4 ms·

Stalking, harassing and doxxing is indefensible, but not being able to wrap one's head around gender is understandable I think. Often people want, whether tran

by songshu 11y ago

Stalking, harassing and doxxing is indefensible, but not being able to wrap one's head around gender is understandable I think. Often people want, whether trans or not, to express their gender in terms of constructs like name, language, manner of dress etc which are clearly social (sometimes clearly invented in the last 100 years). We have no easy way of deciding how these seemingly superficial things relate to underlying gender.

kelukelugames 11y ago
This is absolutely true. A few years ago the majority of Americans couldn't even wrap their heads around marriage equality.
- kefka 11y ago
  Most still can't. It was because 5 people "made it so".
  - ScottBurson 11y ago
    You need to check the latest poll results: http://www.gallup.com/poll/117328/marriage.aspx http://www.gallup.com/poll/117328/marriage.aspx
pluma 11y ago
Trying to explain to a girl who's never seen a kilt why you're "dressed like a girl" is a great exercise for anyone who thinks gender isn't at all a social construct. Like many things, gender is a mix of both. It's an immutable core wrapped in various social and cultural markers we've come to associate with "masculine" and "feminine". And of course the range of possible cores is more of a continuum than a simple binary flag (even though we like sorting all the arbitrary markers into two neat piles as if that really means anything). Considering we still largely refused to acknowledge something as intuitively obvious[0] as non-right-handedness less than two generations ago, I wonder how long it will take until we've learned to deal with the fact that gender (and sexuality) is as idiosyncratic as nearly everything else about an individual's identity. [0]: Seriously. People generally have two hands. Why on Earth should we assume that there's something special about the one that is dominant for most people? Good luck explaining gender and sexuality to a society that can't even imagine not everybody is strictly right-handed.

by songshu 11y ago

kelukelugames 11y ago

This is absolutely true. A few years ago the majority of Americans couldn't even wrap their heads around marriage equality.

kefka 11y ago
Most still can't. It was because 5 people "made it so".
- ScottBurson 11y ago
  You need to check the latest poll results: http://www.gallup.com/poll/117328/marriage.aspx http://www.gallup.com/poll/117328/marriage.aspx

pluma 11y ago

Trying to explain to a girl who's never seen a kilt why you're "dressed like a girl" is a great exercise for anyone who thinks gender isn't at all a social construct. Like many things, gender is a mix of both. It's an immutable core wrapped in various social and cultural markers we've come to associate with "masculine" and "feminine". And of course the range of possible cores is more of a continuum than a simple binary flag (even though we like sorting all the arbitrary markers into two neat piles as if that really means anything). Considering we still largely refused to acknowledge something as intuitively obvious[0] as non-right-handedness less than two generations ago, I wonder how long it will take until we've learned to deal with the fact that gender (and sexuality) is as idiosyncratic as nearly everything else about an individual's identity. [0]: Seriously. People generally have two hands. Why on Earth should we assume that there's something special about the one that is dominant for most people? Good luck explaining gender and sexuality to a society that can't even imagine not everybody is strictly right-handed.