Is there REALLY such thing as gender?

Troll??

Dude, as far as make up goes, men have worn it. 1700s. Also, in Africa there is a tribe where to me the men are looking like women...they wear all the make up and dance to attract a female. This is culture you speak of, not gender identity. I think you have no clue what gender identity issues are and that is why this stuff comes out of you.

You have not done many posts, but sure are positive you know more than we do. Interesting. Do you want to know how we think or feel, or do you just enjoy telling peeps like Purple Crab that they are completely wrong cuz you say so?

---------- Post added 8th Jan 2013 at 06:54 PM ----------

The transgendered person is not always attracted to opposite sex. you will find asexual, bisexual, and gay as well...not all become hetero.

The trans peeps fine with their bottoms do exist, some on here some are famous porn stars, etc. Some are genderqueer not transexual, which maybe why you confuse it. That is what we mean by not 2 genders but a gender spectrum. Some feel more feminine or masculine days as well. cars and Barbies are modern toys of our culture, which parents assume a gender will like. Well, i had both, and liked both. I had both gender friends. I feel male though, even though raised up surrounded with women, few men in my life...I actually began taking on the male responsibilities as a child after my grandpa died cuz my uncles didn't help out, and I am naturally good at it. It isn't simple, like point at a game and oh you like it so that is your gender identity, not is it who you wanna fuck with...it is all encompassing and too long to be listed here.

Fact is, some have been born with some biological change such as various degrees of intersex, but also it appears there are some things that occur to a mother of a fetus that affect the baby's gender as well. I had an intersex cousin, mom recently discussed it with me, I'm starting to come out to her, but I have not yet asked if I was as well. I have stronger male physical appearance than my intersex cousin, who was raised female. I have some facial features like slight brow ridge and flatter cheekbones and a tad wider jaw than all my cis-female cousins...wow, they have long flat foreheads, big cheekbones, and very narrow chins with tapered jaws. Regardless of that, internally I have things in my mind not female, and it confused me so much as I didn't know why I was not like females. Finding Transgender definition has saved me from this...I finally feel normal.

 

I think you've just jumped to conclusions that you prefer and are desperately tryng to find evidence to suppport them. Have you ever heard of aspergers syndrom? Do you know how many people feel comforted by the idea that they are "autistic"...how many people were "saved" by it? well it was just announced that aspergers syndrom no longer exists. There is a good body of evidence that supports the notion that gender is not inherent/biological, same with the notion that it is. Just because your trans doesnt mean you know why your like that in the same way that just because someone is gay or lesbian doesnt know why. What makes a woman a woman? what makes a man a man? I think that is a good question for me to ask considering a few of you have said that being transgendered has "nothing" to do with masc.fem... when the definiton of gender according to the world health organization is...

"the socially constructed roles, behaviours, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women.

..."Male" and "female" are sex categories, while "masculine" and "feminine" are gender categories.

Food for thought?

edit: but then again I guess I don't really follow the "gay" science that everyone here likes to believe in You know, the science that makes us all feel valid because its "genetic" and "we're born this way"...You do know that something can be psychological yet unchangable... so thinking a certain way even for most of your early childhood doesnt mean that its genetic or that there MUST be a biological component.

 

so if a group of peeps come together and decide that all Jews are evil is that true? it happened. How about scientists highly respected worldwide coming together to say sign language is bad and deaf schools are bad, we are heading for disaster...an inferior deaf race will emerge! Think about that...it happened! And later Eugenics was called hogwash...yet some still practice it in various ways.

We don't have all the answers, but we have studied this a lot. It isn't like you are coming up with anything new, certainly no cure, and seems all the more like you are a troll.

I call troll on this one. Bye bye!

 

a troll because i actually brought up a valid point? LOL you think your a scientist...so cute. as i said before just because your trans doesnt mean you know anything just like a gay person doesnt know either and if you think i'm acting like a know-it-all go look in a mirror.

---------- Post added 9th Jan 2013 at 02:49 AM ----------

Oh wait nevermind I remember youre a christian, so GOD made you this way? That explains it. HAHAHAHAHHA

 

^ Been reposted to mods. They will deal with it.

 

lol, okie dokie.

 

One of my friends has recently been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrom. Have you ever met anyone that has it? I think not. Because if you had, you would never, ever have said that.

No, that's gender roles. I don't care what you get your deffinitions from, but we call those gender roles. It's the roles that society thinks males and females should abide by.

Sex: male female
Gender: male female ( ^ may not match)
Gender roles: masculine feminine ( ^ may not match)

That's all I'm gonna say about this, I don't feel like it's gonna come across anyway. And I really think you should reconsider the things you post and the way you're posting it, because it can be offensive to a lot of people -- as people have already pointed out to you previously.

 

Well obviously the person diagnosing him doesnt read the health guidlines established by The American Psychiatric Association because it was removed from the list. And once again, people think they are authorities on the biology/psychology of being LGBTQ when last time I checked there has never been a concensus on the nature of our feelings. Case closed. I already said it above... people believe things because they LIKE to believe things, not because thats where the facts lead them. So if everyones going to get all sensitive because they cant handle someone disagreeing with them then woops, sorry, but in the real world you encounter people like that. the kid above was the one who got offended, well.. tha happens and all im doing is defending my perfectly valid opinion (no matter what you think of it)

---------- Post added 9th Jan 2013 at 04:01 AM ----------

Oh and I get my definitions from the UN. But then again I guess you think your more of an authority than the countless linguists, doctors, and scientists who participated in creating that definition.

 

I don't live in America, so I guess it's still valid here. Maybe we're smarter
And just so you know, no one from the APA says it doesn't exist, they just put a lot of the different types of autism -- which do all still exist -- under one disorder called autism spectrum disorder, because that way it will be easier to diagnose people. As you probably know, autism is very hard to diagnose because of all the different types. That's why they changed this.

Never mind. This is pointless.

 

Alright, I give up. That'll be for other people to reason with you Sasha, but honestly... your argumentation is so similar to that of straight homophobic people to keep claiming that homosexuality is a choice/ doesn't really exist.

It's all about knowing how the dysphoria feels in order to know that there are actually genders and that they exist, totally unrelated from the principles of masculinity and femininity or even the biological sexes and roles.

But you wouldn't know and I guess you can't imagine. If you were trapped like a trans person is, you would have to open your mind and understand; it would be clear and obvious to you as well that gender is innate (while personality is not).

 

Of course there is such thing as gender.
This thread is veiwed from a westetn culture point of veiw. We have 2 genders in the dictionary yes, male and female, but in other cultures there are 3 genders, and that is what is and always has been to them. Maybe is society and small minded people like the things you are saying, that needs to change not how we define gender.

 

Not sure this all needed to devolve into an argument. Can someone please calmly and peacefully and intellectually discuss what I would like to add? - There are a number of people here with differing points of view but have shown an ability to converse civilly, and I'd like to hear from them:

It seems to me that a lot of the problem with the discussion is terminology. I'm going to use what I think is general scientific terminology:
Sex - physical male, female, ambiguous, or both sets of genitalia, hormones, chromosomes, body types or brain structures
Gender - social construct of masculine, feminine
Sexuality - who/what one is attracted to

It would seem to me that people who are trans are born with a conflict in their physical sex: they have some physical portions of the body like genitalia and body type which correspond to one sex, and other physical portions of the body which correspond to another sex, like hormones, brain patterns, etc. I don't know if a lot of studies have been done on this to prove this, but this is what I assume. The person, from a very early age, feels very uncomfortable within their body because for instance the brain patterns do not match the genitalia. This is entirely a physical problem. [Note, there are many different conflicts one can have with their physical sex, I am not saying that trans encompasses all of them, it is separate for instance from having two sets of opposing genitalia.]

On the other hand, there is gender, the social construct. Many feel uncomfortable - beginning at a later age often just before puberty, because they are being forced into a social construct of what is normal behavior for their physical sex (which among humans is currently determined by the easiest thing to see from birth - genitalia), but as humans there is a wide range of variety and anyone who does not fit within a society's rigid definitions of what is considered normal for masculine or feminine are going to have this problem. The problem of gender thus would be a social problem. It is not a problem of conflict of the physical sex, and thus is not per say a medical condition, it is not biological, it is purely environmental.

Sexuality is defined by who or what one is sexually attracted to. It has nothing to do with what sex or sexes one is born as or ay conflict therein, nor does it have anything to do with one's gender. It appears to be a physical difference, but is not a medical condition in that there is no true conflict within the body, the conflict is between the physical body and the social construct of what sexuality should be - if the person were left completely alone that person would have no ill health affects of discomfort, the only physical drawback being that those who are 100% homosexual would not procreate without the social construct we have today, but that in and of itself would not be physically harmful, and would only be the case for a minority anyway as the majority of humans are born somewhat bisexual without a social construct of sexuality.

OK, so if physical sex is about the body (brain, genitals, hormones, body type, etc.), gender is about the social construct of masculine vs. feminine, and sexuality is also physical and determined likely by hormones in the brain, then these are entirely separate issues, and the OP would be correct that gender would not exist without society, because it is a social construct.

However, in the reality of a social world, many people have issues with more than one of these categories. One can be trans (conflict of brain/hormones vs. genitalia/body type, etc.), not fit into typical expectations for their gender (they are a transwoman for example but do not like dresses or dolls as a kid), and at the same time homosexual (say this same transwoman is attracted only to women).

The reason we get upset in the LGBTQ community over these topics, is because we confuse the terminology and use it interchangeably, often because people we grew up around lumped anything that was different involving sex, gender, or sexuality - being trans, having genitalia of both sexes, having ambiguous genitalia, being different than others in one's gender group, or being homosexual - ALL together under the negatively toned word GAY. That does not mean these actually have anything to do with one another. A person can be a "masculine"-acting girl and not be lesbian. A person can be trans and not be gay. A person can be bi and have no social or physical problems whatsoever.

Am I right? I say am I right??... [Charlie Brown reference there, what you say after a big speech to clarify things and stop fighting ]

We get upset when in mixing up the terminology, we think others are somehow implying that we do not have a right to exist. But all of use can relate to what it feels like to be different, and to feel pain because of that.

 

Apart from the definition you give of gender, I agree. I think what you put as the definition of gender is actually the definition of gender roles. The roles that society ascribes a certain sex.

I don't think masculinity or femininity have anything to do with transgenderism. It's not a social problem. Transgender people may behave exactly as society think they should, or they may act like the complete opposite; that doesn't change the fact that they are transgender. It's actually a medical "problem."

Gender is how we perceive ourselves, regardless of society.

Obviously any actual transgender person may correct me if I'm wrong. Although I'm fairly sure I'm right lol.

 

As a note, my physical body was born with female genitalia, and plenty of female hormones, but with a slight physical conflict as I also have a lot of testosterone. This left me looking very female but feeling rather male. Because of the social construct of gender I felt very uncomfortable and out of place, and I hated the expectations for girls in my very patriarchal community. I insisted over and over that I should have been born a boy, and prayed to become one physically. However, the force of the social construct of gender convinced me to put everything I had into learning to act feminine, when I hit puberty. As my body became more and more distinctly female, and I had even more female hormones flooding my brain, the balance with the testosterone was outweighed. Additionally, I left the gender roles that were strictly defined where I was born, and moved somewhere else that allowed them to be loosely defined. I no longer felt the need to become physically male - because I did not have as severe a physical conflict with my sex as many others do, my conflict was very mild. I also was born bisexual. Although that creates social conflicts for me (more from the lesbian/gay community than from anywhere else), it does not create any physical or emotional discomfort in and of itself.

In my life, physical sex had a mild conflict but not to the extent that I could be defined as trans FtM, gender definitions caused a lot of conflict but changed depending on where I was living, and sexuality was a defined physical thing that has never changed but caused no conflict within me. Maybe that helps others to see how these terms can apply to individual cases. My case is my own, it has no bearing on anyone else's experience or identity, so please don't take it as a comment on your life because it is not one.

 

Nah, gender is a great fiction, an artificial construct of human society, nothing more. Like god, gender exists only in the minds of people who choose to believe in it. And as with religion, the overwhelming majority of human beings throughout history have come to believe it is an inherent part of human life. (And once again, as with religion, there are people who feel very strongly that gender, and their idea of what gender means, be enforced upon and believed by everyone).

Hopefully society will one day be able to move forward and leave such an antiquated concept upon the ash heap of history, and we may live in a post-gender society. But in the meantime that's the way I'm going to live my life, I will not shape how I act or dress or talk or behave in any way to conform to any expectation of "maleness" or "femaleness". I am a human being and I 'feel' like a human being; any other traits beyond that are part of who I am as a unique individual, not based on being a 'boy' or a 'girl'.

 

Well just to be clear, nothing I said disagreed with this. The fact that transgender uses "gender" in the term I think is part of the source of confusion, because scientists do not tend to use it that way. Transgender people have a physical conflict of sex that needs medical attention to fully resolve, but we are limited currently in the amount that we can do that adequately.

I have never heard this definition used scientifically. Medically speaking, wouldn't we perceive ourselves through a combination of what our physical sex (including brain and hormones) is, and the social construct of gender roles? I have never heard by medical or social scientists a distinction between "gender" and "gender roles," when they are trying to be precise. In my example, my perception of myself as "male not female" was created by my conflict of physical sex (hormone conflict) and a conflict with the social construct of gender. Because my hormone balance shifted after puberty (physical change), and the construct of gender shifted with where I moved (social change), my problem was mostly resolved.
Someone who truly classifies as trans would not have that experience, because no matter how their social environment changed, physically they would remain with a conflict of sex within the body, and their perception of themselves would only be righted by changing the body no matter what society thought of it - and this is why so many go through the difficult transition, even though it is clearly socially taboo, because it is worth it to resolve the physical conflict. And for most, even though the gender roles never change, they feel better after they physically change their bodies, because they fit within themselves finally. I don't see how one's sense of self is a separate entity from simply a combination of physical sex and social construct.

Some are somewhere in the middle, "genderqueer," or "androgynous," etc., because they don't feel they fit within the social construct of gender at all, but they do not desire to physically change their bodies to align. They may choose to dress one way, or alternate dress styles, to be more comfortable within society.

Some people are fully trans and also learn accept not changing their bodies merely because of practical concerns of major surgery, but it is a struggle.

---------- Post added 9th Jan 2013 at 09:03 PM ----------

You are lucky to feel this way. You were not born with a conflict of your physical sex - for instance your hormones not matching your genitalia. That is a medical condition that is not resolved by changing one's clothing type. I agree that gender construct is pretty useless in modern society (as a History professor I can see why it was useful in earlier civilizations as a means of organizing labor and resolving labor disputes, based on very limited medical and technological resources), but this does not resolve the problems of those who are trans or have other conflicts of physical sex. That will still exist, because it is separate from the social construct of gender.

 

Well, I'm probably the least knowledgeable person on the subject, so anything I said or am going to say can be wrong, just to be clear!

But, this is the one thing I disagreed on with you:

I've heard female-born ftm's here on EC say they are feminine in any and every way imaginable, only have female friends, only have typically thought of as female interests, and are attracted to guys only.

If how one's sense of self is simply a combination of physical sex (in this case female) and social construct (in this case also female), then how come these people still feel extremely trapped in their female bodies?

I've heard the other way around as well, though not as often.

That's what I'm trying to say. Even though everything may match up, physically and socially, some people apparently still feel like they should have a different body. That's why I think gender is something that really does exist and is medical instead of social.

 

Alright, it all comes down to a simple question:
and the question isn't What is gender.

Gender is what people identify as, man, woman or inbetween.
And people don't identify to a gender because of biological sex or social gender roles constructs. People identify to a gender because that's how they feel.

The real question is therefore; why do people identify as man, woman or inbetween?

It's not because they feel more masculine or feminine; today's society being wayyy nicer to very feminine boys and very masculine girls than to trans folks.
It's not because of the feel of belonging to gender roles because anybody can go ahead and be the gender roles they want/need without going through the hell of transition.

...the one thing I could see that would explain why people feel like being a gender or another would be completely physical on a level science has not yet dived into yet; that means we trans folks would be afflicted by some sort of intersex condition that isn't visually obvious ( I know I messed up with words but bear with me please) because it's about the pattern of the nervous system and not about a genital/hormonal malformation.

But then, that's just an idea, otherwise I really can't explain.

However please, pretty pretty please, stop claiming that gender doesn't really exist or is just a social construct around femininity/masculinity. If it was JUST that, it would be so much easier and so much simpler than it is now. What you're talking about is a question of life or death for many many many trans folks (who would rather die than to continue living as the other gender, and risk everything in the process). It's very hurtful and diminishing.
Thus, I humbly withdraw from this thread.

 

You just put it so much better than I ever could :dry: But yeah, that's ^ basically what I meant. I guess.

 

I would never, ever intend to bring harm to anyone with a post. I am only discussing this to understand, because I thought I was trans for a long time and then decided that did not fit me. So I feel like I relate partially, although what I have gone through is nothing close to what others who really are trans go through. I care about people going through such pain and want to understand so I also have a way of explaining it to others, because I know what parts they get stuck on. My way of discussing it is very impersonal, it does not have anything to do with feelings - but that does not mean that other people's feelings are not important to the issue or that I am trying to slight those feelings.

I am just trying to put it into a common language, because there is a big difference between talking about something from a scientific/purely intellectual point of view without emotion, and talking about it from an emotional point of view. For me, the emotional side gets confusing because we use similar words for different ideas, so standardizing the language by using only scientific terms and ideas of biology vs. environment may allow us to find common ground to understand one another, and also pull back a bit so the discussion does not upset anyone, it's not personally about any individual, just about biology and environment. It sounds to me like people are discussing a third dimension of life that is neither biology nor environment, and I find that confusing because in science they only talk about one or the other. Someone's feelings are not otherworldly, according to neurologists, they are created by hormones and brain pathways and also by environmental exposure. So I am just talking about what a trans person experiences on a biological level, if one looked at the brain there would be a hormone level or a pathway for thoughts that would conflict with the person's genitalia. That should be validating, it is not something the person is making up, they are born with it. And even if we don't always have a way to solve it through our current science, it is a real and excruciating thing. Outsiders would be able to understand that - ex. brain pathway female, genitalia male. That would be very easy for people to get and have sympathy for.

I understand that it is hard to discuss something so sensitive when it affects one's own life, but I am doing it to try to find understanding for those who don't get it - i.e., the ones who make it more likely to add to a person's suicidality - so it's important to be able to stick out the discussion with kind people who really do want to be supportive to make the world better. If no one can explain to allies, how can allies explain to enemies? If someone disagrees with something I've said, please just explain to me why I am wrong and stay with the discussion, unless it is simply too painful for you and you would rather leave that to others. But no one should leave feeling bullied by someone who has been polite and just wants to understand the issues and be supportive.

---------- Post added 10th Jan 2013 at 09:09 AM ----------

As a note PurpleCrab, I think it is a shame that you felt the need to leave the thread, as I was thinking that you have the most inspiring story I've ever heard of, and that perhaps a movie should be made about your life and marriage or the two of you should write a book. I missed the chance to compliment how wonderful it was to me to hear of a story that sounded rather resolved (beyond the initial angst and confusion young people go to, to the stage of being an adult who knows who you are) and very positive, finding love, understanding, and building a new family together. I hope you will come back and read this anyway, even if you decide not to post. (&&&)