Sex and Gender

[TC]

I bring this up because it seems like there’s a lot of confusion as to what the difference between gender and sex is, how many there are of each, and what it means to be outside a so-called “gender binary.”

Gender and sex are not archetypal models that people “fit” or fail to fit into, rather they’re types of categorical labels that people apply; genders are social categories, sexes are biological or physical categories.

In this regard, the relation between sex and gender is parallel to the relation between skin colour and other hereditary indicators of geographic ancestry, and race. Skin colour is a physical, biological trait, race is a social construct that people recognize in people based on their physical appearance. Likewise, sex is a physical, biological trait, and gender is the social


Its often repeated that race isn’t biological, and this is sometimes interpreted to mean that race isn’t real. But equating discreet biological categories with something being real or not has no basis in science or sociology or leftist political theory. Race is very real, on a social level, and its also essentially fixed within any given society, because the social recognition of race in individuals is determined by their physical appearance, specifically the social interpretation of traits such as skin colour which relate to geographic ancestry. There is absolutely no biological basis for, .

Nor could there be; the reaction that’s sometimes taken, that there are some species with real races or subspecies but that humans just don’t happen to be one of them, completely misses the point and makes a category error; the reality of social categories is not found in biology its found in social interaction, they exist because of how people behave collectively not because of how people are biologically.

Someone once argued passionately here that there is a “Mediterranean race”, an argument made on the basis of appearance and self-identification, and this race simply wasn’t recognized because the “white race” wrote a version of history where it didn’t exist. In making this argument, she completely misunderstood the concept of race; races aren’t organic things that exist outside of human conception, where failing to fit racial stereotypes evidences the existence another race, rather they are categories created by social recognition. In other words, if the dominate version of history and social recognition, regards people living in the Mediterranean as being ‘white’ rather than non-white as it regards people living in sub-Saharan Africa, that simply means that Mediterranean’s are white because race exists and only exists as a socially agreed upon category.


The same is true of sex and gender.


The existence of intersexed infants who have physically ambiguous sexual characteristics is not evidence of a ‘third gender’ or many different genders; to suggest as much is to mistakenly believe that gender is a physical or biological or mental category rather than a social one. Being physically unusual doesn’t need to be met with abnormal treatment or necessitate any sort of social abnormality; contemporary western society is perfectly capable of recognizing people with unusual sexual characteristics as being one or the other gender and treating them normally.

The ambiguity that might exist in infants is in part attributable to the fact that gender has very little social consequence in interactions with infants and only determines pronoun choice, and because infants have no secondary sexual characteristics which is the way people determine what gender someone is when they’re older. Different types of birth defects that affect primary sexual characteristics lead to different presentation of secondary sexual characteristics and people in normal social interaction have no trouble determining which gender they belong to at that point. For instance, people with two x chromosomes and one y chromosome might not be ‘male’ or ‘female’ on a cellular biological level, but to anyone looking at them and interacting with them on a social level rather than a medical one, they appeal male, so their gender is the same as any other boy or man even though their primary sexual traits are different. It isn’t a case of “not fitting into a gender binary”, they fit into a gender binary perfectly well they just don’t fit into the two common biological sexes.



Getting back to race and skin colour; in addition to the essentially fixed racial categories that society imposes on people, some (but not all) people will additionally posit stereotypical views of people belonging to those categories. These stereotypes are however, just that, and they do not constitute requirements for recognition in a racial category or ‘fitting in.’

For instance, if you accept the premise that certain people believe that, in general, white people can’t dance, and you accept the premise that, say Justin Timberlake, can dance, does it follow that Justin Timberlake is in fact not-white? Does this mean that Justin Timberlake somehow transcends race and doesn’t fit into the racial white/non-white binary? Does it give Justin Timberlake reason to identify himself as non-white, or can Justin Timberlake legitimately say he doesn’t feel white? No of course not, because whether or not someone is white is something that’s agreed upon based on their appearance and presumed ancestry, not whether or not they can dance; the fact that some people who hold this particular stereotypical view assume that if someone is white than they can’t dance or probably can’t dance is irrelevant.

When you see people who don’t fit the stereotype of a race, that doesn’t mean that they don’t ‘fit in’ that race; rather it means that the stereotype is wrong or inadequate to describe the range of human diversity.


Likewise, the same is true about sex and gender.

Someone who prefers to dress a particular way, or acts a particular way, or thinks they feel a particular way, which are not in line with the stereotypical expectations for their gender, isn’t an example of someone who doesn’t “fit into the gender binary” but simply someone who doesn’t fit a particular gender stereotype.

So why is it that, after so many years of feminism demonstrating that the stereotypes about men and women are wrong, of the feminist movement reducing the recognized criteria for gender to sex rather than any set of stereotypical behavior or attitudes, we all of a sudden have people who seem to think that failing to adhere to gender stereotypes means failing to be part of that gender. It seems like a step back in time where there was prescribed behavior for ‘real men’ and ‘real women’.

When people confuse gender with gender sterotypes it actually has a very reactionary affect of presuming a stereotypical role for people on the basis of gender. If for instance, a black kid said “I don’t feel black, I don’t identify with being black, I don’t like rap music, hip hop, reggae, I think OJ was guilty, I straighten and dye my hair and speak with a waspy accent, therefore I feel I’m white and identify as being white”, I don’t think leftists would come to the conclusion that this was in fact a white person trapped in a black persons body, or alternatively, a member of a different previously unidentified race that we need to rush to socially recognize. I think, we’d just think that he or she had bought into stereotypes about black people and white people and mistakenly thought that being a black person meant wanting to adhere to those stereotypes rather than simply being recognized as such in society whether or not one fit the stereotypes.

Similarly, I don’t think that just because some kid is embarrassed that girls or boys do stupidly stereotypical things means that we need to introduce a set of new ‘gender neutral’ pronouns for them, thereby reinforcing the stereotype as the only normal form of being a girl or a boy. Instead stereotypes should be exposed as just that, stereotypes rather than essentially defining qualities.

[Ihavenoidea]

Cool post, thank you. I have nothing to say to it however, as most of it is pretty good.

[apathy maybe]

Meh. I see your point, I'm not sure if I really agree with it though.


There are a few thing that you seem to have missed. There are a number of "races" where as there are generally only to socially recognised genders. As such the dynamics are different.

Another thing is that some people are oppressed because of what race they are perceived as, some people are oppressed because of what gender they aren't. If that makes sense.

More socially recognised genders leads to less oppression, where as getting rid of races leads to less oppression.

A final point, race doesn't mean shit. Whereas gender can affect how you interact with people; you have yourself said, you wouldn't talk about certain things with straight men, that you would with other women or gay men. A gay man wouldn't have sex with you, because he isn't interested, but a straight man might.


I'm interested in what Black ro/ger has to say on the subject, as well as certain other people.

[Reuben]

This post is absolutely excellent.

[Hampton]

A final point, race doesn't mean shit. Whereas gender can affect how you interact with people

Race couldn't possibly affect the way one person may talk to another? I'm pretty sure it would and does.

And race does in fact mean shit. It's nice to say it doesn't, but that isn't doing people who are disliked because of their perceived race any favors.

[TC]

Originally posted by apathy [email protected] 22, 2007 03:48 pm
Meh. I see your point, I'm not sure if I really agree with it though.


There are a few thing that you seem to have missed. There are a number of "races" where as there are generally only to socially recognised genders. As such the dynamics are different.

really the dynamics of race and gender depend on the particular society, state and culture you're considering, these are not universal things they have a political context. Some places only recognize two races, some places recognize many, the actual list and relevance varies a great deal. The dynamics with gender are clearly very different in Amsterdam than Kandahar, thats why the concept of gender in addition to sex is useful.



Another thing is that some people are oppressed because of what race they are perceived as, some people are oppressed because of what gender they aren't. If that makes sense.


no it doesn't make sense.



More socially recognised genders leads to less oppression, where as getting rid of races leads to less oppression.


In societies that recognize three genders, male, female, and a group of biological males that constitute a third gender, the last group is almost always socially marginalized. They are clearly more oppressed relative to the average social position in society than gay males who don't present or behave in a traditionally masculine manner are in the west.



A final point, race doesn't mean shit. Whereas gender can affect how you interact with people; you have yourself said, you wouldn't talk about certain things with straight men, that you would with other women or gay men. A gay man wouldn't have sex with you, because he isn't interested, but a straight man might.

Hampton already addressed your very silly claim that race doesn't mean shit, it clearly affects how people interact with each other, it has huge socio-economic implications. Race does mean shit when black drivers are pulled over randomly by the police, and more so if they're driving expensive cars, at rates far higher than white drivers, it means shit when the average black person has a net wealth of something like 1/40th the average white person's.

and in any case, your example to show your point makes very little sense because thats an instance of treating people differently based on sexual orientation not based on gender, and i'm pretty sure that was made explicit in the original context.

[luxemburg89]

i was once given this simple statement "gender is what you feel, sex is what your biologically are" and that was it. This thread is brilliant, it explains it in excellent detail. I enjoyed reading it.

[Ol' Dirty]

Race is a social construct; I agree with you completely. It is abstract by design, and is just a tool for one class to oppress another. People make race, just like they make gods, stories and glyphs. I see the concept of race as a negative aspect of human culture, and I think that left-wing socialist -particularly anarchist, communist and revolutionary socialist- societies should nullify the harmful concept of the race myth, because it is has a milignant effect on proletarian politics. Why endure that kind of pensive, malific, primative, barbaric -and also disproven- thought in a communistic society?

[LSD]

Tragic, I don't think anyone but the most ardent postmodernist would disagree with your analysis of gender and sex, but I'm puzzled by the conclusion you seem to reach at the end of the piece.

Being a woman in a man's body is not the same thing as being a man who's drawn to female gender stereotypes and to assert that it is is to, theoretically peaking, grossly oversimplify the sex/gender dynamic; and, politically speaking, minimize the very real suffering of the transexual communityand.

You're right, we probably wouldn't think of the guy in your hypothetical as a white man trapped in a black man's body, but that's primarily because he wouldn't think of himself that way ...and there's a reason for that.

I think there's a great danger in taking the sex-gender / colour-race analogy too far and that's that one might start to take the lessons from the latter and try to apply them to the former. And that's an incredibly grave error.

'Cause the thing about skin colour is that it doesn't matter, not at any level.

Now obviously to a racist it matters a great deal and if one were to tell an average African in 1970s South Africa that colour didn't matter one would probably be laughed out of the continent, if not punched in the face.

But, as you pointed out, all of that is the result of the intepretation of colour, not colour itself. Because race had come to mean skin colour, the two became equated. But the mere existance of so-called racial "passing" proves that racism is not, at it's core, about colour.

And while it's tempting to extend that model to sexism and gender politics in general, such an approach is fundamentally flawed because while absent notions of race, skin colour genuinely wouldn't make a difference, the same can most certainly not be said for sex and gender respectively.

Even in a society with absolutely no conception of gender roles or identity (it's a bit of a stretch, but it's certainly concievable), biological sex would still be relevent in people's lives, in a way that biological skin colour never could be.

People aren't born attracted to one skin colour or another, they are, however, attracted to one sex or another meaning that, at a social level, sex will always matter.

A heterosexual woman will always interact differently with men than with women, even if only subtly, because the one is a potential mate and the other isn't; the same, obviously, applies to men.

Now, it's all a lot more complex than that 'cause human society always is, but the point is that no matter how liberalized or liberated society may become, there will almost certainly never come a time when sex becomes socially irrelevent, not so long as we're still recognizably human anyway.

Which all comes back to the issue of transexual identity and your hypothetical black man who "feels white".

'Cause the reason that we'd all be so quick to dismiss such a notion is, ultimately, because we reject the fundamental notion of race. And absent race, there really isn't such a thing as a "black man".

But absent "femininity", there is still very much such a thing as a woman and absent "masculinity", there is still such a thing as a man.

Transexuals don't just want to replicate opposite gender patterns, they want to become the sexual person that they feel they they were psychologically/neurologically born as. A transexual woman doesn't just want to "act womanly", she wants to be a woman. That's not about gender, it's about sex, simple, binary, biological sex.

***

As for "gender neutral pronouns", I don't think the issue is so much "transcending the gender binary" as it is transcending the general tediousness of trying to be asexist while using language deeply intrentched in sexist cultures.

I'm not one to write "womyn" or "persyn", but I recognize the linguistic tragedy that we have no simple easy way to identify a person of unknown sex that isn't pedantic ("he or she"), unclear ("they"), or patrirchal ("him").

That's even more true in languages which employ gender in non-pronomial situations. Just look at any French workers' literature, for example. I can't count the number of times I've heard/read "travailleurs et traveilleuses..".

Is it preferable to a simple "travailleurs"? Yes, because at least female workers are being included, but it would be even more preferable if there was a way to communicate the same idea without referencing gender/sex at all.

And that's what "gender neutrality" is ultimately about, or at least what it should be about if it's to have a progressive function, facilitating the creation of circumstances in which sex and/or gender don't even come up.

In the end, that's the point of any equality movement.

[Sand Castle]

A lot of words in different languages come from different roots. Why should we mutilate a language just because somebody feels "opressed". I understand why sexism is opressing, but I don't see why we should change the language. I've noticed that a lot of people who want to make languages gender neutral aren't even good at speaking these languages. However, I'm not talking about anyone here.

[TC]

Originally posted by LSD

Being a woman in a man's body is not the same thing as being a man who's drawn to female gender stereotypes and to assert that it is is to, theoretically peaking, grossly oversimplify the sex/gender dynamic;

Being a woman in a man’s body is clearly a metaphor for adhering more closely to female sterotypes than male sterotypes despite being male, and the sterotypes are taken to be more ‘genuine’ than the sexual characteristics in determining “real” gender; its not a condition that literally exists even if some people have chosen to take the metaphor literally. If someone says they think they’re really the opposite gender, the basis for this belief can only be the extent to which society characterizes gender.


politically speaking, minimize the very real suffering of the transexual communityand.

I don’t see how it minimizes anyone’s suffering to point out that suffering because of your social position, is the result of a social construct.



You're right, we probably wouldn't think of the guy in your hypothetical as a white man trapped in a black man's body, but that's primarily because he wouldn't think of himself that way ...and there's a reason for that.

The reason he wouldn’t think that now though, isn’t because the social construction of gender role and stereotype is fundamentally different from the social construction of racial role and stereotype, but because the narrative of a “white man in a black man’s body” would not be an accessible narrative to appeal to for understanding as it is not one that exists in the cultural discourse. If such a narrative existed some people who felt sufficiently alienated from racial stereotypes might choose to make use of it.

The reason the narrative doesn’t exist but a parallel one for gender does, I think, is because its no longer seen as socially acceptable to equate stereotypical qualities of races with essential qualities of being a member of a race, but the social discourse on gender is not that advanced yet so its still possible to equate stereotypes with essence. To demonstrate this point you only need to consider the fact that its possible to talk of a real man and what real men do or ought to do, but not possible to talk of a “real white person”; it is simply not in the vocabulary.

Even more so, while it is regarded as supremely racist to talk seriously about differences in psychology between races as if these gave functional explanations for how individual members of different races behaved and acted, its not only acceptable but rather fashionable to seriously discuss psychological differences between genders as if these provided explanations for social relations (which is to say, substituting an essential traditionalist functional explanations for Marxist ones). This is despite the fact that all supposed “psychological differences” are merely statistical trends rather than absolute differences, (the same sense of “psychological differences” you could easily find between races or classes); everyone would acknowledge that assuming that these differences are biological rather than contextual in race would be racist, but the popular press does it all the time in gender.

These two socially constructed factors taken together, I think, make people believe that gender stereotypes are more organic than racial stereotypes and make the narrative of being the ‘wrong gender’ seem plausible but the ‘wrong race’ implausible; but it doesn’t mean that they’re actually any different.

And this cultural understanding is not a universal one. There were times and places where it was regarded as potentially plausible to use just such a narrative with regard to race, to be a white person in a black person’s body, or much more typically, a coloured person in a black person’s body or a white person in a coloured person’s body, specifically in Apartheid South Africa.. If someone who looked native or coloured, thought that they were, really, much more like a coloured person or a white person in lifestyle and social status, they could appeal to racial courts to be legally recognized as coloured or white respectively, rather than native or coloured.

Similarly in parts of Latin America today, race is attributed not only on how European or African or native someone looks, but also what class they appear to be and their general comportment.


'Cause the thing about skin colour is that it doesn't matter, not at any level.
...Now obviously to a racist it matters a great deal...

The biggest reason why skin colour and other characteristics which inform race

It would still when deciding whether or not to wear sun screen, what shade of makeup to buy, whether or not it makes sense to get dermatological screening for cancer, and if you think those are trivial, it matters in the purely superficial aesthetic judgments people make about people’s appearance


Because race had come to mean skin colour, the two became equated. But the mere existance of so-called racial "passing" proves that racism is not, at it's core, about colour.

The concept of “racial passing” is a very particular social construct though that only exists in social contexts where race is seen to be determined definitively by unequally weighed heredity as is the case in north America, not in the case of social context where race is seen to be determined more by appearance or equally weighed heredity as in the case of the Latin American system of race.

The United States racial system, where for instance, someone with many European ancestors but a single African ancestor is regarded as “black”, but someone with half Amerindian ancestors and half European ancestors is “white”, is a result of a legal convention designed so that slave owners wouldn’t lose human property and states wouldn’t have to pay as many natives under treaty obligations.

Racial categories are still normally assumed on the basis of physical features indicative of genetic ancestry (chiefly skin colour and facial structure and hair type, the specific appearance required to be one ‘race’ or another depending on the cultural context, a lot of “white” Brazilians would be regarded as “black” Americans and vice versa), but in borderline cases, someone might appeal to resolve the categorical dispute to the societies collective theory about what determines race definitively, namely ancestry (the percentage of and from where being different in different places).




Even in a society with absolutely no conception of gender roles or identity (it's a bit of a stretch, but it's certainly concievable), biological sex would still be relevent in people's lives, in a way that biological skin colour never could be.

I don’t think that assumption is necessarily correct.

In such a hypothetical society, sex would only really matter in two places, medical and physical issues, and partner selection.

Skin colour would also matter in two places, medical and physical issues (clearly not as many as with sex but still some), and partner selection.



People aren't born attracted to one skin colour or another, they are, however, attracted to one sex or another meaning that, at a social level, sex will always matter.


This makes intuitive sense because of how we talk about sexual orientation by convention, but its just not empirically true.

People aren’t actually attracted to one sex or another, either in the abstract sense or sexes in their entirety, rather people are attracted, to different degrees, to individuals, and for biological reasons those individuals they most prefer physically are usually but not always the same sex. But someone’s set of sexual preferences are almost always far more specific than simply one sex or the other, but rather a narrow demographic within a sex.

Sexual orientation is determined by the sex of ones most preferred type of partner, not the hypothetical range of partners that someone might consider if unable to get their preference, and sex is not necessarily the most crucial feature. To demonstrate this conceptually with an absurd example, were there an apocalyptic event where the only men left on earth were obese 80 year old clones of Yassir Arafat, I imagine I’d end up looking for a girlfriend before considering asking out a fat Arafat clone...to use a more coherent example, straight men have sex with other men, exclusively, all the time in prisons, not because they’re gay, but because their preferred partners are unavailable, and when there aren’t any women around, some men will look more appealing to them than others.

If you’re wondering how this is relevant, its because while its usually the case that someone wont sexually prefer anyone in a particular sex (usually their own), its also frequently or even usually the case that someone wont sexually prefer anyone in a particular or several races, on the basis of associated physical characteristics including skin colour.

This might not be the most politically correct observation but I think everyone knows that its the case. There are of course a million other physical traits that you can think of besides skin colour and sex that someone might never prefer in a partner. And its particular sexual preference, not the degree to which someone might tolerate non-preferred partners, which is actually relevant in sexual orientation, so to suppose that someone could be with a person with any skin colour in the right circumstances, would not demonstrate that sex is relevant and essential to attraction but skin colour is not relevant or essential.

And obviously there are some people whose preferences would include people with the full spectrum of human skin colour and of every geographic origin, but there are also people whose sexual preferences include people of both sexes, so this again doesn’t help make the distinction you’re trying to make any clearer.



A heterosexual woman will always interact differently with men than with women, even if only subtly, because the one is a potential mate and the other isn't; the same, obviously, applies to men.

Again, when you really think about this, its just not empirically the case. I’m not sure how you feel about women LSD but I certainly don’t regard all men I interact with as anyway potential mates and if I counted all of guys I interacted with and considered how many were remotely potential mates I can’t imagine it would be more than one percent.

I mean, to simplify the math, pretend that the population is equally distributed in age, and lives to 100. If you’re only conceivably interested in men no more than 2 years younger or 10 years older, then already 88% of the population aren’t potential mates. If you’re utterly not attracted to overweight men, then that again halves the population, so 94% of men aren’t potential mates. If you’re not interested in men below average height, then that’s half again, so 97% of men are not potential mates...and those are just within reasonable, basic physical requirements, the sort of things people stick on personal ads because they don’t want people to waste their time if they don’t meet them, it doesn’t even get into specific appearance, which might just be a fifth or a tenth or a twentyith of the remainder depending on tastes and pickiness, and personality types that would rule someone out as even a ‘potential’ mate for some people.

So, I think, its clear that the ‘potential mate’ category of interaction is much much narrower than gendered interaction.

The question I think is whether the hypothetical heterosexual woman interacts with 100% of women she wont possibly sleep with differently than the 99% of men she wont possibly sleep with, not with the <1% of men that she might. In a hypothetical society with “absolutely no conception of gender roles or identity”, I don’t see any reason why she would.



Now, it&#39;s all a lot more complex than that &#39;cause human society always is, but the point is that no matter how liberalized or liberated society may become, there will almost certainly never come a time when sex becomes socially irrelevent, not so long as we&#39;re still recognizably human anyway.

Well, were sex only relevant as one aspect of partner selection, than it would be only relevant in the same sense that skin colour could be relevant, so again, I don’t think what you’ve said shows that gender is somehow more inherently (rather than socially) relevant than race as a matter of category rather than simply degree.



&#39;Cause the reason that we&#39;d all be so quick to dismiss such a notion is, ultimately, because we reject the fundamental notion of race. And absent race, there really isn&#39;t such a thing as a "black man".

But absent "femininity", there is still very much such a thing as a woman and absent "masculinity", there is still such a thing as a man.

Absent race there are still such things as geographic clines, the physical traits taken to demarcate race in non-borderline cases. These physical characteristics, skin colour being one of the most obvious, would still exist and be impossible to ignore features in an individuals appearance, just sex is an impossible to ignore feature in an individuals appearance.

The difference, is not that there is “really such a thing as a man”, but not “really such a thing as a black man”, but that we’ve come to the point where we recognize that the very real physical characteristics that constitute being ‘black’ should be regarded superficially rather than informing our prejudices about the individual’s non-physical characteristics, but we’ve not come to the point where we recognize that the very real physical characteristics that constitute being a “man”, also ought to be regarded superficially and not with prejudice with regard to their non-physical characteristics.

Ultimately, someone has dark skin because they have a set of genes that produce dark skin, and someone has a dick and male physique because they have a set of genes that produce male genitals and physique. What it means to be black and what it means to be a man are not determined physically but by social convention, and likewise whether or not these two, equally genetic, physical traits, are really “such a thing” of consequence or not, as you put it, are based on social interaction, not the genes.

Again it is easy to see how these are in fact parallel social constructs based on interpretations of physical characteristics.



Transexuals don&#39;t just want to replicate opposite gender patterns, they want to become the sexual person that they feel they they were psychologically/neurologically born as.

I doubt they “just want to replicate opposite gender” stereotypes, but given that extensive research has only found the most trivial miniscule neurological differences between sexes and fully overlapping psychology with only minor differences in the statistical mean, so there is just no such thing as the psychology of the opposite sex...the only basis for identification with the gender of the opposite biological sex is a stereotypical one. If they find that they tend to fit opposite gender stereotypes anyways, and then believe those stereotypes to be essentially defining characteristics, it could lead to the belief that they are psychologically the other gender.

But that doesn’t mean that the belief isn’t still the result of the social construction of gender role and I think, it should be apparent how under the right circumstances, it could be.


A transexual woman doesn&#39;t just want to "act womanly", she wants to be a woman.

That’s true, but that’s not contrary to the perspective I’ve outlined so I think you’re kind of missing the point. A biological man wouldn’t just arbitrarily decide they want to be a woman on their own spontaneously with no context; if they do it, they do it because they thinks they “acts/feels/thinks womanly”, and what they thinks acting/feeling/thinking womanly entails is a social construct...and not a progressive one because as soon as people elevate stereotypes to essential characteristics of a particular demographic they restrict the expected and acceptable behavior of that demographic.

Which is not to say that its their fault for feeling that way or that they’re personally “reinforcing gender stereotypes”, but that the conceptual paradigm that leads to these types of assumptions privileges existing stereotypes as though they were fundamental.



As for "gender neutral pronouns", I don&#39;t think the issue is so much "transcending the gender binary" as it is transcending the general tediousness of trying to be asexist while using language deeply intrentched in sexist cultures.

I&#39;m not one to write "womyn" or "persyn", but I recognize the linguistic tragedy that we have no simple easy way to identify a person of unknown sex that isn&#39;t pedantic ("he or she"), unclear ("they"), or patrirchal ("him").

Eh, no, I really do think they’re trying to make a post modernist point transcending gender, not just improving language efficiency (which clearly ‘womyn’ and ‘persyn’ do nothing to improve). When using the singular “they” for unspecified individuals and “he or she” for specified individuals of unknown gender, the language is really not that awkward as there are relatively few instances where someone discusses a specific individual of unknown gender...and singular they is grammatically correct to use when being non-specific i’m sure I’ve made this point elsewhere.

The issue anyways that I was addressing wasn’t actually individuals of unknown gender but the political exercise of introducing a set of pronouns for individuals of a hypothetical self-defined third gender which was raised in the “gender neutral pronoun” thread.



And that&#39;s what "gender neutrality" is ultimately about, or at least what it should be about if it&#39;s to have a progressive function, facilitating the creation of circumstances in which sex and/or gender don&#39;t even come up.

Actually I think what “gender neutrality” is ultimately about is that in the 80s and early 90s all you could talk about in liberal academics in terms of addressing social inequality was language use and correctness of speech because they had decided that class and economy were taboo subjects.

The establishment has always tried to shift political discourse away from materially relevant issues to meaningless squabbles so that however conflict turns out it doesn’t ultimately threaten them. That’s a big part of what getting people to obsess about race is about.

Having gender neutral language wouldn’t facilitate a society with gender equality, there are languages without genders spoken in societies no more egalitarian than those with linguistic gender. It’s the fact of material inequalities that make people anxious about perceived sexism in language, such an interpretation only comes up because there are other issues...likewise I’ve heard rather elaborate arguments to how the language is ‘racist’ even though it predates slavery and colonialism. Its not language that’s racist or sexist, those interpretations of it only have currency as a reacton to sexism (and racism) in society.

[counterblast]

Originally posted by apathy [email protected] 22, 2007 03:48 pm

More socially recognised genders leads to less oppression, where as getting rid of races leads to less oppression.

Getting rid of gender also leads to less oppression; adding more genders only creates more constricting categories. Gender should serve as a single collective identity of the individual; rather than a collection of several groups to fall under.


EDIT: Wonderful post, by the way.

[apathy maybe]

OK, obviously my first post wasn&#39;t as clear as I had hoped it might be. When I talked of &#39;race&#39; not meaning anything, obviously this isn&#39;t true. I meant that in civilised society, interactions with people would not be affected by physical characteristics (i.e. race) in the same way that they are in uncivilised (racist) societies. However, gender and sexuality will continue to have relevance.

As for the rest of my post, I think that LSD made basically the points I was intending, and in a lot more detail.

I understand what you are saying in response to my first post TragicClown, but I honestly was talking hypothetically in a civilised (communist or anarchist whatever) society.

[counterblast]

Originally posted by apathy [email protected] 11, 2007 11:15 am
OK, obviously my first post wasn&#39;t as clear as I had hoped it might be. When I talked of &#39;race&#39; not meaning anything, obviously this isn&#39;t true. I meant that in civilised society, interactions with people would not be affected by physical characteristics (i.e. race) in the same way that they are in uncivilised (racist) societies. However, gender and sexuality will continue to have relevance.

As for the rest of my post, I think that LSD made basically the points I was intending, and in a lot more detail.

I understand what you are saying in response to my first post TragicClown, but I honestly was talking hypothetically in a civilised (communist or anarchist whatever) society.
I still don&#39;t agree with that.

Any society which places importance/relevance on gender; is far from liberated. Gender, like constricting racial roles, must be revealed for what it is --- a cultural stereotype, and not a natural or essential category.

As for sexuality; I would think in a more liberated (as opposed to civilized) society, sexuality wouldn&#39;t be such a contested and categorized topic. Today, all bodily pleasures are understood in terms of the degree to which they deviate from, conform to, improve upon, or avoid sexuality.

[KC]

OK, obviously my first post wasn&#39;t as clear as I had hoped it might be. When I talked of &#39;race&#39; not meaning anything, obviously this isn&#39;t true. I meant that in civilised society, interactions with people would not be affected by physical characteristics (i.e. race) in the same way that they are in uncivilised (racist) societies. However, gender and sexuality will continue to have relevance.

How do you define "civilized" and "primitive"? Also, all societies today are racist to an extent, so how can you separate them into "civilized" and "primitive"?

[TC]

Originally posted by apathy [email protected] 11, 2007 11:15 am
OK, obviously my first post wasn&#39;t as clear as I had hoped it might be. When I talked of &#39;race&#39; not meaning anything, obviously this isn&#39;t true. I meant that in civilised society, interactions with people would not be affected by physical characteristics (i.e. race) in the same way that they are in uncivilised (racist) societies. However, gender and sexuality will continue to have relevance.

Why?

When it comes to interactions with people, from that vantage point, both race and gender constitute physical characteristics, they only become more than physical characteristics when you make prejudiced assumptions about someone based on them.

Gender and race are no different in this regard.


Of course though, when deciding on whether or not you&#39;d be interested in having sex with someone, their physical characteristics would matter immensely, but again thats an instance where the physical attributes that lead someone to interpret &#39;gender&#39; and &#39;race&#39; are both relevant, just as are other physical attributes like height, hair or lack there of, size, smell, etc.

So your position just doesn&#39;t add up, in a hypothetical communist society or any other.

[apathy maybe]

I knew I had forgotten a thread&#33;

Zampanò: I never said primitive, I said uncivilised. That is, they might well have a high level of technology and "advanced" social/political organising, but socially they still differentiate between people for irrational reasons.

"How do you define "civilized" and ["uncivilised"]? Also, all societies today are racist to an extent, so how can you separate them into "civilized" and ["uncivilised"]?"
Basically I&#39;m differentiating between advanced/primitive and civilised/uncivilised. One is regarding technology, the other social interactions. A civilised society is one a few things happen, e.g. people are not discriminated against for irrational reasons.
I would say all societies today are uncivilised to a greater or less extent. Countries such as (for example) Saudi Arabia could be considered uncivilised at a general level, though I&#39;m sure there would be patches that are civilised. Understand what I&#39;m saying?


Gender/sexuality (whichever, I could be confused) will still be relevant, because people will want to have sex with someone whom they are attracted to and who is attracted to them. For most things however, it wouldn&#39;t be relevant.
(And I hope that addresses TC&#39;s point as well.)

edit: and to reply to CounterBlasts point as well,

As for sexuality; I would think in a more liberated (as opposed to civilized) society, sexuality wouldn&#39;t be such a contested and categorized topic. Today, all bodily pleasures are understood in terms of the degree to which they deviate from, conform to, improve upon, or avoid sexuality.I&#39;m sure you would agree that liberated would conform to my definition of &#39;civilised&#39; above. And I agree with you on this point. However, people still have to be attracted to each other, which is why gender/sexuality will continue to be important.

[TC]

Gender/sexuality (whichever, I could be confused) will still be relevant, because people will want to have sex with someone whom they are attracted to and who is attracted to them. For most things however, it wouldn&#39;t be relevant.
(And I hope that addresses TC&#39;s point as well.)


Sure, but race/skincolour would remain relevant on that level because it affects appearance and therefore sexual attraction.

So your comment doesn&#39;t address my point, which is that gender and sex and race and physical qualities attributed to geographic origin (such as skin colour) are parallel social constructs.

So, this is not a regard where gender/sex is more relevant than race/skincolour. Both are relevant as physical attributes and physical attributes are relevant to sexual partner selection, but attributing a social or psychological relevance to either set of physical attributes beyond that is just being prejudicial.



However, people still have to be attracted to each other, which is why gender/sexuality will continue to be important.

The physical aspects of sex will still be relevant in this regard, but then so will the physical aspects of "racial" appearance...but thats not what you&#39;re really talking about at all i don&#39;t think. You&#39;re actually talking about gender as a social category when you make comments about making more genders as a progressive thing.

That physical, sexual attributes would remain relevant doesn&#39;t mean that non-sexual social aspects of gender would be relevant, which is what you seemed to suggest earlier with your suggestion that creating more genders would be &#39;progressive&#39;, since that only serves to create more socially constructed categories which is irrelevant to issues of attraction.

[Lynx]

I&#39;m in favor of individuals disregarding or breaking stereotypes. If enough people do, the stereotype will no longer be accurate for the group in question.

With regard to gender, if you can tell if someone is male or female or are unsure, then gender &#39;matters&#39;. If social policies are being planned and gender differences appear within statistics, then gender matters. You cannot wish these things away before they actually do become irrelevant.

Excellent, interesting thread :)