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Acceptance of Gender Diversity

d4m10n said:
So what is the third gender which is not defined in terms of either masculinity or femininity?
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Depends on what non binary gender you are talking about. It is a hugely broad and diverse group of people, who only share the trait of rejecting man or woman as a label.
 
ponderingturtle said:
Depends on what non binary gender you are talking about. It is a hugely broad and diverse group of people, who only share the trait of rejecting man or woman as a label.
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I admire those who reject the gender binary, as well as masculine and feminine social norms, whatever label they choose for themselves. I'm still not seeing a third set of norms, though.
 
Knock off the personalisation, please.
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Agatha
 
I mean, it's not like humans have a three-phase, three-gender procreative cycle.

We could imagine a Space Alien with three genders: One that produces the egg, one that produces the sperm, and one that receives egg and sperm together and gestates them. Three genders. And we could imagine an Alien civilization with a tripartite social structure, organized around social constructs arising from the underlying biological facts of having three genders for procreation.

But obviously that doesn't describe human biology or society at all. Intersex conditions are just rare anomalies in the normal expression of the two-gender procreative system that has evolved in humans (and has evolved in human society). They're not actually additional genders in any meaningful sense.
 
ponderingturtle said:
And that has absolutely nothing to do with the context of specifically referring to all trans women as men, as was done previously.
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I will accept that. I will therefore let my post stand on its own unrelated to your post that I quoted. Too late to edit to remove your quote. I apologize.
 
theprestige said:
How many factual genders have we observed?
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I don't feel like we are taking this question seriously enough. Let me put together a hypothetical for consideration.

Famed anthropologist Margaret Napoleon Mead-Chagnon returns from a years-long expedition into the inaccessible depths of hitherto uncharted territories, where she studied the mysterious tribe of Trimerís people. She observes that, among adults, there are three well-defined social roles: men are expected to behave in masculine ways, women are expected to behave in feminine ways, and the third gender is expected to behave in ways which may most easily be described as stoic. For example, men are expected to be somewhat frank when it comes to expressing their opinions, women are expected to be relatively demure and deferential, third gender individuals are expected to hold their own counsel unless persuaded by men and women alike to hold forth. Men are expected to hunt, women are expected to gather, third gender individuals are expected to study ancient lore. Men are expected to cover their loins, women their loins and breasts, third gender individuals are expected to wear flowing robes which conceal most noticable features of biological sex. Men are expected to resolve their differences with shouting and perhaps violence, women are expected to resolve their differences with gossip and social networking, third gender individuals are expected to ratiocinate together until they find some mutually agreeable way to balance their respective utility functions. Men are expected to initiate courtship, women are expected to be coy but receptive, third gender individuals are expected to abstain from romantic entanglements altogether. Many other sets of three-way social norms may be adduced, these are only a few.

In the case of the Trimerís people, I’d say we have reasonably strong evidence that their culture runs on a three gender model of social norms and relations. I would not say this is true of Australia (at least not yet) and as primary evidence I would cite the responses to the first survey question mentioned in the OP.
 
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d4m10n said:
Famed anthropologist Margaret Napoleon Mead-Chagnon returns from a years-long expedition into the inaccessible depths of hitherto uncharted territories, where she studied the mysterious tribe of Trimerís people. She observes that, among adults, there are three well-defined social roles: men are expected to behave in masculine ways, women are expected to behave in feminine ways, and the third gender is expected to behave in ways which may most easily be described as stoic.
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Wait, wait. Back up. What's this third gender?
 
d4m10n said:
I described it but did not give it a name.

Can you state your question differently?
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Yes: how do you determine who's a member of this third gender? You said that those of this third gender, let's call it Z, are expected to act in a certain way. How do you know who's a Z?
 
d4m10n said:
I described it but did not give it a name.

Can you state your question differently?
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In the example given I'd call it "the clergy". It all read like a code of behavior for a specific profession rather than a separate gender identity.
 
Belz... said:
How do you know who's a Z?
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They rarely ever cried as babies and are in the top percentile in abstract reasoning skills.

TragicMonkey said:
In the example given I'd call it "the clergy". It all read like a code of behavior for a specific profession rather than a separate gender identity.
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Gender *is* a code of behaviour assigned to us based on sex. You can spot a third gender whenever some set of people is essentially exempted from the codes of behaviour governing masculinity and femininity.
 
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d4m10n said:
Gender *is* a code of behaviour assigned to us based on sex. You can spot a third gender whenever some set of people is essentially exempted from the codes of behaviour governing masculinity and femininity.
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...so would a femme gay guy have a female gender? And a butch woman would be male gender? That doesn't sound right.
 
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