RE: Please convince me gender is binary
February 7, 2019 at 7:49 pm
(This post was last modified: February 7, 2019 at 7:52 pm by bennyboy.)
(February 7, 2019 at 7:29 pm)Gae Bolga Wrote: The inclusion of a third or fourth or fifth category would be redundant to my point..if would be no more or less of a construct than the other two we're more familiar with.
Cultural does not equal arbitrary.
Yeah, it matters, because we're talking about whether gender is binary. If you are talking about gender, then all traits, of any kinds, are binary-- male or female. If they aren't, then we're not talking about gender at all.
People can exhibit a complex collection of traits and behaviors, some of them male and some female-- either by species norms or cultural constructs. If you attempt to distill a person's humanity down to a single word, then a complex person will have a very difficult (read: impossible) task. But that's not a gender issue-- that's a semantic issue.
But in the end, there's no option "C." There's still just male and female.
(February 7, 2019 at 7:41 pm)Gae Bolga Wrote: Except when they're not..... What else can be or even needs be said? I'm all for discussing the practicality or social shock of changing or adding categories relative to our current construct...but I'm not interested in debating reality with you or anyone else.
Okay, give me an example of any gender-based construct which is not based on a male/female dualism. Show me an option C.