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Non-binary identities are valid

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MisAndreG said:
Yes, but is dressing androgynously what is meant by a person being non-binary? No. They mean they are neither man or women, defined by a set of criteria that would make virtually everyone non-binary. Moreover they will tell you themselves (lol) that how one presents is to be totally disaggregated from a person’s gender identity, and I guess their identity.

Honestly to me this is just nonsense that no one should pay the slightest attention to, but for some strange reason people want to make this a thing we must all be very, very engaged with. And, it makes smart people act silly — I mean, seriously, you have a guy on this thread who I’m sure would go to great lengths to explain to people the supposed difference between gender and sex using the terms for sex interchangeably with gender, which is incoherent and silly.
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Couple of typos - dressing should be presenting and women should be woman
 
MisAndreG said:
�� you know what I’d love to see? I’d love to see the proponents of this stuff apply the same arguments they use about gender and all that to race or ethnicity. Maybe then they’d see how silly they are when they are applied to those categories.
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TBH, I don't see a problem. In fact, those would be more like examples of why it shouldn't be that hard to figure out that something might be non-binary.

For a start, race never was binary to start with, even in the good old racist days. You had black, white, hispanic, asian, etc, all along. That's a whole lot more than "binary".

Second, it was always defined ad hoc, with pretty much no scientific basis. E.g., we call whites "caucasian" because some dude thought that the women from the caucasus were the prettiest. And blacks were for him the bottom of the list because he found them ugly. Then he met a beautiful black woman and changed his mind.

Yep, it's always been THAT much just a case of thinking with the dick instead of it actually being clearly defined different states.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Are the celts (e.g., irish) white or a different race? Well, roll the clock back like a century or so, and you'd find people arguing that they're a different race. No, really, Lovecraft's horrific realization at one point was that he has a very distant celtic ancestor, as opposed to proper pure WASP, so OMG that makes him one of those inferior races.

Some would actually classify them as "coloured", while others ranked them even lower than blacks. In fact there were racist pseudo-scientists classifying them as, I kid you not, the missing link between apes and blacks. (Because, I guess, some paper-white ginger has got to come in between a black chimp and a black human:p)

Are Jews a different race? Well, Adolf sure thought so, even while acknowledging in a letter that there is absolutely no genetic base for that.

Etc.

And people being somewhere in between were always a problem for those trying to treat it as a small number of distinct races. That's why you end up with 'theories' like that even a drop of black blood in your ancestry makes you black, even though you might look paper-white to someone who doesn't know about it.

So, yeah, there you go, it was always known that some people are mixed ancestry and thus somewhere in between.


Ditto for ethnicity. How do you even define ethnicity anyway? What you actually have (if you actually study anthropology at all) is some culture, with a number of subcultures, or rather a fluid spectrum of subcultures.

If you go somewhere like, say, Transylvania, you'll find that there is exactly zero biological or other hard difference between an ethnic Romanian, an ethnic Hungarian, or ethnic German, or most of the ethnic 'gypsies' that the former 3 groups look down on. Even language isn't much help there, since a lot are bilingual. All that differs is whether you've grown up in a certain group and identify with them.

And then there's the fact that each of those are a fluid spectrum. You don't even need to move a lot over geography for each of those groups to start looking rather different in customs and whatnot.
 
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d4m10n said:
I've heard that it's "assigned" at birth.
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Yes. Traditionally, a doctor looks at a newborn's genitalia and declares the child male or female, and that's what goes on the birth certificate. The child is not consulted, therefore their gender is "assigned" by the doctor. This assignation is solely based on the shape of the child's genitals.

The problem with this approach is that when the child grows up, the gender they identify with sometimes doesn't match what was assigned. Some don't identify with either gender, despite what their genitals look like. Those people consider themselves nonbinary.

The problem as I see it largely stems from the idea that gender identity is a "me thing" and a lot of people are still seeing it as a "you thing". What gender I identify as, if any, is not any of your business. You do not get to tell another person what their gender is, and no other person gets to tell you what yours is. If you want to know, you can ask. Many people will happily offer their gender identity, if only so that you know which pronouns you should use. But if you do ask, you may occasionally receive a "why do you want to know?" response. The only reasonable answer to this question is "so that I know which pronouns to use." They will then tell you their pronouns, and you can move on from there.
 
arthwollipot said:
Yes. Traditionally, a doctor looks at a newborn's genitalia and declares the child male or female, and that's what goes on the birth certificate. The child is not consulted, therefore their gender is "assigned" by the doctor. This assignation is solely based on the shape of the child's genitals.
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No. Birth certificates record a child’s sex, not their gender. Seriously, that’s the word the forms use: sex, not gender. And the shape of a child’s genitals is an extremely accurate indicator of their sex. It is not assigned, it is observed. And most trans issues have nothing to do with incorrectly identified sex.

The problem with this approach is that when the child grows up, the gender they identify with sometimes doesn't match what was assigned.
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No. The problem, which is unavoidable, is that their gender doesn’t match their sex. This is not the fault of doctors who observe sex accurately in almost all cases.

The problem as I see it largely stems from the idea that gender identity is a "me thing" and a lot of people are still seeing it as a "you thing". What gender I identify as, if any, is not any of your business.
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That is naive. A person’s sex is very relevant to others in many situations. Since gender is a good proxy for sex most of the time, it gets used as such. Thus other people will often want to know it. You can wish this were not so, but it is and always will be.

You do not get to tell another person what their gender is, and no other person gets to tell you what yours is.
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Sure, but people will judge you based on how you present, and you cannot stop them from doing so.

If you want to know, you can ask. Many people will happily offer their gender identity, if only so that you know which pronouns you should use. But if you do ask, you may occasionally receive a "why do you want to know?" response. The only reasonable answer to this question is "so that I know which pronouns to use."
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That is what you consider the polite response. That doesn’t mean it the only reasonable response.
 
Ziggurat said:
No. Birth certificates record a child’s sex, not their gender. Seriously, that’s the word the forms use: sex, not gender. And the shape of a child’s genitals is an extremely accurate indicator of their sex. It is not assigned, it is observed. And most trans issues have nothing to do with incorrectly identified sex.
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The sex/gender differentiation isn't as clear-cut as all that. I'm pretty sure we've been through this before.

Ziggurat said:
That is naive. A person’s sex is very relevant to others in many situations.
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Such as?

Ziggurat said:
Sure, but people will judge you based on how you present, and you cannot stop them from doing so.
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You judge people based on their gender presentation? In what ways do you consider someone who presents as a woman different from someone who presents as a man from someone who presents ambiguously? What judgements do you make on that basis?

I submit to you that you should make no judgements of someone based on their gender presentation.

Also note that gender presentation is different from gender identity. I used to work with a man (I asked) who presented as a woman. He identified as a man, and used male pronouns, while dressing as a woman. Yes, in the workplace. The only time he used female pronouns was when he was on stage, as the drag queen Sheneeda Beverage.

Ziggurat said:
That is what you consider the polite response. That doesn’t mean it the only reasonable response.
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If you consider impolite responses reasonable, that's something that you need to deal with.
 
arthwollipot said:
The sex/gender differentiation isn't as clear-cut as all that. I'm pretty sure we've been through this before.
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Huh?

My understanding is that biological sex falls into male, female and in extremely rare cases "intersex", of which even then, it is more or less clear that either male or female is the predominant sex.

Gender has a social dimension, but even then it tends to follow biological sex pretty closely.
 
angrysoba said:
Huh?

My understanding is that biological sex falls into male, female and in extremely rare cases "intersex", of which even then, it is more or less clear that either male or female is the predominant sex.

Gender has a social dimension, but even then it tends to follow biological sex pretty closely.
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This whole debate would have been a lot simpler if social scientists had made up some new words instead of reuse "man" and "woman" for their new concept back in the 60s.
 
angrysoba said:
Ha! Diagnosed?!1?!? :covereyes

That's cancel-bait if ever I heard it. :p
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Well that raises an interesting point, though. A few years ago transgenderism was equated with gender dysphoria, which meant that you needed a diagnostic from a mental health professional to qualify. Nonbinary would be similar, I would think. But now there seems to be no standard at all except self-identification. But self-ID on anything has never been particularily reliable.

arthwollipot said:
No-one gets dagnosed with nonbinariness. It's not a disorder or an illness.
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That seems to be in contention.

No-one's going to diagnose you as male.
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Male is not an identity, and yes they will. They did when I was born.
 
shuttlt said:
This whole debate would have been a lot simpler if social scientists had made up some new words instead of reuse "man" and "woman" for their new concept back in the 60s.
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I'm not sure scientists are the ones driving this debate.

arthwollipot said:
The sex/gender differentiation isn't as clear-cut as all that.
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Careful now. You're running the risk of being called a transphobe by some.
 
Belz... said:
Well that raises an interesting point, though. A few years ago transgenderism was equated with gender dysphoria, which meant that you needed a diagnostic from a mental health professional to qualify. Nonbinary would be similar, I would think. But now there seems to be no standard at all except self-identification. But self-ID on anything has never been particularily reliable.
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Indeed. Pretty much no scientific finding is trustworthy if it relies on self-reporting.

That study on exercise and nutrition relies on self-reporting of calories? Nope, I don't think so.

That medical trial relies on self-reporting of symptoms? Sorry, medical weed, acupuncture, and healing crystals, but no!

In fact, plenty of real science shows that self-reporting is a really terrible metric for almost anything.

"I know what I saw!" No you don't.
"I remember it clearly!" Sorry, but think again.
"I loved my uncle!" You hated him, and always said so.
"In the good old days there was never any animosity between black and white. The black kids used to play on our porch." Yeah, and they were also barred from most businesses, marrying who they wanted, voting, and often got lynched. But sure, total harmony!

Qualia was mentioned earlier:

The concept of qualia is suspect at the best of times, but at least when it is asked of what it is like to be a bat, it can be coherently answered that we simply cannot know.

The problem of qualia being used in this case, is that you cannot understand what it is like to be me, and yet I understand what it is like to be a bat.
 
arthwollipot said:
The sex/gender differentiation isn't as clear-cut as all that.
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It's sufficiently clear that saying doctors assign gender rather than observe sex on birth certificates is a lie.

Such as?
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Such as when one considers whether to pursue romantic interest in someone else.

You judge people based on their gender presentation?
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In some situations, yes. And I have little doubt you do too, even if you lie to yourself about it.

In what ways do you consider someone who presents as a woman different from someone who presents as a man from someone who presents ambiguously? What judgements do you make on that basis?
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I judge whether or not they are a candidate for romantic interest on that basis.

I submit to you that you should make no judgements of someone based on their gender presentation.
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That is stupid. I do, I will, and so will the rest of the world. What you think should be the case is irrelevant, especially since what you want is impossible to achieve.

Also note that gender presentation is different from gender identity.
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Sure. Doesn't change anything I said, though.

If you consider impolite responses reasonable, that's something that you need to deal with.
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You missed the point: what YOU consider polite doesn't dictate what I have to consider polite. But as a matter of fact, while politeness is more often than not the appropriate response, that is not always the case. It's situational. And again, I'm sure you know that, if you're being honest.
 
Ziggurat said:
No. Birth certificates record a child’s sex, not their gender. Seriously, that’s the word the forms use: sex, not gender. And the shape of a child’s genitals is an extremely accurate indicator of their sex. It is not assigned, it is observed.
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Sure, but the reason why a child's sex is recorded is for the purposes of gender; what is recorded may have -- depenindg on jurisdiction -- inplications on how inheritence is divided, on whether someone is allowed to vote or who one is allowed to marry.

No. The problem, which is unavoidable,
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The problem is easily avoidable. As more and more modern countries decide that discrimination based on gender/sex is to be avoided, there is less and less reason to bother recording sex on birth certificates.
 
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