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I've written and rewritten a comment for this thread several times now, but every time I get close to posting it, I feel obliged to go back and revise it. The

I've written and rewritten a comment for this thread several times now, but every time I get close to posting it, I feel obliged to go back and revise it. The simple truth is that, given how toxic and charged a lot of the activism is around this topic, I don't feel able to make any kind of substantive comment that won't be misinterpreted, deliberately or otherwise, and used to pillior me.

justinpombrio 11y ago
Let me try. I frankly find it bizarre that so many things -- colors, clothes, toys, certain behaviors -- that should have nothing to do with gender are associated with gender. Why are toy isles even gendered? Why does everything for girls have to be pink? The kids wouldn't care if the adults hadn't already hoisted the distinction on them. I feel like, if we got rid of all these false associations, the difference between genders would be minimal, and that would make the sorts of problems discussed in the article a lot more manageable. Or are all of these just distractions, and am I missing the point entirely?
- HarrietJones 11y ago
  Well - Yes and No. My view on this is you have both gender identity and gender expression. Gender identity is very important to people and (to a lesser degree, children), but it's (mostly) invisible. We even hide our most obvious sexual characteristics. For this and possibly other reasons, gender identifiers are important. It's important that we (cis and trans both) can hold the magical tchotchke of womanhood and wave it about so that other people know what we are. If it wasn't important that people knew what we are we wouldn't spend a fortune on dresses and makeup. How that gender identity is defined isn't important. What is important is that it is defined. I'd argue that as long as it doesn't impact on a persons life choices then we should have things for boys and things for girls. So - Javascript is for Boys is a bad implementation of Gender Identity. Pink is for Girls is actually a great expression of Gender Identity. (As it doesn't affect career, or ease of getting dressed or anything that may otherwise societally affect women). Of course this whole conversation is full of mentalists shouting at each other, so we're never going to be able to work out the best way of allowing gender fluidity in children or for trans people to live in the world without being labelled as mentally ill.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- whitegrape 11y ago
  In the nicest possible way I'd say you're missing the point. To what degree gender is a social construct vs actually having non-minimal differences in the brain depending on your chromosomes is largely settled (IMO), the real question is just what is going on with gender dysphoria. Is it (and do we treat it as) a mental illness? (The DSM-V calls it a disorder.) What are the causes? Is it just attention-seeking? Or is it just an aspect of personality like preferring the color blue over red, only with much more important social implications? Is it changeable? Does it go away? Is the "gender-affirmative" approach the right one, where we apparently need to up-heave societal norms to make these people "comfortable", whatever that entails? Should such up-heaving be funded by the tax payer? Can we make them "comfortable" while not making other people "uncomfortable"? These and many others are the questions that matter. I don't have a strong opinion in the matter other than I know non-passable trans people creep me out on a sub-rational level (so I just avoid them, like spiders). I'd like to ignore the problem and let the scientists and doctors solve it. But when scientists and doctors are busy purging other scientists and doctors instead of doing science and medicine I guess I'd rather have a decree from the Supreme Court that settles things (at least temporarily) one way or another for society as a whole. If they pick wrong, the scientists that believe so better start coming up with good evidence, since apparently what's presently available is either not good enough to actually be convincing one way or another or it's possible to become a practitioner in the field without a firm grasp of the current state of evidence. Most commenters here won't read the submitted article. I admit I only skimmed it, for it is long, but what I did read was also good. It addresses some of these questions and more. This sort of reporting on purges rarely happens.
  - toothbrush 11y ago
    > To what degree gender is a social construct vs actually having non-minimal differences in the brain depending on your chromosomes is largely settled (IMO) I don't actually think this is true. Disclaimer: a close friend of mine studies this academically, so i'm probably incorrectly passing along a vague version of what i've been told, plus i have a certain level of personal investment in the issue. Anyhow, there's rather a difference of opinion in the schools of thought of queer theory (roughly: it's all a social construct) versus sexual difference theory (roughly: no, the physical body is important in the equation) -- if i understand correctly, this is far from a settled question. I don't want to attack you personally, because i believe you are commenting in good faith (as am i), but this sentence: > I don't have a strong opinion in the matter other than I know non-passable trans people creep me out on a sub-rational level (so I just avoid them, like spiders). Comes across as rather hurtful. I hope that sometime in the near future (like, 10–20 years? one can dream), this sentence will be seen as equally dubious as someone saying something like "black people creep me out, i don't know why but i try to avoid them". I really don't mean to be mean about it, i'm just pointing out that this attitude won't help any early-stage transpeople feel welcome or comfortable. We as the grass-roots society should probably do our bit to make everyone feel accepted and welcome, especially if they do not conform to our (gender expression, as well as other) expectations. I mention the bottom-up point-of-view in contrast to your "Supreme Court" / institutional answer to the issue. Respectfully.
- tzs 11y ago
  > Why does everything for girls have to be pink? That's fairly recent. It wasn't until the early 20th century that blue and pink started being promoted as gender identifiers--and it was pink for boys, blue for girls. It stayed pink for boys, blue for girls until the 1940s, and then the pink for girls, blue for boys convention took hold. From the '60s through the mid-80's the trend was toward gender-neutral clothing for kids, due to the rise of feminism. The style of feminism at this time had a strong anti-femminine bent. The next generation of feminists took a more accepting approach to femininity, accepting that a woman could be the equal of a man and still also want to be feminine. Marketers picked up on this, and started pushing the blue means boy/masculine and pink means girl/feminine because having different categories leads to more sales (if a family has children of both sexes, they need to buy two sets of baby things instead of just passing the first baby's hand-me-downs on to the second baby). Hence, the spread of blue for boys, pink for girls beyond clothing to things like cribs, strollers, room paint, and so on. Here is a nice article on this history of this: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/when-did-girls-start-wearing-pink-1370097/?no-ist http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/when-did-girls-st... > I feel like, if we got rid of all these false associations, the difference between genders would be minimal, and that would make the sorts of problems discussed in the article a lot more manageable There would probably still be some significant differences. Nearly every other mammal has significant sex-based [1] behavior differences, including primates. It would be astounding if humans did not. There is research that indicates that very young children do have built-in preferences for certain kinds of toys and that these preferences are different for boys and girls, and there is research that finds these same preferences in some non-human primates. For instance, studies in two different monkey species found that girl baby monkeys preferred to play with dolls more than with trucks, and boy baby monkeys preferred the trucks over the dolls. See http://www.livescience.com/22677-girls-dolls-boys-toy-trucks.html http://www.livescience.com/22677-girls-dolls-boys-toy-trucks... Researchers looking into these preferences in human babies have found that they correlate with sex hormone levels. Boys with higher testosterone levels tend to have stronger preferences for "boy" toys. Girls with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (a condition that causes them to experience high levels of androgen in the womb) preferred "boy" toys, lending more credence to the theory that hormones are involved. (See previous link for more on this). [1] I'm saying "sex-based" here rather than "gender-based" because when talking about more than just humans we need to stick to things we can externally observe. Since sex correlates very highly with gender in humans, this substitution works for most humans.

justinpombrio 11y ago

Let me try. I frankly find it bizarre that so many things -- colors, clothes, toys, certain behaviors -- that should have nothing to do with gender are associated with gender. Why are toy isles even gendered? Why does everything for girls have to be pink? The kids wouldn't care if the adults hadn't already hoisted the distinction on them. I feel like, if we got rid of all these false associations, the difference between genders would be minimal, and that would make the sorts of problems discussed in the article a lot more manageable. Or are all of these just distractions, and am I missing the point entirely?

HarrietJones 11y ago
Well - Yes and No. My view on this is you have both gender identity and gender expression. Gender identity is very important to people and (to a lesser degree, children), but it's (mostly) invisible. We even hide our most obvious sexual characteristics. For this and possibly other reasons, gender identifiers are important. It's important that we (cis and trans both) can hold the magical tchotchke of womanhood and wave it about so that other people know what we are. If it wasn't important that people knew what we are we wouldn't spend a fortune on dresses and makeup. How that gender identity is defined isn't important. What is important is that it is defined. I'd argue that as long as it doesn't impact on a persons life choices then we should have things for boys and things for girls. So - Javascript is for Boys is a bad implementation of Gender Identity. Pink is for Girls is actually a great expression of Gender Identity. (As it doesn't affect career, or ease of getting dressed or anything that may otherwise societally affect women). Of course this whole conversation is full of mentalists shouting at each other, so we're never going to be able to work out the best way of allowing gender fluidity in children or for trans people to live in the world without being labelled as mentally ill.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
whitegrape 11y ago
In the nicest possible way I'd say you're missing the point. To what degree gender is a social construct vs actually having non-minimal differences in the brain depending on your chromosomes is largely settled (IMO), the real question is just what is going on with gender dysphoria. Is it (and do we treat it as) a mental illness? (The DSM-V calls it a disorder.) What are the causes? Is it just attention-seeking? Or is it just an aspect of personality like preferring the color blue over red, only with much more important social implications? Is it changeable? Does it go away? Is the "gender-affirmative" approach the right one, where we apparently need to up-heave societal norms to make these people "comfortable", whatever that entails? Should such up-heaving be funded by the tax payer? Can we make them "comfortable" while not making other people "uncomfortable"? These and many others are the questions that matter. I don't have a strong opinion in the matter other than I know non-passable trans people creep me out on a sub-rational level (so I just avoid them, like spiders). I'd like to ignore the problem and let the scientists and doctors solve it. But when scientists and doctors are busy purging other scientists and doctors instead of doing science and medicine I guess I'd rather have a decree from the Supreme Court that settles things (at least temporarily) one way or another for society as a whole. If they pick wrong, the scientists that believe so better start coming up with good evidence, since apparently what's presently available is either not good enough to actually be convincing one way or another or it's possible to become a practitioner in the field without a firm grasp of the current state of evidence. Most commenters here won't read the submitted article. I admit I only skimmed it, for it is long, but what I did read was also good. It addresses some of these questions and more. This sort of reporting on purges rarely happens.
- toothbrush 11y ago
  > To what degree gender is a social construct vs actually having non-minimal differences in the brain depending on your chromosomes is largely settled (IMO) I don't actually think this is true. Disclaimer: a close friend of mine studies this academically, so i'm probably incorrectly passing along a vague version of what i've been told, plus i have a certain level of personal investment in the issue. Anyhow, there's rather a difference of opinion in the schools of thought of queer theory (roughly: it's all a social construct) versus sexual difference theory (roughly: no, the physical body is important in the equation) -- if i understand correctly, this is far from a settled question. I don't want to attack you personally, because i believe you are commenting in good faith (as am i), but this sentence: > I don't have a strong opinion in the matter other than I know non-passable trans people creep me out on a sub-rational level (so I just avoid them, like spiders). Comes across as rather hurtful. I hope that sometime in the near future (like, 10–20 years? one can dream), this sentence will be seen as equally dubious as someone saying something like "black people creep me out, i don't know why but i try to avoid them". I really don't mean to be mean about it, i'm just pointing out that this attitude won't help any early-stage transpeople feel welcome or comfortable. We as the grass-roots society should probably do our bit to make everyone feel accepted and welcome, especially if they do not conform to our (gender expression, as well as other) expectations. I mention the bottom-up point-of-view in contrast to your "Supreme Court" / institutional answer to the issue. Respectfully.
tzs 11y ago
> Why does everything for girls have to be pink? That's fairly recent. It wasn't until the early 20th century that blue and pink started being promoted as gender identifiers--and it was pink for boys, blue for girls. It stayed pink for boys, blue for girls until the 1940s, and then the pink for girls, blue for boys convention took hold. From the '60s through the mid-80's the trend was toward gender-neutral clothing for kids, due to the rise of feminism. The style of feminism at this time had a strong anti-femminine bent. The next generation of feminists took a more accepting approach to femininity, accepting that a woman could be the equal of a man and still also want to be feminine. Marketers picked up on this, and started pushing the blue means boy/masculine and pink means girl/feminine because having different categories leads to more sales (if a family has children of both sexes, they need to buy two sets of baby things instead of just passing the first baby's hand-me-downs on to the second baby). Hence, the spread of blue for boys, pink for girls beyond clothing to things like cribs, strollers, room paint, and so on. Here is a nice article on this history of this: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/when-did-girls-start-wearing-pink-1370097/?no-ist http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/when-did-girls-st... > I feel like, if we got rid of all these false associations, the difference between genders would be minimal, and that would make the sorts of problems discussed in the article a lot more manageable There would probably still be some significant differences. Nearly every other mammal has significant sex-based [1] behavior differences, including primates. It would be astounding if humans did not. There is research that indicates that very young children do have built-in preferences for certain kinds of toys and that these preferences are different for boys and girls, and there is research that finds these same preferences in some non-human primates. For instance, studies in two different monkey species found that girl baby monkeys preferred to play with dolls more than with trucks, and boy baby monkeys preferred the trucks over the dolls. See http://www.livescience.com/22677-girls-dolls-boys-toy-trucks.html http://www.livescience.com/22677-girls-dolls-boys-toy-trucks... Researchers looking into these preferences in human babies have found that they correlate with sex hormone levels. Boys with higher testosterone levels tend to have stronger preferences for "boy" toys. Girls with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (a condition that causes them to experience high levels of androgen in the womb) preferred "boy" toys, lending more credence to the theory that hormones are involved. (See previous link for more on this). [1] I'm saying "sex-based" here rather than "gender-based" because when talking about more than just humans we need to stick to things we can externally observe. Since sex correlates very highly with gender in humans, this substitution works for most humans.