Questions about genders ... male/female

[vodkafan]

You can be sure whatever the reason is, it was working long before humans evolved and before Christianity was thought up.

[Aractus]

But so was asexual reproduction, and species that can do both.

[Regina]

Two genders exist because of traditional gender roles attached to both men and women. That said, gender roles do kind of exist among animals, so it's probably something that was there before we fully evolved into modern humans.

Personally, I don't regard being transgender as a whole new gender. If you're a woman who was born a biological man, you're just a woman. I feel like if you're going to be more serious about it you'd forget the "trans" and just refer to yourself as the gender/sex you identify as.

I'll accept "androgynous" as an in-between gender though, I understand some people are not "trans" per se, but feel they are not male or female. I'm not buying into all these unicorn "pangender, omnigender, genderfliud" identities though. They are neither here nor there and are just fancy new words for "androgyny". If you're going to use a term plucked out your arse like that, you've got no right to be offended if someone reacts like "what's that?". It's confusing.

[Dystopia]

It's not two genders, we have male, female and trans* (the asterisk includes all people that don't identify with male or female, and the list is quite long). I don't care what people want to identify with as long as it's a choice - It's ok for others to not know, as long as you are capable of explaining - I think genderqueer is a reason enough to deny the catalogue of male and female, since these people don't identify with either gender.. Or sex.. Which word should we use - Sex or gender?

[Regina]

To me though a transwoman is just a woman. Like it doesn't matter if she was born male, she identifies as a woman. So to talk about being "trans" like it's a whole new gender, to me kinda invalidates her identity with being female. Same would go for transmen.

I do think a third gender, "androgynous" is very valid though.

Of course I'm not any of these things, I'm a male biologically and mentally. So it's just my opinion, I understand if people disagree.

I guess "intersex" as well but that's not really a gender, it's literally being born physically between the male and female sexes.

[bennyboy]

I disagree with the idea of multiple genders, but purely on weak semantic grounds.

I think "gender" comes from the root "gen," meaning "create." So one's gender would be which role one performs in the creation of little people. Those roles, so far as I can tell, are: male, female, asexual and mad-scientist clone doctor.

Now, that doesn't mean that anyone needs to create little people for validation, or that one can't choose how they want to look or be treated, or that people with/without breasts or penises must/should/can do any particular activities in life.

[Dystopia]

To me though a transwoman is just a woman. Like it doesn't matter if she was born male, she identifies as a woman. So to talk about being "trans" like it's a whole new gender, to me kinda invalidates her identity with being female. Same would go for transmen.

I do think a third gender, "androgynous" is very valid though.

Of course I'm not any of these things, I'm a male biologically and mentally. So it's just my opinion, I understand if people disagree.

I guess "intersex" as well but that's not really a gender, it's literally being born physically between the male and female sexes.

Since there's a lot of other gender identities like genderqueer and so on I prefer to distinguish only between male and female (born as such and identify as such) and trans* (the asterisk means all other possible gender identities). Regardless of my opinion I have no right to tell people what they are and I wouldn't want people telling me that if I wanted to be a woman all of a sudden. I used to think negatively of trans* but I met two awesome trans people and I changed my mind

Bennyboy isn't asexual a sex orientation?

[Regina]

Yes "asexual" is a sexuality. Well technically it is a leck of one, it means you don't experience sexual arousal for any sex/gender

I think that's ok with distinguishing between cis and trans, I understand why it is done. Some people do not see "genderqueer" as trans though. Trans tends to mean that you see yourself totally as the opposite gender you were assigned at birth, while pretty much all of the "genderqueer, pangender, omnigender" etc all mean something in between male and female. They all mean the same thing, which is why to me they are pointless terms, when something like "androgynous" can simply refer to all of them. Creating so many new identities that all mean basically the same thing confuses people.

[Godscreated]

I think the real question is how could evolution come up with both sexes before the organism winked out of existence, I used wink because it wouldn't take but the original to die off and the whole process would have been lost. The male and especially the female's reproductive systems are much more complicated than just becoming simply male and female, two totally different reproductive systems that work together must come about simultaneously.

GC

[tantric]

One theory is that males began as a kind of parasite. If you start with hermaphrodites, each fertilizing the other then growing eggs/fetuses/whatever, there could be a mutation so that an individual fertilizers a hermaphrodite, but doesn't in turn bear eggs. Bearing eggs/young is a serious cost, so this would be prosurvival. <---Huge simplification of very complex idea