Who determines the number of genders- and how?

[Tinfoil Hater]

As I understand it there are 39 genders, but the number may in fact be in the thousands. By what scientific rubric is the philosophy of infinite genders achieved? 39 genders seems a bit high, but I have been told there could be so to 10,000 ( and if I dont agree I'm apparently a 'bigoted cis white male'). Okay if there are many genders , how is this determined?

 

[Thermal]

The whole multiple gender thing is a fad, socially defined rather than scientifically. It will pass, leaving the few real genders acknowledged and the rest re categorized as personality types, identity disorders, and make-pretend.

 

[autumn1971]

The whole multiple gender thing is a fad, socially defined rather than scientifically. It will pass, leaving the few real genders acknowledged and the rest re categorized as personality types, identity disorders, and make-pretend.

Gender is socially defined. Everything you say about it being a "fad" is exactly as true for "traditional" binary gender identification.

 

[Thermal]

Gender is socially defined. Everything you say about it being a "fad" is exactly as true for "traditional" binary gender identification.

Right. And the social science definitions are currently including far more subtypes than are practical. The logical extension is to arrive at a unique gender for every individual, making gender identification pointless. By 'traditional', I assume you mean male and female. These correspond to biological sex, so have some observational basis. Things like 'gender fluid' are more like how you are feeling today. Those types, I think, will get reclassified.

 

[Delphic Oracle]

Right. And the social science definitions are currently including far more subtypes than are practical. The logical extension is to arrive at a unique gender for every individual, making gender identification pointless. By 'traditional', I assume you mean male and female. These correspond to biological sex, so have some observational basis. Things like 'gender fluid' are more like how you are feeling today. Those types, I think, will get reclassified.

Male and female are not genders that correspond to biological sex, they are the terms for that.

Masculine and feminine are the genders. They are both socially determined and socially derived in a somewhat chicken-and-egg fashion.

This is where the tapatalk signature that annoys people used to be

 

[qayak]

Gender is socially defined. Everything you say about it being a "fad" is exactly as true for "traditional" binary gender identification.

Not exactly. Traditional gender is defined socially but uses easily identifiable traits in the definition. In other words, mostly you can tell traditional gender simply by seeing someone in their everyday clothing doing their everyday things.

The new age, mumbo-jumbo gender mostly has no identifiable, or even defined, traits. In order to tell some people's gender under this new system, you have to know how they were born, how they are raised, what they feel at this moment, and at various other moments in their lives, what the cool kids are doing, what direction the wind is blowing, and whether the individual has had their first bowel movement of the day or not. (For brevity I skipped over a few thousand markers used by new agers.)

 

[Rolfe]

I was about to post this in another thread, but it might as well go here.

https://lascapigliata8.wordpress.co...ological-sex-of-trans-identified-perperators/

Also this.

http://mirandayardley.com/en/how-transgender-ideology-is-destroying-the-labour-party/

If "gender" is just another word for personality type it's a fairly harmless conceit, but when it leads to the opening of women's protected spaces to male-bodied individuals purely on their say-so that they "identify" as something other than male, women are in real danger.

Many autogynaephilic cross-dressers actually hate women for being what they want to be but can never be. Their motivation for entering women's protected spaces is not to blend in but to occupy and colonise, enjoying the discomfort of women perceiving a male-bodied individual in a women's space. Peeping toms, exhibitionists, voyeurs and other varieties of general creep are now "identifying" as women to gain access to women's locker-rooms and bathroom facilities - not to mention domestic violence shelters - whether or not they normally present as trans. Effeminate boys are being allowed to join the Girl Guides and go on residential camps, sharing sleeping and bathroom facilities with girls. It has been made explicit that the girls' parents are not to be told that their daughters are sleeping in the same room as a male-bodied boy, and any girl who expresses discomfort or objects is labelled a transphobe and publicly shamed.

Mediocre men are competing against women in sports at all levels, and although elite-level sports limit the plasma testosterone concentrations these men are allowed to have, no consideration is given to the physical advantages of having an adult male body which went through male puberty. At school and amateur level even testosterone isn't checked. Girls who have trained hard and been beaten by these boys are publicly biting their lips, choking back their tears, and issuing politically correct statements about how well "Susan" has done and they support her brave stance to adopt her "true identity".

Young children who happen to like clothes and/or toys deemed more appropriate for the opposite sex are now being fast-tracked into a life of permanent medicalisation, disfiguring surgery and serious medical consequences resulting from the use of powerful hormones to try to mimic the endocrinology of the opposite sex. As one masculine-presenting woman who was old enough to avoid being railroaded recently said, "I screamed and screamed that I was a boy, but I didn't want to be a boy, I wanted the things that boys had. The short hair and the skateboard and the jeans and the Power Rangers t-shirt." Girls like her are now being encouraged to have mastectomies and take testosterone.

It's the most horrendously sexist thing imaginable. You're a girl and you like blue and short hair and Meccanno, or you're a boy and you like pink glitter and Barbie dolls, you must have been born in the wrong body, never mind, we'll change it for you and we'll make you feel so special and brave for being an amazing trans-kid!

And don't get me started on rapid-onset gender dysphoria, which has replaced anorexia nervosa as the destructive social contagion among adolescent girls who hate their bodies. At least with anorexia nervosa nobody "affirmed" the skeletal waif in her belief that she was grossly obese. Girls with ROGD are being hailed as brave and special and offered testosterone as young as thirteen. You might as well give an anorectic girl a calorie-controlled diet sheet and schedule her for gastric band surgery.

So no, all this gender stuff isn't harmless, it's destroying lives right now. It will blow over the way the recovered memories of Satanic abuse thing blew over, but in the mean time some kids are being seriously damaged. I hate to think what the lawsuits are going to look like by the time these adolescents reach middle-age and the consequences of the hormones they've been given really start to bite.

 

[ServiceSoon]

I was about to post this in another thread, but it might as well go here.

https://lascapigliata8.wordpress.co...ological-sex-of-trans-identified-perperators/

Also this.

http://mirandayardley.com/en/how-transgender-ideology-is-destroying-the-labour-party/

If "gender" is just another word for personality type it's a fairly harmless conceit, but when it leads to the opening of women's protected spaces to male-bodied individuals purely on their say-so that they "identify" as something other than male, women are in real danger.

I wasn't aware that the discussion about gender had been transformed into the victimization of woman. Are men ever victimized?

Many autogynaephilic cross-dressers actually hate women for being what they want to be but can never be. Their motivation for entering women's protected spaces is not to blend in but to occupy and colonise, enjoying the discomfort of women perceiving a male-bodied individual in a women's space. Peeping toms, exhibitionists, voyeurs and other varieties of general creep are now "identifying" as women to gain access to women's locker-rooms and bathroom facilities - not to mention domestic violence shelters - whether or not they normally present as trans. Effeminate boys are being allowed to join the Girl Guides and go on residential camps, sharing sleeping and bathroom facilities with girls. It has been made explicit that the girls' parents are not to be told that their daughters are sleeping in the same room as a male-bodied boy, and any girl who expresses discomfort or objects is labelled a transphobe and publicly shamed.

I share in your frustration. In the US, when the national discussion of allowing an individual to use the restroom of their choice was presented, the public was assured that no harm would come from allowing people to use the restroom of their choice based on their chosen identify. If you voiced your opposition to this policy you were prejudiced, confused about your sexuality, or subjected to another type of shaming, psychoanalysis or personal attack.

Mediocre men are competing against women in sports at all levels, and although elite-level sports limit the plasma testosterone concentrations these men are allowed to have, no consideration is given to the physical advantages of having an adult male body which went through male puberty. At school and amateur level even testosterone isn't checked. Girls who have trained hard and been beaten by these boys are publicly biting their lips, choking back their tears, and issuing politically correct statements about how well "Susan" has done and they support her brave stance to adopt her "true identity".

Are you suggesting we should resort to the previous state of affairs?

Young children who happen to like clothes and/or toys deemed more appropriate for the opposite sex are now being fast-tracked into a life of permanent medicalisation, disfiguring surgery and serious medical consequences resulting from the use of powerful hormones to try to mimic the endocrinology of the opposite sex. As one masculine-presenting woman who was old enough to avoid being railroaded recently said, "I screamed and screamed that I was a boy, but I didn't want to be a boy, I wanted the things that boys had. The short hair and the skateboard and the jeans and the Power Rangers t-shirt." Girls like her are now being encouraged to have mastectomies and take testosterone.

It's the most horrendously sexist thing imaginable. You're a girl and you like blue and short hair and Meccanno, or you're a boy and you like pink glitter and Barbie dolls, you must have been born in the wrong body, never mind, we'll change it for you and we'll make you feel so special and brave for being an amazing trans-kid!

How many children are proceeding with these surgeries that regret having made that choice later in life? During my childhood, if a girl wanted to do boy things we simply called her a tomboy. Do you believe that invoking that label (tomboy) is a healthier state of affairs than our current status?

And don't get me started on rapid-onset gender dysphoria, which has replaced anorexia nervosa as the destructive social contagion among adolescent girls who hate their bodies. At least with anorexia nervosa nobody "affirmed" the skeletal waif in her belief that she was grossly obese. Girls with ROGD are being hailed as brave and special and offered testosterone as young as thirteen. You might as well give an anorectic girl a calorie-controlled diet sheet and schedule her for gastric band surgery.

So no, all this gender stuff isn't harmless, it's destroying lives right now. It will blow over the way the recovered memories of Satanic abuse thing blew over, but in the mean time some kids are being seriously damaged. I hate to think what the lawsuits are going to look like by the time these adolescents reach middle-age and the consequences of the hormones they've been given really start to bite.

Why do you believe that the NHS has reported that there has been a ten-fold increase in children being diagnosed with gender dysmorphia? The numbers went from just under 100 per year to just under 1,000 per year. I imagine that your explanation for this increase can be attributed to the increase in awareness, to which I will ask; have you seen any evidence that this is indeed the case?

I'm curious if more or less harm (mental and/or physical) has come about due to these newer policies of gender defined strictly through the lens of sociologist? If I am not mistaken, psychologist would classify gender identity as a disorder because it strays from the norm or standard distribution found in a usual population. Do you agree that area of science (sociology) is mostly responsible for our current state of affairs?

Do you agree that no system is perfect, and whichever policy creates the most happiness for the most people should be the official, I.E. governments policy? Perhaps this is an example where individual freedom and choice should be celebrated with the understanding that there is no optimized way to live for everybody, and that changes to alter the laws and culture of a nation should be invoked more slowly.

 

[Rolfe]

It's a huge subject and I'm not sure I want to get into a long discussion of it on the forum.

Since nobody can change what actual sex they are, everyone has to find the best way of living with the personality they have. However, actual body modification to mimic the characteristics of the opposite sex is a huge undertaking with a lot of downsides that aren't usually talked about. I don't think this is something that children should be encouraged to pursue when studies done before such encouragement was mandatory show that 80% to 90% of "non gender conforming" children grow out of it and become contented adults of the sex they were born as - although often same-sex-attracted.

Adults, of course, are free to do what they like to their own bodies, from the clothes and make-up they wear to the hormones they take or the cosmetic surgery they have. However, when the desires of a small number of (often vocal and aggressive) men who want to occupy female-designated spaces comes up against the right of actual women to have the female-designated spaces their grandmothers fought for, I'm on the side of the actual women.

I don't see any particular reason to celebrate autogynaephilia, any more than we would celebrate a rubber fetish or a shoe fetish. If men who exhibit that particular paraphilia want to get on with it without harming anyone else or infringing on anyone else's rights, that's fine, but why would I celebrate it? The problem is that there is a cohort of these men currently making extremely strident demands that they should be allowed to infringe women's rights, and they have succeeded in getting the politicians on their side.

I struggle to understand why you would imagine I think that the recent extremely alarming increase in minors presenting to "gender clinics" is due to an increase in awareness. In the case of pre-puberty children it's due to the massive promotion in schools and youth organisations that "what gender you are" is a choice everyone has to make, and the subsequent fuss over those who make an unconventional choice as "brave" and special. Parties and cake, for God's sake! And then the embarkation on a life of permanent medicalisation, sterility and disfiguring surgery. Because of something that's almost always a passing phase.

The enormous rise in adolescent girls presenting as transgender without any history of earlier tomboy behaviour is, as I said, a social contagion. It has replaced dieting yourself to a shadow as the self-harm craze du jour for self-hating teenage girls. (Although cutting and extreme dieting also seem to feature in this presentation, partly because a very thin girl looks more boyish.) At least they tried to get anorectic girls to eat, but the ROGD ones are being feted as "brave", offered testosterone at their first clinical encounter, and scheduled for mastectomy.

Wait for the bubble to burst and the law-suits to start.

 

[Delphic Oracle]

Biggest reason we can't discuss gender: too many people who can't divorce it from some other attribute(s) that are not gender.

In no small part because even "transgender" is a misnomer as applied in many cases.

This is where the tapatalk signature that annoys people used to be

 

[kellyb]

Wow, that is a lot of food for thought, Rolfe. I'm not sure if I agree, but I can't say I disagree. My own thinking on this topic has always been profoundly affected by my friendship with someone who was born intersex/hermaphrodite (supposedly in a physically visible way). Before transitioning to fully female, she was always very gender-fluid, going back to kindergarten in the early 80's, long before it was some sort of celebrated trend. Supposedly, the cumulative incidence of all the types of intersex variations is about one in 100, so that's a lot of people out there who definitely aren't just suffering from some psychological problem when it comes to gender identity.

I have no idea how to square stuff like that with the other very real phenomenon of disturbed and dangerous men who weaponize claiming transgender status.

 

[Thermal]

Biggest reason we can't discuss gender: too many people who can't divorce it from some other attribute(s) that are not gender.

In no small part because even "transgender" is a misnomer as applied in many cases.

This is where the tapatalk signature that annoys people used to be

Might that be because some people don't think the gender identification thing matters that much, with the relatively small exceptions of trans and intrrsex people?

 

[Elagabalus]

...I share in your frustration. In the US, when the national discussion of allowing an individual to use the restroom of their choice was presented, the public was assured that no harm would come from allowing people to use the restroom of their choice based on their chosen identify. If you voiced your opposition to this policy you were prejudiced, confused about your sexuality, or subjected to another type of shaming, psychoanalysis or personal attack...

And yet, even Harbor Freight has facilities allowing both sexes to use the same restroom-one at a time, of course, with a placard outside stating that the restrooms are for both sexes. Problem solved.

 

[Delphic Oracle]

If we're just going to have the bathroom/shelter discussion again: where was all the outcry over violence against women aside from transgender fakers and what solutions were generated that weren't about preventing transgender fakers specifically?

This is where the tapatalk signature that annoys people used to be

 

[Rolfe]

And yet, even Harbor Freight has facilities allowing both sexes to use the same restroom-one at a time, of course, with a placard outside stating that the restrooms are for both sexes. Problem solved.

No, the problem is not solved, except for very small establishments that only have one toilet with no "communal" grooming space.

https://leyaterra.wordpress.com/2018/04/05/times-up-on-the-lie-that-sex-segregation-isnt-necessary/

I encountered a "gender neutral" toilet for the first time last weekend. I knew many of the men who were at the event and am good friends with quite a few of them, but I was quite surprised by the strength of my discomfort at the idea of walking in there. I beat a swift retreat to find the actual ladies, which fortunately existed so in fact there was no problem.

But another reason for my discomfort was that there were three very obvious trans-identifying males at the event. Two I know nothing about, but the third is someone I've known vaguely for a long time. I've recently discovered that he has not had sex reassignment surgery, and is actually one of the trans-identifying heterosexual men (that is, attracted to women, which diagnoses him as an autogynaephile) who insists that he's a lesbian, and is part of a group of such men pressurising and shaming lesbian women who say they don't want to have sex with male-bodied people as "transphobes". I think this is borderline rape behaviour. If I encountered him in a Ladies' room, knowing what I now know about him, I'd run a mile.

Our grandmothers fought long and hard for public toilet provision for females, so that they could leave the house for more than a few hours at a time. Women in third world countries are still fighting that battle. Women from certain cultural backgrounds as particularly unwilling to share a public toilet space with men.

Just read the article, it will save me typing.

 

[mgidm86]

Well let's just use the word sex rather than gender - problem mostly solved. How many sexes are there?

In fact, I just looked at my California driver's license - it says my sex is male, not my gender.

 

[Rolfe]

Wow, that is a lot of food for thought, Rolfe. I'm not sure if I agree, but I can't say I disagree. My own thinking on this topic has always been profoundly affected by my friendship with someone who was born intersex/hermaphrodite (supposedly in a physically visible way). Before transitioning to fully female, she was always very gender-fluid, going back to kindergarten in the early 80's, long before it was some sort of celebrated trend. Supposedly, the cumulative incidence of all the types of intersex variations is about one in 100, so that's a lot of people out there who definitely aren't just suffering from some psychological problem when it comes to gender identity.

I have no idea how to square stuff like that with the other very real phenomenon of disturbed and dangerous men who weaponize claiming transgender status.

I understand that actual intersex people are extremely reluctant (in fact absolutely furious) about being dragged into this debate. They have their own problems, which they didn't choose, which of course have to be handled with the greatest sensitivity and discretion. However, there are very few such people as a percentage of the population as a whole. I really don't think that one in 100 figure is valid at all.

There are a number of disturbed and dangerous men who aren't faking their transgender status, in that their autogynaephilia is a driving force for their misogynistic behaviour. Not all autogynaephiles are dangerous, of course, but the existence of the dangerous subset means that "fakery" isn't the only concern. However, when we're in a position where a woman challenging any man in a female-designated space is going to be met with "I identify as a woman, how dare you misgender me you transphobe," then the very possibility of challenging a man in that situation becomes null and void. The man's word is to be taken as absolute, he has adopted the identity of the oppressed, vulnerable victim, and the authorities and officialdom are on his side.

An awful lot of women who were generally supportive of "our trans sisters" until recently have had a very sudden awakening when they look into what is going on in more detail. The phenomenon has a name - "peak trans". Sadly, this is going very badly for the genuinely body-dysmorphic trans people who respect women's boundaries and only want to get on with their lives, as women are becoming wary of all trans-identifying men.

As the linked article says, ".... predatory men – let’s remember – don’t come with a big *********** ‘I’m a predator’ sign." Trans-identifying men have the same pattern of offending behaviour as other men, which is to say that while most of them are not a threat, some are. And we can't tell which ones.

 

[Rolfe]

Well let's just use the word sex rather than gender - problem mostly solved. How many sexes are there?

In fact, I just looked at my California driver's license - it says my sex is male, not my gender.

This. Exactly. We are the sex we are, and we can't change that. How we present is our own business and nobody should be disadvantaged or lose fundamental rights if their presentation doesn't accord with their actual sex. However, "fundamental rights" do not include the right of people with male bodies to access female-designated spaces, compete against females in sex-segregated sports, or claim awards or bursaries set up to support women's participation in professional or public life.

However, due to pressure from the trans lobby is is now possible to falsify your birth certificate legally to show that a baby girl was born that day, when in fact it was a baby boy. How screwed up is that?

 

[Oystein]

As I understand it there are 39 genders...

Where does that understanding come from??

 

[Venom]

There is no "official" number of genders, that said I don't know where you got 39. I think that's really pushing it.

What I do hate is the attempt by some to label childrens' gender at birth other than what their sex organs imply. I mean can you let them reach/pass puberty first, Sheesh. Chances are your son won't hold a grudge against the hospital that labeled him as a boy on his little glass bassinet.