anything. Basically the equivelent of heavy masterbation 5 times a day every day for a year(except tugging on a tiny nub of my areola area rather than the more traditional male sexual organ). Entirely a development of something in the capacity of any human.

This has a valuable potental, in allowing men to share another aspect in child rearing. This potentially gives my offspring a better chance. It's related to the ability to reject gender roles.

[Frumple]

Seeing as it's actually a thing (wikipedia link with no pictures or anything particular disturbing, don't worry), have any studies been done to see if the stuff's actually healthy for newborns/infants to ingest? Not all milk is created equal, so to speak. Or so I understand. Some highly cursory searching didn't pull up anything, but the emphasis is on the highly cursory, not searching.

[GoombaGeek]

Evolution...

My male breasts work. They do so because of what I did, no medications or anything. Basically the equivelent of heavy masterbation 5 times a day every day for a year(except tugging on a tiny nub of my areola area rather than the more traditional male sexual organ). Entirely a development of something in the capacity of any human.

This has a valuable potental, in allowing men to share another aspect in child rearing. This potentially gives my offspring a better chance. It's related to the ability to reject gender roles.

It's not evolution if it's not hereditary.

Also, if your children are dying because your wife is incapable of producing enough milk, you're doing it wrong.

[Frumple]

Capability to induce by practice is still hereditary, though. We don't spring forth from the womb speaking five languages, but our ability to learn them in later life is indeed within the umbrella of evolution.

So to, apparently, with the ability for males to stimulate milk production.

[Alastar]

Why all this obsession with self-applied labels anyways?

Identity is a pretty serious issue to some, because it's well, them. What they identify with is important to them, because it's what represents them. If they feel their sex doesn't represent who they are inside, then obviously that's a problem

The only problem is that it's treated as a problem.
Personal identity is a legitimately serious issue. However, sex doesn't have to be a huge monolithic part of it - packaging all "probably sex-related" parts of personal identity as "gender" and making a big deal of it is a mistake. "Pick a gender" is better than "stick to the expected gender" but still doesn't respect human diversity.

[Muz]

I actually wrote about this elsewhere.

There are some hormonal things whatever that does affect the difference between male and female personalities. I think racism will be dead long before sexism is. Men and women are definitely not the same, but the lines are really blurry between what's real and what's a stereotype.

What really annoys me is how people judge women on beauty. People praise boys for being smart, brave. They praise girls for being pretty. A girl grows up under pressure to be pretty. A boy grows up under pressure to be smart/rich/brave.

Like the term "has the balls to do ___" is a very male centric one. A woman who is too brave is considered masculine. Girls are taught to play nice, to avoid conflict. Boys are taught to stick up for themselves. You learn a lot of skills in childhood. It's no surprise that women are often not leaders.. they've actually been trained since childhood to play nice and expect an ideal world. A lot of women leaders are often those who play 'boyish' things with other brothers.

[Reelya]

I definitely think it's an interplay between biology and environment. By biology here i mean the whole mess of DNA, environment in the womb, chemical / hormonal environment in childhood, so it's not something simple like "you're either an 'A' or a 'B' " decided at the time of conception or anything like that.

I think if you try and stick to a "pure nurture" model of gender identity then that actually makes explaining diversity and the difficultly in "pigeonholing" people harder, not simpler. Because then you have to explain what environmental stimuli made transgender and other non-gender stereotypical types the way they were, given we're constantly told how pervasive social stereotyping is. And it leads to unfortunate social eugenics ideas that we can mold people after they are born how they "ought" to be (with what that exactly means dependent on your world view), if only we start the "molding" when they are young enough. Sure, you can mold people to a degree, but many reject molding that doesn't "fit" with their self-conception. This very fact implies to me, we are more than just the sum of our environmental influences.

Pure nurture implies that people could be molded exactly whichever way we like, the only thing that differs is what the proponent feels is best under their ideology - discrete gender roles, or forced uniformity. That's because a strict nurture model implies people don't have any inherent preferences or personality of their own at birth.

So, i think any complete model will have to address a balance of social and biological factors.

[Starver]

Hmm, a quickly growing thread, that I had intended to contribute to almost from its inception (but was distracted away from), with more than one diversion away from the "actual issues"...  Some healthier than others.

But having seen it pop back into the first page of "unread posts" and read (albeit skimmed in places) all the way up to this twelfth page of responses, I'm surprised that I haven't seen (noticed, at least) the old nugget that includes what "gender" means, and how it relates to everything else.

"Gender is what's between your ears; Sex is what's between your legs; Sexuality is who's between your legs."

(Other wordings probably exist, so you may think I've gotten it 'wrong' in some way.)


This doesn't cover every eventuality (e.g. the case I heard reported of a gay man who got gender-reassociation and now finds that she is a lesbian woman, although I wouldn't put some of that past either the hormone treatments or just some underlying fourth/fifth-level element of personality), but it makes a good first-stop classification[1].

Not that anyone's current focus, at the moment, but I'd say that matching your particularly three-point classification with a compatible second-party is probably the most important thing.  (And vice-versa.  No good if they're the right person for you, but you aren't the kind of person they are looking for.)  Strangely, the "Gender" (as defined under that scheme) seems to be the least relevant parameter.  At least at face value.  But as far as forming a personality it probably makes all the difference between one who is a true soul-mate and one who isn't.  But perhaps I'm putting too much power of (in)decision into the "sexuality" variable, in particular.

Well, anyway, that's my idea of boiling-it-down.  I don't think you're wanting to discuss this, at the moment, but (like I said) I had intended to mention it in passing almost near the start of the thread, so job done.  We now return you to your regularly scheduled programme.



[1] Where none of the three measures need be binary, in fact they probably aren't, especially the latter which is possibly a massively-multichoice option.  I also think that the "sexuality" classification is the bit most people have the most problems with other people, with, saving where sexual segregation/bias itself is the issue.

[bombzero]

"Gender is what's between your ears; Sex is what's between your legs; Sexuality is who's between your legs."

Just would like to say I laughed when I read this, just because of how it turns a huge topic into a simple statement rather accurately.

[Nilocy]

@Starver Thats a classic, but really succinctly explains it. And people always love one liners

[Starver]

(Yeah, pity I padded it with so much other guff... )

[Bauglir]

It's not evolution if it's not hereditary.

This is a bit of a strange restriction. Genetic evolution is not the only kind.