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I’m not sure the Japanese concept here is the same thing as what we call trans today. This article seems to portray a more societally enforced “role” for this t

I’m not sure the Japanese concept here is the same thing as what we call trans today. This article seems to portray a more societally enforced “role” for this third gender rather than treating it as an “expression” or “identity”. But I do wonder why Western (progressive / left / whatever) views are insistent on additional genders being hierarchically related to traditional genders (like transwomen being a subset of women) whereas older societies like some Asian ones have a catch-all third gender approach that placed them alongside the two typical genders. To me the latter makes more sense, because there are clear and significant differences between trans and non trans people, so having a new category feels consistent and natural.

makeitdouble 5y ago
I would guess, for one we have a learned tendency to classify things and rank them. Libraries’ DDC comes to mind, where we tried to force an clean order on basically the whole universe. Second would be that christian societies have a very clear cut Adam/Eve dichotomy that I think was enforced way more than other places. Having genders hanging out of the dichotomy becomes more difficult than in laxer societies.
cassonmars 5y ago
I don’t think there’d be significant objection to the notion of transgender folks being recognized as transgender if it weren’t for the fact that trans people experience significant amounts of discrimination explicitly associated with that distinction, in the context of a society that perceives a gender binary.
lagadu 5y ago
The gender binary is arguably one of the strongest and most deeply-rooted concepts of western societies. Because of it I suspect it's a lot easier to accept that some people belong to the category that they weren't assigned at birth rather than accepting that gender has no business with being a binary system and is completely independent from sex. I see it as baby steps, hopefully we'll get there someday.
- ImprobableTruth 5y ago
  What is a coherent (non-recursive) definition of gender that is completely independent from sex? To me it seems like you're just left with 'subculture' at that point, but I think that's missing something very core to gender, namely sexuality.
  - antris 5y ago
    I think of gender as a subjective feeling of identity. It correlates with sex most of the time: most men feel like they are men, and most women feel like they are women. That feeling is a cis identity. But for some people their subjective feeling of identity is just as obviously trans as for most people their cis identity is obvious. If you are cis, then you know what gender identity feels like. For trans people, it's just a different identity from their assigned gender at birth.
    - teakettle42 5y ago
      That's a meaningless tautology — a recursive definition. > If you are cis, then you know what gender identity feels like. I think that, near universally, we do not. I don't feel my gender; there is no frame of reference against which I could possibly correlate my subjective and entirely internal mental experience against some normative model of what it "feels" like to either be male or female, much less your tautological definition of "man" or "woman".
      - bjowen 5y ago
        This is a weird way of talking about feeling. Do you correlate your sensations of happiness or impatience or satisfaction against normative models using objective indicia, or do you just, you know, feel them? When someone tells you that they are feeling one of these things, do you tell them that there is no objective way of understanding the words that they are saying, or do you refer to your own experience where you reached for similar words to understand them? If you live in a society, you are surrounded by archetypes and roles and norms of gender - or of the performance of gender - which might be a helpful way to think about this post. Things like what clothing and grooming is appropriate are easy examples - and depending on where you are in the world, those standards may be radically different - in some cultures men are expected to adorn themselves to be attractive to partners, in some it’s women. But it’s also what emotions it’s appropriate to display, what kind of authority is afforded to a person, what physical strength and which ailments are reasonable, what kinds of body hair is attractive. We have words that describe a favourable performance of those gender roles (womanly, manly) and unfavourable words (effeminate, mannish). They are enforced, or at least patrolled, in all kinds of ways. Easy example is the kind of differential permissiveness around alcoholism. Why is that? If we have a social or a moral standard, why is it gendered? You have without a doubt experienced this in your life - and if you’re lucky it’s been internal and not at the hands of the local bully. If you’ve ever checked or modified your demeanour or your outfit or your tone because you are aware that it is too girly or too butch or too macho or too slutty, then that is the sensation of being trained back towards the model.
jl6 5y ago
You could compare to Samoa’s “fa'afafine”. Gender non-conformance exists in most cultures. The western analysis of gender non-conformance results in what we call “trans”, but other cultures have had, and continue to have, different approaches.
- watwut 5y ago
  No. Being gender non-conforming and being trans are two massively different things. I am gender non-comforming in. I am not trans at all. Whenever I read about trans, I can't relate to it and their feelings, issues etc are puzzle to me. I can relate to what other gender non-conforming people say perfectly fine. Also, seems to me that being gender non conforming is much much less issue then being trans. To the point it is not much issue while being trans seems to sux.
  - jl6 5y ago
    I agree 100% they are not the same thing and I’m explicitly trying to call out that what we call trans is a western lens on GNC and other lenses are available across the world.
    - watwut 5y ago
      I was reacting to "The western analysis of gender non-conformance results in what we call “trans”". My point was, it does not. "Western" people nor Western analysis confuses me with trans.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> But I do wonder why Western (progressive / left / whatever) views are insistent on additional genders being hierarchically related to traditional genders (like transwomen being a subset of women) Er, they aren’t. First of all, “transwoman” (or, as many will inform you is correct “trans woman”) isn’t an additional gender. The gender is “woman”. “trans” is not a gender identity, it is a statement about the relation of the gender identity to the socially ascribed gender (often called “sex”) assigned at birth. Second of all, the actual “additional” genders, i.e., those outside of the binary, are, well, outside of the binary, not “heirarchically related” or even mapped to that binary.
- teakettle42 5y ago
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > My understanding is that "woman" is simply an adult human female, whereas "gender" is a more polite synonym for "sex". There are actually three traits of interest here, not two: sex is a complex of biological traits that is loosely bimodal but not binary. ascribed gender is a categorization imposed (or accepted) by the society in which one exists, whose dimensionality and granularity varies by society. gender identity is one's personal concept of self belonging in the same rough space as ascribed gender, though it may of may not correspond to categories accepted in one’s society for ascribed gender. Currently, in most of the world, people's initial ascribed gender is set by their society based on some subset of sex traits. Historically, in Western societies (and to a greater or lesser extent most historical societies, though some had specific accepted exception from either or both the initial ascribed gender rule and the binary limit) the imposed norm has been that one should align their gender identity with ascribed gender confined to a binary based on stereotypical relation to sex traits on pain of fairly extreme social consequences, though the recent evolving norm (which is resisted by conservative elements of society) is that ascribed gender should shift as needed to align with gender identity which is not confined to a binary.
    - 5y ago

makeitdouble 5y ago

I would guess, for one we have a learned tendency to classify things and rank them. Libraries’ DDC comes to mind, where we tried to force an clean order on basically the whole universe. Second would be that christian societies have a very clear cut Adam/Eve dichotomy that I think was enforced way more than other places. Having genders hanging out of the dichotomy becomes more difficult than in laxer societies.

cassonmars 5y ago

I don’t think there’d be significant objection to the notion of transgender folks being recognized as transgender if it weren’t for the fact that trans people experience significant amounts of discrimination explicitly associated with that distinction, in the context of a society that perceives a gender binary.

lagadu 5y ago

The gender binary is arguably one of the strongest and most deeply-rooted concepts of western societies. Because of it I suspect it's a lot easier to accept that some people belong to the category that they weren't assigned at birth rather than accepting that gender has no business with being a binary system and is completely independent from sex. I see it as baby steps, hopefully we'll get there someday.

ImprobableTruth 5y ago
What is a coherent (non-recursive) definition of gender that is completely independent from sex? To me it seems like you're just left with 'subculture' at that point, but I think that's missing something very core to gender, namely sexuality.
- antris 5y ago
  I think of gender as a subjective feeling of identity. It correlates with sex most of the time: most men feel like they are men, and most women feel like they are women. That feeling is a cis identity. But for some people their subjective feeling of identity is just as obviously trans as for most people their cis identity is obvious. If you are cis, then you know what gender identity feels like. For trans people, it's just a different identity from their assigned gender at birth.
  - teakettle42 5y ago
    That's a meaningless tautology — a recursive definition. > If you are cis, then you know what gender identity feels like. I think that, near universally, we do not. I don't feel my gender; there is no frame of reference against which I could possibly correlate my subjective and entirely internal mental experience against some normative model of what it "feels" like to either be male or female, much less your tautological definition of "man" or "woman".
    - bjowen 5y ago
      This is a weird way of talking about feeling. Do you correlate your sensations of happiness or impatience or satisfaction against normative models using objective indicia, or do you just, you know, feel them? When someone tells you that they are feeling one of these things, do you tell them that there is no objective way of understanding the words that they are saying, or do you refer to your own experience where you reached for similar words to understand them? If you live in a society, you are surrounded by archetypes and roles and norms of gender - or of the performance of gender - which might be a helpful way to think about this post. Things like what clothing and grooming is appropriate are easy examples - and depending on where you are in the world, those standards may be radically different - in some cultures men are expected to adorn themselves to be attractive to partners, in some it’s women. But it’s also what emotions it’s appropriate to display, what kind of authority is afforded to a person, what physical strength and which ailments are reasonable, what kinds of body hair is attractive. We have words that describe a favourable performance of those gender roles (womanly, manly) and unfavourable words (effeminate, mannish). They are enforced, or at least patrolled, in all kinds of ways. Easy example is the kind of differential permissiveness around alcoholism. Why is that? If we have a social or a moral standard, why is it gendered? You have without a doubt experienced this in your life - and if you’re lucky it’s been internal and not at the hands of the local bully. If you’ve ever checked or modified your demeanour or your outfit or your tone because you are aware that it is too girly or too butch or too macho or too slutty, then that is the sensation of being trained back towards the model.

jl6 5y ago

You could compare to Samoa’s “fa'afafine”. Gender non-conformance exists in most cultures. The western analysis of gender non-conformance results in what we call “trans”, but other cultures have had, and continue to have, different approaches.

watwut 5y ago
No. Being gender non-conforming and being trans are two massively different things. I am gender non-comforming in. I am not trans at all. Whenever I read about trans, I can't relate to it and their feelings, issues etc are puzzle to me. I can relate to what other gender non-conforming people say perfectly fine. Also, seems to me that being gender non conforming is much much less issue then being trans. To the point it is not much issue while being trans seems to sux.
- jl6 5y ago
  I agree 100% they are not the same thing and I’m explicitly trying to call out that what we call trans is a western lens on GNC and other lenses are available across the world.
  - watwut 5y ago
    I was reacting to "The western analysis of gender non-conformance results in what we call “trans”". My point was, it does not. "Western" people nor Western analysis confuses me with trans.

dragonwriter 5y ago

> But I do wonder why Western (progressive / left / whatever) views are insistent on additional genders being hierarchically related to traditional genders (like transwomen being a subset of women) Er, they aren’t. First of all, “transwoman” (or, as many will inform you is correct “trans woman”) isn’t an additional gender. The gender is “woman”. “trans” is not a gender identity, it is a statement about the relation of the gender identity to the socially ascribed gender (often called “sex”) assigned at birth. Second of all, the actual “additional” genders, i.e., those outside of the binary, are, well, outside of the binary, not “heirarchically related” or even mapped to that binary.

teakettle42 5y ago
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > My understanding is that "woman" is simply an adult human female, whereas "gender" is a more polite synonym for "sex". There are actually three traits of interest here, not two: sex is a complex of biological traits that is loosely bimodal but not binary. ascribed gender is a categorization imposed (or accepted) by the society in which one exists, whose dimensionality and granularity varies by society. gender identity is one's personal concept of self belonging in the same rough space as ascribed gender, though it may of may not correspond to categories accepted in one’s society for ascribed gender. Currently, in most of the world, people's initial ascribed gender is set by their society based on some subset of sex traits. Historically, in Western societies (and to a greater or lesser extent most historical societies, though some had specific accepted exception from either or both the initial ascribed gender rule and the binary limit) the imposed norm has been that one should align their gender identity with ascribed gender confined to a binary based on stereotypical relation to sex traits on pain of fairly extreme social consequences, though the recent evolving norm (which is resisted by conservative elements of society) is that ascribed gender should shift as needed to align with gender identity which is not confined to a binary.
  - 5y ago