How do you define gender?

[regentrude]

12 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.

Not so sure. Why does the girl get the diminutive term, whereas the forms for boy don't? I do believe that this mirrors different societal attitudes towards girls vs boys.

[Matryoshka]

5 minutes ago, regentrude said:

Not so sure. Why does the girl get the diminutive term, whereas the forms for boy don't? I do believe that this mirrors different societal attitudes towards girls vs boys.

LOL, can you imagine if you called a young man a "Männchen" or "Männlein"?

Edited June 21, 2021 by Matryoshka

[lewelma]

2 minutes ago, Matryoshka said:

LOL, can you imagine if you called a young man a "Männchen" or "Männlein"?

It is like Ruthie or Katie, but you don't hear Markie or Steveie. 

I remember once during my PhD years that I had a major falling out with my academic advisor and switched schools.  He actually published a paper that I did half of the research for and wrote the original draft, with only his name. So about a year after I left, he finds me at my poster at a conference, walks up to me, and says 'Ruthie!'. I was so thunderstruck. Like, why would you call me Ruthie?!?!?! Somehow it was a way to put me in my place as he had never called me that before, and neither has anyone else. Language counts for sure.

[regentrude]

22 minutes ago, Pam in CT said:

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...)...

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. 

Interesting, thanks for sharing. My experience is exactly the opposite. Even in middle school, I prefered playing soccer and wrestlig with the guys to the gossippy way the girls' cliques operated. When I started rock climbing, I was the only girl in our group. I majored in a male dominated field in college. My young adult years were spent almost exclusively in male company and I loved it. I just could be myself. No drama. Maybe I was just lucky with the guys in my circle. Nobody ever hit on me or expected me to be "girlish". No drama, no walking on eggshells. With the guys, I could just be  person and they were cool with it. (I did get catapulted into women dominated circles through motherhood and homeschooling)
I have found the men in my acquaintance - whether I met them through physics, rock climbing, poetry, or music  - interesting conversationalists. I don't think men or women are intrinsically better or worse at talking; you just have to have things in common.

ETA: Upon rereading, I realize that I wrote "no drama" twice. I am not going back to edit that out, because I think this is an important message from my subconscious: it was, for my personal experience, the most defining difference between female and male groups.
Please note that I am writing about MY personal experience here and am not claiming men never have drama; that would, of course, be absurd. But I found women to have a much higher level of it.

Edited June 21, 2021 by regentrude

[lauraw4321]

13 minutes ago, lewelma said:

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?

I've told this story before, so I'll tell it again. My grandfather (a white man) would ALWAYS select that he was Black because he hoped it would mess up statistics. If pressed, he'd say "how do you know I'm not Black" and whomever would drop it. (He worked for the federal government so the question came up fairly frequently). The problem of the bad actor is difficult to address if everything is 100% subjective. 

[regentrude]

11 minutes ago, Matryoshka said:

LOL, can you imagine if you called a young man a "Männchen" or "Männlein"?

Oh my. It would clearly signal that you don't take them seriously as a fully valid human and. But hey, that's how girls were viewed. So I don't think for a moment this is a linguistic coincidence without cultural reason

[lewelma]

1 minute ago, lauraw4321 said:

The problem of the bad actor is difficult to address if everything is 100% subjective. 

True. We have been discussing the idea that physical attributes should not define you. And that the youth of today do not believe that previous generations were successful in removing the gender stereotypes, so they are rejecting the connection between gender and sex. I'm curious why this isn't happening with race also. 

[Matryoshka]

8 minutes ago, lewelma said:

It is like Ruthie or Katie, but you don't hear Markie or Steveie. 

I remember once during my PhD years that I had a major falling out with my academic advisor and switched schools.  He actually published a paper that I did half of the research for and wrote the original draft, with only his name. So about a year after I left, he finds me at my poster at a conference, walks up to me, and says 'Ruthie!'. I was so thunderstruck. Like, why would you call me Ruthie?!?!?! Somehow it was a way to put me in my place as he had never called me that before, and neither has anyone else. Language counts for sure.

Well, that doesn't hold so true here... Stevie Wonder, Jimmy Fallon, Kimmel, and Carter, Johnny Carson and Cash, Billy the Kid,...  boys' names get diminutized all the time, and while most men lose it (at least outside family) upon reaching adulthood, that's obviously far from universal.

Edited June 21, 2021 by Matryoshka

[Pam in CT]

re  girls' spaces, vs women's spaces, and DRAMA

37 minutes ago, regentrude said:

Interesting, thanks for sharing. My experience is exactly the opposite. Even in middle school, I prefered playing soccer and wrestlig with the guys to the gossippy way the girls' cliques operated. When I started rock climbing, I was the only girl in our group. I majored in a male dominated field in college. My young adult years were spent almost exclusively in male company and I loved it. I just could be myself. No drama. Maybe I was just lucky with the guys in my circle. Nobody ever hit on me or expected me to be "girlish". No drama, no walking on eggshells. With the guys, I could just be  person and they were cool with it. (I did get catapulted into women dominated circles through motherhood and homeschooling)
I have found the men in my acquaintance - whether I met them through physics, rock climbing, poetry, or music  - interesting conversationalists. I don't think men or women are intrinsically better or worse at talking; you just have to have things in common.

ETA: Upon rereading, I realize that I wrote "no drama" twice. I am not going back to edit that out, because I think this is an important message from my subconscious: it was, for my personal experience, the most defining difference between female and male groups.

Please note that I am writing about MY personal experience here and am not claiming men never have drama; that would, of course, be absurd. But I found women to have a much higher level of it.

I hear you. When I actually was in middle & high school, drama definitely WAS a salient and wearying element of girls' spaces. Those memories were among the reasons I was so baffled by the determination of my eldest to attend an all-female school.

By college, though, I was able to find women's spaces that were mercifully free of middle-school-girl-drama, AND sexual tension, AND the too-common overbearing habits of mansplainin' #NotAllMen .  And I discovered that [IME] book groups delved deeper if all or nearly all the members were female, conversations around different faith traditions were vastly more insightful and less contentious in all-female contexts, and that women were (talking averages here, not individuals) far more likely actually to have *read* the legislative bill they were advocating for or against than the men.

And by *this* point in my life, my force field for repelling Drama is pretty well honed.

[maize]

1 hour ago, Matryoshka said:

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.

Weib, and its English cognate wife, are interesting etymologically. We don't actually know where they come from.

Here's one linguist's theory as to why the word, going back as far as we know it, is neuter:

https://blog.oup.com/2011/10/wife/

[Melissa Louise]

3 hours ago, Dmmetler said:

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. 

I can't think of any segregation by physical anatomy that is done 'just because'. Well, I can, but it's rare (exclusive men's clubs - teens don't have these in mind).

Generally, in the rare cases it happens (prisons, changing rooms etc), it's because one group of persons with particular anatomy, as a class, commit the vast majority of violent sexual crimes. And as we can't tell the good guys from the violent ones just by looking, we reduce risk by excluding males in places where females are particularly vulnerable. 

In the case of sport, it's because undergoing a make puberty confers an unchangeable advantage 

And that's it. We keep a minimal amount of segregation for safety and fairness. 

Teens are hypocrites on this one. Near me, it was an outrage against human rights that the local women's baths were women-only - much protest, the baths are now mixed sex. 

But an exclusive men's club in the same city, which just voted to stay men only - crickets. 

I'm a bit over worship of youth, tbh. 

Youth are youth; they make mistakes, they see things without nuance; they lack context and experience; their passions often over-,ride them. As it was, so it shall always be. 

They are engaged in regressive politics ATM, imo. I feel no need to agree with them because they are young. 

[maize]

1 hour ago, regentrude said:

Not so sure. Why does the girl get the diminutive term, whereas the forms for boy don't? I do believe that this mirrors different societal attitudes towards girls vs boys.

I do think that diminutives in many cultures are more commonly used for women. 

And that societal attitudes are reflected in that fact.

I just don't think the grammatical gender of words with particular suffixes is itself a reflection of societal attitudes. 

[Melissa Louise]

3 hours ago, SKL said:

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.

I grew up on a diet of Prince and David Bowie. The prettiest men you ever saw. Bowie in drag looks female, not just pretty. Still men. Very much men! Extremely pretty. 

[Melissa Louise]

3 hours ago, KSera said:

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. 

It's such an individualistic way of dealing, though ( not your kids specifically). To me, if female comes with such disadvantages, you go out and fight.

Reclaim the Night, trying to get abortion in my state struck off as a criminal offence, maternity leave protests, working/volunteering for Rape Crisis...these are things we DID when outraged at the female penalty. 

These are things we're still doing! (Along with a tiny minority of our Zoomer sisters). We don't just say 'oh well, I'll step out of female, then it's not my problem!' 

 

 

[LMD]

4 hours ago, Dmmetler said:

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. 

Another link, bouncing off this idea (not necessarily for you, Dmmetler, just putting it out there) - Jane Clare Jones, the radical notion that women are people:  https://janeclarejones.com/2019/09/01/the-radical-notion-that-women-are-people/

[LMD]

3 hours ago, Rosie_0801 said:

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.

Yes, and eating disorders seem to be a common comorbidity amongst those young people - especially girls, juvenile human females, presenting at gender clinics (there's that term gender again!)

 

2 hours ago, lewelma said:

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?

Well, apparently not if you're female (see Rachel Dolezal, discussing that comparison is what got Rebecca Tuvel and Hypatia in a whole lot of trouble), but if you're male you might yet be able to get away with it (see Gwen Benaway in Canada)

[LMD]

3 hours 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. 

To the bolded - I don't exactly 'deny the concept of gender.' For some people, the idea of a gender identity is very real and important to them. What I deny is gender, or gender identity, having supreme importance over the material reality of sexed, mammalian bodies. 

For me, it's like treating people as souls in an irrelevant shell - unrealistic. And, unscientific - we are our bodies, our brain is a part of our body. We may be more than JUST our body, but we are not, NOT our body - at the very least, we certainly are our bodies in how other's perceive and interact with us.

And, no matter what linguistic sorcery or medical manipulation we invoke, the shell still is. And it still belongs to a sex class. 

[regentrude]

4 minutes ago, LMD said:

To the bolded - I don't exactly 'deny the concept of gender.' For some people, the idea of a gender identity is very real and important to them. What I deny is gender, or gender identity, having supreme importance over the material reality of sexed, mammalian bodies. 

For me, it's like treating people as souls in an irrelevant shell - unrealistic. And, unscientific - we are our bodies, our brain is a part of our body. We may be more than JUST our body, but we are not, NOT our body - at the very least, we certainly are our bodies in how other's perceive and interact with us.

And, no matter what linguistic sorcery or medical manipulation we invoke, the shell still is. And it still belongs to a sex class. 

The bolded, to me, is exactly why someone would want to alter their body since we cannot escape being categorized based on a few select characteristics related to biological sex. And if your brain tells you that you don't feel like this category as which they see you, and the society is such that every  interaction is influenced by our external shape, then you have the conflict. And that's real, IMO, not just a delusion.

[Melissa Louise]

5 minutes ago, regentrude said:

The bolded, to me, is exactly why someone would want to alter their body since we cannot escape being categorized based on a few select characteristics related to biological sex. And if your brain tells you that you don't feel like this category as which they see you, and the society is such that every  interaction is influenced by our external shape, then you have the conflict. And that's real, IMO, not just a delusion.

The feeling and distress is real. 

Adults have a right to alter their bodies to deal with this distress, if nothing else helps. 

It's still sexist, imo, to describe that as 'living as a woman' as if there is an essential way of being a woman independent of bio sex. There isn't. 

 

 

 

 

[LMD]

Sure, I never said it was a delusion.

Should we then, in law, make reference to self-referenced Gender (as yet, legally undefined) as the way to make population decisions, instead of sex class?

My example above was prisons. Do we need a noun for the adult of our species of the sex class capable of gestating, birthing and lactating? Because, I think, knowing who can impregnate and who can be impregnated is certainly one big issue in deciding who to lock in a cage with whom. But this is already happening. But predictably, it's only happening one way (male rapists in women's prisons) - talk about treating women as sub-human...

 

I'm not sure I'm understanding this sentence correctly "since we cannot escape being categorized based on a few select characteristics related to biological sex."

What do you mean by being categorized, do you mean, people recognize your sex (because I'd argue that's way more than a few select characteristics), or do you mean people recognizing your sex and then treating you according to the sex stereotypes (feminist meaning of 'gender') that they assume MUST go with your sex class? 

[SKL]

2 hours ago, Matryoshka said:

Well, that doesn't hold so true here... Stevie Wonder, Jimmy Fallon, Kimmel, and Carter, Johnny Carson and Cash, Billy the Kid,...  boys' names get diminutized all the time, and while most men lose it (at least outside family) upon reaching adulthood, that's obviously far from universal.

Agreed, and many girls' names don't lend themselves to the diminutive form either.

I like the cute suffixes - chen, lein, ushka, chan, etc.  I see nothing wrong with terms of endearment.  Guess we can agree to disagree.

[YaelAldrich]

3 hours ago, Dmmetler said:

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". 

 

That is interesting as I attended a women's college my freshman year (92-93) and I hated the feeling of being around only females. It drove me nuts and I gravitated to the few other not-girly women there.  I grew up fixing cars with my dad and watching and playing sports (coed not single sex). My best friends were and are men. I wore dresses and feminine clothing to church (and now because my religion dictates it), and only gravitated to "sexy" but not usually feminine girl clothing as I realized it was another way to hang out with guys. I didn't like pink until my 30s and frills will never be my thing. I fear that I would have been pushed toward trans identity if I'd grown up now. I'm firmly a woman though. I've never felt like I was a man. I'm just a not a girly woman. But I have a much more girly daughter (although she'll outshoot many boys her age). I honestly don't know how to do girly with her.

[SKL]

12 minutes ago, LMD said:

...

 

I'm not sure I'm understanding this sentence correctly "since we cannot escape being categorized based on a few select characteristics related to biological sex."

What do you mean by being categorized, do you mean, people recognize your sex (because I'd argue that's way more than a few select characteristics), or do you mean people recognizing your sex and then treating you according to the sex stereotypes (feminist meaning of 'gender') that they assume MUST go with your sex class? 

Yeah, I mean what is is.  I mean if my kids' eyes are dark, they are dark.  It's not me trying to categorize them as dark.  If dark exists, then my kids' eyes are dark.  (Maybe one could argue that dark is not a real thing, but I think it is.)

It isn't important to categorize my kids as being dark-eyed.  It really has no relevance at all, except maybe to some potential partner who thinks dark eyes are purty.  But that doesn't mean they aren't factually dark-eyed.

But then, we don't have a checkbox on every application form demanding to know whether a person has dark eyes or not.  Nor should we. 

Wonder if some of this discomfort would go away if we stopped asking for sex, "gender," "race," "ethnicity," etc. etc. 10 times a day??  I bring this peeve up from time to time.  It shouldn't be asked unless it is objectively relevant.  It's no wonder people think boxes are more relevant than they are.

[LucyStoner]

5 hours ago, regentrude said:

 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. 

I don’t have an internal sense of a gendered identity, though I do recall feeling distress about being a girl vs. a boy.  I don’t deny that some people do have a strong internal sense of gender but I think it’s at least partially a function of how they view the world.  For people with so much dysphoria with their sexed body that they need to medically transition, gender dysphoria needs to be a recognized medical condition or else we can hardly expect medical insurance to cover it.  One of my concerns about the expanding umbrella of trans is that it will delegitimize the insurance coverage that trans people like my brother rely on.
 

ETA- I have a very feminine presenting female friend who abruptly started claiming to be trans-masc non-binary.  We were sitting at a restaurant bar catching up over drinks and the bartender said something innocently like “what can I get for you ladies”.  My friend was really upset that he misgendered them.  I was a bit bemused because I don’t think it’s reasonable for a female person to wear a dress, purple scarf, makeup and carry a purse and then kevetch that a working class person just going about their shift looking for tips surmises that someone is female. Given that this friend also claims to be poor (but isn’t) and autistic (but really, REALLY isn’t) I’ll admit it feels a bit like my friend is larping as a marginalized person.  My brother gets very frustrated with people like my friend and calls them heteroqueers.  I know my friend has mental health challenges that they often have tried to explain with self dx of this or that. One thing I have heard my brother and other trans people say is that he changed his presentation to be more comfortable moving about the world- he didn’t expect the world to entirely change for his comfort.  I think that the primacy of individual identity over social and family identity is a very western value.  If I, based on my lack of internal sense of gender and my decidedly non-gender conforming personality opted to identify as non-binary or gender queer, I don’t think that my familial ties change.  I am a wife, mother, aunt and sister to many other people.  I don’t actually think that changes if my gender identity changes.  

Edited June 22, 2021 by LucyStoner

[SKL]

As for comfort in all-female settings ... I have always gravitated more toward the male side of the room, but that doesn't mean I'm a guy (or non-binary)!  I do dislike the average level of drama found among females.  So I'm a woman who also dislikes excess drama.  Not a guy.

One of my daughters really dislikes all-girl activities.  She has voiced it many times over the years - co-ed activities, please!  She is a girl.  A girl who happens to enjoy mixed company.

[Melissa Louise]

I don't particularly like groups of either sex. Or mixed. I'm misanthropic. 

But if I had the misfortune to go to prison, I'd prefer a single sex environment. 

 

[Dmmetler]

2 hours ago, Melissa Louise said:

I can't think of any segregation by physical anatomy that is done 'just because'. Well, I can, but it's rare (exclusive men's clubs - teens don't have these in mind).

Generally, in the rare cases it happens (prisons, changing rooms etc), it's because one group of persons with particular anatomy, as a class, commit the vast majority of violent sexual crimes. And as we can't tell the good guys from the violent ones just by looking, we reduce risk by excluding males in places where females are particularly vulnerable. 

In the case of sport, it's because undergoing a make puberty confers an unchangeable advantage 

And that's it. We keep a minimal amount of segregation for safety and fairness. 

Teens are hypocrites on this one. Near me, it was an outrage against human rights that the local women's baths were women-only - much protest, the baths are now mixed sex. 

But an exclusive men's club in the same city, which just voted to stay men only - crickets. 

I'm a bit over worship of youth, tbh. 

Youth are youth; they make mistakes, they see things without nuance; they lack context and experience; their passions often over-,ride them. As it was, so it shall always be. 

They are engaged in regressive politics ATM, imo. I feel no need to agree with them because they are young. 

You've never seen girls and boys lining up separately at school? Or lining up/seating boy, girl, boy, girl? Separate academic awards? Teams for boys or girls in sports BEFORE puberty? Maybe that's less common in Australia, but in the US, kids are definitely separated and defined by their physical anatomy for settings other than changing rooms and prisons, for sports before it becomes relevant (although I would argue that it makes more sense to divide by skill (and for some sports, weight) over gender, particularly for recreational and school teams), and for basically everything under the sun.  Heck, a friend of mine just posted high school grad pictures for her fraternal twins-in two different colors of gowns, assigned based on gender. Why should a girl with red hair have to wear orange that looks absolutely horrid with her complexion when her brother gets to wear blue that is actually a good color on him? There is absolutely no reason, if they wanted two colors of gowns, that the kids couldn't pick which one they wanted!

 

I didn't say I agreed, or that I think, as a group, we should adopt it. And I doubt seriously most of the female bodied teens I know who identify as NB wouldn't identify as female pretty quickly if they were going to be locked up with other people! I said that I understand, because while female roles and opportunities have gotten far better in MY lifetime, a 14-15 yr old hasn't really seen that. If anything, they've seen things seem to become MORE conservative in the last few years. 

 

Edited June 22, 2021 by Dmmetler

[Melissa Louise]

27 minutes ago, Dmmetler said:

You've never seen girls and boys lining up separately at school? Or lining up/seating boy, girl, boy, girl? Separate academic awards? Teams for boys or girls in sports BEFORE puberty? Maybe that's less common in Australia, but in the US, kids are definitely separated and defined by their physical anatomy for settings other than changing rooms and prisons, for sports before it becomes relevant (although I would argue that it makes more sense to divide by skill (and for some sports, weight) over gender, particularly for recreational and school teams), and for basically everything under the sun.  Heck, a friend of mine just posted high school grad pictures for her fraternal twins-in two different colors of gowns, assigned based on gender. Why should a girl with red hair have to wear orange that looks absolutely horrid with her complexion when her brother gets to wear blue that is actually a good color on him? There is absolutely no reason, if they wanted two colors of gowns, that the kids couldn't pick which one they wanted!

 

I didn't say I agreed, or that I think, as a group, we should adopt it. And I doubt seriously most of the female bodied teens I know who identify as NB wouldn't identify as female pretty quickly if they were going to be locked up with other people! I said that I understand, because while female roles and opportunities have gotten far better in MY lifetime, a 14-15 yr old hasn't really seen that. If anything, they've seen things seem to become MORE conservative in the last few years. 

 

Kids line up by sex, but only because it's a quick, convenient way of dividing a large group in half. It doesn't have meaning. 

Assigning colour by sex is just weird. 

 

 

[bolt.]

7 minutes ago, Melissa Louise said:

Kids line up by sex, but only because it's a quick, convenient way of dividing a large group in half. It doesn't have meaning. 

I think it does have meaning. It means, "This is a primary characteristic that matters about you. It matters to your school. It matters more than any other characteristic by which you could be divided into groups." It also means, "These are the people you belong with; they are the ones who are similar to you. This is your crew."

If it was equally 'quick and convenient' to divide a large group in half by race, would that be equally meaningless?

[SKL]

13 minutes ago, Melissa Louise said:

Kids line up by sex, but only because it's a quick, convenient way of dividing a large group in half. It doesn't have meaning. 

Assigning colour by sex is just weird.

Assigning grad gown color by sex is also a simple way to have approximately half of the kids in each color.

We had white for girls and red for boys at my high school graduation in 1983.  Having to wear white wasn't even on the radar of things to be annoyed about back then.  I had seen and participated in many more important changes in my lifetime, even then.  Besides, it's obviously just for photos / big picture aesthetics.  We wear the gown for maybe an hour of our lives.  It's not like my diploma meant something different from my brother's diploma.

I don't know if they still do the girl/boy colors for graduations etc.  So far, my kids' events of that nature have all used just one color.

As for pre-puberty sports, there are still differences between boys' and girls' abilities and how they play before they are in puberty.  For example, pre-pubescent boy runners are significantly faster than pre-pubescent girl runners on average.  Also, since sports eventually get separated and the methods and rules are not identical, it makes sense to start learning the way they will eventually need to play.  Though, there are usually co-ed options if it matters to some people.

Edited June 22, 2021 by SKL

[Melissa Louise]

1 minute ago, bolt. said:

I think it does have meaning. It means, "This is a primary characteristic that matters about you. It matters to your school. It matters more than any other characteristic by which you could be divided into groups." It also means, "These are the people you belong with; they are the ones who are similar to you. This is your crew."

If it was equally 'quick and convenient' to divide a large group in half by race, would that be equally meaningless?

It does matter, intrinsically, because biological sex differences are many and real, in a a way racial differences aren't, but when you want to split a group in half to walk to the hall in two lines, or whatever, sex is a proxy for quick/easy. 

[bolt.]

Just now, Melissa Louise said:

...when you want to split a group in half to walk to the hall in two lines, or whatever, sex is a proxy for quick/easy. 

I'm just saying that the additional implications make sex (or gender) a terrible proxy for quick/easy groupings -- especially with impressionable children. How hard is it to make a green team and a yellow team to use for a school year?

We know it's full of implications in social contexts with adults. When was the last time you saw an adult group quickly and easily split in half by 'men' and 'women' just for convenience in a professional context?

[SKL]

2 minutes ago, bolt. said:

I'm just saying that the additional implications make sex (or gender) a terrible proxy for quick/easy groupings -- especially with impressionable children. How hard is it to make a green team and a yellow team to use for a school year?

We know it's full of implications in social contexts with adults. When was the last time you saw an adult group quickly and easily split in half by 'men' and 'women' just for convenience in a professional context?

What additional implications are you referring to that are going to damage our impressionable children if we call them girls and boys?

Are we also saying something qualitative about the alphabet if we line them up by A-M and N-Z?

As for making a green team and a yellow team - that is layering on another identity which kids will try to get meaning/value from.  Kids being kids, they will divide into "us - better" and "them - worse" on the basis of this imposed teaming.  Test it and prove me wrong.

Kids already know there's a difference between girls and boys.  They know it instinctively from before they can even say it.

[Melissa Louise]

9 minutes ago, bolt. said:

I'm just saying that the additional implications make sex (or gender) a terrible proxy for quick/easy groupings -- especially with impressionable children. How hard is it to make a green team and a yellow team to use for a school year?

We know it's full of implications in social contexts with adults. When was the last time you saw an adult group quickly and easily split in half by 'men' and 'women' just for convenience in a professional context?

School isn't a professional context. 

I can get het up about a lot, but not about lining Kindy up for recess. 

 

[Melissa Louise]

I mean, if the boys line always gets to leave for recess first, sure, that's a problem. 

[SKL]

14 minutes ago, bolt. said:

I'm just saying that the additional implications make sex (or gender) a terrible proxy for quick/easy groupings -- especially with impressionable children. How hard is it to make a green team and a yellow team to use for a school year?

We know it's full of implications in social contexts with adults. When was the last time you saw an adult group quickly and easily split in half by 'men' and 'women' just for convenience in a professional context?

As for splitting adults up by men and women - most adult situations don't have a natural 50/50 distribution, because for both cultural and biological reasons, men and women on average join different groups.  [Even then, it is quite natural/comfortable for men and women to self-segregate (different races too).]  And when there is about a 50/50 mixture, it is often because people are there as couples/families, who prefer to hang together as couples/families.

I thought, though, that it was good etiquette to seat people at a table by gender (male, female, male, female, but not by couple) at social dinners.  Supposedly it improves the conversation and the atmosphere.  Is that taboo now?

Edited June 22, 2021 by SKL

[Melissa Louise]

Ooh, I just remembered that in my Kindy year, there was a girls and boys playground - and the boys playground had the play equipment! 

That's inequality. An unequal allocation of resources on the basis of sex. 

[SKL]

Well, and we still have to line up by sex to go to the bathroom, LOL.

[bolt.]

2 minutes ago, SKL said:

What additional implications are you referring to that are going to damage our impressionable children if we call them girls and boys?

Are we also saying something qualitative about the alphabet if we line them up by A-M and N-Z?

As for making a green team and a yellow team - that is layering on another identity which kids will try to get meaning/value from.  Kids being kids, they will divide into "us - better" and "them - worse" on the basis of this imposed teaming.  Test it and prove me wrong.

Kids already know there's a difference between girls and boys.  They know it instinctively from before they can even say it.

The implications I mentioned are "This is a primary characteristic that matters about you. It matters to your school. It matters more than any other characteristic by which you could be divided into groups." It also means, "These are the people you belong with; they are the ones who are similar to you. This is your crew."

I assume that the same feelings could be generated about one's placement with similar-alphabet-half-mates or with arbitrary team mates -- but those wouldn't be feelings about gender. They would be feelings about other characteristics and I think, therefore, they would be less likely to impact on a child's more lasting thoughts about identity, group membership, or belonging.

Kids *do* instinctively know there's a difference between girls and boys -- they just don't quite know how important it is, when or where it matters, and how it should impact their socialization and play at school. By grouping them by this lazy metric, we accidentally teach them some of those things. I think we should stop that.

Just on the surface, alphabeting seems more arbitrary: the kids don't already feel differentiation based on their alphabetical characteristics -- so it's not the reinforcement of an existing, known category. They'd be less likely to maintain alphabetical in-group/out-group feelings, I would think. Teaming is inherently temporary: kids know they will be on another team next year.

Of course, kids may form bonds based on however they are grouped. I literally married my husband because we were seated alphabetically in a High School class and made friends in the 'Bs'. My point is that in any form of mixed gender grouping, any gender feels normal to be around. I think that's natural and positive. It shouldn't be discouraged by gender based grouping as a matter of ease and convenience.

[Melissa Louise]

It DOES matter. 

We can lie to kids, and tell them their sex doesn't matter, but there is no way to identify out of the experiences of the sexed body. 

 

[bolt.]

1 minute ago, Melissa Louise said:

It DOES matter. 

We can lie to kids, and tell them their sex doesn't matter, but there is no way to identify out of the experiences of the sexed body. 

 

Yes, but intentional grouping decision are a function of the institution, not a function of the sexed body.

[SKL]

3 minutes ago, bolt. said:

The implications I mentioned are "This is a primary characteristic that matters about you. It matters to your school. It matters more than any other characteristic by which you could be divided into groups." It also means, "These are the people you belong with; they are the ones who are similar to you. This is your crew."

I assume that the same feelings could be generated about one's placement with similar-alphabet-half-mates or with arbitrary team mates -- but those wouldn't be feelings about gender. They would be feelings about other characteristics and I think, therefore, they would be less likely to impact on a child's more lasting thoughts about identity, group membership, or belonging.

Kids *do* instinctively know there's a difference between girls and boys -- they just don't quite know how important it is, when or where it matters, and how it should impact their socialization and play at school. By grouping them by this lazy metric, we accidentally teach them some of those things. I think we should stop that.

Just on the surface, alphabeting seems more arbitrary: the kids don't already feel differentiation based on their alphabetical characteristics -- so it's not the reinforcement of an existing, known category. They'd be less likely to maintain alphabetical in-group/out-group feelings, I would think. Teaming is inherently temporary: kids know they will be on another team next year.

Of course, kids may form bonds based on however they are grouped. I literally married my husband because we were seated alphabetically in a High School class and made friends in the 'Bs'. My point is that in any form of mixed gender grouping, any gender feels normal to be around. I think that's natural and positive. It shouldn't be discouraged by gender based grouping as a matter of ease and convenience.

 

I disagree that it gives the meaning bolded.  We can agree to disagree on that.

But I'm picturing two lines side by side, and that actually forces the sexes to be next to each other and do exactly the same things together in exactly the same way.  It seems like that would have positive effects vs. always letting them gang up by sex or whatever other grouping they would choose on their own.

[SKL]

15 minutes ago, Melissa Louise said:

Ooh, I just remembered that in my Kindy year, there was a girls and boys playground - and the boys playground had the play equipment! 

That's inequality. An unequal allocation of resources on the basis of sex. 

Yes, there were lots of sex-based differences in my KG.  For one thing, boys used the bathroom attached to the classroom, while girls had to walk down the hall to the ladies' room (church building).  When a kid puked, the boys had to clean it up.  The boys were selected to do all the "handy helper" type jobs.  The girls were supposed to play with dolls and kitchen equipment, while the boys were supposed to play with building stuff.  These are just the things I remember from 50 years ago.  😛

[Frances]

7 minutes ago, SKL said:

Yes, there were lots of sex-based differences in my KG.  For one thing, boys used the bathroom attached to the classroom, while girls had to walk down the hall to the ladies' room (church building).  When a kid puked, the boys had to clean it up.  The boys were selected to do all the "handy helper" type jobs.  The girls were supposed to play with dolls and kitchen equipment, while the boys were supposed to play with building stuff.  These are just the things I remember from 50 years ago.  😛

Interesting. I think we’re about the same age, but I can’t recall any definitive differences. My kindergarten room was huge and was a completely separate wing of my small elementary building. We did everything separate from the rest of the school and had our own bathroom, cloakroom, and indoor and outdoor play areas. But I don’t recall any gender or sex based differences.
 

Even in sixth grade when we took turns helping with lunch clean-up (a job we all loved), I don’t recall any assignments being made based on gender or sex.

The only time I recall such a thing in elementary was when we had indoor recess due to inclement weather. Our janitor, an elderly former semi-pro baseball player, would be on duty rather than a teacher or aide. And he would organize full-court BB games for the boys and we girls would bug him relentlessly to let us play too.

[Melissa Louise]

28 minutes ago, bolt. said:

Yes, but intentional grouping decision are a function of the institution, not a function of the sexed body.

Sex is one of the most salient human features. 

I accompanied 64 kindergarten children to a sports carnival last week. They had to line up by colours. It was chaos! It was written on their hands but they can't read 🙂 I swear, we spent about half an hour sorting by colour. 

You have a point, but pragmatically, I don't think it makes a lot of difference, so long as the division by sex isn't used to justify unequal treatment, as it used to be, and sometimes still is. 

 

[Melissa Louise]

22 minutes ago, SKL said:

Yes, there were lots of sex-based differences in my KG.  For one thing, boys used the bathroom attached to the classroom, while girls had to walk down the hall to the ladies' room (church building).  When a kid puked, the boys had to clean it up.  The boys were selected to do all the "handy helper" type jobs.  The girls were supposed to play with dolls and kitchen equipment, while the boys were supposed to play with building stuff.  These are just the things I remember from 50 years ago.  😛

Girls had the Wendy house in my classroom.  Consolation prize for no play equipment outside, I guess. 

[Pam in CT]

re inescapable categorization, by others

2 hours ago, regentrude said:

The bolded, to me, is exactly why someone would want to alter their body since we cannot escape being categorized based on a few select characteristics related to biological sex. And if your brain tells you that you don't feel like this category as which they see you, and the society is such that every  interaction is influenced by our external shape, then you have the conflict. And that's real, IMO, not just a delusion.

Yes. This is what I mean by having "gender" thrust upon us as an exogenous force; and also how I (haltingly) understand dysphoria.

I mean. Babies are dressed in identifying colors and patterns. When they aren't, the first question out of cooing strangers' mouths is Boy or Girl?  Of course kids learn it "matters" by the time they arrive in kindergarten.

[Melissa Louise]

8 minutes ago, Pam in CT said:

re inescapable categorization, by others

Yes. This is what I mean by having "gender" thrust upon us as an exogenous force; and also how I (haltingly) understand dysphoria.

I mean. Babies are dressed in identifying colors and patterns. When they aren't, the first question out of cooing strangers' mouths is Boy or Girl?  Of course kids learn it "matters" by the time they arrive in kindergarten.

So, this makes sense to me, as in, abolish gender. Put boys in pink, who cares?

Where it doesn't make sense is to also say 'and now we shall have a new form of classification based on gender!'

I mean, one or the other, surely? Get rid of gender (insofar as the cultural associations attached to sex are harmful and inequitable ie boys need play equipment but girls don't) OR organise society around how masculine or feminine one supposedly feels. 

But it's not possible to simultaneously get rid of gender AND use it as an organising principle in society. 

[LMD]

2 hours ago, bolt. said:

I think it does have meaning. It means, "This is a primary characteristic that matters about you. It matters to your school. It matters more than any other characteristic by which you could be divided into groups." It also means, "These are the people you belong with; they are the ones who are similar to you. This is your crew."

If it was equally 'quick and convenient' to divide a large group in half by race, would that be equally meaningless?

I agree. I think that's a great conversation to have! Especially when all these little instances of focus on sex snowball into always defaulting to boys over here and girls over there, x10 when it's, unfortunately, unconsciously followed by sexist disadvantages (boys get to the play equipment first, boys get to eat first, boys don't have to help etc)

I kind of feel like, that's just feminism? Isn't that what we - and our foremothers - were trying to do, especially in the 70s, 80s, 90s etc? 

 It is also a big reason we chose homeschooling, we never had a 'pink wave' with our dd, and my ds never had any issue with loving 'pink, purple and rainbow' (in that order).

 

I just don't see how some kids switching lines based on ~gender~ (still undefined, gosh, especially for kinder kids!) actually does anything to help anyone? Surely lining up by feminine/hair length and masculine/pants is just as problematic and much less simple, clear cut or quick?

It also doesn't follow, imo, just because sex isn't a meaningful reason to segregate in some/many instances, doesn't mean that there are a) no distinctions between male & female sexed bodies, b) no instances where - due to the differences in sex based bodies - some segregation is valuable, c) that in those instances where segregating by sex is valuable, that a person's completely subjective, unverifyable soul-like feeling (gender identity) should take precedence.

Female prisoners shouldn't be locked in with intact male sex offenders. Can we at least all agree on that as a starting point? This is a whole lot more serious than lining up in kindergarten.

[SanDiegoMom]

On 6/20/2021 at 6:55 PM, Melissa Louise said:

Funny story with toys, though. I was a good feminist with toys. My girls had cars and Lego as well as dolls etc. Ds gets to two or three, and he is totally obsessed with trains. Like, he only really will think or talk about trains. But he does like our Little House picture books, and he particularly likes the one about Almanzo. So I hand sew him an Almanzo doll to love and cherish, and to practice his nurturing play with. Took a while. This was a good doll. Hand sewn hair and all 

The big day comes. Almanzo doll is finished. I present Almanzo doll to ds. It is so soft and nice to look at and touch. I show him to tuck it into the dolly cot, or how to tie it in the kiddy baby carrier. Finally, I hand him Almanzo. 

He takes it, looks at it for a moment, then chucks it across the room. Toddles off to play with his trains again for another.two.years. 

So idk. I always think about this and wonder if I'm entirely wrong about feminism 😂

 

 

 

I tried the same -- three kids, two girls and a boy. I always had every type of toy -- doll houses, Thomas the trains, legos, dinosaurs, airplanes, lots of dolls and stuffed animals.  My two daughters, even though they are VERY different (oldest is very strong, independent, aggressively confident at times, while younger daughter is quiet, gentle, and dances ballet) they both acted very motherly towards all their toys. My oldest loved the trains, but they were always made to talk to each other and never actually used the tracks. She loved her doll stroller. 

There was one funny time when the younger kids were 2 1/2 and they were both playing with the twin baby dolls.  My daughter gently rocked the baby until she "woke up" fed it, changed it. My son grabbed the baby doll and started pounding it on the changing table, yelling "wake up baby! Time to wake up!" and then threw it on the floor. And that was the last time he played with it.