[Serious] Please convince me gender is binary

[bennyboy]

Yes, that insidious "stereotyping" of the sexuality of an animal by which sexual organ it has.

If some societies determine reproductive identity by reproductive capacity, then that's sensible enough. They are, after all, the reproductive organ of the species. Certainly, if I was single and dating a female with an expectation of marriage, I would assume she was capable and willing to reproduce with me unless she specified otherwise. If she weren't, I wouldn't hate her, but if I wanted to have children, I would have to look for a different partner.

Now, treating someone badly because they cannot or will not reproduce is another issue. Making people feel "less than" is a violation of the social contract, and is a dick move. That being said, if the only way to make someone feel complete is to play pretend, then I don't think anyone has the right to ask the people around them to do that.

Anomalocaris, I get the sense that you may be trans or otherwise non-binary-gendered. It's personal, but if it is so, I'd like to talk about how you would want me to treat you, and I'd like to tell you how I would treat you, and we can see how much consensus or disagreement we might have.

[Anomalocaris]

Yes, that insidious "stereotyping" of the sexuality of an animal by which sexual organ it has.

If some societies determine reproductive identity by reproductive capacity, then that's sensible enough.  They are, after all, the reproductive organ of the species.  Certainly, if I was single and dating a female with an expectation of marriage, I would assume she was capable and willing to reproduce with me unless she specified otherwise.  If she weren't, I wouldn't hate her, but if I wanted to have children, I would have to look for a different partner.

Now, treating someone badly because they cannot or will not reproduce is another issue.  Making people feel "less than" is a violation of the social contract, and is a dick move.  That being said, if the only way to make someone feel complete is to play pretend, then I don't think anyone has the right to ask the people around them to do that.

Anomalocaris, I get the sense that you may be trans or otherwise non-binary-gendered.  It's personal, but if it is so, I'd like to talk about how you would want me to treat you, and I'd like to tell you how I would treat you, and we can see how much consensus or disagreement we might have.

You get the wrong sense.   I am unitary gendered.  However i think a person’s gender in practice need not be unitary and can consist of facets associated with different stereotypical genders.   Take you for example, I sense you may be binary gendered, so you seek to deny or disguise that socially regrettably awkward fact by asserting vehemently and ostentatious that each gender must be unitary.

[bennyboy]

You get the wrong sense.   I am unitary gendered.    But I get the sense you may be binary gendered, and you seek to deny or disguise that fact by asserting vehemently and ostentatious that each gender must be unitary.

Hmmm. I had an affinity for silk shirts in college, and even wore nail polish. My goth friends wore black, but I wore a metallic blue color to match my purple Tommy Hilfiger silk necktie ($120 tyvm!)-- very flash. Some friends straight up called me gay, some teachers looked at me funny. Also, my favorite color is purple. BUT it was my favorite tie because a stripper rubbed her cake-covered breasts all over me and asked me out. So. . . I dunno. I have leanings, I guess.

That being said, I think there are boys, girls, and people whose development kind of went off the normal path. But the latter don't need a multitude of words-- just "atypical" and the same respect that everyone else gets.

[The Grand Nudger]

I'm pretty sure that no one expressing a non heteronormative position is talking about their genitalia.

[bennyboy]

I'm pretty sure that no one expressing a non heteronormative position is talking about their genitalia.

No, but they are talking about the kinds of roles and attitudes that are typically found lined up pretty neatly with genitalia.  If gender is whatever one is, then how could you have a trans woman?  What, exactly, would such a biological man be transitioning to?  I'll tell you what-- he's transitioning to the behaviors and fashion sense that is normally associated with people born with vaginas and XX chromosomes.

There are actual women, and there are biological males who act in ways that women generally act.  To pretend there are no norms, no general trends that are defined by physical phenotype, is to ignore the reality of the human species.

Don't believe me?  Define "woman" at all.  In any regard, under any position heteronormative or otherwise.  What's a woman?  Anyone who cares to identify using that word?  Can Bubba with a beard and a donkey dong put on a little mascara and make us call him missis?

[The Grand Nudger]

I'm pretty sure that no one expressing a non heteronormative position is talking about their genitalia.

No, but they are talking about the kinds of roles and attitudes that are typically found lined up pretty neatly with genitalia. 

If, by line up neatly, we mean lines up neatly with whatever gender normative social construct exists in a specific society..then yeah, sure, because there isn't a specific attribute or trait that lines up neatly with genitalia as a broad rule.

If gender is whatever one is, then how could you have a trans woman?  What, exactly, would such a biological man be transitioning to?  I'll tell you what-- he's transitioning to the behaviors and fashion sense that is normally associated with people born with vaginas and XX chromosomes.

You're still talking gentalia, but gender is only coincidentally related to genitalia.  A trans person is perfectly capable of holding heteronormative gender constructs.  Most are expected to, regardless of the contents of that normative construct.  

There are actual women, and there are biological males who act in ways that women generally act.  To pretend there are no norms, no general trends that are defined by physical phenotype, is to ignore the reality of the human species.

No one pretends that there are no cultural norms, no one.  The only reality of the human species being discussed by gender conformity or non conformity is the reality of gender constructs.  There is no specific, species wide reality of gender whatsoever, regardless of the fact that we do or don't have a specific set of genitalia.   

Don't believe me?  Define "woman" at all.  In any regard, under any position heteronormative or otherwise.  What's a woman?  Anyone who cares to identify using that word?  Can Bubba with a beard and a donkey dong put on a little mascara and make us call him missis?

A woman is whatever the culture in question deems it to be. The answer to that question "what is a woman and what makes a woman a woman" is an explicitly cultural question with an explicitly cultural answer. It is not the same question as "what genitalia does a person possess".

As I said before....when a person is telling you/us that they're non binary or non normative...they aren't making some comment on the presence or absence of penis..nor would you/me reaching under their skirt add or subtract anything to or from what they're discussing. These people know full well what sort of plumbing they're packing...and they understand that culture has placed expectations of behavior and normative stereotypes on that plumbing.

This..is exactly what they're discussing..... The failure of our binary heteronormative constructs to justify themselves or the consequences of our holding them.

[Aegon]

I'm on mobile in an airport, but gender is seen as binary because for a long time now the world has decided gender is intrinsically linked to biological sex. It hasn't always been. Different cultures throughout history have had varying interpretations of gender, most commonly incorporating a third gender. I've seen evidence (historical and contemporary) of this in India and Mexico, but there are more examples even in ancient western civ.

It hasn't always been the strict man/woman binary, and I think the recent rejection of what we commonly accept without question is pretty cool. It's forcing us as a society to question our traditions, which is vital.

Race is the exact same way. Italian immigrants weren't considered white in the United States in 1920. Now they are. Our concept of race changed, and what meant "white" changed. Between the trans acceptance movement and the objection to "toxic masculinity," I think we are seeing the same shift right now, in real time. We're witnessing history

[Shell B]

That being said, I think there are boys, girls, and people whose development kind of went off the normal path.  But the latter don't need a multitude of words-- just "atypical" and the same respect that everyone else gets.

I get where you are coming from. I find the pronoun game tedious. I don't want to guess or be expected to get it right. However, I find that most non-binary people are happy to tell you their name, which works to avoid embarrassing mistakes.

[The Grand Nudger]

I have it easy on that.  I'm Mister, regardless, as a guy.  Heteronormative girls have to deal with Miss and Mistress.   This is anecdotal, but I've found that even using those as heteronormative pronouns is falling out. We used to be much more averse to the familiarity of first names than we are, even in formal settings like an employee/employer relationship.

[tackattack]

OK this is a serious thread to cut the side chat down, but I appreciate the taco break.

There were a lot of responses but I didn't want poly to think I wasn't addressing his points

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First of all, there is a range of biological possibilities: typically, XY people have penises and XX people have vaginas. But, there are conditions where a person might be, say, XXY. So there is a genetic question for such people.

Second, the development of sex organs is not an automatic thing based on the chromosomes. It is possible to have a condition known as androgen insensitivity that suppresses the development of male sex organs. This leaves the *default* female sex organs. Often such individuals, who have female external sex organs, do not learn of this condition until puberty (or even later). Again, these are people who are XY and *look* female.

Next, there are the developmental cases of hermaphrodites, where both male and female sex organs are present. often, these cases have surgical 'correction' at birth and are assigned a sex by a doctor.

Next, we have the cases where some more subtle aspect of development is affected and the brain develops characteristics common to one sex while the body develops characteristics of the other sex. It is often the case, for example, in trans-gendered people that the brains show the characteristics of the preferred sex.

All of these are biological, whether genetic or developmental.

But there are also all the *social* aspects of sexuality (called gender). Who takes care of the children? Who gets paid more? Who does the housework? What do they wear? Do they wear makeup? Shave their legs? Etc, etc, etc. NONE of these is biological. And people can have e range of preferences when it comes to these activities. There is certainly nothing biological that says an XY person with a penis can't enjoy putting on makeup, for example.

So, yes, there is much, much more than a simple binary division when it comes to sex and gender.

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Point one- riddled throughout your response is the same "suppresses male genitalia, leaving female genitalia" statements. You're still talking about the D and the vajayjay. You can have a rare outlier that doesn't have either organ, or has both, or two of one, etc. These are anomalies. We don't teach in school that people "normally" have 11 toes, hence normative.

Second point- you said it yourself "look male" or "look female" . I would feel these people are entitled to a birth certificate nomenclature sex change.
Third point- genetial mutilation is societal, and has been around for centuries. But then you defeated your own point in that you use "one sex" vs. "the other sex"

All very binary

Lastly, you're talking about gender identity as more than binary, so I'll address that with my response to DLJ's very nicely put points.

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I’ll have a go at elucidating you.

What is gender/sex? Is it chromosomal, hormonal, gonadal?

It needs a little bit of a break down of terminology and dividing “gender” into four parts (there might be more):
- Biological sex
- Gender identity
- Gender expression
- Attraction (to).

Biological sex (gonadal) forms at an early stage of pregnancy; gender identity (hormonal) develops at a later stage. And these may or may not align.

However, they both have a direct impact on the ability of a sexually dimorphic organism’s ability to reproduce.

Plotting occurrences on a graph we will discover a bimodal distribution (not binary) with the vast majority being male or female for both sex and identity but with outliers and crossover between the two main data clusters.



In contrast, gender expression (how one chooses to dress etc.) and to which sex/gender one is attracted have less to do with reproduction/continuity and more to do with selection and thus can be viewed as a spectrum (including attraction to neither and/or both).

Hope that helps.

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Yes it does thanks.
OK so with a bimodal distribution. We normatives don't usually spend a lot of time contemplating the definition of male/female because there is no dissonance. We see the "spectrum" at the line crossing the peaks, being 2 individual points, male and female. Where I assume that non-normatives see the "spectrum" at some varying line lower. What is the difference in this? It comes from their personal definitions of what is a man/woman. As other people have pointed to, when going from a personal identity to a societal identity usually requires defining terms.

K, so I can see that individual people, who are non-normative, don't categorize themselves as strictly male or female when addressing gender identity towards society. They believe this to be non-binary? What I was alluding to earlier was that instead of changing their definition of what a man is, they expect society to cloud definitions by categorizing every individual definition of what it is to be a man/woman. Bimodal graphs still only have 2 peaks. Sexual dimorphism is the differences in appearance between males and females of the same species.

First Question- Is the argument that there's not enough diversity of definitions, or that we are not a dimorphic species?

Second question- Why would society have to redefine its long standing definition or male or female (tied to sex) to accommodate every individual's personal definition of what does it mean to be a man/woman?

I don't care about gender expression or sexual preference, as I thought I stated earlier. Just about getting an understanding of how gender is some form of one or the other (being male/female). They're even classified as M2F or F2M, meaning that they were once X now they are Y. I might grant that gender could be changeable , based on numerous personal inputs and can change over time. At any one point in time though, you are either some version of male or some version of female, in both the individual's eyes and the eyes of society.

I'm pretty sure that no one expressing a non heteronormative position is talking about their genitalia.

Why not? I thought they were. I go to a restroom. If I say to Randy, "sup dude" I assume he is male and Randy has a dick. If Randy corrects me saying "but I'm a chick", then I'm assuming she doesn't have a dick. That would make me question internally why Randy chose the men's bathroom to pee in. To which I would respond, "Whatever Randy, just wash your hands after"