6 ms·

"Gender" is a social construct but while "old" or "young" is a social construct "69 years old" isn't really.

ArchTypical 8y ago
69 years old (more or less on earth or in space) is no different than Male or Female (more or less). The difference is in relative subjective granularity.
- kennywinker 8y ago
  In what sense is the time since birth subjective? Excepting general relativity time dilation Interstellar situations, that is.
- tdb7893 8y ago
  Many people refer to sex as what someone is biologically and gender as what society considers them (edit: just FYI I'm not an expert and this is probably an oversimplification). While sex is more constant there isn't any reason gender has to be (and there are practical reasons why it shouldn't be but that's out of scope of this comment). This means that while biologically someone might have two XX chromosomes and be 60 years old it's not necessary that society considers them an old woman.
- EpicEng 8y ago
  That's simply wrong. Age has a definition. You cannot 'feel' yourself into a different age. Sex != gender.
  - ArchTypical 8y ago
    > That's simply wrong. > Age has a definition. Relativity explains that this definition is subjective, experimentally. Astronauts experience time differentials and it will only get more obvious as we go farther. Again, the concept of granularity (how much of what matters from what perspective) applies in both cases - age and gender. This isn't a justification. Resolve this philosophically however you like with one and I observe that it should be true in the other case.
    - EpicEng 8y ago
      Quite the stretch. Ok, I give up: if it is demonstrable that a given person has traveled near the speed of light and thus aged significantly differently than the rest of us, that person should be allowed to legally change their age. That's happened zero times thus far, so I stand by my original argument.
      - andrenth 8y ago
        Physics is quite a stretch and yet denying biology isn’t... This is an anti-science, ideological stance.
        EpicEng 8y ago
        >Physics is quite a stretch and yet denying biology isn’t... Who's talking about biology? Go look up the definition of "gender". We can debate the specifics and current state of affairs, but you can't argue with the definition.
        andrenth 8y ago
        The definition of gender, stated multiple times in this thread as if it were a hard truth (i.e. a social construct), is purely ideological.
outside1234 8y ago
People are male or female by genetics and have a personal perception of themselves as something other than that gender. I can totally see how someone might be 69, but still running triathlons, and want to identify with an effective age that is 49. I fail to see how these two cases are different.
- EpicEng 8y ago
  Age is determined by trips around the Sun and sex is determined by genetics. Gender, by definition, is not determined by sex. You are conflating sex and gender, but they are not the same thing. You can feel like a man, but be biologically a woman. You can feel like 40 at 70, but you're still 70. gen·der /ˈjendər/Submit noun 1. the state of being male or female (typically used with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones).
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- the_gastropod 8y ago
  > People are male or female by genetics Some (most) people. As with most things, the whole truth is not that simple. Regardless, "sex" and "gender" are also not the same (though they're usually closely related). There's nothing about having a Y chromosome that makes one have short fingernails, short hair, unable to wear dresses or high heels or paint one's fingernails.
  - vivekseth 8y ago
    Someone can be male without even having a Y chromosome: https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/xx-male-syndrome https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs-...
- belorn 8y ago
  Genetics is not that simplistic. A male born with androgen insensitivity syndrome have every genetic marker for being male, with male chromosomes, but get female genital and female secondary sexual characteristics. AIS has a range from mild, partial and full, and is only one of many areas where you get gender variation. There were a study that looked if biological sex difference in the brain matched the chromosome or the gender that a person say that they are, and it found that biological sex difference did not match the chromosome for transsexuals. It matched the gender that the person said they were. The study also concluded that hormone replacement was not a factor as they only tested those who had not gone through that. This mean that genital and secondary sexual characteristics are not adequate to correctly identify the genetic sex, nor is biological sex difference such as brain composition, bones or other traits which normally differ between genders. DNA is the closest thing to a clean binary state, but then we have strange cases where some individuals have multiple DNA in them, and thus have both XX and XY. As such the best scientific conclusions is that both gender and sex is a probabilistic result of the combined traits that we associate with male, female, man and woman.
epicureanideal 8y ago
But on a birth certificate they show sex, not gender.
- kennywinker 8y ago
  If they do (don’t have mine handy to check) then perhaps they shouldn’t. Since that marker is used to enforce a specific gender on people’s lives.
captainmuon 8y ago
Although, if you show me a random person, I can easily tell you their sex (and in most cases gender). However I can't precisely determine their age. To track somebody's age is quite elaborate, you need a calendar and have to count days and years, and you can't do that yourself or trust the person to do it, but you need a certain social system... Birth certificates etc. or at least your fellow villagers have to celebrate birthdays regularly. What I'm trying to say is, a lot of very unobvious things are socially constructed, I think.
- crooked-v 8y ago
  > Although, if you show me a random person, I can easily tell you their sex (and in most cases gender). No, you think you can easily tell their sex, because people who have successfully transitioned are the ones you can't pick out. It's confirmation bias.
  - jazoom 8y ago
    So they get wrong one in ten thousand. I bet you can't guess the age of 9999/10000 people.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- tdb7893 8y ago
  Maybe I don't understand your argument but it sounds like to me you would think that 3 feet long is societally determined because you need a social system to define what 3 feet is and create measuring tapes and whatever but that would make every metric socially constructed. It only works based off a different definition of what socially constructed means thqn I intended in my post so I could try to nail down a better definition or if you want you could suggest to me clearer words in the future but I'm loathe to get into a semantic argument here. Edit: TL;DR by my understanding your definition of societally determined is so broad as to not really be very meaningful.

69 years old (more or less on earth or in space) is no different than Male or Female (more or less). The difference is in relative subjective granularity.

kennywinker 8y ago
In what sense is the time since birth subjective? Excepting general relativity time dilation Interstellar situations, that is.
tdb7893 8y ago
Many people refer to sex as what someone is biologically and gender as what society considers them (edit: just FYI I'm not an expert and this is probably an oversimplification). While sex is more constant there isn't any reason gender has to be (and there are practical reasons why it shouldn't be but that's out of scope of this comment). This means that while biologically someone might have two XX chromosomes and be 60 years old it's not necessary that society considers them an old woman.
EpicEng 8y ago
That's simply wrong. Age has a definition. You cannot 'feel' yourself into a different age. Sex != gender.
- ArchTypical 8y ago
  > That's simply wrong. > Age has a definition. Relativity explains that this definition is subjective, experimentally. Astronauts experience time differentials and it will only get more obvious as we go farther. Again, the concept of granularity (how much of what matters from what perspective) applies in both cases - age and gender. This isn't a justification. Resolve this philosophically however you like with one and I observe that it should be true in the other case.
  - EpicEng 8y ago
    Quite the stretch. Ok, I give up: if it is demonstrable that a given person has traveled near the speed of light and thus aged significantly differently than the rest of us, that person should be allowed to legally change their age. That's happened zero times thus far, so I stand by my original argument.
    - andrenth 8y ago
      Physics is quite a stretch and yet denying biology isn’t... This is an anti-science, ideological stance.
      - EpicEng 8y ago
        >Physics is quite a stretch and yet denying biology isn’t... Who's talking about biology? Go look up the definition of "gender". We can debate the specifics and current state of affairs, but you can't argue with the definition.
        andrenth 8y ago
        The definition of gender, stated multiple times in this thread as if it were a hard truth (i.e. a social construct), is purely ideological.

outside1234 8y ago

People are male or female by genetics and have a personal perception of themselves as something other than that gender. I can totally see how someone might be 69, but still running triathlons, and want to identify with an effective age that is 49. I fail to see how these two cases are different.

EpicEng 8y ago
Age is determined by trips around the Sun and sex is determined by genetics. Gender, by definition, is not determined by sex. You are conflating sex and gender, but they are not the same thing. You can feel like a man, but be biologically a woman. You can feel like 40 at 70, but you're still 70. gen·der /ˈjendər/Submit noun 1. the state of being male or female (typically used with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones).
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
the_gastropod 8y ago
> People are male or female by genetics Some (most) people. As with most things, the whole truth is not that simple. Regardless, "sex" and "gender" are also not the same (though they're usually closely related). There's nothing about having a Y chromosome that makes one have short fingernails, short hair, unable to wear dresses or high heels or paint one's fingernails.
- vivekseth 8y ago
  Someone can be male without even having a Y chromosome: https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/xx-male-syndrome https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs-...
belorn 8y ago
Genetics is not that simplistic. A male born with androgen insensitivity syndrome have every genetic marker for being male, with male chromosomes, but get female genital and female secondary sexual characteristics. AIS has a range from mild, partial and full, and is only one of many areas where you get gender variation. There were a study that looked if biological sex difference in the brain matched the chromosome or the gender that a person say that they are, and it found that biological sex difference did not match the chromosome for transsexuals. It matched the gender that the person said they were. The study also concluded that hormone replacement was not a factor as they only tested those who had not gone through that. This mean that genital and secondary sexual characteristics are not adequate to correctly identify the genetic sex, nor is biological sex difference such as brain composition, bones or other traits which normally differ between genders. DNA is the closest thing to a clean binary state, but then we have strange cases where some individuals have multiple DNA in them, and thus have both XX and XY. As such the best scientific conclusions is that both gender and sex is a probabilistic result of the combined traits that we associate with male, female, man and woman.

epicureanideal 8y ago

But on a birth certificate they show sex, not gender.

kennywinker 8y ago
If they do (don’t have mine handy to check) then perhaps they shouldn’t. Since that marker is used to enforce a specific gender on people’s lives.

captainmuon 8y ago

Although, if you show me a random person, I can easily tell you their sex (and in most cases gender). However I can't precisely determine their age. To track somebody's age is quite elaborate, you need a calendar and have to count days and years, and you can't do that yourself or trust the person to do it, but you need a certain social system... Birth certificates etc. or at least your fellow villagers have to celebrate birthdays regularly. What I'm trying to say is, a lot of very unobvious things are socially constructed, I think.

crooked-v 8y ago
> Although, if you show me a random person, I can easily tell you their sex (and in most cases gender). No, you think you can easily tell their sex, because people who have successfully transitioned are the ones you can't pick out. It's confirmation bias.
- jazoom 8y ago
  So they get wrong one in ten thousand. I bet you can't guess the age of 9999/10000 people.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
tdb7893 8y ago
Maybe I don't understand your argument but it sounds like to me you would think that 3 feet long is societally determined because you need a social system to define what 3 feet is and create measuring tapes and whatever but that would make every metric socially constructed. It only works based off a different definition of what socially constructed means thqn I intended in my post so I could try to nail down a better definition or if you want you could suggest to me clearer words in the future but I'm loathe to get into a semantic argument here. Edit: TL;DR by my understanding your definition of societally determined is so broad as to not really be very meaningful.