The Nature Of Gender

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Luck

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    Spoiler:

    I've just been thinking about this and I'm curious, because this is a fairly popular topic, so I'm (hopefully) bound to see a plethora of different opinions.

    How many of the 4 "components" of the picture do you agree with?
    Did you use to believe "one side" until recently?
    If so, what made you change your beliefs?
    Do you believe that generally, your gender is part of your anatomy or your personality?
     
    I guess the left side if we're talking about gender roles instead of physiology. Except for the third row. I don't think it's how you relate to yourself and I don't think it's sexual orientation.

    I think you're born of a certain sex, with which comes societal roles inherent to your culture and upbringing. If you deviate from the cultural norms, that's cool. Doesn't make you the opposite sex or homosexual or anything (well, unless you are gay. Then, yes you would be gay). So, I don't really like the idea of "gender" as it seems to imply that you can't be who you actually are if you don't meet a certain definition.

    You don't have grow up to be epitome jock and cheerleader or businessman and homemaker. Girls can be a tomboy. Fathers can stay home with the kids, no reason they can't. In my case, I'm a guy and hate sports altogether. I haven't fit in with male circles very well because of it, but still a guy.

    A person's a person and your sex shouldn't define you or who you grow up to be .

    (Slightly related question, what do people who undergo sex change operations mean when they feel like they're born in the wrong body? I have no idea what it would mean to feel like a gender or sex. I just feel like me, independent of sex. If I were born female I think I would end up being the same person. All I ever see on the media is someone basically going, "When I was growing up as a young girl, I didn't like pink dresses. So, now I want a beard so I can be the man I was intended to be". But dresses are a social construct and shouldn't define who you are. So, yeah I don't get it. Fill me in here.)
     
    I've been through weird gender phases of my life where I wanted to me more masculine or more feminine, but I kind of came to the conclusion that I'm in the middle. I don't need gender to define who I am really.

    Thats the point I've gotten myself too, that I'd rather be genderless than associate with one gender. Also a persons natural sex is always going to be "M' or "F". However, the persons "mental gender" defines if they move towards femininity or masculinity.

    I mean, thats what I have to say on the whole gender thing.

    I'm a person who likes boy things and girl things, so eh'
     
    Spoiler:

    I see myself as variably androgyne, gender fluid, or transsexual. I fit some of the ideas of what transgender is, but some of them don't describe me at all, so I've concluded that my gender is neutral, in the middle, or sometimes changing. However, these are convenience terms for the benefit of other people and I don't feel I need to have or describe myself with a gender. In fact, these days I don't care about gender at all and mostly see it as a fun yet completely disregardable concept, and find it ridiculous when people allow it to be an obstacle against effective communication (all too common imo). Gender in general is mostly constructed with a few things that are statistically more common for women or more common for men (some of which are social constructs themselves), but there are no 100%'s and I think tying yourself to any given gender role is false and silly.

    tl;dr: My gender is fluid but I don't care about it much.
     
    Magdalena~ said:
    Some people (transsexual people and some other gender-variant people) have a gender identity that differs from their biological sex. This causes a feeling of "disagreement" often resulting in the desire for one's body to reflect their gender identity moreso than their biological sex. At the same time, though, sometimes people let gender roles into it too easily and base most of their thoughts or actions off of the stereotypical roles of the gender they're supposed to be. That's an unrelated matter, however, to simply wanting to grow a beard or look like a man.
    Sorry if this sounded a bit eggheaded or technical, but basically (in the example you mentioned) the person has a male gender identity--something that goes beyond simply not liking pink dresses, and he wishes to appear male because it more fits the way he feels his body should be. This . . . is the best I can possibly word it. xD
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    I think the part that confuses him is the gender identity in itself, which I can understand. But for me personally, I've accepted that it's something that people who are born into the right sex can't really understand. It's not something that I think comes into play at all until you feel that it's wrong. Because I've always matched up with being a woman, I've never felt that sense of wrongness or mismatching with my sex, so even if I'm a boyish girl at times, I've accepted myself as a boyish girl and not as a girl who's meant to be a boy. If that makes sense. I guess it would be difficult to explain the opposite to you as well, how it just goes unnoticed, right? xD;

    I didn't know the difference between gender and sex as terms until recently. I understood that there were people that felt like they were women when they were men, but since most forms and such use gender and sex interchangeably I figured the term for gender identity was something more technical that I had never heard before, hahah.
     
    Toujours said:
    I've accepted that it's something that people who are born into the right sex can't really understand. It's not something that I think comes into play at all until you feel that it's wrong.
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    This explains it way better than I ever could have.
    I actually know both feelings, being that I've been known to have gender dysphoria in the past (not that much though) and I'm also all too familiar with the feeling you described, feeling very tomboyish at times.
    Toujours said:
    I didn't know the difference between gender and sex as terms until recently. I understood that there were people that felt like they were women when they were men, but since most forms and such use gender and sex interchangeably I figured the term for gender identity was something more technical that I had never heard before, hahah.
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    Also, some people use "brain sex".
     
    I would say there are eight components here. I have problems with both sides of the picture, but also do agree on certain aspects in both sides.

    I do believe gender is a spectrum. While I may be a male, I am definitely not your extremist-male that I imagine portrayed as strong, loud and outspoken. I have certain aspects of my personality that would be found in what I imagine the extremist-female would be portrayed as, which are emotional and caring, soft-spoken and pacifistic. The idea that gender is a range of expressions I also do agree with, because certain hormones found in different genders inhibit different expressions. While some are more emotional than others, we are all, to an extent, emotional. That range is found all across the spectrum of between your extreme-male and extreme-female.

    However, I disagree with the final two points that this picture depicts gender to be. Relating to yourself is much more through your personality. Standing in front of a mirror and relating to yourself as a boy or girl seems very aesthetically-driven to me. Sure, your gender might dictate how you dress and act, but ultimately your personality is what makes you comfortable with acting and dressing in this particular fashion. Take a male transexual for example. He would act and dress very femininely, whereas I would not. This transexuality is part of his personality and personal choices. These also dictate your personal identity, which the picture claims to be a result of gender. Absolutely untrue. Personal identity is so unique to yourself that claiming a personal aspect with which you can categorize every human being in as something unique to yourself is far off the map.

    The problem I find with the right column is that it is much more scientifically-oriented, and my rational mind does like to agree with some of its claims. Gender is not just male or female, I can agree with that. But, you can't deny that gender is also dictated by our body parts. Otherwise, how could you explain people who feel so far out of their skin that they wish to get a sex-change? I don't know if such a surgery fills the void they felt in their lives pre-procedure, but one must assume it does. You also can't deny the existence of X and Y chromosomes that did, quite literally, make the difference between your being a boy or a girl as a fetus. It's a very unemotional way of looking at things but there evidence and facts are there. To say gender is not that is looking at things very emotionally.

    And that's pretty much what this picture is saying. Gender isn't just what you've got between your legs. Which is true, but the pictures goes about it badly. It shouldn't claim that gender is not and rather is more than.
     
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    I think gender is hard to describe and can be different for lots of different people. I hold contradicting views on it that, for me, make sense.

    TRIFORCE89 said:
    (Slightly related question, what do people who undergo sex change operations mean when they feel like they're born in the wrong body? I have no idea what it would mean to feel like a gender or sex. I just feel like me, independent of sex. If I were born female I think I would end up being the same person. All I ever see on the media is someone basically going, "When I was growing up as a young girl, I didn't like pink dresses. So, now I want a beard so I can be the man I was intended to be". But dresses are a social construct and shouldn't define who you are. So, yeah I don't get it. Fill me in here.)
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    It's hard to explain to someone who is cisgendered (the body matches the personal feeling of one's identity) and therefore has cis-privilege. Like describing color to a blind person, sort of. To me, this privilege is apparent in how you say that you would still be you if you were born female. You take for granted that your body wouldn't affect your personality because for you they are in sync and (I'm assuming) that's always been how it is for you. Maybe a better example would be a person with asthma. If you've never had it, you don't think of breathing as an issue that affects your life. If you do, it's something that, while not debilitating, is still a hindrance.

    For me, and I can really only speak for myself about this, I find that not being able to express my gender how I feel I should is debilitating. I can and have lived in this discomfort, but it's something that gets down to the core of being happy with yourself.

    SchwarzRozen said:
    Also a persons natural sex is always going to be "M' or "F".
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    I'm gonna assume that by "natural sex" you mean genitalia.

    Some people actually have ambiguous genitalia and there are a lot of possible reasons for this. Even people who have matching gender identity, chromosomes, and secondary sexual characteristics elsewhere on their body can have genitalia which skew to the far end of the bell curve and appear to have elements of both sides.

    Penatrait said:
    The problem I find with the right column is that it is much more scientifically-oriented, and my rational mind does like to agree with some of its claims. Gender is not just male or female, I can agree with that. But, you can't deny that gender is also dictated by our body parts. Otherwise, how could you explain people who feel so far out of their skin that they wish to get a sex-change? I don't know if such a surgery fills the void they felt in their lives pre-procedure, but one must assume it does. You also can't deny the existence of X and Y chromosomes that did, quite literally, make the difference between your being a boy or a girl as a fetus. It's a very unemotional way of looking at things but there evidence and facts are there. To say gender is not that is looking at things very emotionally.
    Click to expand...
    I think we usually express our gender using terms for body parts, or terms originating from the body (i.e. "I feel like a man" with a man being a hairy, broad-shouldered thing with dangly parts), but I don't know if I would say it's dictated by our body parts.
     
    To me that seems more like the physical aspect and emotional aspect. Physically yes there is a clear defined way to identify a male from a female. Internally/emotionally there is another. Neither side ends up being wrong.
     
    i believe we born as either male or female...and it's clear according to the body anatomy......what makes a change here is brain..the way that male or female think....you can't say i'm a male while your body say you're female unless you're doing that for fun lol.....so,we just do what the brain say and then you act like it's in there..but sometimes you may meet a manly girl or a girly boy..and this is something about hormons but it doesn't change the natural of their bodies though as a male or female....rarely very rarely the ones who born as both male and female (i mean their body have both natural) and those might have to change to the gender they accep themselves as..

    so again my opnion is...the brain control that.
     
    How funny. Whomever made that image admits to have black/white thinking. Lay off the pokemon, pal.

    And to be more serious.. gender is exactly male or female. Nothing more, nothing less.
    Add other differences if you insist. I'm keeping this simple.
     
    I agree with the charts. Gender (Emotional, and Mental) is fluid for everyone while Sex (Physical)is pretty much set (with some exceptions) By the way what is the sexual orientation at the right end (with the circles splits but part of them together, my guess is Asexual but I'm not sure).
     
    Calipornia said:
    How funny. Whomever made that image admits to have black/white thinking. Lay off the pokemon, pal.

    And to be more serious.. gender is exactly male or female. Nothing more, nothing less.
    Add other differences if you insist. I'm keeping this simple.
    Click to expand...

    I'm sure "Gender is a spectrum" is entirely black and white, yeah?

    Not even sex is exactly male or female, let alone gender identity.
     
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