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So apparently gender doesn't exist?

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Original post by Learner4


I used to have a tumblr account


stopped reading
Reply 21
Avatar for JPO92
JPO92
17
It can be really easy to put gender and sex down as the same things.

They are not.

Gender is a social construct of perceived behaviours attributed exclusively to either the male or female sex.

Sex is the genetically determined, sexual characteristics of a human being.

To put it simply, gender is assigned by society, sex is assigned biologically. However, to make matters more complicated, the stereotypical gender classification of society is often impossible to adhere to for ANYONE. No one can really be completely masculine or completely feminine and therefore, everyone feels innadequate in the face of such expectations.

Our gender is not only a social construct, but it is also something that we, indivdually, struggle with conforming to. It damages our true sense of identity, it can often force us to 'hide' parts of ourselves that we would rather be comfortable with.

Although gender is a social consturct, it still exists. That being said, it exists on shakier ground than you might think.
Original post by mojojojo101
Gender exists, just in the sense that Spiderman exists, rather than in the sense that an elephant exists.


I think this is an important point. There are plenty of things which don't 'exist' but which impact people massively. Two examples I can think of are money and laws.
I can't really add anyting re: gender/sex distinction, but I will say that I very much doubt most "otherkin" really feel that way. They are just teenagers who like to be part of a sort of roleplaying community. It's harmless as far as I can see.

I agree that Tumblr can be very toxic, though. It can be great for support and for creativity (I pretty much exlusively use it for following artists now), but the extreme SJ side does seem to regularly bleed through into everything else.
Original post by DiddyDec
Make you are well versed in your gender chart.



I can't tell if that chart is a joke or not. If it isn't then Christ help us all.
Original post by Dr Pesto
I can't tell if that chart is a joke or not. If it isn't then Christ help us all.


This one is, but it is based off a real chart which is bigger
Original post by DiddyDec
This one is, but it is based off a real chart which is bigger


Yeah, having had a closer look I saw it wasn't real, but I think I've seen the one you mean before.
Original post by Learner4
x


I'm studying gender history and we're actually taught from day one that the construction of gender is totally separate from the physical body. Gender is performed; it tells you how you should and should not act according to your biological sex. This performance takes different forms within societies that are geographically and chronologically separate. Gender is not fixed or biologically determined.

Read Joan Scott or Judith Butler. Honestly, it's worth it.
Also, this video changed my life. I'm lucky enough to actually now the speaker as we're at Oxford together.

[video="youtube;bzj1BTdfoeI"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzj1BTdfoeI[/video]
(edited 8 years ago)
Original post by ivybridge
It's not really a 'tumblr' thing is it though? It's just that person is ridiculous. Gender does exist and I'm not sure how that photo says it doesn't?


Wrong. Just wrong. Gender doesn't exist. Just because you're happy to live your life according to the little box you've confined yourself to doesn't mean that everyone has to do the same thing.
Original post by colourtheory
Wrong. Just wrong. Gender doesn't exist. Just because you're happy to live your life according to the little box you've confined yourself to doesn't mean that everyone has to do the same thing.


What are you talking about? Gender does exist, we live in gender roles, we buy clothes according to gender, we by healthcare products and beauty products based on gender - stop talking utter crap. I didn't say there's only two either. Sex and gender are not the same - I didn't say it was either.

Go back to your degree and supporting condescending ***** as lecturers :borat:
(edited 8 years ago)
Original post by Dr Pesto
Yeah, having had a closer look I saw it wasn't real, but I think I've seen the one you mean before.


Here it is.

Original post by colourtheory
Wrong. Just wrong. Gender doesn't exist. Just because you're happy to live your life according to the little box you've confined yourself to doesn't mean that everyone has to do the same thing.


It should be noted that most people actually have no problem with the issue of gender. Society assigning my gender for me doesn't affect my life in the slightest. Only a small minority of people struggle with this - not saying they're wrong, or that we shouldn't care about them, but those people have no cause to be all superior about it as if they're the real enlightened ones and the rest of us are just ignorant.
It seems like you're confusing gender with sex.
Sex is the biological classification of being a man or a woman, or both.
Gender is more mental/social. So if it's more mental or social, then people can be whatever they like and shouldn't be judged by narrow-minded idiots like yourself. :smile:
Original post by squeakysquirrel
Yup - people are bonkers - these are first world problems - treat them with the disdain that they deserve.


Actually transgender identity is common in many developing countries, as are the problems associated with it: the Indian Hijra community has existed for thousands of years.

Gender does exist, in the same way that all personality traits 'exist' inside the brain. Except gender is not just one trait, it's a broad spectrum of different traits, likes, dislikes, ways of thinking, and it brings together personality and identity. So there are not just two gender identities, there are many. You can say that having a gender identity at odds with your physical sex is 'bonkers' if you want, but then you are at odds with psychiatry.

At the end of the day insanity doesn't exist, it's defined by acceptance. If a whole society of people choose to believe that there is a bearded man in the sky who brutally murdered his own son in the name of 'love' and has the power to read our minds, then it's not insanity. If a society of people chooses to believe that your gender is defined by your genitals, then not believing so is going to cause severe problems.

Obviously there are some psychological conditions that will cause you problems whether or not you are accepted: if you believe you are a wolf and try to eat raw meat you'll get food poisoning. But imagine for a second that we lived in a society where everyone accepted transgender people and defined people's gender based on self-identity (or a mix of self-identity and physical sex). Would there be any actual problems for such people outside those in the minds of other people?
(edited 8 years ago)
Original post by ivybridge
What are you talking about? Gender does exist, we live in gender roles, we buy clothes according to gender, we by healthcare products and beauty products based on gender - stop talking utter crap. I didn't say there's only two either. Sex and gender are not the same - I didn't say it was either.

Go back to your degree and supporting condescending ***** as lecturers :borat:


Oh my, my degree has actually taught me the very thing I'm trying to get across to you. Society, just like you, has defined two very rigid gender roles which are biologically determined. Like you, society is unable to spot its own ignorance. Burn the clothes, throw out the pink and blue packaged toiletries and you're left with nothing. You're left with possibilities and opportunities for individual expression that are not censored by the hetero-norm.

Joan Scott: 'gender is a constitutive element of social relationships based on perceived differences between the sexes, and gender is a primary way of signifying relationships of power... [These] normative statements depend on the refusal or repression of alternative possibilities, and, sometimes, overt contests about them take place… [we need] to disrupt the notion of fixity’. (Scott, 1986, p. 1068)

‘We need refusal of the fixed and permanent quality of the binary opposition, a genuine historicisation and deconstruction of the terms of sexual difference. We must become more self-conscious about distinguishing between our analytic vocabulary and the material we want to recognise. We must find ways… to continually subject our categories to criticism, our analyses to self-criticism’. (Scott, 1986, p. 1065)

‘Like words themselves, subjective identities are processes of differentiation and distinction, requiring the suppression of ambiguities and opposite elements in order to assure (and create the illusion of coherence and common understanding. The idea of masculinity rests on the necessary repression of feminine aspects - of the subject’s potential for bisexuality - and introduces conflict into the opposition of masculine and feminine. Repressed desires are present in the unconscious and are constantly a threat to the stability of gender identification, denying its unity, subverting its need for security. In addition, conscious ideas of masculine or feminine are not fixed, since they vary according to contextual usage. Conflict always exists, then, between the subject’s need for the appearance of wholeness and the imprecision of terminology, its relative meaning, its dependence on repression’. (Scott, 1986, pp. 1063-4)
Reply 35
Avatar for whorace
whorace
2
Original post by Dandaman1
One thing I've noticed is that these 'gender fluid' something-o-sexual snowflakes are disproportionately teenage, tumblr-dwelling dorks with self-diagnosed mental disorders. But I'm sure their obscure gender identities and increasingly unique sexual orientations are genuine and not simply a product of their adolescent cries for attention.

Not that many genderqueer, pansexual 45-year-olds out there. Just sayin'.


Which are almost always used to excuse responsibility for being rude...
Original post by colourtheory
Wrong. Just wrong. Gender doesn't exist. Just because you're happy to live your life according to the little box you've confined yourself to doesn't mean that everyone has to do the same thing.


From the American Psychological Association's page on the matter:

https://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/sexuality-definitions.pdf

Gender refers to the attitudes, feelings, and behaviors that a given culture associates with a person’s biological sex. Behavior that is compatible with cultural expectations is referred to as gender-normative; behaviors that are viewed as incompatible with these expectations constitute gender non-conformity.


Never mind whether or not you think it is morally right to have expectations of people because of their sex, it is undeniably the case that this DOES happen, and has been ingrained in our society for millennia. Gender DOES exist, and you don't have to deny it to think it's a terrible thing.
(edited 8 years ago)
Original post by StrangeBanana
It should be noted that most people actually have no problem with the issue of gender. Society assigning my gender for me doesn't affect my life in the slightest. Only a small minority of people struggle with this - not saying they're wrong, or that we shouldn't care about them, but those people have no cause to be all superior about it as if they're the real enlightened ones and the rest of us are just ignorant.


I can't agree with this. Many people struggle with the concept of the gender binary and over the years there have been many many attempts to broaden its definitions, look at the work of Bowie, of the popularity of androgyny, and the LGBT movement etc.

I'm not telling you to stop defining yourself according to these binary roles if that is what you choose. Instead, I am suggesting that you adopt a broader based understanding of gender and how it functions so that you don't deny the identities of those who choose to operate outside of the hetero-norm. The gender binary, when used to suppress ambiguity, is a tool for oppression.
Original post by colourtheory
I can't agree with this. Many people struggle with the concept of the gender binary and over the years there have been many many attempts to broaden its definitions, look at the work of Bowie, of the popularity of androgyny, and the LGBT movement etc.

I'm not telling you to stop defining yourself according to these binary roles if that is what you choose. Instead, I am suggesting that you adopt a broader based understanding of gender and how it functions so that you don't deny the identities of those who choose to operate outside of the hetero-norm. The gender binary, when used to suppress ambiguity, is a tool for oppression.


While I'm sure that's true, "many" is not the same as "a majority".

Well obviously, we should all live and let live - I don't need a degree in gender studies to know that. If people feel like they're gender-fluid or transgender or whatever, it's none of my business. That "little box" comment sounded like you were implying that people who accept the gender society assigns them are somehow less enlightened than those who don't, which is a pile of crap.
(edited 8 years ago)
Original post by TimGB
From the American Physcholical Association's page on the matter:

https://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/sexuality-definitions.pdf



Never mind whether or not you think it is morally right to have expectations of people because of their sex, it is undeniably the case that this DOES happen, and has been ingrained in our society for millennia. Gender DOES exist, and you don't have to deny it to think it's a terrible thing.


But these gender constructions do not remain relevant across all societies and they interact with other modes of self-identification, which often take precedence. For example, class may form the dominant aspect of one's identity. In that case there is more similarity between a peasant man and peasant woman in the 13th century, than a Queen and peasant woman within the same century. Therefore distinctions based on gender are often null in such highly stratified societies which rely on other modes of social organisation, suggesting that gender does not universally exist as a fact of nature or society. Gender may therefore 'exist' within one community and not within another.

Moreover, the definition of gender does not remain fixed at all levels of the social hierarchy, thus gender has different implications for different people. It's not a category that can be used to usefully divide the population in any rigid sense. Aspects of noble womanhood may in fact overlap with aspects of masculinity at lower levels of society, for example.
(edited 8 years ago)

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