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[Phmcw]

I don't say "difficult to pin down" I say, "harmfull when used the way it's usually used".

I don't think we should ignore those distinctions because they are difficult to accurately define and understand.

This, for me, strongly indicate that it's actually an bad model. There is no gender, just peoples trying to  act according to random expectations.

[Mlamlah]

In a sense i agree. For me personally i would be much happier without any of the trappings of gender in my life. But does that apply to everyone? Well, i'm not so sure about that. Mentally i shuffle the benefits and ills of gender itself as a concept under a "needs more study" category, because as someone who's more harmed by it than helped i'm not really a reliable narrator. Others seem deeply fulfilled with gender however, and i hesitate to take that from other people.

Speaking simply for myself? I agree, gender sucks, get rid of it. But the truth is that it as a social phenomena is not fully understood, and the scientist in me is unwilling to judge it as a concept so harshly when the information available to me is so mixed and confused. I am totally willing to say that *binary* gender is crap because it as a model is unable to deal with the realities of humans, but gender itself? It's hard to say.

[Tiruin]

Err, LordBucket, one glaring thing with your post back there.
It contains a lot of generalizations and personal definitions of behavior used to characterize and detail the reasons why things happen, as the cause of why it happens.

Humans are often cruel. They rarely need good reason to express their cruelty.

Firstly on this point.
You cannot credibly say such a thing when you attempt to generalize a whole subset of attitudes and traits within behavior--especially from a standpoint as this. It commits the same mistake your point in your post has, as its essence. It assumes from personal experience, which thus personally validates its credibility.

Especially when you try to explain dysphoria with comparisons or additions to other types of crisis or negative connotation, what was mentioned there are superficially related but inherently completely different subjects. Using discrimination as an basepoint does not make a credible idea when put in how you word it.
Especially when you use extremes of description. 'Nobody cares' is no way to put forward understanding of a point. Especially when you deliver a post that doesn't keep the openness of its discussion at the heart of the message. Doing so may lead to unethical delivery, given the rigidity of detail.

On the issue of gender, as related there and in general: the problem is in-between the lines (as inferred from the previous posts) and how it is treated. Society/Culture/Environment of an individual also affects how they treat themselves, but its the personal factor which is mostly what is described--this depends on the person's knowledge of their environment and of how they may utilize knowledge to understand (themselves or otherwise).

Now in regards to gender identity--is it wrong? This isn't 'wronged', so to speak, in many societies and cultures, nor on how people identify themselves as, but more on how a person deals with the situations as well as how their environment is--not putting in the factor of our personal uniqueness there--is where the 'wrong' may come from, in others' perspectives. This usually stems from an appended idea making it wrong, giving it a negative meaning, or limiting [the capabilities of people under] said gender. The idea of a 'binary' gender is, to refer an origin, more a western idea (coupled and intertwined with gender roles), and which is the basic and theoretical definition of such {with the three descriptions of gender being male, female and trans}. Its a social construct, in part.
The problem is in how it is treated. In the 'how', and not the idea that the construct exists.

@Helgoland: You should really clarify the #3 point in quoting other forumites and the reason which makes it a rule to make mention of--using an assumption, personally made, does not give detail on why it is a rule when 'quoting other forumites' has no wrong at all with how it works. Its neutral. What is done when quoting other forumites//by the quoter is where it may go wrong, as in what may be said (and how it is continued).

[pisskop]

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[Phmcw]

I'm not saying that no one have the right to act according to gender roles, I'm saying that often "peoples that are XXX act this way" become "peoples that are XXX have to act this way".


Any identity is becoming opressive once you're bound to it, and forced to act according to it. Actually I think the problem largely lie with how our brain process identity.


I believe that it try to make us part of a "tribe" using mechanism usefull to define a pack and assure its survivial, and that it cause problems in our societies. You have to identify with your "tribe" or be rejected by it, and you have to otherise the other "tribes" often with tragic consequences.

Instead of just using it to have something to work with during first contacts.

[4maskwolf]

Here's a couple of provable trends in human biology and behavior:

People whose physical gender (see my earlier definition for what I mean by this) is female TEND to be physically weaker than those whose physical gender is male.  This is easily provable and is a generally acknowledged fact: it doesn't make women less than, it's simply due to biological differences.

People whose physical gender is female have a greater proclivity towards being better at communication and empathy than those whose physical gender is male.  This can be seen by looking at tendencies on the Myers-Briggs test.

I believe that most of our gender roles have their roots in these two facts.  The problem is when we force people to define themselves by those roles or face social exile.

LordBucket: Just because other people are also subject to ridicule doesn't give you the right to say that their claims are invalid.  That's like saying the civil rights movement was invalid because of [insert other marginalized group here].

[Urist Arrhenius]

Can we please use gender to discuss social differences and sex to discuss biological ones? It really well make this easier. It can be difficult to see people as having a different gender identity than one of the easily accessible binary options when we confuse gender and sex, but when we define them separately understanding becomes easier.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

I think that the world would be better off if no one cared about what gender you were and that people weren't so prone to being assholes in general.

[pisskop]

I think that the world would be better off if no one cared about what gender you were and that people weren't so prone to being assholes in general.

I agree mostly.


Equality means normality means not special means no special treatment.
As with all cases of 'inequality', you can't be equal by asking for different treatment.

[Bauglir]

I'm gonna have to call bullshit on the notion that special treatment is an inherent evil, actually. President Johnson had the right idea when he said, "You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, "You are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have been completely fair." Because we live in a world that includes all sorts of conditions that cripple the notion of freedom of opportunity, it is necessary to treat people unequally in order to treat them equally. Do you honestly believe, for example, that financial aid based on need is inherently evil because the poor have just the same opportunity to pursue a higher education as the rich?

Here's the thing - I'm not saying that people ought to get free shit because they're trans or something. That's just a different extreme. I'm saying that insisting on a standard of "equality" that erases genuine differences between people is absurd. At least the bigots have the decency to acknowledge that people are different. Here, you wind up treating people unequally by treating them equally, because everybody will (in reality) vary from your assumed standard. Some people will happen to largely conform to it, and you wind up treating them better than the people who don't, because your society tolerates them. Is the argument that gay people have the same right to heterosexual marriage as anybody else a convincing one?

Maybe we ought to focus less on having objective, universal standards in a universe that objectively defies standardization.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

I don't necessarily believe that everyone should be uniform or held to the same standard, just that everyone would chill about it and not be so obtuse about allowing people to hold themselves to whichever standard they want.

[SomeStupidGuy]

Indeed, I've always felt that the whole idea of 'equality doesn't mean justice' is something that one should always keep in mind in these sorts of matters. Sure, in theory, a man and a woman(or any similar comparison between the majority and minority) should have the same opportunities as one another, but life doesn't always work out that way. So let's do what we can to try and nudge stuff a bit more in that direction, eh?

Basically, all in all? Affirmative action is pretty baller, yo. Only problem is that we don't apply it to enough stuff.

[4maskwolf]

Equality isn't justice because people aren't carbon copies of each other.  I am not the same as Tiruin who isn't the same as Urist McScoopbeard who isn't the same as Bauglir.  Different people are have different strengths and weaknesses.  Some people are easily emotionally hurt, some can easily bounce back from things that would emotionally devastate most people.  Are either of these things inherently bad?  No, it's just how these people are.  So how we treat people has to take this into account.  But we can't play to the lowest common denominator either, as education very well shows: if you teach to the slowest learners, the kids who can learn at a rapid pace get bored and hate school (that was me in elementary school).  And even in the case of the emotional resiliency thing, the person who is easily injured is going to be hurt emotionally sometimes, because everyone experiences suffering during their lives.

In general, trying to act in the world is a difficult balancing act, and inevitably some people will be dissatisfied.  On the one hand, people don't want to have to spend their whole lives tiptoeing around other to avoid setting them off, because then they are the ones who are being shut down and made to not matter.  On the other hand, we can't simply ignore the differences people have, because saying that their differences mean nothing is insulting and untrue: it's a part of who they are, and you are simply dismissing that.  This is particularly true re: Gender Identity.  I'm not sure where the optimal line is where the fewest people are dissatisfied, but I know that what we have now is not the optimal line.

[Vector]

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[LordBucket]

@Tiruin: if I understand you correctly, you're obecting to the character of my post rather than the content.

Ok. Allow me to rephrase:

It seems to me that there's a tendency to perceive gender issues as being somehow special and sacrosanct. I don't particularly think they are. This same phenomenon happens routinely with racial issues, and I don't see those as special either.

If somebody punches you in the face for being gay, I don't see that as somehow "worse" than somebody punching you in the face for having a lisp, or for not being on the football team, or whatever "you're not one of us" characteristic isn't popular that day.

The basic phenomenon I see at work here is the same as the "chicken with one red father" experiment. Take a group of chickens, paint a feather on one of them red, and the other chickens peck that chicken to death for being different. It wouldn't matter if you paint the feather blue instead of red. They're still going to pick the chicken to death. And being pecked to death for having a red feather isn't somehow magically worse than being pecked to death for having a blue feather.

And yet if somebody is beaten up for being gay instead of beaten up for wearing glasses, or if somebody makes less money for being female rather than makes less money for being short, somehow the people with exactly the same problems are perceived as having it worse, and their problems are perceived as more valid...solely because of the gender angle.

I look at this, and conclude that the people with gender-issue related problems don't have it worse. They are a socially protected class. This is trivial to demonstrate. It is illegal to discriminate based on sexual preference or status. You can hire and fire anybody you want for having a speech impediment, or being ugly, or any of a number of other traits you like. Not only legal protections, but cultural protections as well. It's not at all socially acceptable to make fun of gays, for example. There are stereotypes about "every girl wanting a gay friend" for example. Because having a gay friend is some sort of special thing that is valued and sought after for some reason. There are movies about this, songs about it, a quick google check reveals wikihow to guide for finding gay friends...it's so pervasive it even has a Tvtropes entry. Being gay or bisexual is considered cool and trendy in a lot of places. I once heard a teenager introduce himself by telling me he was bisexual. Like, before he gave me his name he threw that out there. Wasn't sure how to respond, so I asked if he preferred being on the giving or receiving end of gay sex. He was shocked and horrified at the thought, and as it turned out he wasn't bisexual at all. He was simply pretending to be because it was the trendy thing to be.


And yet still these communities insist that their particular form of victimhood is more horrible than that of others.  And many people agree with them. Which tells me that the entire premise that society views them more critically is simply false.  Consider the fact that we're even having this discussion. People care about gender discrimination. If somebody makes less money because they're a woman, society will go on a crusade over it. If a gay man is murdered, it's perceived as a horrible travesty that is somehow worse than if he'd been heterosexual.

People care about gender issues. And yes, people care about racial issues and a few others. If somebody beats up a guy in a wheelchair, that will be perceived as a greater injustice than somebody not in a wheelchair being beaten up. People with gender issues are not the only protected class. But they are are a protected class. Have a problem because you're gay, or had a sex change, or female, or whatever...and people will shower you with sympathy and crusade on your behalf. The treatment you will receive will be better than somebody who has the exact same problem for other reasons.


@Vector
Well, sorry that you're not one of the fortunate ones. The tides of culture are fickle. When I was a kid it was socially acceptable to make fun of gays. Now they're a protected class. So are women in general, but I think masculine women are not, right now. Maybe next year. Maybe next decade. Hard to say.

I will reiterate what I've said previously in the thread: these problems may be real, but you having difficulty because of gender issues is not particularly more holy and sacrosanct than people who have the same issues for other reasons, and gender issues in particular are very likely to go away in the next decade or two. There is an expiration date on these problems. People insisting that people who've had sex changes are not "really" changed will have a very difficult time maintaining that view once the technology improves to the point that the new bodies are indistinguishable. When MTF people can get pregnant and give birth it's going to be very difficult to say they're not female. When couples are popping sex change pills, and fraternities are making "hey dude, tonight you're the gang bang girl for all twenty of us" part of their new member initiations, when anybody can put on their AR and VR headsets and "try out" being a different sex for the night and when it becomes commonplace to do this...I think an inevitable result will be that everybody is going to have a lot more understanding what it's like for everyone else. People will be more accepting of other people's situations. A lot of current gender lines and social expectations are going to blur. And as a result, the people in the weird places in the middle between binary genders are likely to find themselves becoming the new normal.

It might not be tomorrow. It might not be next year. But it's going to happen.

Your difficulties might be real, but they will come to an end. You're not stuck with this. None of you are. It will end.