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[TheBiggerFish]

I wholeheartedly approve of this.  However: insert obxkcd here.

[Sergarr]

Seems pretty comprehensive to me, and easily expandable without loss of precision and/or exponential growth in number of words needed for any potential future needs. It could really use some distinguished verbal shorthands for individual word components, though. There are some difficult-to-pronounce and similar-in-pronunciation words in there.

[Toady One]

Removed a derail.  These threads don't have a great track record, but I'm willing to keep trying if people can keep it together.

edit: Removed it again.  Less likely to be repeated now.

[Reelya]

Phew, maybe we can go back to non-inflammatory stuff like gender pronouns now.

@Solifuge: I like that system, although I think it's unwieldy. Think about it this way: for people to understand "Androgyne Trans-Female, with a Gyno-Masculophilic Sexual Orientation" they'd have to understand all elements of that and how they fit into the broader system. Therefore they'd have to be using the full terminology to describe everyone. It doesn't help you if the terminology exists but nobody uses it, because you'd still be constantly explaining it.

The fact is, the most common terms to describe people's gender/sex and orientation are shorthand which describe most people. Even though you can iterate all the possible combinations of terms in your system, that doesn't mean that all combinations make sense, or that each combination is proportionally equal.

People will still end up using the shorthand descriptions because they're convenient to describing the vast majority of people. You can't expect e.g. a "straight male" to be referred to as a "Man Male with Gyno-Feminophilic Sexual Orientation", because people will just flat-out refuse to use that terminology. And if they're not using the "correct" terminology for the vast majority of people, then they're not going to understand the terminology when it's applied to niche minorities.

Also: if all terms a described in terms of a male/female spectrum you haven't really separated from a gender-binary concept.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

But how do you have a gender that isn't based off of that axis? The only one I can imagine is genderless, which is like "bald as a hair colour."

[Reelya]

Well I outlined earlier in the thread why I think the spectrum is actually an artifact.

Basically, traits are clustered by evolution around two "poles" and when developmental things don't go to design, the most likely outcome is for trait from the other gender to be expressed. This then causes traits to appear to be on a spectrum which is in fact an arbitrary line through a N-dimensional space which defines the trait parameters. This explanation explains both trait clustering, and trait overlap, and why "spectrum" definitely doesn't imply that all points on the spectrum are equally represented.

So effectively, things could exist WAY off that line between the male and female poles, but it's just unlikely because people of both genders are built on top of the same "machinery", and evolution weeds out outliers. Also, "gender identity" might not exist at all: it's just how categorize the cluster of traits. Someone could be born with all the relevant traits that we associate with gender being completely different to both male and female norms. Do we call that their "gender" then? Does "individual gender" even make sense, when gender is a way of categorizing people? For someone who has traits that don't fit in any cluster, "gender" might not even be a relevant concept, because it's a term defining a group.

[Catmeat]

I tend to go after anyone

I hit on obviously lesbian females all the time, but the social dynamic changes when their preference is bought up.
For some people sticking to their preference is priority over pleasurable experiences despite being mutaly and sexualy attracted.
With me there is no preference. If you are beautiful in anyway (especially mentaly stimulating) I will date you.
I actually only persue females though. I blame them smelling good and hormones.

[Rolepgeek]

Gender is relevant so long as people identify by it. And trying to tell people not to identify as certain stuff is what brought up the thing anyway.

Gender is based off an axis, in the way we use it, just like real numbers are. But just like there are imaginary numbers that sprout off sideways and make the line into a plane, you could say there are imaginary genders, and that's where you might call it genderless and still have a shitton of different genders. There's 'dark' and then there's 'in a part of the electro-magnetic spectrum you can't see but still acts fairly similarly to colored light'.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

But I simply can't imagine a gender that is not connected in some way to the male-female "anchors." Cisgender, transgender are each on an anchor. Genderlessness isn't even on the graph, it's not a gender. Everything else I've seen is like "demifemale" or "hemidemisemifemale", which is "halfway from one to the other."

Or if gender itself is a combination of multiple traits that go from F to M, and if you have mostly M then you're male, then we're still stuck to the F/M anchors.

[scriver]

You missed the opportunity to say "hemidemisemifemi".

I am disappoint in you, child.

[Baffler]

I tend to go after anyone

I hit on obviously lesbian females all the time, but the social dynamic changes when their preference is bought up.
For some people sticking to their preference is priority over pleasurable experiences despite being mutaly and sexualy attracted.
With me there is no preference. If you are beautiful in anyway (especially mentaly stimulating) I will date you.
I actually only persue females though. I blame them smelling good and hormones.

This is sort of off topic, but why did guys suddenly start calling women they're potentially interested in "females?" I can't help but hear anything else they say about it as some kind of David Attenborough-esque narration, or (less likely) an alien infiltrator who hasn't been here quite long enough to sound like a local.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

I AM DEFINITELY A HUMAN, FELLOW HUMAN. PLEASE INSTRUCTIONS FOR LOCATION OF NEAREST_BUILDING SUCH THAT BUILDING = PUB.

[Starver]

I AM DEFINITELY A HUMAN, FELLOW HUMAN. PLEASE INSTRUCTIONS FOR LOCATION OF NEAREST_BUILDING SUCH THAT BUILDING = PUB.

je tera'ngan. pagh vIt ghaH "pasty head" tu'lu'. DaH maHvaD ghu'vam moq!

(Off topic, but probably not needing a Toady-bleaching if we don't much further.)

[Imic]

I AM DEFINITELY A HUMAN, FELLOW HUMAN. PLEASE INSTRUCTIONS FOR LOCATION OF NEAREST_BUILDING SUCH THAT BUILDING = PUB.

je tera'ngan. pagh vIt ghaH "pasty head" tu'lu'. DaH maHvaD ghu'vam moq!

(Off topic, but probably not needing a Toady-bleaching if we don't much further.)

Tirak jahl. Gulatrak mitnor geldranamer. Mhalagest, d,ral. Undarak, hreldarak, eldratharak. Kultamir sen.

I am personally a femenist. Makin' this clear. So was me Mum. And me Dad. And me brother, though he's on the spectrum so we can't quite say for sure.

[Baffler]

Terah, tak kagalit. Mugim darat tak dalit muron'amah, gemad "Undarak, hreldarak, eldratharak," hragen tirak tak Starver melar teverit jahlan.

But I simply can't imagine a gender that is not connected in some way to the male-female "anchors." Cisgender, transgender are each on an anchor. Genderlessness isn't even on the graph, it's not a gender. Everything else I've seen is like "demifemale" or "hemidemisemifemale", which is "halfway from one to the other."

Or if gender itself is a combination of multiple traits that go from F to M, and if you have mostly M then you're male, then we're still stuck to the F/M anchors.

I can't really see it either, but is that even a bad thing? Having solidly established anchors, to use the term, for identity gives everyone something to fall back on and a certain sense of community. Discrimination on that basis is bad, obviously, but I'm not convinced that, even if it were possible, it would be a good thing to do away with the ideas of masculinity and femininity.