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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

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.
    - teakettle42 5y ago
      > Do you correlate your sensations of happiness or impatience or satisfaction against normative models using objective indicia Of course we do. It’s how we establish shared meaning about what it means to feel any of those things. The rest of your post describes gender roles; as in, social standards and stereotypes of behaviors attached to sex. We don’t use the words “woman” and “man” to denote roles or a social subculture, and we’ve never segregated bathrooms, or established segregated sports programs, on the basis of gender roles. How I feel internally, even if you could correlate it to some objective definition of “feeling female” — which you cannot — does not change that I am a man; an adult human male.
- ImprobableTruth 5y ago
  But that's a definition that hinges on sex, so it's not at all independent. If you were to remove the correlation to sex, 'subjective feeling of identity' is essentially just subculture, so hipster, goth and skater would also be 'genders'.
  - antris 5y ago
    Sorry I thought you were genuinely curious, and not just baiting for a debate. I'm not interested. It's not that complicated a concept. Even kids can understand it quite well and there's plenty of information available when you decide that you want to actually learn instead of trying to debate your way into confirming your own opinions.
    - teakettle42 5y ago
      If you have a cogent argument, make it; someone genuinely curious is still going to need more than "because I say so" to work with. > It's not that complicated a concept. Even kids can understand it quite well Children will also readily believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny if their parents tell them that they exist. That's not an argument.
      - antris 5y ago
        Like I said, I'm not here to argue or debate. Genuinely curious people can find ample information on Wikipedia.
        teakettle42 5y ago
        If one applies any intellectual rigor to the question at all, the ample information to which you refer makes it clear why you refuse to define "gender", "man", or "woman"; you cannot. Your assertions are prima facie undecidable, and it's not merely that you're unwilling to defend them — you cannot defend them.
    - ImprobableTruth 5y ago
- bjowen 5y ago
  There are of course also people whose identity is non-binary, whose experience may be more difficult for cis people to understand, but are a better example of a gender identity that is not easily relatable to sex characteristics. I found learning about fa’afafine was helpful to show where gender identities from my (Anglo) background did not adequately describe a material situation that is uncontroversial in its own cuktire.
  - teakettle42 5y ago
    What you're describing just sounds like any other subculture. Can you define what a gender is not? As in, why are "goth" or "emo" not a gender, by your definition of gender?
  - ImprobableTruth 5y ago
    At least as far as I know, non-binary identities are still anchored to the male-female dimension (which correlates to sex), but in a, well, non-binary way (i.e. a mix or complete rejection). From quickly looking them up the fa’afafine seem to line up with that.
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  What makes the “subjective feeling of identity” different from just having a different personality? Or what makes it different from a subculture like the ones of the past - punk, goth, emo, and so on. I think of gender as being strongly related to sex (like a trait of belonging to a certain sex), although I recognize there is an ongoing debate around how to define this word (gender). And I view personality as more personal, variable, and subjective. Is it that personality implies individuality whereas the subjective feeling of identity for trans people comes with group belonging?
lagadu 5y ago
Sex is a biological concept, and not even a binary one, as intersex people exist, gender is a social concept. Sex is mostly based on a mix of genome and primary sexual characteristics. Gender is based on how one presents themselves in society and in turn gets treated by it, as our societies are very gendered. They're concepts in two very different domains, why would you assume them to be interdependent? They only tend to be statistically correlated in the same way that gender and sexuality tend to be: most people are heterosexual but the two are independent as being a man doesn't mean one is attracted to women. Same goes for gender, being born with female sex doesn't mean one's gender is female. Honestly I've some trouble understanding how some people find this to be such a hard concept, it's exactly the same thing as gender/sexuality and this is even without getting into that neither sex nor gender are binary, as shown biologically by intersex people and socially by the very article we're discussing.
- esarbe 5y ago
  Sex is very much a 'binary' concept; it's fundamentally tied to a property of reproduction strategies; the size of the gametes. To quote [0]: > The type of gametes produced by an organism defines its sex. Commonly in plants and animals, male organisms produce smaller gametes (spermatozoa, sperm) while female organisms produce larger gametes (ova, often called egg cells). Convention is; if you produce small gametes, you're male, if you produce big gametes, you're female. Sexual reproduction happens pretty much exclusively in two sexes. Biologically speaking, individuals that don't produce gametes, don't have a sex. To quote from [1]: > There are almost invariably only two gamete types, all analyses showing that intermediate gamete sizes are eliminated due to selection. Gender can be considered a cultural construct based upon the interpretation of sexually defined roles and strategies. But sex itself is binary. So "Intersex people" - your words, not mine - do exist but as an defective expression of the reproductive function, see above. I'm not aware of any medical condition in humans that results in functional hermaphrodity as seen in some plant species, that is; individuals that produce functional small and large gametes. Although there is a condition called 'True Hermaphrodity' whereas an individual develops both ovarian and testicular tissue, this does not result in functional gametes. > Sex is mostly based on a mix of genome There are many sex-determination mechanisms, not all of them involve different genomes. Some are based on temperature, for example. Again; see [0]. > Honestly I've some trouble understanding how some people find this to be such a hard concept, I do wonder that myself and I guess it's because for some people this is a placeholder for some kind of ideological discussion, separate from the actual discussion about sex. The impreciseness of colloquial language probably also plays a part. But to summarize; Gender: cultural construct based on interpretation of reproductive roles and strategies, pretty much unbounded in its expression and shape and form Sex: "binary" reproductive trait that comes in two expressions; male (small gametes) and female (large gametes), although there are some species where both male and female is expressed in single individuals. Sex doesn't necessarily depend on the chromosomes but in many species can also be decided by external factors. Hope that helps! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamete https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamete

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.
  - teakettle42 5y ago
    > Do you correlate your sensations of happiness or impatience or satisfaction against normative models using objective indicia Of course we do. It’s how we establish shared meaning about what it means to feel any of those things. The rest of your post describes gender roles; as in, social standards and stereotypes of behaviors attached to sex. We don’t use the words “woman” and “man” to denote roles or a social subculture, and we’ve never segregated bathrooms, or established segregated sports programs, on the basis of gender roles. How I feel internally, even if you could correlate it to some objective definition of “feeling female” — which you cannot — does not change that I am a man; an adult human male.
ImprobableTruth 5y ago
But that's a definition that hinges on sex, so it's not at all independent. If you were to remove the correlation to sex, 'subjective feeling of identity' is essentially just subculture, so hipster, goth and skater would also be 'genders'.
- antris 5y ago
  Sorry I thought you were genuinely curious, and not just baiting for a debate. I'm not interested. It's not that complicated a concept. Even kids can understand it quite well and there's plenty of information available when you decide that you want to actually learn instead of trying to debate your way into confirming your own opinions.
  - teakettle42 5y ago
    If you have a cogent argument, make it; someone genuinely curious is still going to need more than "because I say so" to work with. > It's not that complicated a concept. Even kids can understand it quite well Children will also readily believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny if their parents tell them that they exist. That's not an argument.
    - antris 5y ago
      Like I said, I'm not here to argue or debate. Genuinely curious people can find ample information on Wikipedia.
      - teakettle42 5y ago
        If one applies any intellectual rigor to the question at all, the ample information to which you refer makes it clear why you refuse to define "gender", "man", or "woman"; you cannot. Your assertions are prima facie undecidable, and it's not merely that you're unwilling to defend them — you cannot defend them.
  - ImprobableTruth 5y ago
bjowen 5y ago
There are of course also people whose identity is non-binary, whose experience may be more difficult for cis people to understand, but are a better example of a gender identity that is not easily relatable to sex characteristics. I found learning about fa’afafine was helpful to show where gender identities from my (Anglo) background did not adequately describe a material situation that is uncontroversial in its own cuktire.
- teakettle42 5y ago
  What you're describing just sounds like any other subculture. Can you define what a gender is not? As in, why are "goth" or "emo" not a gender, by your definition of gender?
- ImprobableTruth 5y ago
  At least as far as I know, non-binary identities are still anchored to the male-female dimension (which correlates to sex), but in a, well, non-binary way (i.e. a mix or complete rejection). From quickly looking them up the fa’afafine seem to line up with that.
throwawaysea 5y ago
What makes the “subjective feeling of identity” different from just having a different personality? Or what makes it different from a subculture like the ones of the past - punk, goth, emo, and so on. I think of gender as being strongly related to sex (like a trait of belonging to a certain sex), although I recognize there is an ongoing debate around how to define this word (gender). And I view personality as more personal, variable, and subjective. Is it that personality implies individuality whereas the subjective feeling of identity for trans people comes with group belonging?

lagadu 5y ago

Sex is a biological concept, and not even a binary one, as intersex people exist, gender is a social concept. Sex is mostly based on a mix of genome and primary sexual characteristics. Gender is based on how one presents themselves in society and in turn gets treated by it, as our societies are very gendered. They're concepts in two very different domains, why would you assume them to be interdependent? They only tend to be statistically correlated in the same way that gender and sexuality tend to be: most people are heterosexual but the two are independent as being a man doesn't mean one is attracted to women. Same goes for gender, being born with female sex doesn't mean one's gender is female. Honestly I've some trouble understanding how some people find this to be such a hard concept, it's exactly the same thing as gender/sexuality and this is even without getting into that neither sex nor gender are binary, as shown biologically by intersex people and socially by the very article we're discussing.

esarbe 5y ago
Sex is very much a 'binary' concept; it's fundamentally tied to a property of reproduction strategies; the size of the gametes. To quote [0]: > The type of gametes produced by an organism defines its sex. Commonly in plants and animals, male organisms produce smaller gametes (spermatozoa, sperm) while female organisms produce larger gametes (ova, often called egg cells). Convention is; if you produce small gametes, you're male, if you produce big gametes, you're female. Sexual reproduction happens pretty much exclusively in two sexes. Biologically speaking, individuals that don't produce gametes, don't have a sex. To quote from [1]: > There are almost invariably only two gamete types, all analyses showing that intermediate gamete sizes are eliminated due to selection. Gender can be considered a cultural construct based upon the interpretation of sexually defined roles and strategies. But sex itself is binary. So "Intersex people" - your words, not mine - do exist but as an defective expression of the reproductive function, see above. I'm not aware of any medical condition in humans that results in functional hermaphrodity as seen in some plant species, that is; individuals that produce functional small and large gametes. Although there is a condition called 'True Hermaphrodity' whereas an individual develops both ovarian and testicular tissue, this does not result in functional gametes. > Sex is mostly based on a mix of genome There are many sex-determination mechanisms, not all of them involve different genomes. Some are based on temperature, for example. Again; see [0]. > Honestly I've some trouble understanding how some people find this to be such a hard concept, I do wonder that myself and I guess it's because for some people this is a placeholder for some kind of ideological discussion, separate from the actual discussion about sex. The impreciseness of colloquial language probably also plays a part. But to summarize; Gender: cultural construct based on interpretation of reproductive roles and strategies, pretty much unbounded in its expression and shape and form Sex: "binary" reproductive trait that comes in two expressions; male (small gametes) and female (large gametes), although there are some species where both male and female is expressed in single individuals. Sex doesn't necessarily depend on the chromosomes but in many species can also be decided by external factors. Hope that helps! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamete https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamete