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This is a can of worms, and I'm going to regret doing this, but here goes.

I was recently introduced to the concept of something called a non-binary gender. Seriously, just heard of this today. I've heard the 'cisgender' thing slung around before, mostly ironically, but it's a cringeworthy term that annoys me to no small amount, and I hadn't considered the real opposite to that, or rather, the myriad of opposites that could exist to that.

So the problem here for me is the whole "gender identity" thing. Gender is NOT an identity. It's an attribute to your identity, yes, but it's not an identity in and of itself. I mean, if that's really all you have to go off of for defining yourself, then I suppose you gotta take what you can get, but seriously, how can that be all you have to go off of? If someone asked me for a word to describe myself, the last thing I'd pick is male. I mean, I'm a guy; I recognize this, but who cares? There's at least a hundred other words I'd use to describe myself before I'd fall back to male.* It's no less true and real, but when talking about the most important attributes, it's just not even ranking up there with the things I'd consider genuinely special and meaningful. Anyone who has a penis can be a male. Not anyone can be me.

I... need someone to explain this to me in such a way that it makes sense, and doesn't feel like someone is just inventing awkward conversation points or classifications for people for how much they feel like they buck sex-based stereotypes and expectations.

I'm not trying to offend anyone, I just don't understand people, and really would like to. This stuff is seriously alien to my train of thought.



* This is also assuming there's a situation where I'm being prodded to describe myself to people. Having to broadcast your identity to others is weird. If they want to know, they'll ask, or they'll learn from interaction with you. Life is social interaction, not acting like a facebook status update made of flesh.

To add on to that, not only would male be much lower on my list, but so would my sexual orientation.

Good point. I hadn't even considered that either.

Look at the people who actually care about gender. That should answer your questions.

Agreed my sexual preference and gender would be close to last on my list of ways to describe myself , weirdly age comes first in that situation.

I myself can get all other genders but non-binary? Sometimes I am a different gender or I have no defining gender............, practically, just what does that mean?

 Bullockist wrote:
Agreed my sexual preference and gender would be close to last on my list of ways to describe myself , weirdly age comes first in that situation.

I myself can get all other genders but non-binary? Sometimes I am a different gender or I have no defining gender............, practically, just what does that mean?

It can be a difficult concept to grasp (and I personally dislike it because it makes things excessively complicated), but genders are not binary. There's the obvious difference in genitalia and secondary sexual characteristics, but past that it's just a difference in estrogen and testosterone levels. Give a man enough estrogen and he'll develop female characteristics. Give a woman enough testosterone and she'll develop male characteristics. Actual levels of t and e vary wildly from person to person. Then there are those that were actually born with undeveloped or mixed genitalia and that's a whole other ball game.

Ultimately, it doesn't really matter to the majority of the population. Most people are far predominantly "male" or "female."

The key thing is to remember that we are all human and gender is completely irrelevant to a person's value.

 daedalus wrote:
If someone asked me for a word to describe myself, the last thing I'd pick is male. I mean, I'm a guy; I recognize this, but who cares? There's at least a hundred other words I'd use to describe myself before I'd fall back to male.

Male, cisgender privilege, brah!

 trexmeyer wrote:

 Bullockist wrote:
Agreed my sexual preference and gender would be close to last on my list of ways to describe myself , weirdly age comes first in that situation.

I myself can get all other genders but non-binary? Sometimes I am a different gender or I have no defining gender............, practically, just what does that mean?

It can be a difficult concept to grasp (and I personally dislike it because it makes things excessively complicated), but genders are not binary. There's the obvious difference in genitalia and secondary sexual characteristics, but past that it's just a difference in estrogen and testosterone levels. Give a man enough estrogen and he'll develop female characteristics. Give a woman enough testosterone and she'll develop male characteristics. Actual levels of t and e vary wildly from person to person. Then there are those that were actually born with undeveloped or mixed genitalia and that's a whole other ball game.

Ultimately, it doesn't really matter to the majority of the population. Most people are far predominantly "male" or "female."

The key thing is to remember that we are all human and gender is completely irrelevant to a person's value.

The argument you would likely hear is that nothing in your post deals with gender, but instead deals with a persons sex.

 trexmeyer wrote:

Ultimately, it doesn't really matter to the majority of the population. Most people are far predominantly "male" or "female."

The key thing is to remember that we are all human and gender is completely irrelevant to a person's value.

So, I'm with you 100% right here, but I'm still left wondering why on earth it's so important if it's irrelevant to a person's value.

It seems, at least to some, to be all-important.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 d-usa wrote:
[
The argument you would likely hear is that nothing in your post deals with gender, but instead deals with a persons sex.

I'm not sure that leaves me less confused.

To me, non-binary gender is on about the same level of validity as rainbow unicorns.

You either are a man or a woman. Or in dire need of psychological counceling.

 Sigvatr wrote:
To me, non-binary gender is on about the same level of validity as rainbow unicorns.

You either are a man or a woman. Or in dire need of psychological counceling.

That is an extremely ignorant viewpoint.

 daedalus wrote:
So the problem here for me is the whole "gender identity" thing. Gender is NOT an identity. It's an attribute to your identity, yes, but it's not an identity in and of itself. I mean, if that's really all you have to go off of for defining yourself, then I suppose you gotta take what you can get, but seriously, how can that be all you have to go off of? If someone asked me for a word to describe myself, the last thing I'd pick is male. I mean, I'm a guy; I recognize this, but who cares? There's at least a hundred other words I'd use to describe myself before I'd fall back to male.* It's no less true and real, but when talking about the most important attributes, it's just not even ranking up there with the things I'd consider genuinely special and meaningful. Anyone who has a penis can be a male. Not anyone can be me.

I think that's a pretty easy way to think about things when most of society thinks about your gender much the same way as you do.

I mean, I never thought much about being white, until I went to China and suddenly experienced being very different to everyone else. All of a sudden I became very conscious of my ethnicity. I imagine someone who is biologically one gender but doesn't feel the assumptions that surround that gender suit them would be very conscious of the difference and it would be very likely to become a major part of their identity.

Well, it is a complicated mess.

Part of the problem is that gender doesn't always match up with sex, but many people act like they always do. And that we often assign certain roles to certain genders that them get transfers do people of that sex.

It might be not so much that people focus their identity on their gender, but that it is more about gender roles.

I'm certainly no expect on the subject either.

 Sigvatr wrote:
To me, non-binary gender is on about the same level of validity as rainbow unicorns.

You either are a man or a woman. Or in dire need of psychological counceling.

Well, thank you for confirming that you are a bigot and have no idea what you're talking about. What's next, a discussion of how round-earth theory is so absurd and anyone who doesn't accept a flat earth is in dire need of psychological counseling?

 daedalus wrote:
So, I'm with you 100% right here, but I'm still left wondering why on earth it's so important if it's irrelevant to a person's value.

People like to be understood. They like to be among people who get them and get how they think. Most people are able to take for granted that random people they meet will more or less get them, maybe they won't be best friends, but they won't have a huge gulf either. If there's something, like a non-standard gender identity, that keeps you from relating to regular people, well that's a problem that people want to solve.

 daedalus wrote:
I mean, if that's really all you have to go off of for defining yourself, then I suppose you gotta take what you can get, but seriously, how can that be all you have to go off of?

Obviously that isn't all there is to a person, but that's why it's called gender identity, not person identity. Gender identity simply refers to how you define yourself in a gender context, it doesn't mean that your primary (or only) defining characteristic is your gender.

If someone asked me for a word to describe myself, the last thing I'd pick is male. I mean, I'm a guy; I recognize this, but who cares? There's at least a hundred other words I'd use to describe myself before I'd fall back to male.* It's no less true and real, but when talking about the most important attributes, it's just not even ranking up there with the things I'd consider genuinely special and meaningful. Anyone who has a penis can be a male. Not anyone can be me.

What you need to recognize here is that you're able to say this because you have the privilege of having your chosen identity accepted without question by most people you encounter. It's very easy to say that being male isn't a very important part of you when you never have to justify that identity. If you were constantly having people question whether you're really a man, defaulting to female pronouns when talking about you, etc, you'd probably invest a lot more effort in saying "I AM A MAN" as part of your identity.

 Sigvatr wrote:
To me, non-binary gender is on about the same level of validity as rainbow unicorns.

You either are a man or a woman. Or in dire need of psychological counceling.

Wow, it's like you're reading the lines of a villain in a mid-00s festival movie. The festival movies that sucked because they were so polemic that they were utterly unbelievable, because no-one could believe the other side of the argument would so mindlessly crude.

Everyone please remember that there are rules in the OT Forum.

Don't make useless spam posts.

 Peregrine wrote:


What you need to recognize here is that you're able to say this because you have the privilege of having your chosen identity accepted without question by most people you encounter. It's very easy to say that being male isn't a very important part of you when you never have to justify that identity. If you were constantly having people question whether you're really a man, defaulting to female pronouns when talking about you, etc, you'd probably invest a lot more effort in saying "I AM A MAN" as part of your identity.

Okay, I can understand that to some extent. Were I to resemble a woman, but be a man, it would probably bother me that people couldn't tell the difference. Perhaps we place too much significance on gender.

If that's the case though, why is it that the only place I've seen anyone make a big deal out of this (the internet) is the one place where we can't actually see each other? I would think, here, you could just state, "I'm a guy", if you identified as a guy, and it would be generally accepted as such.

 daedalus wrote:
If that's the case though, why is it that the only place I've seen anyone make a big deal out of this (the internet) is the one place where we can't actually see each other?

Because:

1) The internet is one of the safer places to discuss this kind of thing. You aren't going to risk being beaten to death for discussing your non-standard gender identity on the internet, something that is a very real problem in the offline world.

2) You probably don't have the right friends to see much offline discussion of it. This is something that varies tremendously depending on what communities you're part of. There are plenty of offline communities where gender identity is a big deal, you just don't seem to be part of them.

I would think, here, you could just state, "I'm a guy", if you identified as a guy, and it would be generally accepted as such.

It is generally, but that's not where these discussions tend to happen. It isn't just some random person making an intro post saying "gender: male" in their description, it's discussions where gender identity is a relevant topic. Either you have threads like this where people come in with personal experiences or bigoted s make stupid posts and have to be corrected, or you have online communities where people want to have discussions about the subject and you just happen to be an outside observer.

Gender = Social definitions of masculinity and femininity
Sex = Biological definitions of masculinity and femininity

 Peregrine wrote:

Well, thank you for confirming that you are a bigot and have no idea what you're talking about. What's next, a discussion of how round-earth theory is so absurd and anyone who doesn't accept a flat earth is in dire need of psychological counseling?

So you're claiming ignorance / bigotry when doing the very same? Smells like some mighty hypocrisy to me. And thanks for confirming your lack of manners.

Yes, it's a very ignorant viewpoint. It's mine. If you don't like it, deal with it. If you want to offend me for having it, then you're no better than the one you're flaming.

And in both cases, no one's really entirely clear cut towards either way.

Just like sexual orientation, sex and gender can range from male, female, or many states inbetween. It's just that most people tend to fall somewhere on the further sides of the scale of male or female. Most of the plumbing installation is finalized before birth, but all the plumbing is made from the same basic collection of parts, just modified for masculine or feminine features. Most intersexed people also fall somewhere on that scale, but are obviously more centralized than others.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sigvatr wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Well, thank you for confirming that you are a bigot and have no idea what you're talking about. What's next, a discussion of how round-earth theory is so absurd and anyone who doesn't accept a flat earth is in dire need of psychological counseling?

So you're claiming ignorance / bigotry when doing the very same? Smells like some mighty hypocrisy to me. And thanks for confirming your lack of manners.

Yes, it's a very ignorant viewpoint. It's mine. If you don't like it, deal with it. If you want to offend me for having it, then you're no better than the one you're flaming.

It's not so much a viewpoint as it is being patently incorrect.

There might also be a 'full disclosure' element. If you're accustomed to people responding negatively, then you might just want to get it out of the way. No point spending ages getting to know someone if it's gonna turn out they're a donkey-cave.

 Sigvatr wrote:
Yes, it's a very ignorant viewpoint. It's mine. If you don't like it, deal with it.

I am dealing with it, by telling you that you're ignorant and a bigot. Don't like it? Don't post ignorant and bigoted things in a public forum.

If you want to offend me for having it, then you're no better than the one you're flaming.

So if you call a KKK member a racist you're no better than the KKK member? I think we can all see how this is an absurd argument.

Having transgendered friends has done a lot to change my perceptions. They face significant obstacles in trivial things that most take for granted.

 trexmeyer wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:
To me, non-binary gender is on about the same level of validity as rainbow unicorns.

You either are a man or a woman. Or in dire need of psychological counceling.

That is an extremely ignorant viewpoint.

That may be.
But this is actually the first time I strongly agree with Sigvatr on something! Oh joyous day!
I just don't understand it I guess. You are either born male or female, there is nothing in between... I am of the opinion that people who feel they should be of a different gender just have a problem with accepting themselves, a problem that might be taken away with psychological help, instead of an expensive surgery that just turns you into a manwomanwomanman that will never look as female or male as an actual female or male. If that makes the person in question happier, it is good I guess, but couldn't the same result have been achieved in a more 'natural' way?
Feel free to disagree with me, but please, for the love of God, explain to me how there can be anything between man and woman!
I want to know.

 Ouze wrote:
Having transgendered friends has done a lot to change my perceptions. They face significant obstacles in trivial things that most take for granted.

Agreed. I know multiple people with these issues, and it affects them and their lives in a way that most people do not comprehend.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
If that makes the person in question happier, it is good I guess, but couldn't the same result have been achieved in a more 'natural' way?

What 'natural' way are you talking about?

I think there is some fairly convincing transsexuals out there, like Bailey Jay for example.