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[hops]

TBH, I'm not even sure how a male-gendered person that would take a majority of traits associated with the female gender would make sense, at least by the definition of gender I've been using.  I'd love it if Vector could pop in and join the discussion, they've been great on the subject before.

Also, if serious discussion is intended, the title should be changed.

I think that's the main issue. Gender kind of depend on people's definitions. I have been guilty of this. I have met people with different views and we too were both stubborn in our ways.

I met an agendered person that was offended when I talked about sex as a separate, concrete thing that you're born with, while gender is more cultural and personal. They said that some people don't identify with a sex they were assigned, which to me is kind of contradictory as in my set of definitions, a gender is a combination of what you choose and what your peers allow you to be, while sex is your biology. Of course, it's not clean cut since people with Down's Syndrome for example have different chromosomes from normal humans, but at that point you're just being a Socradick.

And the issue I have with gender roles, or rather "sex roles" except nobody except me use that because I did literally just invent my own axiom, is not that it's conformist or whatever people say. It's that it's, what shall I say. "Ableist"? People justify sexism with the fact that there is indeed physiological difference between the two sexes (and intersexes and other sort of people, get off my back) and that is true, but as a society we should ignore it. If it is insensitive to make someone feel less of a human because they're msising a few limbs, won't it be even more insensitive to make someone feel less of a human even though they have the same amount of limbs as the normal people?

[Flying Dice]

The lot that try to justify sexism with biological differences between the sexes are full of shit, frankly.

I've used this example before, because it's a good one: A group of people are trying to become firefighters. On average, a lower percentage of the women will be able to meet the physical requirements. Does that mean that women shouldn't be allowed to become firefighters? Fuck, no; it means that hiring should be based solely on the competence of candidates and their ability to perform the labor required by the job.

You'll find that the "biological-dimorphism therefore sexism = okay" types very quickly retreat into discussing gender while claiming to be talking about sex, mostly because the actual differences between the sexes are relatively minor, not entirely understood (because a lot of them are more neurochemistry and less physical composition), and subject to a fairly wide degree of individual variation. In other words, it's difficult to make meaningful generalizations based on them, so they're largely worthless. Ultimately it's circular reasoning, "Gender roles exist because of significant differences in the sexes, which we know exist because of gender roles."

[SirQuiamus]

To add my two cents to this pile:

I personally think that the terms "male" and "female" should be (eventually) abolished altogether if we want to get rid of all gender/sex-trouble. If you want to talk about "man-ness" and "woman-ness," then you're already lost in an endless maze of cultural gender roles that morph and mutate into each other just to stay the same. If you really want to talk about "raw reproductionary biology" as the evopsych guys put it, just say "people who produce sperm" or "people who produce eggs"---it's that simple.

I don't particularly care about the sex/gender/identity/whatever of my sex partners---I'm not currently interested in producing offspring, and even if I were, it would mostly be a matter of finding some eggs for my sperm, regardless of who produces them.

The discoupling of reproduction from sexuality is simply an inevitable consequence of modern medicine. We should just deal with it, or alternatively do away with all the medical advances.

[mainiac]

The perfect is the enemy of the good.

[Frumple]

... what about the folks that produce neither, though, SQ?

[Flying Dice]

To add my two cents to this pile:

I personally think that the terms "male" and "female" should be (eventually) abolished altogether if we want to get rid of all gender/sex-trouble. If you want to talk about "man-ness" and "woman-ness," then you're already lost in an endless maze of cultural gender roles that morph and mutate into each other just to stay the same. If you really want to talk about "raw reproductionary biology" as the evopsych guys put it, just say "people who produce sperm" or "people who produce eggs"---it's that simple.

I don't particularly care about the sex/gender/identity/whatever of my sex partners---I'm not currently interested in producing offspring, and even if I were, it would mostly be a matter of finding some eggs for my sperm, regardless of who produces them.

The discoupling of reproduction from sexuality is simply an inevitable consequence of modern medicine. We should just deal with it, or alternatively do away with all the medical advances.

...Those are the definitions of the sexes. Males are individuals which produce mobile gametes (sperm); females are individuals which produce immobile gametes (eggs). That is literally what "male" and "female" mean in the biological sense. Any argument otherwise is some flavor of soft-headed social/psych nonsense.

[hops]

So sterile people are sexless, got it.

[Neonivek]

So sterile people are sexless, got it.

You counter argued yourself when you said "Sterile".

[Flying Dice]

Okay, I misspoke. "Possess the organs &c. necessary to produce..."

[Frumple]

... some folks don't, though :V

[Flying Dice]

If they were born entirely lacking, then yes, they're sexless. If they're damaged or otherwise nonfunctional due to genetics, surgery, accident, &c., they still exist.

A blind person isn't eyeless, either. You don't describe someone as headless because they got an ear lopped off.

[SirQuiamus]

@Everyone:
No, people who don't produce any gametes at all are not "sexless" as per the current definition of "sex." That's not what I meant.

I'm just saying that if sex/gender/sexuality were completely decoupled from reproduction, then there would be no need for a binary category called "sex" at all.

I'm also saying that the abovementioned decoupling would be desirable, if possible.

[spümpkin]

y-y-y-y-y-yikessss

This thread is a good idea, albeit also a terrible one.
If I've anything to say about it, it's that I just find it easier, and less harmful to individuals to judge case-by-case, and judge people as people. As, I personally think people are made by what they do, not what parts they're born with. Although, this is probably hypocritical coming from a trans person, but I'm not going to go into my reasoning for that. I also just think that if someone is doing something that doesn't harm anything or anyone, including themselves, and it makes them happy, it should be fine. But, as my personal text says, I can't tell people how to think. Only they can convince themselves to change.

Really, gender binary can be useful for those who align with it (such as i do, or at least, some aspects of me do. Other parts i can classify on my own.) It can be hell for those who don't align with it. I just call gender and sexuality a cloud of options, really. It's always changing, and it's fuckin all over the place. People will be people, after all.

[Reelya]

While we're on the topic of gender (thus making this not quite as much of a derail):

Would it make any sense at all to construct a Kinsey-like gender scale? Something like

Code: [Select]

         4         
      3     5     
   2           6   
1                 7

Where the left is female, the right is male? 7 is hypermasculine (MANLY MAN WHO IS SO TOTALLY MANLY HE HAS TO REMIND YOU EVERY MINUTE), 6 is definitely not agender or trans, but not SUPERMASCULINE, 1 and 2 are similar, 4 is entirely agender, and 3 and 5 are "slightly" gendered but without a way of measuring precisely, pretty much identical to 4 for most intents and purposes?

Or is this just a bunch of nonsense?

About #7, i disagree that the hyper-masculine person would be "reminding you all the time". Someone who does that is compensating for something, so it's a projection of insecurities, meaning they're probably around a 4.5 in real life.

Someone who was really #7 just is masculine, but that doesn't mean "macho man", it means their brain is wired up in some way we associate with being male. It's also multi-dimensional. High exposure to testosterone in the womb doesn't give people (male or female) "macho" personalities. Being male doesn't mean extrovert. High fetal testosterone is actually much more correlated with geeky interests. The hyper-male brain therefore has a strong things focus rather than a people focus. Some of that personality variation in women as well as men seems to be correlated to fetal testosterone.

Fetal testosterone is a slider, and extroverted "macho man" types are actually closer to the center of the slider, with "girly" types on one side and "geeky" types on the other end. So that really complicates our attempt to have a single slider of "masculine/feminine".

Sexuality as well. Look up finger length in lesbians. Tesosterone exposure in uterine seems to shape sexuality (though we have an incomplete picture, but there are definite pre-natal effects). Males have a different ratio of ring finger to middle finger than females do. Lesbians have a ratio that's slightly towards the male end, and self-identified "butch" lesbians have a ratio that's markedly different to "femme" lesbians, in the masculine direction. So, "penis or no penis" might be one dimension of dating which could be partly social, or partly biological, but even the roles we choose play in a relationship seem to be shape by fetal hormones.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11910785
It's also related to male homosexuality and the older-brother effect.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/695142.stm
Controversial stuff, but it's raw data-based observation rather than opinion

[flame99]

Oh man, this thread is probably not going to go well. Time to do the smart thing and ignore it and avoid future drama immediately jump in with my two cents.

I think the idea of gender is a bit outdated. It essentially defines cultural roles and perceptions of males and females, which could maybe be argued as sensible in a time when those differences were prominent enough to be important, but definitely really isn't today. For example, I am a transvestite, but I would much rather just be 'a male who likes {x} style of clothes.' Distinguishing that as masculine or effeminate seems like a very arbitrary thing, and a waste of time. Though, naturally, long-held ideas like that aren't going to disappear one day, so we're probably stuck with them for the foreseeable future.

EDIT: Actually I guess finding people you're interested in touching the butt of is a reason for gender in the modern day, as far as appearance and the like go. Still, attaching behavioral baggage to it seems questionable.