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[AlleeCat]

This entire thread makes me grind my teeth in disgust and frustration. You guys have no idea how mad it makes me when someone says, "You can identify as female but you'll always be biologically male!" or "You can't identify as anything other than male or female! Those are the only real genders!"
I'm not going to call anyone out, but people who think that way make me want to vomit. You know who you are.

[TD1]

That would be me.
*bow*
Not that I'm being confrontational, just curious. How am I so obviously wrong?

[Neonivek]

Unfortunately it is just a straight up fact that you cannot change your biological gender, with possible exceptions but that isn't here nor there. Sex change operations do a lot of things but not that. Perhaps in the future, but not today.

Not that I think sex change operations are pointless, they just don't "change your sex". The only thing they do that is close to an actual gender change, as opposed to cosmetics, is usually they come with hormone therapy.

But to me whether or not someone is biologically a male or female shouldn't matter.

Gender Identity and politics are now a lot more complex now.

I still remember that feminist article I read that I won't state here because it is rather insulting to transgendered people... But suffice it to say the article was about what women pick up as gender identity versus what a transgendered female picks up (in blanket waving motions).
-Yeah I can grab interesting topics from bad articles.

-Note: Sorry if my terminology is incorrect. By Transgendered female I mean a male who identifies as female.

[AlleeCat]

First of all, how do you even go about defining "biologically male" or "biologically female" besides what the doctor says when you're born?
Is it what genitals you have when you're born? What about someone who was born with a vulva, but no uterus? Does that make them only half a woman? What about someone who was born with a penis, but no testicles? How about someone who was born with both sexual organs? Or neither? If someone has a penis and they get surgery to turn it into a vulva, does that make them "biologically female" now? Because if not, your little sorting system is completely arbitrary.
Is it chromosomes? Some people who are assigned male at birth (AMAB) have XX chromosomes. Some people who are AFAB have XY chromosomes. If you really want to sort it that way, then what about people who are XXX? Or XYY?

Second off, gender identity is not a binary. It's not a spectrum, either. You can't even map it on a chart. It's nebulous. Sure, most people are comfortable being either male or female, but there are people who don't feel comfortable either way, and we shouldn't discredit how they feel. You can't just say something doesn't exist because you've never experienced it.
Saying "You're either male or female, get over it." is like telling a guy who just got shot "Quit crying, you big baby! I bet it doesn't hurt that much."

As a side note, I am not transgendered, I am transgender. Saying I'm transgendered makes it seem like it was something that happened to me. Plus, transgendered isn't even a word.

[Phmcw]

First of all, how do you even go about defining "biologically male" or "biologically female" besides what the doctor says when you're born?

XX, and XY. Anything else is an anomaly, a special case.

Because if not, your little sorting system is completely arbitrary.

Every sorting system is arbitrary, that's why you have to know why you use them, when you can use them, and when they are invalid.

Second off, gender identity is not a binary. It's not a spectrum, either. You can't even map it on a chart. It's nebulous.

It's optional. That the thing is don't get : gender, race, ... are sort of irrelevant in many of the aspect we thought they were relevant, and in our affirmation of the right to individuality, we reject the very basis of the use of those system to define poeples.

Yet I see peoples discussing them more and more.


I personally thing that gender is usefull to know if it's the pill or the prostate exam that get refunded by social security. For the rest I don't give a fuck, and I think this whole debate is counterproductive.

[scrdest]

Is it chromosomes? Some people who are assigned male at birth (AMAB) have XX chromosomes. Some people who are AFAB have XY chromosomes. If you really want to sort it that way, then what about people who are XXX? Or XYY?

That one is actually really easy to answer, if you wanted to make the case for that side - at least one Y, or more specifically the presence of a specific sequence that is normally on the Y (but sometimes deleted - then you get AFAB XYs - or moved - AMAB XXs) means male, because of how hormones are genetically determined.

[Arx]

The thing that most pegs your biological sex in my opinion would be the gonads you were born with. If you were born with no female reproductive anatomy but the ovaries, you will probably have at least most of the female-dominant hormones which promote development of the mammaries, etc. Likewise, even if for whatever reason you were born with no penis but have testicles, you will probably have at least most of the male-dominant hormones which promote development of bodily hair, etc. If you were born with neither, then you would be sexless, and that's okay too. I'm not sure what ramifications that would have for further development, but otherwise I don't think it has to be an issue.

If you get surgery to have your gonads swapped out, welcome to your new biological sex. Assuming the hypothalamus and pituitary aren't wired to your sex during puberty, I don't think there's any distinction between you and any other person born as that sex any more.

I maintain my stance on gender identity. I don't care what you identify as, as long as you tell me (if it's going to offend you if/when I misgender you, of course; there's no obligation to tell me if you'd rather not) so I know what pronouns to use. I tend to call everyone 'they' these days anyway.

[TD1]

But we are not speaking of the exceptional circumstances brought about by mutation or what have you. We're speaking of gender change. Perhaps a new gender for two genitalia should be made, but they are so rare as to make such categorisation unneeded. We're speaking of gender change. If you are born a stereotypical male, then you are a male. You may decide otherwise, and that's your own concern, but it doesn't make you a girl. A statue made of wood may look the same as one made of stone, but they're not. A Stamen which is crushed, no matter its resultant shape, is still the male part of the flower.

Goodness, I hate using the phone to type.
Ninjas. Gonna post this, don't care if it has been said already.

[Neonivek]

I have three conditions of which one needs to be fulfilled for biological gender

1) You have to have male or female genes: You cannot get your genes changed in real life
2) You must have the male or female reproductive organs: You cannot get these through surgery in real life
3) You must have had those organs at one point in the case of losing them.

That is pretty much it. There is no way to affect Biological gender with our current technology. It is immutable.

[scrdest]

I have three conditions of which one needs to be fulfilled for biological gender

1) You have to have male or female genes: You cannot get your genes changed in real life
2) You must have the male or female reproductive organs: You cannot get these through surgery in real life
3) You must have had those organs at one point in the case of losing them.

That is pretty much it. There is no way to affect Biological gender with our current technology. It is immutable.

That's a bit of a self-serving definition then, since you've literally excluded any possible mean of affecting gender outside of literal magic.

[EnigmaticHat]

OK, there's like 5 posts I seriously want to argue against, but since discussion is apparently banned I'll just say what I think.

A lot of times I hear people say things like "gender matter any more", "I don't really care about gender", "just be yourself, whatever".  I'm willing to be that like 90% of the time these people are male identified and have no outstanding issues with gender.

Like you (talking to a hypothetical crowd of people, not necessarily even forumites here) understand that half the population fully and realistically expects to get payed 3/4ths of what the other half gets paid for the same jobs, soley because of gender?  That people with gender dysphoria undergo intense unhappiness for potentially their entire lives, because they identify as a different gender than the one that biology/society gave them at birth?  To say nothing of the countless gay, trans, or whatever people who get murdered every year because of who they are.  Or hell, the men who get raped, or experience any form of intense emotional distress, and then have to hide it around others.

I'm pulling the most dramatic examples of course.  But the point is, those people, they aren't arguing that gender doesn't exist, or that no one cares about it any more.  Because they feel it, every day of their lives, as a fact of their existence.

TL;DR: Gender is real, it has real effects on people's lives.  If you think it doesn't, there's a good chance you're one of the lucky minority who hasn't received any shit because of gender, which is fine, until the moment you presume that's been everyone's experience.

[Orange Wizard]

Okay, words-definition time. This isn't an opinion so I'm allowed to post it.

Sex, being one's physical or biological gender, their chromosomes, et cetera. Generally, your possession of dangly or lack of dangly bits. Confined to male and female as per our current understanding of biology.

Gender, being one's mental gender, what they consider themselves to be, or the area of society they fit in to.  Normally, this is the same as your physical sex, thus people tend to use them as synonyms.

In this case, the words are not synonymous, and I have a feeling the discussion would be easier to understand if the word sex was used in many cases in the place of gender.

[Arx]

I'm not sure, but I at least say I don't care about gender not because I don't know that people have difficulties caused by gender but exactly because I know that. They go through enough of hell every day without me adding my insistance on whatever conformity. I say "just be yourself" and "I don't really care about gender" because the alternative is... to care about gender, which pretty much becomes some form of discrimination by default.

[TD1]

Any time I've heard gender/sex being used they have meant the same thing. At what point do they cease to mean what you say they do?

[AlleeCat]

Saying "You're either male or female, get over it." is like telling a guy who just got shot "Quit crying, you big baby! I bet it doesn't hurt that much."

TL;DR: Gender is real, it has real effects on people's lives.  If you think it doesn't, there's a good chance you're one of the lucky minority who hasn't received any shit because of gender, which is fine, until the moment you presume that's been everyone's experience.

I want to reiterate this. This thread is seriously the equivalent of a bunch of white people trying to talk about black oppression. (Which I'm pretty sure also happened on this very forum.) This thread just needs to stop. You can't talk about gender issues like you know everything about them if you've never experienced them. I would be open to a thread where questions can be asked of trans people, but it's clear that pretty much everyone in this thread is talking out their ass.