What is the difference between gender and gender norms?

[Palindromemordnilap_v1legacy]

If someone with boobs claims they're a man, cool, but why does a man need more testosterone?

If your logic is "if you need drugs to feel like a man how are you a man?" then where do you stand on steroids or viagra?

 

[Agema]

I believe that the tendency to want conform is actively harmful, actually. It robs one of one's own potential and autonomy and enslaves them to the whims of those around them who are what you'd call trend-setters.

Conformity is like anything: good in moderation and harmful in excess. Humans, to a large extent, like conformity: we're a form of herd animal, where conformity is natural behaviour for the group. Conformity helps with "social glue", giving people common ground and a sense of safety and companionship. When we think of our friends, we see they are usually people quite like ourselves in many ways.

 

[the December King]

Since some people seem to be pretty confused about this: This is what it means to be a man. Hope that clears everything up.

Wow, that answered so many of my own questions... I actually feel like I can face the world (or even Lord Grummond) now.

 

[Abomination]

OK what does it mean to belong to a certain gender?

To me it sounds like you are signaling "this is what I am comfortable with. This is what I prefer.". but that feels like it turns around and runs into the same question. Why do you prefer that way? What is it about your chosen gender that makes you feel that way? Because, to me, all I can see of gender is gender norms. So to me that sounds like "these are the set of gender norms that I feel most in line with.".

Jot me down as seconding this question. Kind of surprised nobody has answered it already.

It means the individual desires to conform with the social behaviors most associated towards the perception of that particular gender. The individual also wishes to be perceived as that particular gender through both looks and behavior by others.

It's a desire of conformity. The exact reason why people wish to conform to any particular gender over another is an entirely personal thing and subjective per person.

 

[Eric the Orange]

OK what does it mean to belong to a certain gender?

To me it sounds like you are signaling "this is what I am comfortable with. This is what I prefer.". but that feels like it turns around and runs into the same question. Why do you prefer that way? What is it about your chosen gender that makes you feel that way? Because, to me, all I can see of gender is gender norms. So to me that sounds like "these are the set of gender norms that I feel most in line with.".

Jot me down as seconding this question. Kind of surprised nobody has answered it already.

It means the individual desires to conform with the social behaviors most associated towards the perception of that particular gender. The individual also wishes to be perceived as that particular gender through both looks and behavior by others.

It's a desire of conformity. The exact reason why people wish to conform to any particular gender over another is an entirely personal thing and subjective per person.

If that is so how do you explain the existence of atypical gender identifications like non-binary. The ideas of such things is a relatively new one and as such their isn't really any norms to conform to.

 

[Abomination]

OK what does it mean to belong to a certain gender?

To me it sounds like you are signaling "this is what I am comfortable with. This is what I prefer.". but that feels like it turns around and runs into the same question. Why do you prefer that way? What is it about your chosen gender that makes you feel that way? Because, to me, all I can see of gender is gender norms. So to me that sounds like "these are the set of gender norms that I feel most in line with.".

Jot me down as seconding this question. Kind of surprised nobody has answered it already.

It means the individual desires to conform with the social behaviors most associated towards the perception of that particular gender. The individual also wishes to be perceived as that particular gender through both looks and behavior by others.

It's a desire of conformity. The exact reason why people wish to conform to any particular gender over another is an entirely personal thing and subjective per person.

If that is so how do you explain the existence of atypical gender identifications like non-binary. The ideas of such things is a relatively new one and as such their isn't really any norms to conform to.

Exactly what I said before, but inverse. A desire to not conform. "Non-binary" can mean "does not identify or care to conform" but there's always a chance they are just stating they are as a form of rebellion or... a desire to just be contrary.

Some cultures do have a third gender, but it can range from transsexuals to eunuchs. I do not know of any genuine third gender that's not either someone effectively transitioning between the two, attempting to occupy both, or refusing either. Probably because gender roles originate from the sex of individuals.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

If someone with boobs claims they're a man, cool, but why does a man need more testosterone?

If your logic is "if you need drugs to feel like a man how are you a man?" then where do you stand on steroids or viagra?

Steroids are cheating and viagra is avarice, I guess?

There is such a thing as aging gracefully. Viagra is like the male equivalent of botox and other beauty surgeries, it's done by people who want to pretend they're still a kid to the point it's unseemly.

You need to keep in mind that I'm not the one making the argument about things being their true selves, I'm just working within that argument's confines to show it to have faults. It is the people who claim that being the other sex is their natural being and that their body is an error that you have to ask why it is that they have to be their natural selves when that entails a whole lot of invasive stuff that can be harmful and hasn't even been tested for long enough.

Well, possibly because reassignment surgery is statistically the most effective approach.

Most effective at doing what though?

No, wait a minute, you've changed the analogy. The arm represents the physical aspect. Pre-transition trans people don't claim to have the physical aspects of their identified sex; that's the issue.

The trans individual states that they do not have the body of their identified gender, and that this should be rectified.

The child missing an arm, likewise, believes the physical aspect should be rectified. The analogy holds.

....and only an asshole would insist on referring to someone with a prosthetic arm as "one-armed"; and only an asshole would deny that person the prosthetic on the basis that they were born another way.

I think you completely missed where I was going with this. A prosthetic arm is not an arm, it's a prosthetic arm. It may be way cooler than a regular arm (look at Sekiro, that thing seems to have no motion restrictions at all and also can shoot fire!) but it's never gonna be an arm. Depending on your level of technology or how sci-fi you go about it, it may be better or worse than an arm, but it'll always ultimately be something external to the being that it is attached to. A tool, not a part of them like their normal arm. This is why people with prosthetics still feel phantom pain despite having a new arm now, they still fill the sensation of their missing arm. If your theory was correct there'd be no missing arm to feel the pain of after attaching the prosthetic.

The kid if it's a mature kid or when it grows up will feel the same about it too. Our job is to not mistreat the kid for having one arm and one cool mech arm, not to pretend it has two normal arms and that is absolutely normal that his arm fires lasers.

Similarly, just cause you took testosterone, you're not magically a man all of a sudden, you just have a mech arm that makes you function like you feel that you should. I'm cool with being accepting about that, I just don't want to deceptively pretend that that's usual or common or that it's the same with the common vernacular usage of "being a man".

 

[Palindromemordnilap_v1legacy]

If someone with boobs claims they're a man, cool, but why does a man need more testosterone?

If your logic is "if you need drugs to feel like a man how are you a man?" then where do you stand on steroids or viagra?

Steroids are cheating and viagra is avarice, I guess?

There is such a thing as aging gracefully. Viagra is like the male equivalent of botox and other beauty surgeries, it's done by people who want to pretend they're still a kid to the point it's unseemly.

So you would say there's a definite difference between people who use chemical assistance for a cosmetic reason ("I'm taking these steroids because I want my muscles to be bigger so I can feel like more of a man") and people who take chemical assistance for medical reasons ("I'm taking these steroids because I have a compromised immune system and need the boost they give me to stay healthy")

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

If someone with boobs claims they're a man, cool, but why does a man need more testosterone?

If your logic is "if you need drugs to feel like a man how are you a man?" then where do you stand on steroids or viagra?

Steroids are cheating and viagra is avarice, I guess?

There is such a thing as aging gracefully. Viagra is like the male equivalent of botox and other beauty surgeries, it's done by people who want to pretend they're still a kid to the point it's unseemly.

So you would say there's a definite difference between people who use chemical assistance for a cosmetic reason ("I'm taking these steroids because I want my muscles to be bigger so I can feel like more of a man") and people who take chemical assistance for medical reasons ("I'm taking these steroids because I have a compromised immune system and need the boost they give me to stay healthy")

Indeed, they are not doing it to "be who they feel they should be" on a cognitive or feelings-based sense. They are just taking medicine to survive from an actual physical illness.

If someone for some reason needs to undergo gender surgery to save their live (some weird complication with someone born a hermaphrodite that requires surgery or something along those lines for example) that's completely different to someone just doing it to feel better about themselves. If there's an actual medical cause like a diagnosis of autoimmune disease that completely changes things.

 

[Palindromemordnilap_v1legacy]

If someone with boobs claims they're a man, cool, but why does a man need more testosterone?

If your logic is "if you need drugs to feel like a man how are you a man?" then where do you stand on steroids or viagra?

Steroids are cheating and viagra is avarice, I guess?

There is such a thing as aging gracefully. Viagra is like the male equivalent of botox and other beauty surgeries, it's done by people who want to pretend they're still a kid to the point it's unseemly.

So you would say there's a definite difference between people who use chemical assistance for a cosmetic reason ("I'm taking these steroids because I want my muscles to be bigger so I can feel like more of a man") and people who take chemical assistance for medical reasons ("I'm taking these steroids because I have a compromised immune system and need the boost they give me to stay healthy")

Indeed, they are not doing it to "be who they feel they should be" on a cognitive or feelings-based sense. They are just taking medicine to survive from an actual physical illness.

If someone for some reason needs to undergo gender surgery to save their live (some weird complication with someone born a hermaphrodite that requires surgery or something along those lines for example) that's completely different to someone just doing it to feel better about themselves. If there's an actual medical cause like a diagnosis of autoimmune disease that completely changes things.

Well then to use your definitions, if drugs for physical illness are fine then what about drugs for mental illnesses? If someone can take steroids so they can better fight infections, what about taking anti-depressants so they can better fight depression? Where does that fall on your scale of okay things?

 

[Specter Von Baren]

Tis a shame that Politics got thrown out because I could point to my old thread on this same topic as a starting place for you get off the ground in the conversation.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

If someone with boobs claims they're a man, cool, but why does a man need more testosterone?

If your logic is "if you need drugs to feel like a man how are you a man?" then where do you stand on steroids or viagra?

Steroids are cheating and viagra is avarice, I guess?

There is such a thing as aging gracefully. Viagra is like the male equivalent of botox and other beauty surgeries, it's done by people who want to pretend they're still a kid to the point it's unseemly.

So you would say there's a definite difference between people who use chemical assistance for a cosmetic reason ("I'm taking these steroids because I want my muscles to be bigger so I can feel like more of a man") and people who take chemical assistance for medical reasons ("I'm taking these steroids because I have a compromised immune system and need the boost they give me to stay healthy")

Indeed, they are not doing it to "be who they feel they should be" on a cognitive or feelings-based sense. They are just taking medicine to survive from an actual physical illness.

If someone for some reason needs to undergo gender surgery to save their live (some weird complication with someone born a hermaphrodite that requires surgery or something along those lines for example) that's completely different to someone just doing it to feel better about themselves. If there's an actual medical cause like a diagnosis of autoimmune disease that completely changes things.

Well then to use your definitions, if drugs for physical illness are fine then what about drugs for mental illnesses? If someone can take steroids so they can better fight infections, what about taking anti-depressants so they can better fight depression? Where does that fall on your scale of okay things?

I am against treating psychology like a hard science the same way you treat immunology. There's too many unknowns and there's too much over-medication or pathologization of the regular spectrum of human behaviors like with medicating willful children. Thanks to mistaking the two for equivalent.

A lot of these things often have unknown sideffects or a shopping list worth of them. I've even heard of anti-depressants making someone more suicidal when it's the opposite thing of what they should be doing.


In the context of this topic, I think the suggested cure is worse than the disease basically, on top of causing the societal ill of forcing people to live the lie of pretending it is not. Mass delusions are not good.

 

[Palindromemordnilap_v1legacy]

Indeed, they are not doing it to "be who they feel they should be" on a cognitive or feelings-based sense. They are just taking medicine to survive from an actual physical illness.

If someone for some reason needs to undergo gender surgery to save their live (some weird complication with someone born a hermaphrodite that requires surgery or something along those lines for example) that's completely different to someone just doing it to feel better about themselves. If there's an actual medical cause like a diagnosis of autoimmune disease that completely changes things.

Well then to use your definitions, if drugs for physical illness are fine then what about drugs for mental illnesses? If someone can take steroids so they can better fight infections, what about taking anti-depressants so they can better fight depression? Where does that fall on your scale of okay things?

I am against treating psychology like a hard science the same way you treat immunology. There's too many unknowns and there's too much over-medication or pathologization of the regular spectrum of human behaviors like with medicating willful children. Thanks to mistaking the two for equivalent.

A lot of these things often have unknown sideffects or a shopping list worth of them. I've even heard of anti-depressants making someone more suicidal when it's the opposite thing of what they should be doing.


In the context of this topic, I think the suggested cure is worse than the disease basically, on top of causing the societal ill of forcing people to live the lie of pretending it is not. Mass delusions are not good.

Cool, but not really the parameters of what we were talking about. Do you think someone taking drugs to help deal with their depression is somehow less of a person?

 

[Abomination]

Cool, but not really the parameters of what we were talking about. Do you think someone taking drugs to help deal with their depression is somehow less of a person?

This assumes we accept, in the analogy you are drawing, that being trans is a state of depression or mental sickness.

You also used the term "less of a person", when personhood is not a metric that is being measured when discussing trans people.

 

[Palindromemordnilap_v1legacy]

Cool, but not really the parameters of what we were talking about. Do you think someone taking drugs to help deal with their depression is somehow less of a person?

This assumes we accept, in the analogy you are drawing, that being trans is a state of depression or mental sickness.

You also used the term "less of a person", when personhood is not a metric that is being measured when discussing trans people.

No, this isn't an analogy or metaphor, I'm actually asking if he thinks needing anti-depressants makes you less of a person. His initial statement was that if a trans man needed testosterone to be a man then they were not really a man. So I'm seeking what exactly the boundaries of this "taking medication means you aren't really what you think you are" belief is

 

[Abomination]

Cool, but not really the parameters of what we were talking about. Do you think someone taking drugs to help deal with their depression is somehow less of a person?

This assumes we accept, in the analogy you are drawing, that being trans is a state of depression or mental sickness.

You also used the term "less of a person", when personhood is not a metric that is being measured when discussing trans people.

No, this isn't an analogy or metaphor, I'm actually asking if he thinks needing anti-depressants makes you less of a person. His initial statement was that if a trans man needed testosterone to be a man then they were not really a man. So I'm seeking what exactly the boundaries of this "taking medication means you aren't really what you think you are" belief is

It's a strange parallel to draw. Being depressed has nothing to do with being a person or not.

The correct parallel to draw would be that if a depressed person needed antidepressants to not be depressed then they were not really not depressed.

It's so strange that you'd conflate an attribute of a person to be what makes them a person or not, or even needing medication for it.

 

[Palindromemordnilap_v1legacy]

Cool, but not really the parameters of what we were talking about. Do you think someone taking drugs to help deal with their depression is somehow less of a person?

This assumes we accept, in the analogy you are drawing, that being trans is a state of depression or mental sickness.

You also used the term "less of a person", when personhood is not a metric that is being measured when discussing trans people.

No, this isn't an analogy or metaphor, I'm actually asking if he thinks needing anti-depressants makes you less of a person. His initial statement was that if a trans man needed testosterone to be a man then they were not really a man. So I'm seeking what exactly the boundaries of this "taking medication means you aren't really what you think you are" belief is

It's a strange parallel to draw. Being depressed has nothing to do with being a person or not.

The correct parallel to draw would be that if a depressed person needed antidepressants to not be depressed then they were not really not depressed.

It's so strange that you'd conflate an attribute of a person to be what makes them a person or not, or even needing medication for it.

If you don't think having depression can make you feel like less of a person then you have clearly never suffered depression so good for you buddy

 

[stroopwafel]

There is such a thing as aging gracefully. Viagra is like the male equivalent of botox and other beauty surgeries, it's done by people who want to pretend they're still a kid to the point it's unseemly.

Exactly, it's pathetic. Good looks will fade and so will libido as the years go by. People who cling on to lost youth only look more desperate trying to deny reality and are probably at risk breaking down as well as they realize the futile endeavour of trying to prevent the inevitable. Women want to stay beautiful and men wants to stay 'virile' but both are lost causes in the passage of time.

 

[Kwak]

There is such a thing as aging gracefully. Viagra is like the male equivalent of botox and other beauty surgeries, it's done by people who want to pretend they're still a kid to the point it's unseemly.

Exactly, it's pathetic. Good looks will fade and so will libido as the years go by. People who cling on to lost youth only look more desperate trying to deny reality and are probably at risk breaking down as well as they realize the futile endeavour of trying to prevent the inevitable. Women want to stay beautiful and men wants to stay 'virile' but both are lost causes in the passage of time.

So is literally every single thing. Therefore, everything is valid, as far as things you decide to fill your time with.

 

[Agema]

I am against treating psychology like a hard science the same way you treat immunology. There's too many unknowns and there's too much over-medication or pathologization of the regular spectrum of human behaviors like with medicating willful children. Thanks to mistaking the two for equivalent.

Firstly, let's be clear on the differences between psychology, clinical psychology and psychiatry:

1) Psychology is the science of how the mind works, and despite the relative difficulties in variability and unknowns, it's still a science.
2) Clinical psychology is the therapeutic application of psychology.
3) Psychiatry is a branch of medicine, rather than science: and that's where giving people drugs to control their behaviours come in (although in some countries clinical psychologists also have prescribing powers).

A lot of these things often have unknown sideffects or a shopping list worth of them. I've even heard of anti-depressants making someone more suicidal when it's the opposite thing of what they should be doing.

This is an old suspicion, generally found unsupported by the evidence. Inasmuch as it may exist, it's because depression (in simple terms) involves both low mood but also low motivation, which to an extent operate through different brain pathways. Antidepressants can affect both pathways, the problem is that they may improve motivation more than mood, particularly in early usage. That motivation increase might include the motivation to carry out suicide, which before they weren't. But that's theory - like I said, it's unproven.

A lot of psychiatric medications - particularly antidepressants and certain stimulants like modafinil - are surely overprescribed. But this isn't really a problem with the field of psychology. It's got roots in society (why are so many people unhappy?) and a lot of it is about healthcare systems: that psychological treatment - which is theoretically the first line treatment - is undersupported in many countries, pressure from drugs companies pushing their wares, pressure on doctors (often from patients themselves), etc.

There is such a thing as aging gracefully. Viagra is like the male equivalent of botox and other beauty surgeries, it's done by people who want to pretend they're still a kid to the point it's unseemly.

We think Viagra (sildenafil as the generic name) and we think about randy Hugh Hefners still trying to get their rocks off at 70, but I'd suggest underneath is a lot of valuable treatment.

Some people may have impotency due to medical conditions (or the drugs they are taking to control medical symptoms), there's no reason they shouldn't have anti-impotence drugs to help them. In terms of age, potency does decline with age and it might seem trivial to the average 20- or 30-something, but actually there's no reason at all older men and their partners should have to do without sex. The partners thing is important, because in many cases it's not just men getting their jollies: a couple might want to have sex to have children. And for many couples, sex may also be important to their relationship, so it's reasonable to help the relationship instead of sneering at them for requiring some pharmacological assistance.