WTF is gender?
I've always understood gender to be mostly synonymous with sex: male/female, with maybe an extra category of 'ambiguous'. More specifically, gender was the social aspect of sex. Stereotypical behaviors and societal roles that correlated strongly with sex. It was a pretty innocuous and widely agreed upon concept for most of my life. The bolded part is basically what I consider a decently functioning word to be.
These days, most seem pretty confused about it. I'm confused about it. There seems to be some demand to change how it works, but I honestly don't understand what's being demanded.
I sense a contradiction. An insistence that gender is important, but that it needs to be much more flexible. That it needs to be disassociated from sex. But it's a stereotype about sex to begin with. So, how does that work?
These days, most seem pretty confused about it. I'm confused about it. There seems to be some demand to change how it works, but I honestly don't understand what's being demanded.
I sense a contradiction. An insistence that gender is important, but that it needs to be much more flexible. That it needs to be disassociated from sex. But it's a stereotype about sex to begin with. So, how does that work?
Comments (37)
So you don't think sex and gender are synonymous? Is gender is a social construct?
Yes, I think there is some degree of confusion, left and right. Left because people who are socially progressive aren't always philosophically literate and right because people who are socially conservative sometimes don't want to be.
I think the insistence to distinguish sex and gender doesn't amount to something being demanded as much as an insistence that fewer demands be made on the basis of sex. If you are a biological determinist, or biological essentialist, about sex and gender, for instance, you are likely to judge that someone who doesn't comply with a demand regarding how people of a given sex ought to behave isn't entitled to be considered normal. This socially prevalent demand for normal behavior, construed with reference to the alleged link between biological sex and gender-appropriate behavior, seems grounded into a form of the naturalistic fallacy (or, sometimes, divine command).
My minor way of contributing to this rebellion is to cross out the label 'Gender' whenever it appears on a form I am asked to fill in, and write next to it 'Sex'. Yeah, call me a dangerous radical, but somebody's got to do it.
The properties that distinguish organisms on the basis of their reproductive roles.
I all ways thought that people just used gender instead of sex because it sounds weird talking peoples "sex role" whereas "gender role" is OK. I think they still do, they just don't know it.
Quoting andrewk
I remember some stupid form the embassy sent to all of the expats living around here, he got pissed of when someone wrote "yes please" as an answer to the question about sex. The next form had gender on it. I doubt he ever figured out who done it. He he.
Quoting andrewk
hahaha. That's pretty great. Thank you for inspiring me. : D
In response to the opening poster. Gender is social constructed and therefore maliable. Biological sex is not. Once you know that then you'll truly realize how often people confused transsexual and transgender.
: /
Seems a bit of a non-sequitur. I don't think accepting the malleability of cultural norms precludes one from taking a harsh stance towards specific changes occuring in their society.
There have been some prominent culturally conservative philosophers who've embraced the notion of the historicity of human values, practices, etc. while also thinking the modern world represents a sharp decline relative to previous eras. I'm thinking along the lines of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and a few others who compared our situation unfavorably in many ways to previous eras, especially the glory days of the ancient Greeks.
They, too, wanted change, but the type of radical change they longed for would be a nightmare for most political and social progressives out there today.
I'll re-read the specific post I responded to - and I only responded to one of the many questions you posed - before commenting in detail.
Quickly though, I assumed I was offering support of your intuition that change is not always for the better. That seems a questionable modern prejudice which I'm pretty sure you don't share based on the overall tone of your post and the specific questions you raised in it.
But yeah, I'll read again and check back...
Most don't of course. But the larger point is that one can be a radical historicist, a fierce critic of the modern world as being essentially nihilistic, and a proponent of radical change all at the same time.
The only relevance of this I guess is that it challenges the standard and IMO oversimplified progressive/conservative dichotomy.
No no not your conclusions, but the conclusions of those who hold the position that change ipso facto is positive. I should have made that clear.
It clearly involves clarifying terms and engaging in other tedious but essential legwork, but it's an important topic that I'd like to discuss elsewhere. I don't want to distract from Roke's topic any more than I already have, so let's start a discussion on that one and get to work.
You want a line somewhere? How about a line that says that if it is acceptable for people with one type of genitalia to wear a particular item of clothing then it is acceptable for people with a different type of genitalia to wear that same item of clothing? Nothing about biology makes it the case that it's appropriate for people with male genitalia to wear trousers but not skirts or for people with female genitalia to wear skirts but not trousers, or for people with female genitalia to wear make up and high heels but not people with male genitalia.
And although historically there may have been a connection between the use of the pronouns "he" and "she" or the nouns "man" and "woman" and the biology of the person being talked about, there's no compelling reason to insist that this use can't evolve as has been the case with other words. Meanings change.
These are the socially constructed gender norms that need not be dogmatically followed.
Is there not something inappropriate about children seeing up a woman's skirt when she's sat down on a public transport with her legs open?
Of course. But it doesn't then follow that it's inappropriate for men or women to wear skirts. Only that it's inappropriate to look up someone's skirt and for someone wearing a skirt to sit with their legs open.
Besides, how is it different to a kilt?
Perhaps not, but then that has nothing to do with the fact that it's "women's" clothing and everything to do with the fact that the outline of his genitals is visible (which I assume is less decent than the outline of a woman's breasts being visible)? We can always have a secondary rule that prohibits these exceptional cases.
But then do a Google image search for "men in yoga pants". Hardly the horror show you're making it out to be.
It's also a much more complex and bigger question than even triadic or quarternary designations really imply. Gender is an aspect of identity, and so is actually a topic worthy of study because of this complexity and our general ignorance of the phenomena. (that is, it's more than just how we use words, it's an actual phenomena that can be studied)
Simone de Beauvoir herself was probably confused about her own gender/sex by how she developed. This particular line in her Wikipedia article is telling:
Even IF gender and sex were not synonyms based on the way that they are being defined (physiology vs. behavior), physiology normally defines one's behavior. In every other species, each organism reacts to, and interacts with, another based on their perception of the attributes of the other - like their health and sex. In other words, males not only act like males but are treated as such by others of it's kind.
In humans you find this tiny fraction of the population confused about it's sex because of how they were interacted with as they developed from a very young age.
I don't find this definition particularly enlightening. But whatever else "gender" may be, I think it's in any case something that certain lawyers (I'm a lawyer), academics, psychologists, sociologists, pundits and politicians will find a way to exploit for their own benefit as best they can.
I think this is part of what I wanted to get at.
If I don't behave normally, I'm not entitled to be considered normal. But it need not be a pejorative thing. I think the healthy thing for a nonconformist to do is to accept that they aren't normal, rather than campaign to redefine normal. My sense is that this is a big part of what's going on.
Can you elaborate on what gender means to you? Expressions and impressions about what? Is my affinity for pinstripes part of my gender?
As to lawyers, it represents an opportunity. We see it exploited already. Just do a Google search of "gender law." An example, I would think, would be in what I like to call the Lex Lavacrum, the "Law of the Bath(room)", i.e. the disputes arising out of the use and alleged misuse of gender-specific bathrooms. Then, there are the questions arising from disputes as to the rights of transgender or transsexual people (e.g., serving in the military); whether the law should recognize the "third gender" option. Much money to be made by enterprising lawyers--Thar's gold in them thar genders.
As to academia, gender is and no doubt has been for some time the subject matter of courses historical, psychological, anthropological, sociological. You'll find academic journals devoted to gender, I'm sure. As to pundits and politicians, what do they do but exploit controversial issues? Gender certainly is one of them. Positions on gender will generate popularity, publicity, funding and votes.
I think they used to be synonymous but have drifted apart. And I suspect gender is a poorly defined fraught concept now, post-drift. Trying to sort it out.
I understand where you're coming from. I think the cognitive dissonance stems from an attempt to reconcile multiple narratives about these issues. It's sometimes easy to mistake two separate positions for the same thing due to the overlapping themes. In addition to that, many of these positions seem internally inconsistent. I've been picking up on a certain recurring theme: anti-something positions that sneakily presuppose the something they're attacking.
Whether that's the case is the big question that is nowhere near answered - to what extent human sexual stereotypical behaviour is based on genes vs how they were raised. We can't learn much from other animals because those that are social enough to have a culture will have the same dilemma. We can learn from observing sexual differentiation of behaviour in non-social animals, but it's hard to draw any inferences from that to humans, since non-social animals are much more different from humans than the social ones (eg all the great apes are social (actually, I'm not sure about orang-utans. Are they social?)).
But even if it were to be conclusively demonstrated that genes make boys enjoy playing rugby more than girls, I would like to live in a world where girls are allowed to play rugby, and are not looked down on, or regarded as 'not a proper girl' for doing so.
The trouble is that people don't usually go around qualifying other people's behaviors as "normal" or "abnormal" in a totally dispassionate and/or merely descriptive or statistical way. If this were the case, we could say of an American citizen who speaks both Chinese and Russian that she is highly abnormal.
Also, if someone is gay or transgender, say, and demands not be treated as an abnormal person, it would be very disingenuous to interpret her as saying, foolishly, that her specific case represents a statistical norm: that a large majority of women are gay, or that a large majority of people born with XY chromosomes are females, and hence that she is normal in that sense. Rather, what she is saying is: to hell with norms. Merely statistical of biological norms aren't normative in any kind of moral sense.
"Gender" means reference to an aspect of identity. Identity is both expressed and impressed upon us -- it is expressed socially and expressed to ourselves. It is impressed socially and also impressed by our self. So when a person expresses masculine traits to the world they are expressing an aspect of their gender which is an aspect of their identity. But they can also express these traits to themselves: reflecting upon how, as a man, they feel that....
And we are also impressed by others as well as ourselves. We are impressed, as men, to... ; we are impressed by our self to act as...
I think identity has this two by two aspect where it is expressed and impressed, and that expression is to others/self, where impressions is from others/self.
As to whether your affinity for pinstripes is part of your gender, I'd ask -- how do you feel about it?
Gender roles aren't disregarded, gender roles change as society changes and our shared understanding of being changes. An interesting Marxist take on our changing gender roles would locate the main source of this 'ideological' change in the ever 'evolving' technological infrastructure.
Sorry I don't really understand this. By being do you mean gender?
Was there? I would be surprised if there were not some cultures in which men and women performed the same roles in everything except those things that only one was equipped to do by virtue of their sex, eg breast-feeding.
We'd need to ask some anthropologists.
No, we just furiously type whatever we 'reckon' don't we?
Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years: Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times by Elizabeth Barber makes the case that women mastered the art and technology of fabric production because it was compatible with another task, child care. Fabric production, from raw material to finished cloth, could be done while caring for children without exposing them to unnecessary harm. Stone cutting, wood cutting, metal-making, plowing, herding, digging, hunting... -- all men's work -- was too risky for children to be close at hand.
The book is interesting for its treatment of both the social aspects and the fabric produced. Women in ancient Egypt could (did) produce linen cloth with 200+ threads per square inch which is about what ordinary sheets are today.
On the other hand, I am pretty sure there were lots of women doing agricultural work in the ancient world -- not because work roles were reversed, but because it was an 'all hands into the rice paddies and fields' necessity. That's still true today in places.
One also has to bear in mind that all work--domestic, raw materials production, and agriculture--was very hard work up until recently. Making bread? Women had to grind grain into coarse flour by hand, using heavy stones. Or they pounded raw material into usable mash.
The difference between women's and men's work was how much movement was involved, and risk. Taking an infant to the stone quarry, metal-making site, the forest (woodcutting), following herds, etc. is obviously not a good idea. Women's work tended to be more localized in the house or village. This localization allowed for safe work and child care in the same place.
Just think of the things that women can do that men can't and vice versa simply based on their anatomy. Many species have sexual dimorphisms where the size and shape of the bodies can vary between sexes and each one has their own possible behaviors bases on their design. It's obvious you don't know enough about biology and psychology by the claims you are making.
Quoting andrewk
I never said that girls can't play rugby. The problem comes when a man thinks he is a woman and wants to play with the women. The problem is the result of the physical differences between men and women.
Thanks, that's helpful.
What are some examples of masculine traits?
So?
I think that's a tricky question -- not that I couldn't list things that come to mind, but I'd temper any such list by noting that traits are historically fluid. What counts as masculine changes depending on when, where, and who.
But, to use part of my little frame, I'd say that social impression (which, naturally, derives from my own upbringing and the particular sub-culture which that upbringing took place in) makes these sorts of traits masculine: Protective of the people you love, actively listen to your wife, earn enough money to support your family, make the first move in courtship, remain faithful to God, never give up, never complain, work hard
Some of these traits could been seen in the feminine as well. They are not mutually exclusive, per se (and I would say that my particular sub-culture is strongly structured around a binary of gender, where the two are treated very differently). But they are bound up in the identity as a man within this particular sub-group, rather than as bound up in a feminine identity. So it's not the traits, per se, which define the masculine and the feminine. In some sense identifying as a man is just as simple as that -- you are identified/identifiy within this particular gender, often but not exclusively bound up with sexuality, and finding what it means is actually a part of a journey (like a lot of parts of ones identity); there are general characteristics which we can talk about, but even within a particular category one is on a journey of discovery/creation of what it means to be said gender.
Very! Have you tried chatting them up?