Poll: There are only 2 genders....right?

[mrdude2010]

Sex is what chromosomes you have: that's binary. Gender is what your psychological makeup is, and is more fluid.

 

[Zefar]

For me there are just 3. Male, Female and Trans.

Anything other than that I see you whoever claims to be something else that you're an attention whore who is in need of medical help.

Like most of those Otherkins or wolfkin people.

 

[Mong0]

The other half of my point, which has gone unaddressed, is the fact that self perception does not change one's physiology. Neither does sex reassignment surgery, as the body still retains the same sex genes, and there is no creation of reproductive organs.

SRS quite clearly does change physiology; it changes genitalia and the chest shape, among other things. Genes are not all there is to physiology.

There is also more to physiology than superficial form. The shape is the only thing that it changes. Saying that thats enough to change sexes is like spray painting black spots on a white dog and saying you have a Dalmatian.

Additionally, sex being the reproductive classification of an animal is a widely accepted definition of the word, not an opinion.

Aye, because it holds true for the majority of animals, and is a useful general rule. This doesn't mean we should treat it as absolute. Doing so would discount injured people, or infertile people, from being considered male or female if they couldn't reproduce.

Similarly, notice that documentaries and even papers will characterise animal sexual behaviour by male-female pairings, because that behaviour is typical and a useful general rule. It's also far from absolute, and we shouldn't treat it as such.

Infertile people still have their sex organs, usually. Injured people on the other hand, originally had their sex organs at one point, so genetically they're the same. I suppose with certain deformities you would have a point, they do fall outside of the normal definition of the sexes. That said, SRS isn't a deformity, its a self inflicted injury that so happens to heal in the shape of the opposite sex.

 

[Mong0]

I misread medical as mental, I'm actually kind of shocked that it isn't considering they have a mental or personality disorder for every little quirk.
The other half of my point, which has gone unaddressed, is the fact that self perception does not change one's physiology. Neither does sex reassignment surgery, as the body still retains the same sex genes, and there is no creation of reproductive organs. Additionally, sex being the reproductive classification of an animal is a widely accepted definition of the word, not an opinion.

That's right, but; sex is the physical descriptor, gender is the social and mental descriptor. This is why transgender is actually something that exists within humans.

By the way people keep mentioning genetics so I have an interesting thing to add: I have XX male syndrome, or de la Chapelle syndrome, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XX_male_syndrome] which is actually different from XXY genetics called Klinefelter Syndrome. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klinefelter_syndrome]

I suppose that just means that we're referring to 2 separate concepts when we think of the term gender. Technically, according to merriam webster, gender can also mean sex. It doesn't really matter what its called though, what I care about when I think of how I'm going to relate to a stranger is their biological makeup. How they relate to themselves has no real relevance to me or my life.

 

[Jaeke]

Yep.

End of discussion.

Usually when I go to check the little box labeled "sex" OR "gender" there are only 2 options, not sure what much else there is to argue.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

I suppose that just means that we're referring to 2 separate concepts when we think of the term gender. Technically, according to merriam webster, gender can also mean sex. It doesn't really matter what its called though, what I care about when I think of how I'm going to relate to a stranger is their biological makeup. How they relate to themselves has no real relevance to me or my life.

Well think about this. Can you be absolutely sure of what the other person's physical make up is, if they don't tell you? Does it matter if they're not a romantic interest for you? And if you know some one is trans, is it so hard to treat them as they present, rather than the parts they were burdened with at birth?

 

[Azure23]

My favorite thing about this thread (besides from letting me know who not to bother engaging with) is how many people are factually incorrect and unable to let go of ingrained, ethnocentric beliefs from their childhood in favor of actual academic and empiric evidence.

The amount of people claiming that "liberal academia has an agenda so we can't trust anything they say" is also hilarious. "Guys! I heard pharmaceutical companies are giving our children autism, they just want out money. let's not vaccinate and weaken herd immunity and bring back polio, because hey, why the fuck not yeah?" That's honestly how silly some of these people sound.

Fucking hell this thread is not good for my forum health meter but damn, it's so annoying.

 

[Azure23]

Yep.

End of discussion.

Usually when I go to check the little box labeled "sex" OR "gender" there are only 2 options, not sure what much else there is to argue.

Really? I mean I live in the Deep South and even here most forms, (and ALL local government forms) have an other with a write in option.

But hey. If you want to take a stance about a complex sociological and anthropological issue based on a form's checkbox, I can't really stop you.

 

[Politrukk]

I misread medical as mental, I'm actually kind of shocked that it isn't considering they have a mental or personality disorder for every little quirk.
The other half of my point, which has gone unaddressed, is the fact that self perception does not change one's physiology. Neither does sex reassignment surgery, as the body still retains the same sex genes, and there is no creation of reproductive organs. Additionally, sex being the reproductive classification of an animal is a widely accepted definition of the word, not an opinion.

That's right, but; sex is the physical descriptor, gender is the social and mental descriptor. This is why transgender is actually something that exists within humans.

By the way people keep mentioning genetics so I have an interesting thing to add: I have XX male syndrome, or de la Chapelle syndrome, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XX_male_syndrome] which is actually different from XXY genetics called Klinefelter Syndrome. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klinefelter_syndrome]

I'm sorry to burst your bubble but according to the quoted article in essence you are still a male.


A male with POSSIBLE female characteristics but overall scientifically agreed to still develop the normal male traits.

What this means is that you were the one out of the 100.000 who developed a feminine side.
Those smaller testes and that infertility are not changing that.


Obviously this is based on the wikipedia article but it's the one you brought up yourself.

I.E Physiologically you're a male, but you may develop female character traits.


Edit: this is not meant to be offensive, just reading the information you're bringing me and wondering how you came up with such a different conclusion.

 

[Strazdas]

I think the problem with OPs thinking sterns from not understanding the terms and where they come from. There are two sexes (with some very rare exceptions). This is determined biologically. However, gender is not equivalent to sex (altrough it was used as such by many). This is because gender is a social and political construct. As such, it can be anything you want, even mayonaise. Though its important to relaize that Gender has nothing to do with physiology, only psichology. That being said, the reason why sex and gender is conflated so often is because in 99% of cases the two match up perfectly. So i dont blame the OP for not seeing the difference.

 

[James Elmash]

2 biological sexes in humans.
There are other species with more.

But as everybody in the comments is saying, layered on top of that is gender identity, which is a can of worms i try not to open, just "okay, you don't like being called he/she, i'll call you something else"

Or as I once said to my agender friend (i have 1 agender friend, i found out they were agender less than half a year ago, i've known them for 3) "I call you they because I respect you, and you aren't a dick about it. If you were an arse about it, i'd refer to you as she"

 

[Akjosch]

In most languages I know, there are three genders - including in English, which we use to communicate here - but there can be as many as ten and as with every language-related concept, they evolve with time. That's the primary and oldest definition of gender (coming from Aristotle's genos) and one I use when interacting with people.

In whatever language we use, pick whichever of the available genders you feel comfortable with, and we'll just use that one for you.

 

[Pinkilicious]

From how I've come to understand gender I would say that there would be over 7,000,000,000 genders, where every human being has their own unique gender and as such defining or referring to genders is pointless.

Salsa is bestest gender. Mayonaise are mutants!

 

[Coruptin]

Semantics: The Debate

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

I misread medical as mental, I'm actually kind of shocked that it isn't considering they have a mental or personality disorder for every little quirk.
The other half of my point, which has gone unaddressed, is the fact that self perception does not change one's physiology. Neither does sex reassignment surgery, as the body still retains the same sex genes, and there is no creation of reproductive organs. Additionally, sex being the reproductive classification of an animal is a widely accepted definition of the word, not an opinion.

That's right, but; sex is the physical descriptor, gender is the social and mental descriptor. This is why transgender is actually something that exists within humans.

By the way people keep mentioning genetics so I have an interesting thing to add: I have XX male syndrome, or de la Chapelle syndrome, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XX_male_syndrome] which is actually different from XXY genetics called Klinefelter Syndrome. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klinefelter_syndrome]

I'm sorry to burst your bubble but according to the quoted article in essence you are still a male.


A male with POSSIBLE female characteristics but overall scientifically agreed to still develop the normal male traits.

What this means is that you were the one out of the 100.000 who developed a feminine side.
Those smaller testes and that infertility are not changing that.


Obviously this is based on the wikipedia article but it's the one you brought up yourself.

I.E Physiologically you're a male, but you may develop female character traits.


Edit: this is not meant to be offensive, just reading the information you're bringing me and wondering how you came up with such a different conclusion.

I have no qualms with that. I am physiologically male, but it's neither how I present in the world, or identify myself as a person. Besides that genetically I'm female. Also my testes have nothing to do with it, as having orchi means I got rid of them. Symptomatically, had I not had a genetic test I would have never known I had the syndrome because I don't have symptoms outside of an underwhelming package physically speaking. By phenotype I'm male, genetically I'm female, and by gender identity I'm female, by gender presentation I'm female, in day to day life the only ones that really matter are the last two. I would have developed as a more or less normal male had I not transitioned because of being transgender, I.E. Having a gender identity different from my physical birth sex, and thus going on hormones and getting some GRS work done.

 

[Lightknight]

For my response, to keep the pronouns easier to use I'm going to address this as though we're talking about a transgendered woman (aka, sexually male, gendered female). Hey, and thanks for putting forth a legitimate discussion with me. I appreciate the discourse and opportunity to learn or teach(hopefully both).

Well you somewhat contradicted yourself. If you wanted to be polite and caring you would call them the gender they would want to be addressed at and the reason for a that is easy: because you're compassionate to their mental troubles.

Conceding to another person's definitions isn't "polite and caring". Polite and caring isn't saying that you can't disagree with a person. Polite and caring is treating them like a person and caring about their feelings and what happens to them. But just because you care about someone doesn't mean you have to give them everything they want. I would personally just avoid pronouns and use their name. But if I slip up, it would be with whatever gendered pronoun matches their sex.

But maybe it's not polite to demand people change their language whenever you're in the room? Maybe the person being impolite is the one making the imposition? When I say "he" or "she" I am referring to someone who is sexually male or female. Them telling me that they're gender male or gender female is irrelevant to my use of pronouns and so it is incorrect of them to demand I start using their own personal definitions of terms that are not theirs to control.

So yeah, it's perfectly possible to be polite and caring and to disagree. It's a shame that we've decided as a society that disagreement means transphobia or some such nonsense.

But let's start somewhere else, because I want to make sure you have to right picture of what gender identity disorder actually means. Their perception of reality is not different from your own. Every transperson knows what sex they are. As you already stated gender identy can be different from the sex of a person but question is why? And since you compare them so to people who think of themselves as animals I think your information on why and how modern psychology came to the conclusion a "core gender identy" in each individual exists is lacking.

I'm not sure what you're asking or stating here. A person who believe they're a fox internally is not so great a leap from a person who beliefs they're another gender. It's a core identity that is incongruous with the physical reality. And don't think that I'm mocking transpeople by referring to individuals who see themselves as animals. I had a friend I cared about who very literally saw himself as a fox. He hid it frequently and it weighed on him terribly. To the point where he ended his own life (a terrible and sad event in my life). So I'm not pulling a random silly example out of my ass. I'm bringing up a specific example that is relatable to the conversation at hand. I am not scoffing.

I am also not saying that they aren't aware of their sex. But that they believe they should be treated as a female which is incongruous to the reality of the situation. They want to be treated as a female when they are not sexually female. So here's the disparity in realities. In my reality they are males with a feminine gender but males all the same. In their world they're a female with male genitals but a female all the same. So, from my view I treat them like a man with feminine attributes. You know, treat them like Tom who has that unique combination of qualities rather than pretending along that they are fully something else.

The first part is that for the last century the transsexual patient was seen as actually delusional and everything was done to hopefully free them from their "twisted" minds but neither psychotherapy, behavior therapy or aversion therapy helped and the question was why are transsexuals so ressistent to treamtment? Even very early on people suspected a biological root and this has only been strenghtend by recent research. The whole etiology has not been found but a strong a biological influence is nowadays out of question: Here are some sorces just so you know I'm not talking out of my ass
http://europepmc.org/abstract/med/25667367
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1743-6109.2011.02567.x/abstract;jsessionid=E31F983FFF8B5F1A62A57462AA3895CE.f02t01?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&userIsAuthenticated=false
http://press.endocrine.org/doi/full/10.1210/jcem.85.5.6564

A lot of psychological illnesses have biological roots. I'm not sure who or what you're debating with. This is why medication can be as effective as it is because it counters biological issues like hormone levels and other deficiencies. Hell, most issues are biological. That's why we treat patients with medicine or surgery depending on what the issue is. If they weren't biological than the appropriate response would only be therapy and such. Basically all those stupid archaic practices were just holistic treatments that never worked.

It then became standart that every person has an inner sense of their gender and being forced to live against it causes the individual mental stress and depression:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23574768
http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/ccp/81/3/545/

Yep. No disagreement. Haven't said otherwise. Are you imagining that I think they're just making it up or just need a good trip to some "scared straight camp" equivalent for transpeople to resolve the issue? Because I'm not.

No, at the most I'm just in favor of evaluating alternative medical resolutions to the problem rather than automatic genital mutilation amongst other things. Just a stronger evaluation that there may be a medical response to alleviate the disorder without rendering them sterile and in extreme medical debt. Gender reassignment surgeries have been around for a damn long time (1930's) and it's possible that they're also a vestige of ignorant science with better alternatives that don't require risky procedures being possible. Surely there is a possibility of something better? Why is it negative to wonder about that possibility? Who does it harm? Studies still show post operation transsexuals as having so many existing issues, it clearly isn't getting the job done. Maybe the end result will be a combination surgery/medical resolution? I simply don't know and I think the political pressure to just do the surgery or else you hate transgendered people could be getting in the way of a better path.

So the reasons you should treat them as their gender ther're presenting rather than as you see them are the following:

What do you think I mean when I say I'm not going to treat them like a female? Do you think I mean that I'm going to run up and demand to arm wrestle them or play catch? Demand they go to an all-guy's dinner? Talk with them about sexy women? How do you treat women or men differently that's so apparent? I'm saying that I'm not going to follow their pronouns. That's about it. I'm not going to tell someone that she's a girl. I would consider that dishonest. So instead I will avoid pronouns. "Oh no! How evil of me not to do everything someone else wants me to do. Someone go get the shame police."

1.No one wants to be gender dysphoric and the only way for them to live a halway normal life is to treat like a person whose gender identity matches with them after all if you were hit you with gender dysphoria you would want to be treated the same way.

Do you think we're talking about prodding them with a stick in a circle and chanting, "Ur a boy, a boy, a boy"? I'm just talking about their disordered view not being imposed on me. When I talk to you about HIM I should be able to use sex-appropriate pronouns and not get bitched out. But when I talk to him, I would avoid pronouns out of politeness but if asked directly I'm not going to lie and shouldn't have to.

2. As it has been shown gender dysphoria causes a lot of pain to the individual trying to ease that pain by atleast letting them live as a normal woman or man as best as it can be done should be a non issue since it only costs you a quick change of pronouns.

Why is my use of pronouns preventing them from being able to live as a normal woman or man?

FYI, both 1 and 2 are the same thing. Gender dysphoria causes them pain. Got it.

Also no one expects to go and tell a transperson that they actually have their nonexisting gentials and that their penis is totally a vagina. They know what is and isn't there. You also don't have to date them or whatever the only thing that people ask for is that they will be treated socially as their gender identity since social recognition and acceptance is important for every human being.

Didn't say I did. Just said I didn't want to be forced to play along with their disorder. It'd be different if I were saying that their disorder didn't exist or could absolutely be easily cured through silly means. But being coerced into making concessions for someone else in the exact ways they want? That's silly talk. I'll respect their wishes to not call them by the other pronoun, but I'm not going to lie every time I talk about them.

What's more is that I'd almost never talk in pronouns if a person is in the room. Maybe if I'm introducing them to someone else. This is almost a non-existent problem in that the scenario would have to be just perfect for it to show up.

Look, the primary reason I'm discussing this is because of a person I knew in college. A sexually male individual who identified as female but did NOT present as female. During a conversation I used a masculine pronoun or something else like that and got horribly berated by the group for being so calloused when I had no idea. The guy wasn't wearing pink or anything. I mean, what the fuck? Why is it all eggshells and harsh punishments when genuine mistakes are made? I wasn't going around punching babies and yet they sure treated me like I was. Had he at least been presenting as female I would have known to avoid the nounage. So yeah, I'm considering a lot of imposition here. But more specifically the situation where someone is demonized for just failing to get it right.

 

[AgedGrunt]

And my point is that biological sex and gender identity are being conflated. You can either say gender is purely biological that has no effect on how you are treated or that it is a cultural thing that does greatly influence how you are treated. The third option is that there should be boundaries on how biological males and females can express themselves, which sounds a bit unethical don't you think?

I agree that sex and gender identity get conflated. Changing sex on legal documents, for example, is hard for me to accept.

But gender is about perception.

Again, I agree; I stated that transgenderism is about perception. So long as we're talking about gender in the context of an identity and not biology; I dislike interchanged and unofficial terms.

But let's say that being transgender was "pretending" and it wasn't a legitimate condition. What you're suggesting is the same as going to a church and shouting "there is no god" or "Allah is the only god" or something like that. All that happens is that you satisfy your ego and annoy a bunch of people. Is it worth it?

I'm not talking about any mental condition someone lives with; gender dysphoria is real. Whether someone's solution to working through that is to embrace the opposite sex is not my point. The point is that doing so is a mask. There's nothing real about a male's womanhood when he has a male biology. If we want to look at it as a belief system, then I'd compare transgenderism to a religion and that it's ok to be a non-believer. I don't think it would be fair to have everyone acknowledge a God exists so the religious don't have to go through doubt and disillusionment.

So I think there's room to co-exist, but as long as we're seeing schools transform (e.g. requirements for gender-neutral public bathrooms), it's not going to come easy when some people might feel coerced to accept something that seems based on belief. Again, I'm only talking about big picture stuff.

 

[IMissedThatOne]

For my response, to keep the pronouns easier to use I'm going to address this as though we're talking about a transgendered woman (aka, sexually male, gendered female). Hey, and thanks for putting forth a legitimate discussion with me. I appreciate the discourse and opportunity to learn or teach(hopefully both).

Well you somewhat contradicted yourself. If you wanted to be polite and caring you would call them the gender they would want to be addressed at and the reason for a that is easy: because you're compassionate to their mental troubles.

Conceding to another person's definitions isn't "polite and caring". Polite and caring isn't saying that you can't disagree with a person. Polite and caring is treating them like a person and caring about their feelings and what happens to them. But just because you care about someone doesn't mean you have to give them everything they want. I would personally just avoid pronouns and use their name. But if I slip up, it would be with whatever gendered pronoun matches their sex.

But maybe it's not polite to demand people change their language whenever you're in the room? Maybe the person being impolite is the one making the imposition? When I say "he" or "she" I am referring to someone who is sexually male or female. Them telling me that they're gender male or gender female is irrelevant to my use of pronouns and so it is incorrect of them to demand I start using their own personal definitions of terms that are not theirs to control.

So yeah, it's perfectly possible to be polite and caring and to disagree. It's a shame that we've decided as a society that disagreement means transphobia or some such nonsense.

But let's start somewhere else, because I want to make sure you have to right picture of what gender identity disorder actually means. Their perception of reality is not different from your own. Every transperson knows what sex they are. As you already stated gender identy can be different from the sex of a person but question is why? And since you compare them so to people who think of themselves as animals I think your information on why and how modern psychology came to the conclusion a "core gender identy" in each individual exists is lacking.

I'm not sure what you're asking or stating here. A person who believe they're a fox internally is not so great a leap from a person who beliefs they're another gender. It's a core identity that is incongruous with the physical reality. And don't think that I'm mocking transpeople by referring to individuals who see themselves as animals. I had a friend I cared about who very literally saw himself as a fox. He hid it frequently and it weighed on him terribly. To the point where he ended his own life (a terrible and sad event in my life). So I'm not pulling a random silly example out of my ass. I'm bringing up a specific example that is relatable to the conversation at hand. I am not scoffing.

I am also not saying that they aren't aware of their sex. But that they believe they should be treated as a female which is incongruous to the reality of the situation. They want to be treated as a female when they are not sexually female. So here's the disparity in realities. In my reality they are males with a feminine gender but males all the same. In their world they're a female with male genitals but a female all the same. So, from my view I treat them like a man with feminine attributes. You know, treat them like Tom who has that unique combination of qualities rather than pretending along that they are fully something else.

The first part is that for the last century the transsexual patient was seen as actually delusional and everything was done to hopefully free them from their "twisted" minds but neither psychotherapy, behavior therapy or aversion therapy helped and the question was why are transsexuals so ressistent to treamtment? Even very early on people suspected a biological root and this has only been strenghtend by recent research. The whole etiology has not been found but a strong a biological influence is nowadays out of question: Here are some sorces just so you know I'm not talking out of my ass
http://europepmc.org/abstract/med/25667367
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1743-6109.2011.02567.x/abstract;jsessionid=E31F983FFF8B5F1A62A57462AA3895CE.f02t01?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&userIsAuthenticated=false
http://press.endocrine.org/doi/full/10.1210/jcem.85.5.6564

A lot of psychological illnesses have biological roots. I'm not sure who or what you're debating with. This is why medication can be as effective as it is because it counters biological issues like hormone levels and other deficiencies. Hell, most issues are biological. That's why we treat patients with medicine or surgery depending on what the issue is. If they weren't biological than the appropriate response would only be therapy and such. Basically all those stupid archaic practices were just holistic treatments that never worked.

It then became standart that every person has an inner sense of their gender and being forced to live against it causes the individual mental stress and depression:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23574768
http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/ccp/81/3/545/

Yep. No disagreement. Haven't said otherwise. Are you imagining that I think they're just making it up or just need a good trip to some "scared straight camp" equivalent for transpeople to resolve the issue? Because I'm not.

No, at the most I'm just in favor of evaluating alternative medical resolutions to the problem rather than automatic genital mutilation amongst other things. Just a stronger evaluation that there may be a medical response to alleviate the disorder without rendering them sterile and in extreme medical debt. Gender reassignment surgeries have been around for a damn long time (1930's) and it's possible that they're also a vestige of ignorant science with better alternatives that don't require risky procedures being possible. Surely there is a possibility of something better? Why is it negative to wonder about that possibility? Who does it harm? Studies still show post operation transsexuals as having so many existing issues, it clearly isn't getting the job done. Maybe the end result will be a combination surgery/medical resolution? I simply don't know and I think the political pressure to just do the surgery or else you hate transgendered people could be getting in the way of a better path.

So the reasons you should treat them as their gender ther're presenting rather than as you see them are the following:

What do you think I mean when I say I'm not going to treat them like a female? Do you think I mean that I'm going to run up and demand to arm wrestle them or play catch? Demand they go to an all-guy's dinner? Talk with them about sexy women? How do you treat women or men differently that's so apparent? I'm saying that I'm not going to follow their pronouns. That's about it. I'm not going to tell someone that she's a girl. I would consider that dishonest. So instead I will avoid pronouns. "Oh no! How evil of me not to do everything someone else wants me to do. Someone go get the shame police."

1.No one wants to be gender dysphoric and the only way for them to live a halway normal life is to treat like a person whose gender identity matches with them after all if you were hit you with gender dysphoria you would want to be treated the same way.

Do you think we're talking about prodding them with a stick in a circle and chanting, "Ur a boy, a boy, a boy"? I'm just talking about their disordered view not being imposed on me. When I talk to you about HIM I should be able to use sex-appropriate pronouns and not get bitched out. But when I talk to him, I would avoid pronouns out of politeness but if asked directly I'm not going to lie and shouldn't have to.

2. As it has been shown gender dysphoria causes a lot of pain to the individual trying to ease that pain by atleast letting them live as a normal woman or man as best as it can be done should be a non issue since it only costs you a quick change of pronouns.

Why is my use of pronouns preventing them from being able to live as a normal woman or man?

FYI, both 1 and 2 are the same thing. Gender dysphoria causes them pain. Got it.

Also no one expects to go and tell a transperson that they actually have their nonexisting gentials and that their penis is totally a vagina. They know what is and isn't there. You also don't have to date them or whatever the only thing that people ask for is that they will be treated socially as their gender identity since social recognition and acceptance is important for every human being.

Didn't say I did. Just said I didn't want to be forced to play along with their disorder. It'd be different if I were saying that their disorder didn't exist or could absolutely be easily cured through silly means. But being coerced into making concessions for someone else in the exact ways they want? That's silly talk. I'll respect their wishes to not call them by the other pronoun, but I'm not going to lie every time I talk about them.

What's more is that I'd almost never talk in pronouns if a person is in the room. Maybe if I'm introducing them to someone else. This is almost a non-existent problem in that the scenario would have to be just perfect for it to show up.

Look, the primary reason I'm discussing this is because of a person I knew in college. A sexually male individual who identified as female but did NOT present as female. During a conversation I used a masculine pronoun or something else like that and got horribly berated by the group for being so calloused when I had no idea. The guy wasn't wearing pink or anything. I mean, what the fuck? Why is it all eggshells and harsh punishments when genuine mistakes are made? I wasn't going around punching babies and yet they sure treated me like I was. Had he at least been presenting as female I would have known to avoid the nounage. So yeah, I'm considering a lot of imposition here. But more specifically the situation where someone is demonized for just failing to get it right.

Sorry I still don't know how this qouting system here works exactly but I'll try to adress everything.

Just to clear things up for me let me quickly get some points down. I want to make sure I got everything you're saying and don't mispresent your words.


The first part: You and I both agreed on (hopefully) that gender dysphoria is something intrinsic to the person and causes great harm. How is then not polite and caring to refer to them in the gender they want to live as?

If I get your point correctly it would be because doing so would go direclty against perceived reality. Which I think is unfair because it only sees phenotypical sex and not gender identity as reality. You might say gender identity is purely in their heads but as I have shown gender identity belongs in to realm of biology as well. It's just not noticable with your pure eyes but just because we can see or perceive things purley with our own senses does not make them not real. (atoms, depression, back pain, head aches)

Secondly: They can not impose language on to you. They can only ask you to refer to them in a certain way. They have no control over your mouth. If I am in a room with a black person and call them a negro they might be angry even if my intention is purely to state that their skin is off darker color and let's say I'm ignorant of the social implication. Are they impolite to ask me to refer to them with a another word if at all? If a somewhat weird person would call some guy ?hey cishet male? and the guys asks them to stop refering to him in such way either because he thinks it's stupid or just plain doesn't like it is he impolite to ask the weird guy to stop or would that be imposing his strandards for language`?
What I'm trying to say here is that we censor our language all the time in respect to someone elses feelings. If someone doesn't want to talk about their breakup or the weather we usually do not tell them that it is not theirs to control the conversation topic. We see that the person is not in the mood to talk about certain things and since we know that we have days where we don't want to talk about stuff we do not push for it further.

Now to the situation at hand. In principle we have two interests conflicting with another
-The transgender womans wish to be referd to as a woman
- Your wish to refer to people however you see them.

At the moment your approach to solve this situation is to not refer to pronouns or any other gender expressions at all. Since this way neither her not your wish is neglected. The only problem with this is that she is the only person in the room whose pronouns are awkwardly avoided. Which if everyone would do so would put her in really weird situation. She is a more treated like a different thing than a normal human, because everyone else gets their correct pronouns without hestitation.

So lets analyse these wishes more closely:
In her case her wish stems from her the gender identity she experience and that she has to come to terms with. The best way to do so is to live fully a as woman (socially) since living as man is demonstrable mentally painful for the person in question (and would be even painful for a lot of normal person if they were somehow forced to live against their identity). To achieve this goal she has two options: Either become so feminine that nobody will suspect or figure out her different sexed body and hopefully blend in. Since this is not possible a lot of the time and especially when starting transition she has to ask people to listen to her situation and hopefully show the compassion to let her life as a woman (as close as possible)despite her physical features

Your wish stems from basically being very strict to language and maybe being uncomfartable to saying pronouns that to you feel wrong to give to a person of certain looks.

And that by doing so you feel like playing into someones wrong perception of reality. Even if they can't do anything about that.

I will now argue for the use of the pronouns they prefer. Not because I think your position bigoated or anything. I hopefully understood your postion and now know how to came to it and I'm a atleast very pleased to see that you were willing to adjust your language atleast somewhat in a presents of a transwoman which only goes to show that you do feel for them. I'm just in diagreement with your way and I'll hopefully show you why.

First to adress language:
Even if the purest definition of he and she is pronoun given to a member of biological sex. I don't see why we can widen that definition since we do it with a lot of words. Words oftem come into existence out of new discoveries or changing social attitude(marriage). I don't see why he/she can refer to someones gender identity especially since we talk to people heads and not their bodies. You might agree with that (you might not) You might argue why you should be ?forced? so choose on definition over the other.

Well if you use she/her and so on for a transwoman she will be happy and you are no worse off especially when you consider the pronouns to reflect her gender identity and not her physical body, because in that case your perception of reality is not infringed upon.

If you stay with your position the transwoman will be unhappy (if she would find out you're activley avoiding her pronouns and are on the position to never gve her female pronouns in the first place.) but your not better off. Afterall giving pronouns to a person doesn't harm or benefit you in anyway.

You might say well being called he or she doesn't harm a person as well and I agree but I trying to paint a bigger picture here. If one person uses the wrong pronouns yes it hardly matters, if one person throws his trash on streets it hardly counts as pollution but if everyone does is it we have a society in which a transwoman cannot live as a normal woman because noone treats her as such.

We should usually do what is best for all as a whole and not what we can get away with.

Now to clarify some other things.

The only thing I wanted you to be aware of is that while Gender dysphoria is a medically regonised condtion with a logical biological explaination and treatment option. ?Species dysphoria? is not. They only have superfical similarities but that doesn't mean I have no compassion for you friend I just wanted to clear it up since some people go by the logic: Thinking your really an animal is silly and delusional therefore gender identity is silly.

If they ever find out what causes people to have an animal identity I will support any treatment option hat is considered best for the patient.

As for other options. The thing is that the medical history of transgender treatment was very cruel. Yes surgery was avaiable very early on but only for a few individuals and it was considered brutal mutilation or playing into someones neurosis. Only haver studies showed that the surgery benefited the patient is slowley became the best option.Putting people into asylums or treating them with hormon ?conforming? medicamens or vomiting inducing stuff to train them in leaving ther feelings behind was well accepted as well (at that time) Politics were often very biased against the surgical options you might want to read up on Janice Raymond if you don't believe me.

Now for the last thing:

You circle of friend reacted really bad in this case (in my opinion altleast). We all make mistakes and especially in your position they should have atleast considered that you couldn't possible know this persons gender identity. There are after all a lot of feminine men out there that wouldn't like to be called a girl. Misgendering can also happen to everyone. It happens more often to transgender people but that is due the condition. It more or less comes with confusion (in a lot of cases).

Just to make a point. A friend of mine that I knew for a long time transitioned to female. At the beginning I was very clumsy with pronouns since I knew her so long as a ?guy? She then told me that it will just take time to get used to it but that she has the correct me otherwise I might get stuck in my old ways.Since I wanted her to be happy since I've experienced her depression so closely I did my best and after a while the pronouns came fluently. Sometimes when we went out people were asking if we're a gay couple and depending on who was asking we either explained the situation and went away. She was always very sad afterwards, because she got perceived as a man but she never considered the person misgendering her ?evil or bigoted? She just wished she were more feminine and was a bit down.

 

[peruvianskys]

Gender is a social construct that is undeniably related to physical sex. The fact that gender is socially constructed does not mean that it is a matter of individual identification. Licensing systems for electricians are also socially constructed, but no one would hire someone who "identifies" as a licensed electrician. The problem is that people think "social construction" means "not real," which is silly. Gender is the system of expectations and demands put on males and females (which are biological types and even *less* identity-based). It has nothing to do with internal feelings.

 

[Nietzschen]

The thread title calls to mind a certain image.
http://www.tickld.com/smsg/t/1105539

that said while sexual orientation is a sliding scale there are only 2 genders for humans, or atleast thats what my very basic understanding of biology tells me.