Understanding transgenderism.

[Silver]

Needling.

[The Grand Nudger]

Well, lol, I don't expect an answer, and..frankly, I don't know what you get off on (nor would it matter). The pairing of sex with their supposed opposite gender characteristics is pretty instructive. Just thinking about how boyness is not maleness, but a set of descriptors that can apply to a female. Does. Many of them, is what matters. Same with females and girls. We identify inside of these boundaries, or so we say, but if we really considered just our own apprehensions we might notice something is amiss. A person can hit our fetishized gender requirements...but that one sexual surprise will likely tank it all. We often find ourselves waking up in bed with a person who hits our sexual requirement, but fails with respect to our gender fetish.

[Silver]

Answers don't suffice to quell the thrill you feel from being obtusely argumentive, dear.

[arewethereyet]

Answers don't suffice to quell the thrill you feel from being obtusely argumentive, dear.

You aren't seriously calling someone else argumentative, are you?

[Silver]

Others most like myself are easier to understand.

[The Grand Nudger]

When I think something is super interesting, I tend not to shut up about it, it's true.

I think it's interesting that gender identity has become such a useful item of the culture war that we find ourselves entertaining untenable notions like biological essentialism in gender. We know that's not true, we know that it can't even be true, and yet, here we are - for so many different reasons, saying that it is.

To give you very different examples of something - that the explanation of gender lies in it's fitness as an idea, not it's truth - pure utility -

A transgender person might argue for the biological essentialism of their state of affairs because they feel it grants a toe hold for that state of affairs equality, for it's naturalness™. Or maybe because they feel as though the gender they identify as is just as genuine, just as earnestly felt.

A nutjob might argue for biological essentialism because they been guzzling haterade their whole life and biologically, essentially, that trans person is just a sick yucky dude.

[Silver]

And sometimes we become so interested that we tightly entwine ourselves into philosophical webs where we lose perspective of reason.

[The Grand Nudger]

Which would be what? I think that gender literally is one of those webs. There is no essential boyness or girlness. Boyness and girlness are not heritable. Boyness and girlness provide no instructions.

-and yet we all assume we have some.

[Silver]

We like to compliment ourselves with a complexity that does not exist. Most things are linearly simple. Webs are simple, until you twist yourself unreasonably into one with no hope of escape without getting further entangled. Gender is simply what it is, until people want to pretend they are more complex than what they are at their core.

[The Grand Nudger]

I don't think we differ much here in principle. I think that gender is that pretense of complexity.