Biological sex and gender identity: differences and overlaps

[jeevey]

Or you are a person who's close to transgender people and aware of the issue and you don't feel comfortable calling yourself simply "male", as though you are the real kind of male and your friends are not? It's a way of creating equality through language: "I became male this way and you became male that way, and we are both male". Incidentally, isn't it interesting how conversation on trans and gay issues always seem to center on men? I think that our gender performance standards are higher for men, and we have a lot more anxiety about men who transgress than women.

 

[bono_212]

For me, the standard is to speak in male terms, hence why I used male as an example.

Wasn't there a term for a male who dressed in drag in the list?

I guess the question is whether or not you want to speak in terms of normal or not. Normal isn't the worst I want to use, but I guess it fits best. I'm female. Biologically. Period. So I don't understand why I need to go further to say 'I'm female, not Transgender.'

And I realize I don't HAVE to. I guess I just don't see the purpose, and I don't think it's anything to slight someone who isn't naturally male or female.

 

[LuckyNumber7]

Or you are a person who's close to transgender people and aware of the issue and you don't feel comfortable calling yourself simply "male", as though you are the real kind of male and your friends are not? It's a way of creating equality through language: "I became male this way and you became male that way, and we are both male". Incidentally, isn't it interesting how conversation on trans and gay issues always seem to center on men? I think that our gender performance standards are higher for men, and we have a lot more anxiety about men who transgress than women.

I thought about changing my scenario to a female just to avoid this concert. But I didn't know how to phrase it really. Gay men dominate the stereotypical gay scene.

 

[LuckyNumber7]

For me, the standard is to speak in male terms, hence why I used male as an example.

Wasn't there a term for a male who dressed in drag in the list?

I guess the question is whether or not you want to speak in terms of normal or not. Normal isn't the worst I want to use, but I guess it fits best. I'm female. Biologically. Period. So I don't understand why I need to go further to say 'I'm female, not Transgender.'

And I realize I don't HAVE to. I guess I just don't see the purpose, and I don't think it's anything to slight someone who isn't naturally male or female.

In terms of it being on the list on Facebook, maybe it's redundant. But in terms of someone using the word or going by it, it's hardly innately conceited or pretentious as it's been thought up.

 

[Galeongirl]

Where do people even come up with all these freakin' terms.


Your Greek is off though nr 7. Homosexual means same sex, not one sex. Hetero sexual means other sex. Not a mixture of sexes.

 

[Diemen]

Maybe we should split off the cis/trans talk to a separate thread, since it is a different subject from homosexuality? Or should we expand this thread to be The LGBT Thread?

 

[bono_212]

More conversation, easier to find, is always my preferred route, so I'm cool with a new thread.

 

[jeevey]

Discussion of what it means to identify as male or female as related to biological sex, including both external markers and genetic markers of sex. Also discussion of terminology around gender identification. It's great to bring outside resources from gender research, gender studies, and voices of individuals.

 

[LJT]

Where do people even come up with all these freakin' terms.

Academia has a ton of terms not used in the everyday Labelling matters a great deal to people who are trans, as they are so often wrongly mislabelled. You can use cis- or not purely optional, but most things i've read in direct relation to trans issues have preferred to use the term cis-.

It's really just a way of not completely othering trans people, and not treating those who identify as a man or woman who are born with the matching sex (an example of where cis-gender a much more succint term would be useful) as the absolute norm in life, as has happened in the past say with heterosexual or simply being a man.

Terms matter greatly to people. It's no skin off my back to refer to myself as cis male in a discussion of gender.

 

[LJT]

Of course it's going to be used as a marketing tool, and that's a good thing (you'd think, for people who believe in a free market economy.) A good company designs their product in response to their customer base. It's not in fact the PC police tool that Indy claims, and you can tell it isn't because companies who are doing things because they have to NEVER do them as thoroughly as Facebook did this. (Just think of any other form you've ever seen with 'trans' as a choice and how cursory it was, like the BMV for instance.) What you can tell by this form is that Facebook is marketing themselves to trans people and others who are aware of gender identity issues. And that's nice, because they deserve to be manipulated by advertising just like the rest of us.

I just can't help but be depressed when everything is reduced to money, i'm on a lonely anti-capitalist crusade

 

[LuckyNumber7]

Where do people even come up with all these freakin' terms.


Your Greek is off though nr 7. Homosexual means same sex, not one sex. Hetero sexual means other sex. Not a mixture of sexes.

Now you're just being picky. I made a point and the point still stands.

 

[jeevey]

I just can't help but be depressed when everything is reduced to money, i'm on a lonely anti-capitalist crusade

I hear you there. I'm a pacifist socialist leaning pansy myself.

 

[INDY500]

i'm starting to cringe now. you don't even understand the terms you're criticizing (sex vs. gender, just to begin).

Sorry but like the vast majority of people I use them interchangeably because we live in the world of nature and reason, not Leftism and feminist/gender studies. I know the difference -- I just refuse to play the game. Human sexuality is very complex but we are all born male or female and feelings cannot change that.

 

[INDY500]

I'm curious what the distinction is between the personal level and a broader level that allows one to publicly decry as a larger group individuals who you would empathize with one on one.

That's a good question but I'm off to work. I'll get back to you.

 

[jeevey]

You refuse to use precise language on principle?

The problem (one problem) is that we are not all born either male or female. There's a small but very diverse population of intersex people who are born with varying combinations of physical bodies and genetic sex who are not strictly speaking one sex or the other, so it's easy to see that gender and sex are not identical. Further, what's classed as "male" or "female" characteristics vary so much over time and culture that there is no firm, permanent way of "acting male" (or female, what theory wonks would call gender performance) that we can clearly tie to biological sex. And you only have to look at the epithets people throw at gays and gender nonconformists to know that there are LOTS of ways that someone who has a body of one biological sex can fail to "be a real man" or "real woman." Gay men are fags, not real men, ect. and women like Hilary Clinton or Lady Gaga are often speculated to really be men somehow. (Doesn't she have a penis under there? She's unnatural.) So how can we discuss these variations and complications without using language that differentiates gender expression from physical bodies?

 

[Irvine511]

Sorry but like the vast majority of people I use them interchangeably because we live in the world of nature and reason, not Leftism and feminist/gender studies. I know the difference -- I just refuse to play the game. Human sexuality is very complex but we are all born male or female and feelings cannot change that.

like i said before, you're uninformed. i understand the comfort of ignorance and how one "feels" about a topic is more important than what one actually knows about a topic -- a certain half-term governor has built a reality-show career on it -- but anyone even passingly familiar with the actual definitions of the words, or even a dictionary, will tell you that, yes, there is a difference between one's sex and one's gender.

 

[PhilsFan]

Sorry but like the vast majority of people I use them interchangeably because we live in the world of nature and reason, not Leftism and feminist/gender studies. I know the difference -- I just refuse to play the game. Human sexuality is very complex but we are all born male or female and feelings cannot change that.

"I enjoy being wrong. I embrace it. You can't make me be right. I'm not playing that game of being correct."

 

[KhanadaRhodes]

i personally know multiple people who identify as genderfluid, trans, and non-binary. all the differences between the different sexualities (just for one moment i'm lumping this together with pansexuality, asexuality, etc.) and gender identities, but you do get the hang of it. and yeah, any of these people would be (rightly) offended if i continuously used the wrong pronoun to refer to any of them. a one-time mistake, sure. we've all done that, even simply assuming someone's screenname sounded male or female, etc. but to be informed of how someone wishes to be addressed and to continue to call someone however i choose is just rude and ignorant.

indy, what if i insisted on using feminine pronouns for you? i could just decide your username sounds like something a girl would use and refuse to use male pronouns, no matter how often you correct me. would this not offend or upset you?

 

[Pearl]

I think it would be very nice if the English language had a gender neutral pronoun. Other languages like Arabic and French have one, and it certainly makes life easier on so many levels.

 

[bono_212]

So, I looked that up out of curiosity, to see if anyone had introduced the concept and so I'm now aware of Xe and Xyr... I can't read them in my head without, chuckling though, because it just sounds like an awful accented version of they and there.

 

[jeevey]

There are some genderqueer folks who use exactly that, like vocalist CN Lester, who identifies as neither male nor female and uses the pronoun they. CN Lester I think it works fine, except for the urge to pluralize all the verbs to match the pronoun. They even wrote a blog post on this exact subject AND Piers Morgan recently, and it's pretty smart. a gentleman and a scholar | trans politics, too many books, a great deal of music, assorted ephemera Not that it matters, but I also think Lester is rather gorgeous.

 

[bono_212]

I don't mind the idea at all, actually. I hate saying he or she... Takes too much time.

Maybe I'll start dropping Xe in conversations. I'm sure I'd confuse everyone around me, lol.

 

[digitize]

English needs a good gender-neutral pronoun. I think some textbooks would say that it's "he", but I'm not a fan of that for obvious reasons. "They" is bad unless the verbs are switched to singular, which makes one sound stupid. I tend to use "she" for abstract people, but there's a small segment of the population (non-binary people and the like) who (understandably) may take issue with that.

 

[Galeongirl]

Just use it. That's pretty much what we in Dutch and in French and German use for the gender neutral form.

 

[jeevey]

"They" does seem to be gaining quickly for singular usage, especially when the person is unidentified like in "Somebody needs go pick up their dirty socks." It seems like the switch could possibly happen somewhat naturally. Is that true, GG, that you use a plural pronoun for a GN singular? I never knew.

 

[Irvine511]

English needs a good gender-neutral pronoun. I think some textbooks would say that it's "he", but I'm not a fan of that for obvious reasons. "They" is bad unless the verbs are switched to singular, which makes one sound stupid. I tend to use "she" for abstract people, but there's a small segment of the population (non-binary people and the like) who (understandably) may take issue with that.

what about "one"?

 

[Galeongirl]

"They" does seem to be gaining quickly for singular usage, especially when the person is unidentified like in "Somebody needs go pick up their dirty socks." It seems like the switch could possibly happen somewhat naturally. Is that true, GG, that you use a plural pronoun for a GN singular? I never knew.

In Dutch we basically have he/she/it, where it is also used for animals (though if the gender is known it is used as well but not mandatory or something).
We also have different words for the, not as bad as the gazillion German versions though. We have De, Het and Een. They are sorta gender separated like de is male, het is female and een is genderless, but it's not as strict as say the French language where le is always male, la female and les genderless.

The only person using They as singular usage here is the Queen. Pardon me, king. Man it's been nearly a year but it still confuses. We haven't had a king in over a century.

 

[bono_212]

Just use it. That's pretty much what we in Dutch and in French and German use for the gender neutral form.

I thought you meant the word "it" at first and I was like.... That would go over terribly, lol.

I don't know why it took me forever to learn this, but I actually just learned the Japanese pronouns for male and female a couple weeks ago... I've only been studying Japanese on and off since 2002. You'd think this would've come up before.

what about "one"?

And risk sounding like a total douche?

 

[LemonMelon]

Maybe I'll start dropping Xe in conversations.

And risk sounding like a total douche?

 

[bono_212]