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[Criptfeind]

Some seem to have the culture required for gender as a social construct as opposed to biological sex to occur. Humans are an obvious example, but things most closely related to us, Monkeys and Apes, also seem to be able to construct as pass around and change knowledge, a prerequisite for such a thing as culture I would think. As for applying this to passing ideas about the correct behavior of sexes, I have to admit I'm not totally sure if there's documentation of that totally. The best I can remember off the top of my head was the event where in a troop of baboons the aggressive males more or less all died because of poisoned food, which then changed the culture of the group as a whole. If you say that the aggressiveness of the alpha males and their hierarchy was a facet of the gender role that their society enforced (which seems to be the case since after this event other males that moved in from other troops would adapt to the more chill troop, learning to be less aggressive) then this seems like it'd be a case non human animals having gender (and what that gender means being changed after a radical event.)

Um, I'm fairly unsure of my conclusions here, but uh. Maybe?

[smjjames]

And fungi have this wierd system with tens, hundreds or even (in some cases) thousands of 'genders'

[Criptfeind]

Er. Genders? Or Sexes?

[Tiruin]

Err...do remember that gender != gender role. The 'role' here is the manner of interacting towards a certain theme or concept noticed as a characteristic, not necessarily of the gender. (It's like more of a title/term rather than an indicator)

So...nope. That's a tad bit more personification and attribution of human qualities onto observations in a way. :O It's rather less of actual gender there given what you're citing.

[Criptfeind]

Err...do remember that gender != gender role. The 'role' here is the manner of interacting towards a certain theme or concept noticed as a characteristic, not necessarily of the gender. (It's like more of a title/term rather than an indicator)

Ah, yeah, fair enough. I'm not totally sure of where the divide here lays. Like, the role is how you expect something to act when given a certain label, which conversely means that the label can be used as short hand to bring the mind the role. And if you change the meaning of the label or the content of the role, you've transitively changed both.

If that's not the case, then, well, whoops.

[smjjames]

Er. Genders? Or Sexes?

Not sure if that was at me or not, was just going along with what Doze and TempAcc were quipping about.

Though the system used by fungi stretch the human cultural concept of genders/sexes, as in functional sex, not gender roles, stretches the human concept of genders/sexes to near meaninglessness. At least in the form that we have a concept of it as a dual thing rather than a multispectral whatever (again, functional and biological gender/sex not gender roles).

[Criptfeind]

I was just imagining Fungus wearing 1000s of different types of dresses.

[smjjames]

It's a strange thing to wrap your head around, yeah.

[Criptfeind]

I guess we've at least conclusively answered what lifeform on earth is the most fashionable.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

I was just imagining Fungus wearing 1000s of different types of dresses.

One fungus, or multiple fungi? Because the first would be difficult to pull off. It would also be difficult to pull the dresses off of the fungus afterward.

[TheBiggerFish]

Why philosophical asparagus?

[wierd]

Don't ask.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

Because people are asparasexual, apparently, and this thread is evolving toward philosophy.

[wierd]

They love their asparagus so much they want to marry it?
What is this, a peewee herman rerun?

/joke

Naw, it is basically because of a massive derail about how preferences are innately based on likes and dislikes, which are innately internal, automatic things and not based on after the fact reasoning, and another user disagreeing vociferously. This spiraled into a long and tedious examination of a number of things which does indeed border on philosophy very closely.

In that derail I mentioned asparagus as something people might instantly dislike.

[Solifuge]

Do animals even have gender, or is it just sex?

The best I can remember off the top of my head was the event where in a troop of baboons the aggressive males more or less all died because of poisoned food, which then changed the culture of the group as a whole. If you say that the aggressiveness of the alpha males and their hierarchy was a facet of the gender role that their society enforced (which seems to be the case since after this event other males that moved in from other troops would adapt to the more chill troop, learning to be less aggressive) then this seems like it'd be a case non human animals having gender (and what that gender means being changed after a radical event.)

Yeah. Robert Sapolsky's baboon research was going to be my example too. Dramatic cultural shift in the role of Males in that troupe toward what had been the Female role (grooming, less dominance displays and fighting, sharing food, pro-social behavior), which was enforced by gender-policing the incoming aggressive new Males from other cultures, until they conformed.

Basically, it happens to other animals than humans, but they have to be socially-organized and have a culture in order for gender to exist. Solitary animals don't tend to have clearly defined roles or behaviors, because individuals can't specialize. Each individual has to hunt and find a mate and do all the things their species needs to do to survive, so roles that limit their behavior don't make sense. Plus, if they live solitarily, there's no neighbors or cultures to create or to enforce roles, either!

EDIT: basically, gender is a facet of culture, not of biology. Sex is biological. Even nature agrees!