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gender is more relevant than sex No it's not. The underlying biological reality is that humans reproduce sexually. All gender roles are social elaborations an

by mafribe 10y ago

gender is more relevant than sex No it's not. The underlying biological reality is that humans reproduce sexually. All gender roles are social elaborations and heuristics that evolve(d) to regulate and structure the biological reproduction of humans. All gender roles directly or indirectly refer to the sexual binary between males (= can father children) and females (= can give birth to children). E.g. the concept of Kathoey doesn't make sense except as an inversion of the biology-based distinction between males and females. After all, a substantial part of the Kathoey lifestyle is to look and act exactly like a biological female (including permanent genital modification), and have sex with a biological male. Clearly that's an extreme identification with the biological binary, except from an unusual angle. By imitating biological females and their conventional gender roles, by trying to look exactly like somebody who can give birth to children, the Kathoey reinforces the binary between male and female. stereotype threat It's deeply questionable that "stereotype threat" actually exists. The 'studies' that claim its existence are methodologically dubious.

SolaceQuantum 10y ago
The binary between female and male is kind of awkward to say, especially if you're using biological terms. I'm pretty sure that intersex is considered a very normal, if relatively rare,variation of human sex biology. Intersex isn't extremely rare either and isn't a defect so the idea of a biological binary confuses me.
- mafribe 10y ago
  intersex is considered a very normal To a quantitative biologist, maybe. But that's the wrong point of reference, as they don't make mainstream culture. Sexual reproduction so as to perpetuate humanity is the single most important function a society executes. All human culture directly or indirectly relates to this task. One of the key tasks in this context is the choice of partner(s) whom to reproduce with. Alas, not any two humans can reproduce together. Indeed, an exact determination who can successfully reproduce with whom is still not possible in 2016, although we are much better at this task than say 1000 years ago. Given that we can't predict mate compatibility perfectly, humanity needs heuristics to make this decision efficiently. The following heuristics are being used in practise: - Divide humans into two, male and female, based on the shape of their genitalia. - Have sex with members of the opposite group. Humans use additional heuristics for deciding with whom to mate, e.g. social status, age, but the male/female binary is by a large margin the most important. As you correctly point out, not all humans neatly fall into the genital-shape based classification between. But it doesn't matter, because the heuristic works so well that humans can reproduce successfully by ignoring those outliers. That means outliers must be infrequent enough (say > 99% fit the binary). I can't overemphasise this: the heuristic has been extremely successful. The very concept intersex makes sense only in contradistinction from binary normalcy. To see this, consider the fact that most humans have 10 fingers, but not all. Yet, there is no socially relevant concept of 'interhanded' people, no pressure groups, nobody claims to have been born with the wrong number of fingers, no finger reassignment surgery etc. That's because the number of fingers is not all that important. In the future we might have a refined classification, as our understanding of human reproduction has improved immeasurably in the last century. But note that a finer classification still relates to biological facts about human bodies. It would probably be something along the lines of - Can give birth to children, i.e. falls in the category woman, despite non-standard genitalia. - Can father children, i.e. falls in the category man, despite non-standard genitalia. - Can neither father children, nor give birth to children. In other words, it would be a refinement of the male/female binary.

by mafribe 10y ago

SolaceQuantum 10y ago

The binary between female and male is kind of awkward to say, especially if you're using biological terms. I'm pretty sure that intersex is considered a very normal, if relatively rare,variation of human sex biology. Intersex isn't extremely rare either and isn't a defect so the idea of a biological binary confuses me.

mafribe 10y ago
intersex is considered a very normal To a quantitative biologist, maybe. But that's the wrong point of reference, as they don't make mainstream culture. Sexual reproduction so as to perpetuate humanity is the single most important function a society executes. All human culture directly or indirectly relates to this task. One of the key tasks in this context is the choice of partner(s) whom to reproduce with. Alas, not any two humans can reproduce together. Indeed, an exact determination who can successfully reproduce with whom is still not possible in 2016, although we are much better at this task than say 1000 years ago. Given that we can't predict mate compatibility perfectly, humanity needs heuristics to make this decision efficiently. The following heuristics are being used in practise: - Divide humans into two, male and female, based on the shape of their genitalia. - Have sex with members of the opposite group. Humans use additional heuristics for deciding with whom to mate, e.g. social status, age, but the male/female binary is by a large margin the most important. As you correctly point out, not all humans neatly fall into the genital-shape based classification between. But it doesn't matter, because the heuristic works so well that humans can reproduce successfully by ignoring those outliers. That means outliers must be infrequent enough (say > 99% fit the binary). I can't overemphasise this: the heuristic has been extremely successful. The very concept intersex makes sense only in contradistinction from binary normalcy. To see this, consider the fact that most humans have 10 fingers, but not all. Yet, there is no socially relevant concept of 'interhanded' people, no pressure groups, nobody claims to have been born with the wrong number of fingers, no finger reassignment surgery etc. That's because the number of fingers is not all that important. In the future we might have a refined classification, as our understanding of human reproduction has improved immeasurably in the last century. But note that a finer classification still relates to biological facts about human bodies. It would probably be something along the lines of - Can give birth to children, i.e. falls in the category woman, despite non-standard genitalia. - Can father children, i.e. falls in the category man, despite non-standard genitalia. - Can neither father children, nor give birth to children. In other words, it would be a refinement of the male/female binary.