Acceptance of Gender Diversity

[Dr. Keith]

Much slippage to get to the point I wish to comment on.

I am in agreement in principle with the hilited statement. I have never had an opportunity to put in into practice. I have never had a person tell me the gender they identify with. I know that there are posters here who have much different life experiences than me. I would like to know if there are people who encounter this type of open self-identification enough for this to be a principle that needs to be stated.

It has just come up in our family as a good friend has decided that they would rather go by "they/them" than the pronouns we previously used. I have a hard time with it because i don't talk about them very often, so I don't practice it. But, my kids give me gentle reminders and I am getting the hang of it.

Bottom line is that it is a sign of respect for their wishes. They are going through some tough times and we have always been supportive of them so it seems an odd time to say "No thanks, I will call you whatever I want and you'll just have to get over it. This is the real world, deal!"

Also, I read this as being pronouns that one would use when discussing the gender-identifying person with a third party, and not when one is in direct conversation with that person. The only pronoun that would arise in direct conversation is the gender-neutral word you.

This is correct, which makes it a bit harder actually. When the person is in front of you it is easier to remember what that person wants. When you are recalling a person it is easier to fall back into old habits. Especially if they have changed their look to be less binary conforming.

 

[Thor 2]

What motivated me to start this thread was my feeling of incredulity, that so many just refused to accept that gender diversity existed. Those to the far right politically and the religious (familiar bedfellows often), being the least able to accept the existence of this phenomena.

Some here sought to cloud the issue with debate regarding definitions of gender versus sexuality and although some vagueness exists (possibly mainly among academics), I think the average person in the street accepts the terms gender and sex as interchangeable. The small number of those questioned who responded "I don't know.", as pointed out by arth, seems to indicate a lack of confusion.

 

[Tsukasa Buddha]

My perspective might be too Eurocentric or something, but most of these appear to be 'men who take on feminine roles' and vice versa. So these 'other' genders still seem to exist on the masculine-feminine spectrum, rather than adding an extra dimension to 'genderedness'.

To be more frank, they seem like gay men. Many traditional societies push gay men into transsexualism, and this seems like a sexed up variation of that. It is rather ironic that we have come so far in gay acceptance and are now going back to "you act in gender non-conforming ways so you must be a different gender".

 

[Thor 2]

It has just come up in our family as a good friend has decided that they would rather go by "they/them" than the pronouns we previously used. I have a hard time with it because i don't talk about them very often, so I don't practice it. But, my kids give me gentle reminders and I am getting the hang of it.

Bottom line is that it is a sign of respect for their wishes. They are going through some tough times and we have always been supportive of them so it seems an odd time to say "No thanks, I will call you whatever I want and you'll just have to get over it. This is the real world, deal!"



This is correct, which makes it a bit harder actually. When the person is in front of you it is easier to remember what that person wants. When you are recalling a person it is easier to fall back into old habits. Especially if they have changed their look to be less binary conforming.

Well this is what it's all about. Trying to accommodate and put at ease those who are already going through tough times. A sentiment alien to the far right wingers like One Nation, who can't handle any kind of sexual diversity and don't give a damn about who they hurt.

 

[Joe Random]

<...>
Some here sought to cloud the issue with debate regarding definitions of gender versus sexuality and although some vagueness exists (possibly mainly among academics), I think the average person in the street accepts the terms gender and sex as interchangeable. The small number of those questioned who responded "I don't know.", as pointed out by arth, seems to indicate a lack of confusion.

Not said sarcastically : have you looked in many of the gender related threads on this board over the past year or so? "Transwomen are not women", etc.? A major source of the difficulty in those discussions are that there's a vocal cultural push to say that 'sex' and 'gender' are indeed two different (though related) things. There's a bit of resistance to that from some segments. Then you get down to the "okay, sex and gender are different - define what constitutes the 'man' and 'woman' genders". That will give you 10 different answers when you ask 9 different people, so there's a huge dust up at that point, too.

I can't speak to what the average person on the street thinks, but there's a non-trival push from segments in society to decouple "man" from "male" and "woman" from "female", followed by loads of arguments over specific definitions of those decoupled words.

 

[PhantomWolf]

There's plenty of evidence that homosexuality has existed for millennia, transgenderism not so much.

because it really isn't pat of the OP and I'm not interested on getting into another Trans bashing thread, I'm just going to put this here and leave it.

Sumerian and Akkadian texts from 4500 years ago document transgender priests, and Assyrian texts document trans prostitutes; evidence suggests these gender roles go back to prehistoric times and may have a common origin with third gender roles that were accepted in America before European colonization, some of which (like Navajo nádleehi and Zuni lhamana) survived colonizers' hostility. Graves of trans- or third-gender people in Europe and America have been identified from 4500 years ago, and likely depictions occur in art around the Mediterranean from 9000 to 3700 years ago. In Ancient Greece, Phrygia, and Rome, there were trans-female galli priests, and records of women dressing as men to vote, fight, or study; Roman emperor Elagabalus (d. 222) preferred to be called a lady not a lord, sought sex reassignment surgery, and has been seen as an early trans figure. Hijras on the Indian subcontinent and kathoeys in Thailand have formed trans-feminine third genders since ancient times, documented for thousands of years; today, at least half a million hijras live in India and as many as another half million live in Bangladesh, legally recognized as a third gender, and many trans people are accepted in Thailand.

 

[Belz...]

As the master of the hypothetical, I can do anything within the bounds of reason and imagination.

What are you? The curator of the Twilight Zone?

If a society chose to exempt some group from the norms of both masculinity and femininity, what would you call it other than a third gender?

A social class.

See post 62 for what I nearly always mean by gender.

Ok. I disagree, of course, but let's work with that.

The very fact that you define gender as pertaining to masculinity and femininity shows that it is, actually, binary.

In the past, gender was used interchangeably with sex. This new usage might be justifiable, but not on a basis of a "better understanding" of humans. It's just changing outlooks.

 

[d4m10n]

The very fact that you define gender as pertaining to masculinity and femininity shows that it is, actually, binary.

Only if one were to add in the premise that there are no intermediate values to be found between the two.

In the past, gender was used interchangeably with sex.

I think it's quite safe to assume that the people who authored the survey question about preferred pronouns had a more modern conception in mind.

 

[Robin]

I think the average person in the street accepts the terms gender and sex as interchangeable.

Sure. Whenever the average person on the street has told me to "be a man" they have always meant "have a penis and testicles". I am not sure how they thought that, if I didn't have those, I would be able to grow them.

 

[Robin]

I think it's quite safe to assume that the people who authored the survey question about preferred pronouns had a more modern conception in mind.

Define "modern". When was the time that "masculine" and "feminine" referred to nothing else than biological sex? I don't believe that time existed.

 

[Tsukasa Buddha]

Something does not have to be common for the evidence of its existence to be overwhelming or mountainous.

I know some argue that many transgender folk are just screwed up in the head, and this lowers the credibility of their claim, that they are a gender other than that suggested by genitalia. Hence they reject the notion of gender diversity.

When confronted with the evidence that ambiguous genitalia and chromosome irregularities are observed (albeit a rarity) a plank is knocked from their platform. The honest ones should concede defeat but many just dodge around the issue.

Counterexample: the existence of mixed race people and acknowledgement of the social construction of race does not imply the acceptance of Rachel Dolezal.

(I'm only using this example for this particular logical argument. I'm not claiming all trans people are like Dolezal.)

 

[Robin]

When Rudyard Kipling said "And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!" all he meant was "You will be over a certain age and have a penis and testicles".

 

[d4m10n]

Define "modern".

After 1955, the year in which the idea of gender roles was put forth.

 

[Robin]

After 1955.

Rudyard Kipling's "If" was written in 1895, so we will have to back up a little.

 

[Robin]

That is the way of the world. All my life I have been told I am not a man.

However if I turn around and say "Fine, I am not a man" then those same people will angrily denounce me for suggesting that there is more to gender than biological sex.

And they will strenuously deny that I was ever told I was not a man.

 

[p0lka]

Could I just interject a plea that the other thread *stay* in the other thread? I've completely given up on it, and I really don't want to see this thread go down the same road.

I suspect that driving down a road to get to the truth of the matter, will always be the same road. Even if you start at different origins.

 

[xjx388]

Sex is biology; gender is roles culturally associated with sex. Men are hunters, protectors. Women are gatherers, caretakers. That’s the way I’ve come to understand it. Therefore, it’s difficult for me to “accept gender diversity.” I can see Person A seems to be a dude; Person B seems to be a chick and Person C . . . Well I can’t really tell what Person C is.

I have no problem with people expressing themselves however they see fit. I will respect how they want me to refer to them as best I can -I might slip here and there because it’s not something I’ve ever experienced. But I do not accept that there is Masculine, Feminine and Multiple Others. How do we define those Multiple Others outside of the Masculine/Feminine binary? What, for example, does genderqueer mean? I can’t see how it means anything other than “equal expressions of culturally typical male and female roles.”

 

[Robin]

Miranda Devine, who at other times has denied that there is any difference between gender and biological sex writes:

"This is the noble side of masculinity that we once would perpetuate in folklore and stories passed down from father to son about what it means to be a real man."

Presumably they all said "Son, in order to be a real man, be over sixteen and have a penis and testicles".

Later she says:

"The male attributes it fingered as most worrisome were: stoicism, competitiveness, dominance, aggression, anti-femininity, achievement, “eschewal of the appearance of weakness,” adventure, risk and violence.

Gimme a break! Without any of that, all you’re left with is a soy boy with whom no self-respecting woman would want to mate."

So even Miranda Devine identifies another gender: "soy boy".

If I am not stoic, nor competitive, not dominant, not aggressive, not anti-femininity, a low-achiever, non-adventurous and non violent and don't eschew the appearance of weakness then I am not a man, I am a "soy-boy".

 

[p0lka]

That is the way of the world. All my life I have been told I am not a man.

However if I turn around and say "Fine, I am not a man" then those same people will angrily denounce me for suggesting that there is more to gender than biological sex.

And they will strenuously deny that I was ever told I was not a man.

What do they mean by saying you are not a man?

Are they saying you aren't stepping up and doing manly things (i hate that, fck conforming to gender, do what you want), or is it you physically don't look like a man?

EDIT:
just carried on reading the posts and yes, you answered it.

 

[Robin]

Can we all stop this silly pretense that the distinction between gender and biological sex is something new and that it is something being pushed only by liberals?