5 ms·

>biological factors don’t necessarily affect people’s genders then what gender is if not biology? Does it mean it is nurture instead of or as a significant add

• DoktorDelta 6y ago
  As I understand it, Gender is the socio-cultural aspect, and Sex is the biological term.
  • monkeycantype 6y ago
    But they aren’t, at least in our present culture decoupled, so people have a sense of whether the feel aligned in form and physiology with their gender identity. We’re going to find out in future decades as people experiment with gender identity and physical transformation how much this can be deconstructed, how much of what we think of as gender is an association of things that often went together in the past, how much is about social perception, how much is about your own feeling of inhabiting your body, and how much is a free space for you to author
    • sudosysgen 6y ago
      They aren't completely decoupled, no. But historically gender has varied wildly while sex hasn't, so it's intrinsically significantly decoupled from sex itself. Since the extent of that coupling is currently unknown the scientists provide an answer that reflects the uncertainty. What we know for sure is that it's at least significantly decoupled, and almost certainly not completely decoupled.
  • vehemenz 6y ago
    That's one way to cash out the distinction, but "gender" can also mean sex. This usage (at least in English) dates back to the 13th century. At best, it's ambiguous. You can't really know what someone means by "gender" without context, such as the mentioning of the sex/gender distinction. "Gender" has become somewhat of an auto-acronym.
  • throwawaysea 6y ago
    If gender is social/cultural and there are infinite genders and it is a spectrum, what makes gender different from personality? How is that term useful in a way different from personality, and why should pronouns be altered for it?
  • oji0hub 6y ago
    This if often claimed but there seems to be no evidence for it. If anything, all efforts to change humans using social techniques have failed. Take gay conversion therapy, for instance. It just doesn't work. There is no evidence for it. We just can't mold ourselves using social pressure -- because it's really down to biology.
• strogonoff 6y ago
  Presumably it’s about the fact that the gender one identifies with can differ from their biological sex (e.g., a person born as male may identify as female). On one hand, an argument can be made that the freedom to identify with a gender different from one’s biological sex enables individuals to live more fulfilled lives that are not defined by gender stereotypes they’d otherwise be forced to live within. On the other hand, an argument can be made that the distinction between gender identity and biological sex actually strengthens gender stereotypes and potentially hurts equality (e.g., women were historically supposed to be soft and pretty and under-achieving, so a female who doesn’t want to fit that stereotype would feel pressured to identify as a male rather than be her own unique person), and that there’s no clear consensus regarding a self-sufficient definition of what a gender is that doesn’t recursively involve biological sex.
• caconym_ 6y ago
  Biology affects biological sex. For most people this means XX or XY chromosomes. There are probably some nuances of expression and phenotype in there too, and obviously some people's chromosomal situation does not fall into either of those buckets. It's likely not possible to find widespread agreement on this, but I think the modern concept of gender is more or less about how you align with the traditional male and female roles in society (doesn't have to be in the binary sense). I don't think there's a known right answer for how much of this alignment comes down to "nature", and how much to "nurture". What's clear is that some people do not mentally identify with the sex and/or gender labels and/or roles that their chromosomes would traditionally assign to them. The "biology doesn't care about your feelings" arguments are stupid because they don't amount to any more than excuses for ignorance—biology obviously can't fully explain gender as in gender roles. In fact, pretty much all the arguments I've seen against accepting transgender folks' identities rely on being obtuse about definitions to some degree.
  • trhway 6y ago
    >accepting transgender folks' identities that is the issue of social policy (i'm for accepting of whatever identities people have, whether it has scientific basis or not) while the article is supposedly about scientific findings >obtuse about definitions to some degree that is my point. It is an science related article and thus it is the context where significant degree of precision and obtuseness with definitions is kind of expected. Slipping in such a blanket imprecise statement is what i tried to point to.
    • caconym_ 6y ago
      I don't really think it's inappropriately imprecise, though. It's just an acknowledgement that the link between biological sex and gender self-identification is not well understood at this time.
    • sudosysgen 6y ago
      Gender is an issue of social policy, psychology, neuropsychology, and biology. Sex is an issue of science. That's why science on gender always has small degrees of precision and is obtuse. It's moreso a question of soft science than hard science.
• deleted 6y ago
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