How do you define gender?

[MercyA]

4 hours ago, Melissa Louise said:

However, I don't think WTM is the place to get into gender-abolition feminism, and it's kinda off topic, and I don't want to derail Mercy's thread. 

I'm interested, too, but if you don't have the time or inclination right now, I understand!

I never mind rabbit trails! It's all good.

[lewelma]

4 hours ago, Melissa Louise said:

Yes, this. 

Because if being a girl is no longer tied to being a juvenile female, then what is it? In what way is it a meaningful category?

A girl is someone who feels like a girl? Circular reasoning. It doesn't help us define the category. Plus, there are many juvenile females who don't 'feel like a girl' but just feel like themselves. 

A girl is someone who acts like a girl? How do girls act? Is there an aggregate 'girl' way of being? What of a juvenile female who doesn't 'act like a girl'? Is she shunted out of her own category?

A girl is likes the things girls like? This all presupposes there is an essential, immaterial nature of 'girlness'...

Isn't it just easier to say girl means juvenile female, and within that definition, there are a million different ways of experiencing and being a girl?

This is exactly where I am at. But when I go looking for academic well-considered studies, I can't find any. There appears to be some cancel culture happening. So I was wondering if someone could link me to some good reading on this issue. 

[Melissa Louise]

Just now, lewelma said:

This is exactly where I am at. But when I go looking for academic well-considered studies, I can't find any. There appears to be some cancel culture happening. So I was wondering if someone could link me to some good reading on this issue. 

Kathleen Stock (academic philosopher) just wrote Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism. Might be in interesting read. 

[lewelma]

I have some very masculine personality traits, specifically my ability to lead in an authoritarian way. I am extremely ENTJ. I have learned that my more masculine personality is more acceptable to most people if I appear more feminine - so have somewhat flowing hair, and dress in a sporty feminine style.  I choose this style not because it defines me, but rather because it eases social situations.  I think that the youth of today don't perceive of gendered behaviour and appearance in this way - as a means to an end for social interaction. Rather they appear to focus on individualism and finding their 'true' selves. 

[Melissa Louise]

25 minutes ago, lewelma said:

I have some very masculine personality traits, specifically my ability to lead in an authoritarian way. I am extremely ENTJ. I have learned that my more masculine personality is more acceptable to most people if I appear more feminine - so have somewhat flowing hair, and dress in a sporty feminine style.  I choose this style not because it defines me, but rather because it eases social situations.  I think that the youth of today don't perceive of gendered behaviour and appearance in this way - as a means to an end for social interaction. Rather they appear to focus on individualism and finding their 'true' selves. 

That's interesting. 

I dress so as to be as frictionless as possible with the people around me. I do a good job performing some aspects of femininity, but it is a performance. On a desert island, I'd make different choices. 

I don't really understand what a true self is. 

[Rosie_0801]

38 minutes ago, lewelma said:

 I think that the youth of today don't perceive of gendered behaviour and appearance in this way - as a means to an end for social interaction. Rather they appear to focus on individualism and finding their 'true' selves. 

This interests me. I have younger friends who don't feel like they have a "true self" whereas I've always had a strong sense of self, even when it's had piles and piles of DV dumped on top of it. Is that sense of self another thing that exists on a spectrum of strength or are these unhappy people missing out on some kind of emotional nutrition? Being human is about being special because you're one of a kind, and not being special because you're one of 6 billion, both at the same time.

[lewelma]

1 hour ago, Rosie_0801 said:

This interests me. I have younger friends who don't feel like they have a "true self" whereas I've always had a strong sense of self, 

I work with teens, so I see a lot. There is a subset who *needs* to have their visible self represent who they believe they are.  Kind of like the quote from Fight Club "what kind of dining set defines me as a person?" (but without the sarcasm. LOL). In my experience, most (not all) teens have a sense of self, but not all of them need to have this represented visibly. 

What I currently find confusing is why gender has become on the most important ways for young people to represent their sense of self. 

 

Edited June 21, 2021 by lewelma

[Rosie_0801]

7 minutes ago, lewelma said:

What I currently find confusing is why gender has become on the most important ways for young people to represent their sense of self. 

Society treats just about everybody badly, and gender is an obvious basis for ill treatment but in a way that leaves wiggle room and doesn't cost money?

[lewelma]

On a separate but related topic is American Cultural Imperialism (MercyA said rabbit trails were OK!). I moved to NZ 25 years ago, before the internet. And I started to notice differences between Kiwis and Americans when I would meet an American who was 'straight off the boat.'  They were just very interested in classifying themselves. They were Attachment Parents, Vegans, Homeschoolers, etc. Their classifications were discussed within the first 10 minutes of meeting. This was NOT true of New Zealanders, who worked for the first 10 minutes to figure out who they both knew, where their connections were. This was based out of the indigenous Maori culture where your lineage and connections were more important than the individual.  I came to believe that the need for Americans to classify themselves was because America was large, so Americans needed to connect, but couldn't through people, so instead they did it through group identity.

So what I have seen in the last 15 years as the internet has become more and more integrated into our lives, is that New Zealand youths are much more concerned with the individual self and with claiming group identity than older kiwis. They have been highly influenced by the American culture as seen on the internet. So as Americans have focused on group identity for gender, so have kiwi youths. What category best represents you as a person?  And it has become important for others to know your category.  This is not traditional NZ culture - individualism and classification is not cross cultural. And actually it is pretty far from our indigenous culture. The Maori have always had a 'third gender' but stressing individual identity ahead of your connections to whanau is actually quite odd (and possibly rude) based on Maori worldview.

It is all just really interesting actually -- because gender identity requires individual identity, which is not cross cultural. 

[lewelma]

2 hours ago, Melissa Louise said:

Kathleen Stock (academic philosopher) just wrote Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism. Might be in interesting read. 

My library here in NZ has it on order! I'm third in the queue. Thanks for the rec, looks good.

[Eos]

7 hours ago, lewelma said:

This is also what I'm confused about.  I've been trying to read up on it, but it is really hard to find academic papers.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/may/22/kathleen-stock-taboo-around-gender-identity-chilling-effect-on-academics

Gender critical feminist writers are so hated and bullied, it's no wonder academics would shy away.  It's amazing to me we are even having this conversation/thread.  

[lewelma]

Just now, Harpymom said:

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/may/22/kathleen-stock-taboo-around-gender-identity-chilling-effect-on-academics

Gender critical feminist writers are so hated and bullied, it's no wonder academics would shy away.  It's amazing to me we are even having this conversation/thread.  

Agreed. I have been interested in reading about the ramifications of the trans revolution to gender norms. This is a real question. A valid intellectual curiosity. I find it sadly funny that radical feminist writers have been hated by the right in the past and now by the left. 

[Carrie12345]

5 hours ago, Lady Florida. said:

Yes, but oddly you'll hear people talk about sexing a chicken. 

Yup. Based on their bodies.  Even though some species have some behaviors that “go with” their sex, isn’t it really humans that then genderize them? (Autocorrect really wanted that to say tenderize!)

I don’t know that I have my own special definition for gender, just that I recognize intended meanings through context. Gendered clothes, toys, work, behaviors, etc. Made up things that exist in our psyche.

I was born in the late 70s, had Hot Wheels, a bowl haircut, played in the muddy woods, and wore too many courderoy (sp?) jeans. I also had dresses and dolls and baked cookies. I would never call my parents consciously progressive, but I wasn’t told (by them) that any particular things were just for boys or girls.  (I also only grew up with sisters, so I’m not saying they’d have done the same exact thing for boys.). School is where gender suddenly “mattered”.

As an adult, I once again wear and do what I want, when I want, and have a bunch of body image issues, but zero distress over the sex of my body. I’m okay in a world where others may feel differently about themselves, which doesn’t change my own situation.

Systemically, I’m invested in how gender is used. Person-to-person, I don’t really care.  Though I do want to go on record saying that I was obsessed with the prettiest men in the world in the late 80s/early 90s. Because daaaaaaaaang!!!

[Melissa Louise]

35 minutes ago, Harpymom said:

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/may/22/kathleen-stock-taboo-around-gender-identity-chilling-effect-on-academics

Gender critical feminist writers are so hated and bullied, it's no wonder academics would shy away.  It's amazing to me we are even having this conversation/thread.  

Not many places on the internet allow it, that's for sure.

[Melissa Louise]

@MercyA

You might like to read the WHO definition.

https://www.who.int/health-topics/gender#tab=tab_1

 

[LMD]

55 minutes ago, lewelma said:

Agreed. I have been interested in reading about the ramifications of the trans revolution to gender norms. This is a real question. A valid intellectual curiosity. I find it sadly funny that radical feminist writers have been hated by the right in the past and now by the left. 

If you want names, maybe start with Rebecca Reilly Cooper - https://sexandgenderintro.com/ 

I also find SisterOutrider interesting https://sisteroutrider.wordpress.com/2017/02/07/sex-gender-and-the-new-essentialism/

 

I'm not really interested in getting into a debate on here, just putting these forth for whoever wants to read them and decide for themselves.

[TravelingChris]

6 hours ago, lewelma said:

On a separate but related topic is American Cultural Imperialism (MercyA said rabbit trails were OK!). I moved to NZ 25 years ago, before the internet. And I started to notice differences between Kiwis and Americans when I would meet an American who was 'straight off the boat.'  They were just very interested in classifying themselves. They were Attachment Parents, Vegans, Homeschoolers, etc. Their classifications were discussed within the first 10 minutes of meeting. This was NOT true of New Zealanders, who worked for the first 10 minutes to figure out who they both knew, where their connections were. This was based out of the indigenous Maori culture where your lineage and connections were more important than the individual.  I came to believe that the need for Americans to classify themselves was because America was large, so Americans needed to connect, but couldn't through people, so instead they did it through group identity.

So what I have seen in the last 15 years as the internet has become more and more integrated into our lives, is that New Zealand youths are much more concerned with the individual self and with claiming group identity than older kiwis. They have been highly influenced by the American culture as seen on the internet. So as Americans have focused on group identity for gender, so have kiwi youths. What category best represents you as a person?  And it has become important for others to know your category.  This is not traditional NZ culture - individualism and classification is not cross cultural. And actually it is pretty far from our indigenous culture. The Maori have always had a 'third gender' but stressing individual identity ahead of your connections to whanau is actually quite odd (and possibly rude) based on Maori worldview.

It is all just really interesting actually -- because gender identity requires individual identity, which is not cross cultural. 

I watch a lot of international tv mysteries and crime dramas.  I have noticed this trend too in those shows.  

[1234]

I think that gender just refers mostly to stereotypes. I know people use it as a synonym for sex. I grew up in a household that seemed very focused on those stereotypes for some issues and for others not at all. I’ve never felt a need to follow or resist any of them.

Since the conversation waded into those who are transgender I feel a need a need to point out that the transgender people I know are not trans due to gender stereotypes. My transgender son isn’t at all following gender norms for a male (and didn’t follow them for females either). It has to do with him feeling he was born as the wrong sex (actually has zero to do with gender -it’s just the label he’s been given). His clothing styles and colors are all over the place and at the moment his hair is long and curly. He thought for the longest time he only liked females but he has also started dating males. He has no problem with all of his pictures growing up because he has no problem seeing himself with long hair, in dresses, and/or playing with stereotypical girl toys (he still has his Barbie doll house😁).  He’s just living a much happier life being identified as a male.

[EKS]

12 hours ago, Melissa Louise said:

Isn't it just easier to say girl means juvenile female, and within that definition, there are a million different ways of experiencing and being a girl?

This exactly.  And I think we were headed in that direction.  Unfortunately the current focus on self-consciously "selecting" one's gender, choosing one's pronouns, putting oneself into a particular gender box, is undoing all of that.  

[KSera]

6 hours ago, lewelma said:

The Maori have always had a 'third gender'

How does this look for them? Are these intersex individuals or more akin to people that would otherwise identify as trans? Do they use any surgery or hormones to address being a third gender? My nb kid has frequently told me about third genders being common for millennia, but I’ve not thought until now to wonder what that looked like (obviously medicalization couldn’t have been a thing until recently). 

[Pam in CT]

re ancient & ubiquitous linguistics

18 hours ago, maize said:

Here's a long article explaining some of the history of the term "gender" in the past 60 years or so. Before that, it was just a grammatical term designating noun classes.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-gender/

OK coming in late so by now this is a rabbit trail, but, my ears are literally ringing with the implications of this insight.

What grooves in the human brain found it so natural that so many languages evolving across vast distances of space and time and culture so often developed

• two binary buckets, into which concrete nouns like "river" and "mountain" and "chair" and "table" were sorted, and also
• defined those buckets in terms that were -- somehow -- associated with "masculine" and "feminine"   ?

 

And, I dunno, I'm a super-slow processor and expect to be churning that question over for weeks, but I have to believe, out the gate, that part of the churn involves this question:

15 hours ago, lewelma said:

Is there a reason that society requires gender?

and relatedly

13 hours ago, Melissa Louise said:

....Let's just be done with boxes. 

... can we?  [FTR and clarity I agree it'd be awesome if we could]

What need or purpose or function does the "social construct" of gender fill?

[Dmmetler]

53 minutes ago, EKS said:

This exactly.  And I think we were headed in that direction.  Unfortunately the current focus on self-consciously "selecting" one's gender, choosing one's pronouns, putting oneself into a particular gender box, is undoing all of that.  

I honestly think that it's the next step-mostly because almost all the kids I know who are doing that are not putting themselves in a box, but taking themselves OUT of the male/female box. It's like "I'm physically female, but I'm me first". And, honestly, I can see why. All our effort at broadening gender roles didn't work. Female bodied people still face more risks than male bodied people, get paid less, and get taken less seriously. Male bodied people still face a pretty significant set of societal expectations (it was no problem for a female bodied kid to have legos, building blocks, trucks, and superheroes-every female bodied kid I know had such things, but a male bodied friend only got to play with Barbie, My Little Pony, and Disney princesses at a female bodied friends' house, because Dad would have none of it-and I know at least four kids who fit in that category). Why would you want to be a gender non-conforming woman, when woman is still the operative word, if you can decide to NOT be a woman and get rid of it? Why be a man if you can be gender fluid and allowed to express yourself in ways men aren't allowed? A majority of these kids are still regularly choosing relationships that match their physical anatomy (and those who aren't honestly are the ones who, when they came out, had the response from everyone be "Yeah, I figured that out")-friends might be either, but actual significant others have the opposite anatomy needed to enable reproduction (regardless of pronouns used). They really aren't changing much but language.

 

I don't think it will work, any more than prior efforts to expand the definition of male/female, but the more people in my life who define themselves this way, and the more I talk to them, the more I understand it. 

 

 

 

[SKL]

I tend to agree with Melissa Louise on this one. 

But my answer to the question would be "I don't define gender.  I only use it as necessary to avoid offense and attack."  [Before the age of wokeness, I used it as a less jarring form of the term "sex" as in M/F.]

In the thread about CRT the other day, someone posted excerpts from some kind of diversity training used in schools.  There was an example provided to kids who were assigned to write about things they used to believe and what they now know better.  One example was (paraphrasing):  "I used to think people were born either a boy or a girl.  Now I know that people can choose whether they want to be a boy or girl...."  I didn't notice anyone else commenting on this, and since the thread was about race, I left it be.  But, am I the only person disturbed by this?

I though the whole trans thing was that some people actually believe they were born with the wrong body - not that they "choose" a different gender.  (What I understand to be "gender dysphoria," a diagnosable mental health issue.)  When did it become a choice people can make, like a favorite ice cream flavor?  Or a career choice?

And which version are today's kids learning in school?  I think it's the latter one.  That they all get to choose their gender.  And that gender, as noted above, is about superficial indicators.  Don't like to wear make-up?  You must be a trans boy.  You like babies?  Must be a trans girl.

So yeah, I agree it is a significant step backwards.  What were the last 100+ years even about from women's perspective?  And also, I believe we're lying to our kids and making things harder rather than easier.

Edited June 21, 2021 by SKL

[SKL]

13 hours ago, Melissa Louise said:

The claim that we cannot tell males and females apart reliably without recourse to gender(ed presentation) or nudity is very confusing to me ( just reading through the thread). 

Is this a common problem? ie put an adult male and female side by side, with the same haircut and in jeans and a t-shirt, and you can't tell them apart 99 times out of 100? 

I can!  🙂

[EKS]

41 minutes ago, Dmmetler said:

Why would you want to be a gender non-conforming woman, when woman is still the operative word, if you can decide to NOT be a woman and get rid of it?

Because you cannot decide not to be a woman.  It is a fact of biology that cannot be changed regardless of hormone status, body modifications, or wishful thinking.

[fairfarmhand]

13 hours ago, TravelingChris said:

I was thinking about this.  Of course I can.  And it is not the Adam's Apple.  I have been noticing that facial structures in men and women are different too though I don't know exactly how.  

When you take drawing classses they discuss the facial differences of males and females. 

hormones affect a lot of things. I notice it in particular with cows. As the young bulls and cows draw close to puberty the males have overall masculine features. I can tell the difference by their heads and faces alone. Cows have prettier faces with more delicate features than the bulls.

[maize]

2 hours ago, Pam in CT said:

re ancient & ubiquitous linguistics

OK coming in late so by now this is a rabbit trail, but, my ears are literally ringing with the implications of this insight.

What grooves in the human brain found it so natural that so many languages evolving across vast distances of space and time and culture so often developed

• two binary buckets, into which concrete nouns like "river" and "mountain" and "chair" and "table" were sorted, and also
• defined those buckets in terms that were -- somehow -- associated with "masculine" and "feminine"   ?

 

And, I dunno, I'm a super-slow processor and expect to be churning that question over for weeks, but I have to believe, out the gate, that part of the churn involves this question:

and relatedly

... can we?  [FTR and clarity I agree it'd be awesome if we could]

What need or purpose or function does the "social construct" of gender fill?

With regard to language:

I believe the number of languages without grammatical gender is actually much larger than the number of languages with. It's just that the languages most of us are more familiar with are in the Indo-European language family, descendants of a common ancestral language (which linguists call Proto-Indo-European) that happened to have three grammatical gender classes--masculine, feminine, and neuter. Some descendants of this language dropped the neuter class and kept only masculine and feminine (French); some dropped all or nearly all grammatical gender (English); some kept all three genders (German).

Languages without grammatical gender include, among others, Persian, Armenian, Hungarian, Basque, Finnish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Mongolian, most Austronesian languages (such as Samoan, Tongan, Tahitian, Maori...), and many Indigenous American languages. 

There are also languages with different types of grammatical gender or noun classes; for example, some languages have "gender" or noun classes that class things as animate or inanimate, not male or female. The Bantu languages of Africa tend to have many noun classes; what word belongs to what class is often quite arbitrary, just as the division of objects between genders in Indo-European languages is mostly arbitrary. The Bantu language Ganda for example has ten classes, sometimes characterised for descriptive purposes as people, long objects, animals, miscenallaneous objects, large objects and liquids, small objects, languages, pejoratives, infinitives, and mass noun--but these descriptors don't actually apply to every word in each class.

It appears that languages can be organized in a near infinite variety of ways.

I do see a general human proclivity towards classifying things. I believe this is the way our brains make sense of a very complex world.

Classifying humans according to sex is, evolutionarily speaking, probably pretty critical. Individuals need to be able to recognize quickly who is a potential mate, who might be a rival, who might be an ally, who might represent a risk. I think human brains will always make that classification. And as I have pointed out before, lack of grammatical gender differention in no way equate to lack of social distinction between the sexes. Language just is not a defining feature let alone driver of such distinctions. All human societies differentiate between males and females.

Edited June 21, 2021 by maize

[maize]

I remember attending a martial arts tournament a couple of years ago. I was watching the teen forms competition, in this particular tournament not split into male and female divisions. The kids were all dressed in unisex costumes and performing similar routines. Some boys had long hair and some girls had short. There were really none of the usual obvious social/cultural markers (hairstyle, dress, makeup...) to differentiate male and female.

And yet as each competitor came on stage I noticed that I was immediately classifying them as male or female. I couldn't avoid doing it. My brain couldn't just see "a human'--it had to classify that human as male or female. I don't know if my split second classifications were 100% accurate, I wasn't right up by the stage and had no way to verify--but I'm willing to bet I was 99% accurate. 

One pretty consistent difference I did notice: identical outfits don't actually fit male and female bodies the same way. In martial arts, one way this plays out is that males tend to wear their belts lower, more over the hips, while in females the belt always rides up to the natural waist. Because...curves. Even in athletic young women. You can tie the belt over the hips but it won't stay there.

[Dmmetler]

1 hour ago, EKS said:

Because you cannot decide not to be a woman.  It is a fact of biology that cannot be changed regardless of hormone status, body modifications, or wishful thinking.

But that's not what these teens are thinking. What they see is that expanding gender roles isn't working (and don't have the life experience to realize just how much things HAVE changed). So, they're trying to change things. Not physical bodies, but that having a physically female body automatically means you're a woman. 

 

As I said, I don't think it will work. But maybe it will lead to less segregation by physical anatomy when it's not really needed. 

[Pam in CT]

re natural consequences when decades of efforts to "expand the boxes" don't work

54 minutes ago, Dmmetler said:

I honestly think that it's the next step-mostly because almost all the kids I know who are doing that are not putting themselves in a box, but taking themselves OUT of the male/female box....

...And honestly, I can see why. All our effort at broadening gender roles didn't work. Female bodied people still face more risks than male bodied people, get paid less, and get taken less seriously. Male bodied people still face a pretty significant set of societal expectations... Why would you want to be a gender non-conforming woman, when woman is still the operative word, if you can decide to NOT be a woman and get rid of it? Why be a man if you can be gender fluid and allowed to express yourself in ways men aren't allowed? ...

I don't think it will work, any more than prior efforts to expand the definition of male/female, but the more people in my life who define themselves this way, and the more I talk to them, the more I understand it.

 

9 minutes ago, EKS said:

Because you cannot decide not to be a woman.  It is a fact of biology that cannot be changed regardless of hormone status, body modifications, or wishful thinking.

 

 

Once upon a time, when I was a high school teenager, I took a college intro psych class in which I was introduced to both Freudian analysis, generally, and the construct of "penis envy," specifically.  And I was just a kid, wobbly in my powers of perception and articulation, and also extremely disposed toward teacher-pleasing, and not at all disposed to rocking boats.  But my instant (interior) response to my initial introduction of the concept was something like

Quote

so you're telling me that a house symbolizes the self and water symbolizes birth and umbrellas symbolize boy parts and suitcases symbolize girl parts and on and on and on... but women's "envy" is for the concrete physical part, and not the concrete benefits and privileges that accrue to those who possess the part? The vastly greater ability to participate in the political domain, the access to professions, the better pay, the freedom from cat-calls from strangers on the street, the fear and fact of rape, and on and on? Might it be possible that What Women Want is the *stuff* that goes with the body part rather than the part itself?

... and there's an element of this exchange that reminds me of that same dynamic, 40+ years ago around a construct that even then on its way to outmoded. 

If "gender" is the socialized/nurture side of all this -- all the stuff that is culturally understood to be "feminine" and "masculine" as opposed to what stems directly from the biologicall body parts... and if all those decades of feminism, like it or hate it, still left women mommy-tracked at 70 cents on the dollar/ blamed for their own sexual assault/ left without social supports for child or elder care; and still left men facing career consequences if they took family leave/ feeling constrained about expressing feelings/ boxed in wrt the range of hobbies/activities/dress based on social sanctions... if all those decades did not succeed in busting-- or at least expanding-- the "boxes" that the social construct of "gender" restrict us into... 

...then it shouldn't be surprising, that the pendulum is swinging back toward a (different) preoccupation with body parts. 

 

 

 

 

re brain patterns, linguistic patterns, and which frames which

14 minutes ago, maize said:

With regard to language:

I believe the number of languages without grammatical gender is actually much larger than the number of languages with. It's just that the languages most of us are more familiar with are in the Indo-European language family, descendants of a common ancestral language (which linguists call Proto-Indo-European) that happened to have three grammatical gender classes--masculine, feminine, and neuter. ...

There are also languages with different types of grammatical gender or noun classes; for example, some languages have "gender" or noun classes that class things as animate or inanimate, not male or female....

It appears that languages can be organized in a near infinite variety of ways.

I do see a general human proclivity towards classifying things. I believe this is the way our brains make sense of a very complex world.

Classifying humans according to sex is, evolutionarily speaking, probably pretty critical. Individuals need to be able to recognize quickly who is a potential mate, who might be a rival, who might be an ally, who might represent a risk. I think human brains will always make that classification. And as I have pointed out before, lack of grammatical gender differention in no way equate to lack of social distinction between the sexes. Language just is not a defining feature let alone driver of such distinctions. All human societies differentiate between males and females.

(definitely still churning on this, more musing than rebutting... but... while I can kinda-sorta follow the evolutionary external imperative for quick classification of ally v threat, and how that might track to sex, I'm not sure I can follow how that extends to a need or value in differentiating a mountain from a river, or associating either with constructs that tie, even just grammatically, to "masculine" and "feminine" pronouns / verb cases.  Inanimate v animate categorization actually seems more logical; and most living things actually do have something corresponding to biological sex.  And the comparatively rare languages like English whose only noun categories are singular versus plural sorta prove that any "needs" that such categorizations fill are... not determinative, KWIM?  English manages fine without any such distinctions, our only real grammar fail is the lack of a consistently accepted second person plural... )

 

I do believe language frames, as well as reflects, our thought patterns.  It's very, very hard to articulate a thought if there is no existing language available to put to it.  Brilliant innovative brave people sometimes pull it off, but the rest of us lag.  (OP to this particular thread, but: There was no language for "date rape" when I was young.  There was the stranger jumping out of the bush, or there was Your Own Damn Fault.  That was all that existed.  Consequences ensued.)

[marbel]

Reading this thread has brought to mind "gender reveal parties" which may or may not be passe now. There was one in my neighborhood last summer though I have not heard of any recently. I only knew about it because it involved revving car engines which produced huge clouds of pink smoke. 🙄

Really these should be called "sex reveal parties" but that sounds icky so no one is going to use that term.

I was born in 1956 and have always considered gender to be a grammatical term and generally misused when talking about people (though obviously that has changed/is changing; I am not setting up for a debate on the changing meanings of words). It has never been, for me, an equivalent term for sex. 

Years ago I had a friend who had a daughter and then much later, a son. She said she was determined that he would not be tied into stereotypical gender roles and was annoyed when people gave him "boy toys" such as trucks, though she did allow him to play with them. Once when I was at her house, he was playing with the trucks and making truck sounds. She looked at me and asked "How do they know to do that? He's never heard anyone do that!" I said it just seemed to come naturally to every boy I had ever known. She was so upset by this. I don't know if she actually had wanted another girl or what, but... it was so odd to me, That might have been the beginning of the end of our friendship, as shortly after that she ghosted me. I'd love to know how that boy grew up.
 

[SKL]

I don't understand the need to "expand" any boxes.  You can be a boy, and separately like dolls, and separately wear your hear long.  Like, I'm a woman, and I wear jeans.  I'm not "the kind of woman who wears jeans."

I really thought that was the whole point of so many things that were said and done in the 20th century.

I agree that young people may be hampered by the fact that they don't understand how things used to be when I was a child.  When I thought "I wish I were a boy," it was because girls had to wear dresses and weren't allowed to climb playground equipment because our underwear would show.  It was because girls weren't allowed to take martial arts classes or go shooting with their dads.  Girls were supposed to keep quiet and sit a certain way, and after a certain age, wear lipstick.  Girls had to take "home ec" while boys took "shop."  Girls had two professional careers to choose from - nursing and teaching.

What a difference for today's girls (and boys), and how glad we should be.  And yet.  Where did we go wrong?

[SKL]

Re seeing xy as men regardless of styles they choose ....  I spend a fair amount of time enjoying music on youtube, and certain male artists are what people like to call "androgynous" in style, and sometimes it even seems like they are trying to look like females.  (Nothing new about that either.)  Yet I can't not see them as men.  Pretty men, sure, but men.  Sometimes awkward men, but still men.

[KSera]

36 minutes ago, Pam in CT said:

Quote

so you're telling me that a house symbolizes the self and water symbolizes birth and umbrellas symbolize boy parts and suitcases symbolize girl parts and on and on and on... but women's "envy" is for the concrete physical part, and not the concrete benefits and privileges that accrue to those who possess the part? The vastly greater ability to participate in the political domain, the access to professions, the better pay, the freedom from cat-calls from strangers on the street, the fear and fact of rape, and on and on? Might it be possible that What Women Want is the *stuff* that goes with the body part rather than the part itself?

 

This really resonates based on discussions with my nb kid. They don’t want the other parts, they want an absence of parts that draw the above kind of attention and want to not be classified either way. But, if they are going to have someone make a mistake, they much prefer it to be in the direction of being called male. There is a definite male>female dynamic. Being female is seen as having many drawbacks that males don’t contend with. 

[maize]

1 hour ago, Pam in CT said:

 

re brain patterns, linguistic patterns, and which frames which

(definitely still churning on this, more musing than rebutting... but... while I can kinda-sorta follow the evolutionary external imperative for quick classification of ally v threat, and how that might track to sex, I'm not sure I can follow how that extends to a need or value in differentiating a mountain from a river, or associating either with constructs that tie, even just grammatically, to "masculine" and "feminine" pronouns / verb cases.  

I don't think that differentiating between male and female humans does extend to a need for grammatical gender.

 

I think we differentiate male from female regardless of how our grammar works.

 

 

[Rosie_0801]

47 minutes ago, SKL said:

What a difference for today's girls (and boys), and how glad we should be.  And yet.  Where did we go wrong?

In places I suspect have nothing to do with sex or gender. I wrote an essay on fashionable diseases back in my uni days, and that phenomenon was about control. If you can't control your environment, you control your body. Or, as we're seeing now, language.

[Scarlett]

16 hours ago, LucyStoner said:

.  

Our best couple friends have two daughters and the mom in that couple remembers that she gave my older son and her older daughter some dinosaurs to play with when they were really small and hadn't yet seen any movies or TV.  My son immediately started pretending the dinosaurs were blowing things up.  Her daughter immediately started mothering her dinosaurs like they were baby dolls.  

This reminds me of my strict 'no guns of any kind' policy with ds.  One day I observed him playing in the back yard....he had a stick pretending to shoot everything in his path.

[Scarlett]

1 hour ago, marbel said:

Reading this thread has brought to mind "gender reveal parties" which may or may not be passe now. There was one in my neighborhood last summer though I have not heard of any recently. I only knew about it because it involved revving car engines which produced huge clouds of pink smoke. 🙄

Really these should be called "sex reveal parties" but that sounds icky so no one is going to use that term.

I was born in 1956 and have always considered gender to be a grammatical term and generally misused when talking about people (though obviously that has changed/is changing; I am not setting up for a debate on the changing meanings of words). It has never been, for me, an equivalent term for sex. 

Years ago I had a friend who had a daughter and then much later, a son. She said she was determined that he would not be tied into stereotypical gender roles and was annoyed when people gave him "boy toys" such as trucks, though she did allow him to play with them. Once when I was at her house, he was playing with the trucks and making truck sounds. She looked at me and asked "How do they know to do that? He's never heard anyone do that!" I said it just seemed to come naturally to every boy I had ever known. She was so upset by this. I don't know if she actually had wanted another girl or what, but... it was so odd to me, That might have been the beginning of the end of our friendship, as shortly after that she ghosted me. I'd love to know how that boy grew up.
 

Look him up on FB!

[regentrude]

On the original question:
For me, gender refers to an innate sense of identity that, apparently, for some people exists, for some does or does not coincide with biological sex, and that some people are lacking altogether. I hear from many women that they have a strong inner sense of womanhood that makes them feel a kinship with other women, feel drawn to groups consisting of other women, women-only spaces, relate better to women etc.  I think we can all agree that sensation exists, at least in some people. Whatever these women perceive would be what I'd consider "gender". 

I myself lack this sensation completely. I feel no kinship based on shared anatomy and have always felt more at ease among groups of men. Does that mean I am deficient? 

There are persons for whom this internal sense makes them identify with persons of the opposite sex. Question for the people who deny the concept of gender: are you saying this is a mental illness? Would then be the lack of a gender sensation also be pathological?
Since I don't feel a sense of gender identity, I have no idea what it feels like when your gender identity does not agree with your sex. But I know there are people who feel this way. I see no reason to doubt their experience. 

Edited June 21, 2021 by regentrude

[Matryoshka]

35 minutes ago, maize said:

I don't think that differentiating between male and female humans does extend to a need for grammatical gender.

I think we differentiate male from female regardless of how our grammar works.

In German, because nouns have gender that is disconnected from physical sex, babies and children of either sex as well as all girls and young women have always been referred to with the neutral pronoun "it".  Yes, girls and young women are neuter gendered nouns.

[regentrude]

8 minutes ago, Matryoshka said:

In German, because nouns have gender that is disconnected from physical sex, babies and children of either sex as well as all girls and young women have always been referred to with the neutral pronoun "it".  Yes, girls and young women are neuter gendered nouns.

As Mark Twain states: "In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has. Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and what callous disrespect for the girl."

Btw, the noun for young boy is male.

Edited June 21, 2021 by regentrude

[Pam in CT]

re language reflecting, vs framing, human experience

4 minutes ago, Matryoshka said:

In German, because nouns have gender that is disconnected from physical sex, babies and children of either sex as well as all girls and young women have always been referred to with the neutral pronoun "it".  Yes, girls and young women are neuter gendered nouns.

That is a good example of what I see as language reflecting a hopefully-historical dominant cultural judgment; and also framing current lived experience.

 

 

{Signed,

a former young person whose early interior dialogue at "we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal...."

Quote

I'm not convinced that y'all really meant "all," and I'm not convinced that y'all really meant "equal"... but what I DO know is, you definitely DID mean MEN...

And the breezy fuggaboutit dismissals along the lines of "of COURSE male language is universal language, you thin-skinned femiNazi" really didn't defuse that uneasiness. On the contrary, it left me doubting that that exclusionary history was actually all in the past.]

[regentrude]

1 minute ago, Pam in CT said:

a former young person whose early interior dialogue at "we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal...."

And the breezy fuggaboutit dismissals along the lines of "of COURSE male language is universal language, you thin-skinned femiNazi" really didn't defuse that uneasiness. On the contrary, it left me doubting that that exclusionary history was actually all in the past.]

Amen. 
Language is powerful. Gendered language that uses the male as the default is perpetuating a power imbalance.
I am glad that things are changing in this respect. The English language has it much easier than the German. And both have it easier than languages where even the verb has to be gendered depending on the subject, like Russian. 

[Dmmetler]

I was amazed at how comfortable and relaxed I felt, as an almost 50 yr old who never had any desire to be in an all female space, when visiting a Women's college. There was just this feeling of belonging and relaxing that I hadn't been aware I was missing. And the students seemed just so comfortable in their skin. It was like I could put down a burden that I had never fully been aware I Was carrying. And the alumni we met (including women I never knew attended a women's college until they commented on L's college choice) seem to have an extra air of confidence even years later. 

 

I've also seen that same phenomenon on HBCU campuses, where the same kids who we took on a tour of a PWI who were nervous and anxious and questioning whether college was right for them just relaxed once we were on the HBCU campus. And alumni of HBCUs seem to carry that confidence with them. 

 

I don't know that the choice to prefer women centered space is so much a clear identification with the gender as that it is, honestly, a chance to replace "woman" as a derivative form of "man" with "person". 

 

[lewelma]

5 hours ago, KSera said:

How does this look for them?

Recent scholarship has started to demonstrate that the 'civilising' goals of the missionaries changed attitudes towards sex and gender. The traditional word is takatapui, which was an intimate partner of the same sex, and there is growing evidence of some ability for people to live outside the male/female dichotomy. Academics have been working through both the Maori oral histories and Western Pakeha diaries to reconstruct traditional attitudes that were purposely erased by the missionaries around 1820 to 1860. 

[maize]

12 minutes ago, Pam in CT said:

re language reflecting, vs framing, human experience

That is a good example of what I see as language reflecting a hopefully-historical dominant cultural judgment; and also framing current lived experience.

 

Or...it just reflects the randomness of linguistic evolution.

The German word for girl derives from the older word Magd, related to our English word maid; that word was feminine. But when the suffix -chen was attached and the word turned into Mädchen, the word became neuter because all words ending in the suffix -chen are neuter. 

It's about grammar, not sex, and not about a cultural judgment.

[Pam in CT]

re gender as meaning an interior sense of identity and affiliation (as opposed to an externally imposed set of social expectations)

45 minutes ago, regentrude said:

On the original question:
For me, gender refers to an innate sense of identity that, apparently, for some people exists, for some does or does not coincide with biological sex, and that some people are lacking altogether. I hear from many women that they have a strong inner sense of womanhood that makes them feel a kinship with other women, feel drawn to groups consisting of other women, women-only spaces, relate better to women etc.  I think we can all agree that sensation exists, at least in some people. Whatever these women perceive would be what I'd consider "gender". 

I myself lack this sensation completely. I feel no kinship based on shared anatomy and have always felt more at ease among groups of men. Does that mean I am deficient? 

There are persons for whom this internal sense makes them identify with persons of the opposite sex. Question for the people who deny the concept of gender: are you saying this is a mental illness? Would then be the lack of a gender sensation also be pathological?
Since I don't feel a sense of gender identity, I have no idea what it feels like when your gender identity does not agree with your sex. But I know there are people who feel this way. I see no reason to doubt their experience. 

That is interesting.

I have always felt a very strong pull towards women's spaces; and given a choice in mixed company among strangers (say, a conference where I don't know anybody) I virtually always plonk myself down beside, or initiate conversation with, a woman > a man.  On average, I find women to be better, more thoughtful, more reciprocal, more interesting conversationalists.  (Of course there are exceptionally engaging men, and the occasional female clunker, #NotAllConferenceParticipants , but median to median, this finding largely holds for me.... though I'm not going to physics conferences and there may well be selection issues going on...)

My eldest wanted to go to an all-female boarding school. I was *baffled* by this choice, which was wholly hers, at the time... but have since drunk the Kool-Aid. It's not for everyone, but for those to whom it calls... it really can be transformative.

 

Anyway, I've always experienced the draw to/ affinity with/ relief in women's spaces as more around being able to put the game face down and FOCUS, more like I understand the HBCU experience to be. 

I choose such spaces; whereas for me, "gender" is about expectations that are thrust upon me whether they fit or not, whether I like them or not.

 

[lauraw4321]

2 hours ago, maize said:

I remember attending a martial arts tournament a couple of years ago. I was watching the teen forms competition, in this particular tournament not split into male and female divisions. The kids were all dressed in unisex costumes and performing similar routines. Some boys had long hair and some girls had short. There were really none of the usual obvious social/cultural markers (hairstyle, dress, makeup...) to differentiate male and female.

And yet as each competitor came on stage I noticed that I was immediately classifying them as male or female. I couldn't avoid doing it. My brain couldn't just see "a human'--it had to classify that human as male or female. I don't know if my split second classifications were 100% accurate, I wasn't right up by the stage and had no way to verify--but I'm willing to bet I was 99% accurate. 

One pretty consistent difference I did notice: identical outfits don't actually fit male and female bodies the same way. In martial arts, one way this plays out is that males tend to wear their belts lower, more over the hips, while in females the belt always rides up to the natural waist. Because...curves. Even in athletic young women. You can tie the belt over the hips but it won't stay there.

This is totally normal human behavior.  It's super ingrained in us because for 99.99% of human history, being able to identify the sex of a person was a very important survival skill.  Is this a person who I can reproduce with? So our minds "see" things that we don't consciously see.  I recall watching some random YT video and thinking, this person was born male.  That was not relevant to what they were doing/discussing, but my brain noticed it immediately.  The person later confirmed they had been born male. I can't begin to tell you what made me recognize their sex. 

[Matryoshka]

3 minutes ago, maize said:

Or...it just reflects the randomness of linguistic evolution.

The German word for girl derives from the older word Magd, related to our English word maid; that word was feminine. But when the suffix -chen was attached and the word turned into Mädchen, the word became neuter because all words ending in the suffix -chen are neuter. 

It's about grammar, not sex, and not about a cultural judgment.

While that does explain "Mädchen" and "Fräulein" (-lein is another German diminutive ending), it does not explain the weirdness of "das Weib" - which is admittedly not a commonly used word these days, but does mean just plain "Woman" with no diminutive.

I have been pondering, since it has always been normal to refer to swaths of humanity with the word 'it' in German, unlike in English, where it's weird since it tends to imply an inanimate object, if the nonbinary/genderqueer Germans are going with 'es' as a pronoun, or ??  There's really no reason to use the plural for an indeterminate singular human like there is in English.  I haven't lived in Germany for years and am not hip to whatever new lingo is being adopted.  I do know in some Spanish-speaking countries they're advocating a neutral 'e' ending rather than 'a' or 'o' ('x', as in Latinx, is an American thing and annoys most Spanish speakers who prefer something that actually works in their language to something an English speaker thought looked cool).

 

[lewelma]

I hope this isn't too far off topic, but I was wondering.... If today's youth can choose their gender, can they also choose their race?