[Serious] Please convince me gender is binary

[The Grand Nudger]

Sure, Benny.  No normative constructs...and it's not "bad" to be the 300lb monster that follows my daughters into the little girls room.

What are facts anyway?  Ladies and gentleman, the futility of the "serious" tag.

[arewethereyet]

Who, or what, defines normal?

Are we really talking about the unfamiliar or misunderstood?

[The Grand Nudger]

The Other is on full display.

[bennyboy]

Who, or what, defines normal?  

Numbers.  Purely numbers.

[Jehanne]

I don't think that you're pulling punches with your misapprehensions on the dangers of trans people or being trans..I'm certain that you're pulling punches on yourself.

If you were as critical of your own comments as you are with the very notion of being transgender, I think you might find yourself reaching an entirely different conclusion about transgender people and the nature of the relationship between normative constructs and psychological distress.

As a social species, we are uncomfortable when we are abnormal in some way, and not only by gender.  We don't like to be at the tail ends of the Bell curve, where things get lonely and cold.

Given the varied attributes that make us all human, we are all beyond 3-sigma on at least one attribute. Just posting on this message board pushes you beyond the "99% category".

[bennyboy]

As a social species, we are uncomfortable when we are abnormal in some way, and not only by gender.  We don't like to be at the tail ends of the Bell curve, where things get lonely and cold.

Given the varied attributes that make us all human, we are all beyond 3-sigma on at least one attribute.  Just posting on this message board pushes you beyond the "99% category".

Yeah, fair enough.  I can think of a lot of areas in which the top 1% would be pretty creepy to me.  The top 1% of Republicans, the top 1% of hunters, or survivalists, or horror novelists, or martial artists,  or vegans, or. . .

The 1% or less of biological males who identify as female IS a little bit strange to me. . . but so are all those people.  Mostly, I'm comfortable with ritualized behavior, because it can be done on social autopilot: "Hey, Biff, how you doin, eh?"  "Hey, Chuck.  Cold enough for ya?"

[Jehanne]

Given the varied attributes that make us all human, we are all beyond 3-sigma on at least one attribute.  Just posting on this message board pushes you beyond the "99% category".

Yeah, fair enough.  I can think of a lot of areas in which the top 1% would be pretty creepy to me.  The top 1% of Republicans, the top 1% of hunters, or survivalists, or horror novelists, or martial artists,  or vegans, or. . .

The 1% or less of biological males who identify as female IS a little bit strange to me. . . but so are all those people.  Mostly, I'm comfortable with ritualized behavior, because it can be done on social autopilot: "Hey, Biff, how you doin, eh?"  "Hey, Chuck.  Cold enough for ya?"

The idea is that brains produce minds, not souls or spirits:

Are the Brains of Transgender People Different from Those of Cisgender People?

[bennyboy]

The idea is that brains produce minds, not souls or spirits:

Are the Brains of Transgender People Different from Those of Cisgender People?

All feelings and their behaviors come down to brain function, and most chronic differences must surely come down to brain structure.

You are arguing that the seat of the self is in the brain, so if the brain has structures typical of females, then the self is functionally female without regard to the form of much courser organs located far from that center. Do I read you correctly?

[Jehanne]

The idea is that brains produce minds, not souls or spirits:

Are the Brains of Transgender People Different from Those of Cisgender People?

All feelings and their behaviors come down to brain function, and most chronic differences must surely come down to brain structure.

You are arguing that the seat of the self is in the brain, so if the brain has structures typical of females, then the self is functionally female without regard to the form of much courser organs located far from that center.  Do I read you correctly?

I am no expert, but it is at least certain that gender is not purely black/white.  Some biological men, such as myself, are effeminate; some women (some women cops, for sure) are masculine.  I have traits that are female; I know this to be so, because, over the last 50 years of my life, I have had other women look and even make fun of me when I was acting "feminine" around my children.  My two youngest children, now age 20 and 21, used to call me "Moddy", when they were toddlers.  And, my "list" goes on and on.  As such, I am comfortable with the label "transgender".

[bennyboy]

Well, let me put it this way-- all traits are either ying or yang, Apollonian or Dionysian; that's because most scalar traits are bipolar: tall vs. short (tall would be "male"), strong vs weak (strong would be "male"). If you plot any scale vs gender, then either there's a scalar transition (one end of the scale is more typical of females, the other of males), or there's a perpendicular relationship-- neither end of the scale is typically male or female.

There are traits which depend on gender, but only on two categories of gender, and that's because traits are scalar. Someone says, "Oh trait X is masculine" or "Oh trait Y is feminine," or "Oh trait Z isn't really gender-dependent." I don't think anybody says, "Oh, traits ABC are gender-bender-ist," other than the trait of identifying as a gender bender.


The discussion, to me, is about whether if many of a person's traits are typically found in people of the other gender, you say "This is a male with predominantly female traits" or "This is a female (because of the vast preponderance of female traits), who happens to have been born in/with a male body."

I prefer the first: the classification-of-fact, in my opinion, should be as unambiguous as possible, and based on concrete reality. I find it much clearer to say "biologically male, but identify as female" than "woman trapped in a male body."