Who determines the number of genders- and how?

[ponderingturtle]

"So is a man with X a man or woman?"
"Is X a defining trait of being a woman?"
"No."
"Then he's still a man."

If you don't feel comfortable telling a woman she's not really a woman unless she has "X" you shouldn't be comfortable agree with a man saying he's a woman because he has it.

But how do I know if the woman with a beard is really a woman biologically when I see her walking into the ladies room? How do I know if I should stop her or not?

I mean I guess I could forcibly strip her naked to inspect her genitals but that seems a bit extreme.

 

[ponderingturtle]

That's pretty much where I'm at.

I think I'm basically a-ok with gender being whatever the heck people want it to be for themselves and writing this whole current mess off as a mass post-Puritanical/Victorian era hangover.

Women have had the (limited, but significant compared to men) freedom for a while to wear whatever clothes and shoes and hairstyles or whatever we want. When dudes wearing skirts becomes just as "non-crazy" as women wearing pants, and the actual sexual fetish aspect of "autogynephilia" becomes destigmatized, I think we'll all be able to think more rationally about this stuff.

you know you could easily do the same thing with sexuality. Because there is plenty of evidence that what someone finds attractive in a member of the gender they like is socially determined. So sexuality must then not be biological. After all if forcibly deformed feet could be the height of errotic feminity in china what couldn't?

So clearly no one is born gay, and as such they need no social protections. QED.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Occasionally, women are born without vaginas (but with ovaries).

And of course they do not count as women. We have to go by the defining traits after all, we can't broaden them just to make it fit their comfort and pretend they are something they are not. That would be wrong for some reason that many people in this thread understand.

 

[caveman1917]

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.

The new gay eugenics. Find the group of children likely to grow up gay (those who display gender non-conformity in childhood) and push them to medical procedures sterilizing them.

 

[cullennz]

But how do you know she is a woman with out inspecting her genitals before entrance? She could be once of those perverts who get off on invading womens spaces the Rolfe was talking about.

I don't get your point sorry

Why do you have to have inspections?

Currently if someone flops their schlong out in the women's it gets noticed and they get told to leave

 

[ponderingturtle]

I don't get your point sorry

Why do you have to have inspections?

Currently if someone flops their schlong out in the women's it gets noticed and they get told to leave

But how do we know if they belong in there in the first place? If it all comes down to genitals and you need to prove which bathroom is the right one for you, the logical solution is inspection of your genitals before allowing entrance.

 

[cullennz]

But how do we know if they belong in there in the first place? If it all comes down to genitals and you need to prove which bathroom is the right one for you, the logical solution is inspection of your genitals before allowing entrance.

Because the vast vast vast majority of people just get that you use the toilets corresponding to your biological sex, so there would be no point.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Because the vast vast vast majority of people just get that you use the toilets corresponding to your biological sex, so there would be no point.

But how do you know, if you see someone in a dress with a beard in the women's room if they are a woman or not? You are trying to block people from using the womens room, what do you do when you see someone with a beard and a dress going in? What techniques to determine their genitals do you do? Should I take it you pull a Crocodile Dundee?

 

[Porpoise of Life]

[qimg]https://i.imgflip.com/28ykfd.jpg[/qimg]

Meh... doesn't appear like such a 'gotcha' to me... just a sign of the ambiguity of the language we use.

What's usually meant by gender being a social construct is that gender roles are a social construct. Men should act like this, women should act like this, that stuff...

And I seem to recall that there is research that shows that gender identity (I feel/know I'm a man/woman) is inborn, hence the possibility for someone to experience gender dysphoria.

Sure, people who maintain that gender in its entirety is a social construct create a kind of catch 22. But I don't recall anyone here claiming that.

 

[d4m10n]

I think I'm basically a-ok with gender being whatever the heck people want it to be for themselves and writing this whole current mess off as a mass post-Puritanical/Victorian era hangover.

I’m fine with that too, but then I’m not in charge of any spaces designated exclusively for women or men, such as the Women’s College World Series or MichFest, not to mention ordinary sex-segregated spaces such as public bathrooms and gymnasium locker rooms. This leaves me free to live my life without policing people for either gender or sex, almost all of the time. Of course, this doesn’t make the problem go away for those who are tasked with creating sex-segregated spaces or events.

Women have had the (limited, but significant compared to men) freedom for a while to wear whatever clothes and shoes and hairstyles or whatever we want. When dudes wearing skirts becomes just as "non-crazy" as women wearing pants . . . I think we'll all be able to think more rationally about this stuff.

Agreed. Most people will continue to wear the clothes usually associated with their sex, but hopefully this will become something of a personal preference and less socially enforced.

you know you could easily do the same thing with sexuality. *Because there is plenty of evidence that what someone finds attractive in a member of the gender they like is socially determined. *So sexuality must then not be biological.

Don’t quite see how that follows. Sexuality is the result of an interplay of genetics and environment, as are any other complex set of behaviours.

So clearly no one is born gay, and as such they need no social protections.

Don’t see how this follows, either. Even in the counterfactual world where homosexuality was not significantly the result of genetic predispositions, people who choose such a lifestyle would still be worthy of civil rights and equal treatment under law.

Meh... doesn't appear like such a 'gotcha' to me... just a sign of the ambiguity of the language we use.

Agreed. We need to differentiate between gender as a set of externally observable socially-approved behaviours (i.e. presentation) and gender as subjective personal identity. From what I can tell, social conservatives are mostly concerned with policing the former, rather than the latter.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Don’t quite see how that follows. Sexuality is the result of an interplay of genetics and environment, as are any other complex set of behaviours.

But the graphic made it a clear either or choice so it has to be that way! Are you now refusing to stand by your own graphic?

 

[d4m10n]

But the graphic made it a clear either or choice so it has to be that way! Are you now refusing to stand by your own graphic?

Of course, yes. That meme is almost always a false dilemma, but not always one worth thinking about.

 

[kellyb]

I’m fine with that too, but then I’m not in charge of any spaces designated exclusively for women or men, such as the Women’s College World Series or MichFest, not to mention ordinary sex-segregated spaces such as public bathrooms and gymnasium locker rooms. This leaves me free to live my life without policing people for either gender or sex, almost all of the time. Of course, this doesn’t make the problem go away for those who are tasked with creating sex-segregated spaces or events.

Sports, prisons, and locker rooms should probable be segregated by biological sex, with intersex individuals figuring out where to go on their own as always, and the rest can be trans-inclusive spaces, or genderfluid friendly, or whatever you want to call it.

 

[Cavemonster]

Sports, prisons, and locker rooms should probable be segregated by biological sex, with intersex individuals figuring out where to go on their own as always, and the rest can be trans-inclusive spaces, or genderfluid friendly, or whatever you want to call it.

Let's take an example like the character Lavern Cox plays in "Orange is the new Black".

She plays someone who possesses XY chromosomes and was born with a penis, so this person's sex would be definitively male.

Yet, they've undergone reassignment surgery and so have genitalia that, regardless of function appears female, they have breasts and a generally female looking body.

It seems to me like this person would be subject to some very negative possibilities in a men's prison, a likelihood of harassment and rape that goes beyond the common level of risk. And it also seems that this person is not particularly likely to pose any special threat to the occupants of a women's prison. Putting them in solitary confinement for their entire incarceration would be cruel and unusual torture. From those three possibilities, a women's prison looks like the best choice. Why would you choose otherwise?

 

[kellyb]

Let's take an example like the character Lavern Cox plays in "Orange is the new Black".

She plays someone who possesses XY chromosomes and was born with a penis, so this person's sex would be definitively male.

Yet, they've undergone reassignment surgery and so have genitalia that, regardless of function appears female, they have breasts and a generally female looking body.

It seems to me like this person would be subject to some very negative possibilities in a men's prison, a likelihood of harassment and rape that goes beyond the common level of risk. And it also seems that this person is not particularly likely to pose any special threat to the occupants of a women's prison. Putting them in solitary confinement for their entire incarceration would be cruel and unusual torture. From those three possibilities, a women's prison looks like the best choice. Why would you choose otherwise?

Right, I should have clarified that post reassignment surgery would be the exception for prisons and locker rooms. Sporting events alone are still different, tho.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Okay we're allowed to go "There's gonna be special cases that will be determined on a case by case basis" without abandoning the traditional categorization that works in 99% of cases.

The idea that exception worshiping is the highest form of inclusion is.... less than useful one.

And the fact is for.. pretty much statistically everybody sexuality... is pretty cut and dry. Saying that isn't abandoning the people for whom it isn't to the wolves, it's just saying "I'm sorry but we don't have to nor be expected to rewrite the rules from scratch to accommodate rare occurrences."

No matter how conceptualize sexuality and gender you'll gonna be able to find cases where our framework doesn't work. Humans are complicated and there's a lot of us.

But we don't have to breakdown and rebuild the system from scratch everytime a new scenario is brought up.

 

[Horhang]

Okay we're allowed to go "There's gonna be special cases that will be determined on a case by case basis" without abandoning the traditional categorization that works in 99% of cases.

The idea that exception worshiping is the highest form of inclusion is.... less than useful one.

And the fact is for.. pretty much statistically everybody sexuality... is pretty cut and dry. Saying that isn't abandoning the people for whom it isn't to the wolves, it's just saying "I'm sorry but we don't have to nor be expected to rewrite the rules from scratch to accommodate rare occurrences."

No matter how conceptualize sexuality and gender you'll gonna be able to find cases where our framework doesn't work. Humans are complicated and there's a lot of us.

But we don't have to breakdown and rebuild the system from scratch everytime a new scenario is brought up.

This is what I mean when I think of it being a bad decision to write policy based on 1% of the population. Policies should deal with what works for 99%, we deal with the exceptions on a case by case basis.

 

[Delphic Oracle]

This is what I mean when I think of it being a bad decision to write policy based on 1% of the population. Policies should deal with what works for 99%, we deal with the exceptions on a case by case basis.

A system where one person's prefences are automatically validated while another has to jump through extra hoops to achieve the equivalent experience runs afoul of that equal protection thing.

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

 

[quadraginta]

A system where one person's prefences are automatically validated while another has to jump through extra hoops to achieve the equivalent experience runs afoul of that equal protection thing.

We only need equal protection for the majority.

 

[mumblethrax]

For the non-zoologists referring to humans, the vagina thing is usually the go-to criteria, not "ova".

I think the go-to is that you dress like, act like, and say you are a woman. I rarely do genital checks.

And ova isn't some deeply technical term of art, accessible only to experts. It's high school biology.

Right, and nobody ultrasounds babies for ova verification before girlhood is entered into.

They don't check for vaginas, either, which is how someone can make it to puberty without realizing she doesn't have one.