The LGBT Gamer Community Thread.

[Krensky]

Rysky wrote:

Sissyl wrote:

"it"

*pokes head in*

Can we haz gender neutral third person pronouns that don't come off as dehumanizing? :3

Singular they, but using that will get you cut in some places.

[Dustwich]

Krensky wrote:

Rysky wrote:

Sissyl wrote:

"it"

*pokes head in*

Can we haz gender neutral third person pronouns that don't come off as dehumanizing? :3

Singular they, but using that will get you cut in some places.

That's okay, my agender kineticist's pronoun is they, and they have DR/adamantine!

[Caineach]

I know a number of people who use Ze.

[Krensky]

Yeah, but do they have Damage Immunity (Editor)?

[mechaPoet]

Malachi Silverclaw wrote:

TanithT wrote:

Why does anyone need to know my gender or treat me in gendered ways or use gendered language to describe me? The whole thing just weirds me out. I have no answers to give about my gender identity that fit into a binary, and that makes life pretty uncomfy in a world that is so intensively focused on gendering everyone and everything.

Do you think that part of it, part of it, is that humans are sexual creatures, constantly and subconsciously assessing everyone they meet to see if that person is up for it, assuming that they are attracted to that gender?

Given that most people (there are exceptions) limit themselves to one particular gender, then knowing the gender of the person you meet is crucial information when it comes to how you interact, both consciously or subconsciously.

Thoughts?

Thoughts: humans are sexual creatures, but almost no one is looking to have sex 100% of the time? When I go to work, I'm not eyeing my co-workers, most of whom are old enough to be my parents, thinking, "Hm, yeah, that's the right gender presentation, I should pursue reproduction with them."

The obsession with gendering others is, perhaps, in some small part, sexual in nature. Perhaps even born of the fact that humans reproduce sexually. However, gender is a social construction, and acts much more like a social class presented as an inherent reality. If the urge to gender people was a largely sexual one, rather than a social process we're taught to enact, then I'm guessing there would be a lot fewer children asking, "Are you a girl or a boy?" to anyone who fails to conform strictly to the socially constructed gender binary.

[Krensky]

Caineach wrote:

I know a number of people who use Ze.

Shklee.

[Dustwich]

Krensky wrote:

Yeah, but do they have Damage Immunity (Editor)?

Yes.

Also, it turns out that language is mutable and always changing, and what is "grammatically correct" one day may not be tomorrow! It also turns out that "grammatically correct" is a phrase that matters mostly to linguistic prescriptivists, and when "grammar" doesn't mesh with the language created by oppressed groups, "grammatically correct" means "invalid because it doesn't fit the narrative of the dominant culture."

[Krensky]

You were good until the last sentence descended into post-structuralist gobbledygook. It's also a run-on sentence.

[Sissyl]

mechaPoet wrote:

Thoughts: humans are sexual creatures, but almost no one is looking to have sex 100% of the time? When I go to work, I'm not eyeing my co-workers, most of whom are old enough to be my parents, thinking, "Hm, yeah, that's the right gender presentation, I should pursue reproduction with them."

The obsession with gendering others is, perhaps, in some small part, sexual in nature. Perhaps even born of the fact that humans reproduce sexually. However, gender is a social construction, and acts much more like a social class presented as an inherent reality. If the urge to gender people was a largely sexual one, rather than a social process we're taught to enact, then I'm guessing there would be a lot fewer children asking, "Are you a girl or a boy?" to anyone who fails to conform strictly to the socially constructed gender binary.

Or maybe it's simply that children are the same people who then grow up to be adults, and so have a lot of the instincts that adults have, such as gendering people, which later become important for reproduction? The same way, you know, that children have genitals from their days in the womb even though their first possible period of fertility is many years away. You need one to have the other.

[Caineach]

mechaPoet wrote:

Malachi Silverclaw wrote:

TanithT wrote:

Why does anyone need to know my gender or treat me in gendered ways or use gendered language to describe me? The whole thing just weirds me out. I have no answers to give about my gender identity that fit into a binary, and that makes life pretty uncomfy in a world that is so intensively focused on gendering everyone and everything.

Do you think that part of it, part of it, is that humans are sexual creatures, constantly and subconsciously assessing everyone they meet to see if that person is up for it, assuming that they are attracted to that gender?

Given that most people (there are exceptions) limit themselves to one particular gender, then knowing the gender of the person you meet is crucial information when it comes to how you interact, both consciously or subconsciously.

Thoughts?

Thoughts: humans are sexual creatures, but almost no one is looking to have sex 100% of the time? When I go to work, I'm not eyeing my co-workers, most of whom are old enough to be my parents, thinking, "Hm, yeah, that's the right gender presentation, I should pursue reproduction with them."

The obsession with gendering others is, perhaps, in some small part, sexual in nature. Perhaps even born of the fact that humans reproduce sexually. However, gender is a social construction, and acts much more like a social class presented as an inherent reality. If the urge to gender people was a largely sexual one, rather than a social process we're taught to enact, then I'm guessing there would be a lot fewer children asking, "Are you a girl or a boy?" to anyone who fails to conform strictly to the socially constructed gender binary.

I have to disagree. I think it is a huge part for some people. One of the first things that goes through my head any time I meet someone is a sexual assessment of them. It doesn't matter what age or gender, though I am only personally attracted to women. I'm also constantly re-assessing people as I interact with them.

Just because people don't think about sex 100% of the time doesn't mean it doesn't interrupt their other thoughts with regularity and change their behavior.

[mechaPoet]

Krensky wrote:

You were good until the last sentence descended into post-structuralist gobbledygook. It's also a run-on sentence.

If you think run-on sentences are bad, just wait until you see my knuckle tattoos. One hand says POST, and the other, having transcended the limits of the form, says STRUCTURALIST.

[mechaPoet]

Okay, look. Gendering others is not an act based on natural or inherent gender markers. It is based on a history of societally defined gender markers, which have no basis other than a long history of repeated arbitrary defining and redefining.

[Krensky]

A thesis you have no proof of, and offer no proof of other then postmodernist navel gazing.

What qualities define masculine/feminine/neuter/whatever are, for the most part, societal constructs.

The concepts of gender, stripped of those qualities, seem to be largely universal to the human animal regardless of culture or society. This strongly suggests that either there's more to it that social construct or that said construct likely predates Homo sapiens.

EDIT: Just to clarify, I'm referring to gender in the man/woman/non-gendered/whatever sense, not the grammatical or linguistic senses since that's a whole other kettle of very tangentially related fish.

[mechaPoet]

Okay but

what is gender if stripped of the "masculine/feminine/neuter/whatever" qualities they describe??? Seriously, y'all act like I don't give suitable explanations. Seriously answer this question for me.

I also can't tell if you know anything about post-structural and/or postmodern theory. This isn't a "You don't know what the hell you're talking about! >:(" kind of statement. I'm just curious whether you're dismissing me based on your knowledge of feminist gender theory or your lack of it. Because, like, postmodernism and post-structuralism are very different? And I can't tell how you're using these words (except in a "postmodern is a poorly understood catch-all word that's great for dismissing people's opinions when they're related to philosophy or theory" way).

[Sissyl]

Every child that is not severely mentally disabled learns a language. Which language depends on what they are taught, but that they learn a language is an absolute. It turns out that the thing that is most likely genetic is that the language they learn is one with verbs, nouns, a certain word order, and so on. If brought up hearing a language that has no formal grammar, the little blighters design a version that can be spoken with one (this is the difference between a pidgin and a creole, apparently).

It really is no great stretch to imagine that it is the same with gender. THAT gender exists is biological as is our evaluation of it, but the exact ways people are male or female vary by culture.

[Krensky]

Perhaps fewer gender studies classes and more math, science, and information theory might have helped. ;)

Ok. For simplicity sake I'm just going to use one gender here, let's call it gender X.

Gender X in a given society is defined as possessing qualities A, B, and C. Qualities ! and @ are irrelevant. Qualities 1, 2, 3 are allowed but deprecated. Qualities $ and % are right out. Several hundred years ago that 'same' society considered A, B, and 3 relevant, ! and $ required, and 2 and C verboten. Another third society has yet another series of requirements, irrelevancies, and disqualifiers.

All of those societies have X as a gender. Their definitions of what that gender looks like, but they all have X. Like a class in programing.

Post-structuralism is a post-modernist school of thought. Unless you're a post-structuralist and then it's schmoo or some other made up word.

Also, I'm not dismissing you, I'm dismissing your arguments and asking you to try again without radically redefining words or making things up whole cloth. Probably a lost cause though since my philosophic beliefs are a mix of Pragmatism and Analytic philosophy. Yes, I know that's... idiosyncratic.

[Jessica Price]

Krensky wrote:

You were good until the last sentence descended into post-structuralist gobbledygook. It's also a run-on sentence.

No, it's not. I might break it up for being too long, but there's no grammatical problem with the way the clauses are joined.

[mechaPoet]

Krensky wrote:

Ok. For simplicity sake I'm just going to use one gender here, let's call it gender X.

Gender X in a given society is defined as possessing qualities A, B, and C. Qualities ! and @ are irrelevant. Qualities 1, 2, 3 are allowed but deprecated. Qualities $ and % are right out. Several hundred years ago that 'same' society considered A, B, and 3 relevant, ! and $ required, and 2 and C verboten. Another third society has yet another series of requirements, irrelevancies, and disqualifiers.

All of those societies have X as a gender. Their definitions of what that gender looks like, but they all have X. Like a class in programing.

So, correct me if I'm wrong here (not that you need the encouragement), but it seems like you're presupposing that gender X exists somehow outside of the societal qualities that describe it. You say that each of these societies has "X," but can they be truly said to be the same thing is they're by definition different?

In any case, this example isn't particularly helpful because of its abstraction. A more concrete example might help the discussion.

[KSF]

mechaPoet wrote:

However, gender is a social construction, and acts much more like a social class presented as an inherent reality.

I'm actually not certain that gender is an entirely social construction. A large portion of it, sure, most likely the great majority of it, but I think there's at least a part of it that is not. Just going by my own experiences with hormone therapy. I feel like there's something there, beneath the matrix of notions of gender that we move through and express ourselves through in our society, or have imposed upon us by society. Though that something beneath is by no means all-encompassing or limiting, or restricted to the gender binary, and I doubt we'll ever be able to isolate that portion of it from the much larger, socially constructed side of it.

Again, that's just the impression I have from my own experiences as a transgender person.

[Krensky]

I'm not presupposing anything. I can't think of a single actual society that does not have a concept of gender. Several that define the roles and qualities that define those genders differently (although there's a good bit of overlap in those roles and qualities), but none that lack it completely.

I doubt removing the abstraction will help because it will just give people places to get hung up on how they choose to define the language in use, but whatever.

Two societies define male/masculine and female/feminine differently. They both have the concepts even if what qualities define those concepts are different.

[Pillbug Toenibbler]

Jessica Price wrote:

Krensky wrote:

You were good until the last sentence descended into post-structuralist gobbledygook. It's also a run-on sentence.

No, it's not. I might break it up for being too long, but there's no grammatical problem with the way the clauses are joined.

{wanders off to fetch a cordless drill to get "Conjunction Junction (What's Your Function?)" out of her head}

[mechaPoet]

I feel like we're chasing this issue down the rabbit hole a little too far, and not really getting anywhere useful.

What is important to recognize is how and why we gender other people. Gender, especially gender identity, has biological basis, but is ultimately tangled up in the socially defined aspects of what a given gender is, does, looks like, etc., and if it even "exists".

This analysis is important because it helps us understand and dismantle sexism, homophobia, and transphobia.

[Jessica Price]

Pillbug Toenibbler wrote:

Jessica Price wrote:

Krensky wrote:

You were good until the last sentence descended into post-structuralist gobbledygook. It's also a run-on sentence.

No, it's not. I might break it up for being too long, but there's no grammatical problem with the way the clauses are joined.

{wanders off to fetch a cordless drill to get "Conjunction Junction (What's Your Function?)" out of her head}

<wry> Well, if you're going to call out someone for their grammar on the messageboards of a publishing company... :-)

[KSF]

mechaPoet wrote:

I feel like we're chasing this issue down the rabbit hole a little too far, and not really getting anywhere useful.

What is important to recognize is how and why we gender other people. Gender, especially gender identity, has biological basis, but is ultimately tangled up in the socially defined aspects of what a given gender is, does, looks like, etc., and if it even "exists".

This analysis is important because it helps us understand and dismantle sexism, homophobia, and transphobia.

That, I totally agree with.

[Sissyl]

mechaPoet wrote:

I feel like we're chasing this issue down the rabbit hole a little too far, and not really getting anywhere useful.

What is important to recognize is how and why we gender other people. Gender, especially gender identity, has biological basis, but is ultimately tangled up in the socially defined aspects of what a given gender is, does, looks like, etc., and if it even "exists".

This analysis is important because it helps us understand and dismantle sexism, homophobia, and transphobia.

Why we gender other people is because those who did got more offspring than those who did not, most likely. It is not the gendering process that is the real problem, but the idea that someone deserves to be treated a certain way because they are gender X.

[Krensky]

mechaPoet wrote:

I feel like we're chasing this issue down the rabbit hole a little too far, and not really getting anywhere useful.

What is important to recognize is how and why we gender other people. Gender, especially gender identity, has biological basis, but is ultimately tangled up in the socially defined aspects of what a given gender is, does, looks like, etc., and if it even "exists".

This analysis is important because it helps us understand and dismantle sexism, homophobia, and transphobia.

But only as long as those reasons are the ones that your learned in your gender studies class, right?

You keep saying that it's important to accept your argument as true for reasons, without actually giving any evidence or even a real benefit besides ideological purity to accepting it as a premise. Especially since looking at the general discourse suggests that your argument and methodology is counter-productive due to pissing off people who aren't as steeped in jargon or the, frankly strange, view of the world that everything is always about oppression, all the time and everywhere.

I can claim that having a fish and chips basket for lunch at the local brewpub every Tuesday helps dismantle inequality and bigotry, but you'd demand evidence of it doing so or some sort of argument why it's a beneficial idea, right?

[mechaPoet]

Sissyl wrote:

mechaPoet wrote:

I feel like we're chasing this issue down the rabbit hole a little too far, and not really getting anywhere useful.

What is important to recognize is how and why we gender other people. Gender, especially gender identity, has biological basis, but is ultimately tangled up in the socially defined aspects of what a given gender is, does, looks like, etc., and if it even "exists".

This analysis is important because it helps us understand and dismantle sexism, homophobia, and transphobia.

Why we gender other people is because those who did got more offspring than those who did not, most likely. It is not the gendering process that is the real problem, but the idea that someone deserves to be treated a certain way because they are gender X.

The way that we gender others is a real problem, because it's more complicated than just "someone deserves to be treated a certain way because they are gender X."

Gendering others is a problem because it involves determining and evaluating someone's gender based on societally defined notions of what is appropriate for a given gender.

To put this in more concrete terms: gendering is a largely automatic response to someone's appearance, and the normative thing to do (in most western societies) is to determine if they're male or female. For people who don't fit the normative gender mold, this can lead to misgendering and sometimes angry interrogation and even violence. Gendering people is a problem because deciding that a person is a given gender leads to a whole bunch of other assumptions and stereotypical assumptions. Whether you put stock in these stereotypes or not, you are still aware of them, and you have to make a decision (implicitly or explicitly) about their validity.

[thejeff]

mechaPoet wrote:

I feel like we're chasing this issue down the rabbit hole a little too far, and not really getting anywhere useful.

What is important to recognize is how and why we gender other people. Gender, especially gender identity, has biological basis, but is ultimately tangled up in the socially defined aspects of what a given gender is, does, looks like, etc., and if it even "exists".

This analysis is important because it helps us understand and dismantle sexism, homophobia, and transphobia.

We gender people (by which I assume you mean we look at a person and make the assumption they are a particular gender. Correct me if I'm misunderstanding.) because it works. It's useful. We're are pattern matching creatures. We use shorthand to put things in categories so we can make assumptions about them.

The vast majority of the time this is useful behavior: That furred thing with the big teeth and sharp claws is a predator, even if I've never seen one exactly like it, the vast majority of other furred things with the big teeth and sharp claws were predators. Safer to assume.

Whether gender is a social construct or not, it's a universal one. Every human culture I'm aware of has had the concept of gender and has had male and female genders. Some have been more strict about forcing every person into one of those two. Some have had one or more other genders. Some have been more open about letting people choose which gender they fit into. But there have always been male and female genders and the overwhelming majority of the human population has always fit neatly into one or the other.

There's nothing wrong with that and you're not going to break people of doing something that basic and fundamental. We're still going to see male and female. What we can do is not force people into those categories. Accept their corrections when we misgender them (and remember, so we don't repeat.)

[thejeff]

mechaPoet wrote:

Sissyl wrote:

mechaPoet wrote:

I feel like we're chasing this issue down the rabbit hole a little too far, and not really getting anywhere useful.

What is important to recognize is how and why we gender other people. Gender, especially gender identity, has biological basis, but is ultimately tangled up in the socially defined aspects of what a given gender is, does, looks like, etc., and if it even "exists".

This analysis is important because it helps us understand and dismantle sexism, homophobia, and transphobia.

Why we gender other people is because those who did got more offspring than those who did not, most likely. It is not the gendering process that is the real problem, but the idea that someone deserves to be treated a certain way because they are gender X.

The way that we gender others is a real problem, because it's more complicated than just "someone deserves to be treated a certain way because they are gender X."

Gendering others is a problem because it involves determining and evaluating someone's gender based on societally defined notions of what is appropriate for a given gender.

To put this in more concrete terms: gendering is a largely automatic response to someone's appearance, and the normative thing to do (in most western societies) is to determine if they're male or female. For people who don't fit the normative gender mold, this can lead to misgendering and sometimes angry interrogation and even violence. Gendering people is a problem because deciding that a person is a given gender leads to a whole bunch of other assumptions and stereotypical assumptions. Whether you put stock in these stereotypes or not, you are still aware of them, and you have to make a decision (implicitly or explicitly) about their validity.

To follow up what I said before, you're not going to stop the automatic response or misgendering for those who don't fit the model. What we can do is normalize the idea that the automatic response isn't always right and that there are other models, to stop the angry interrogation and violence.

Making assumptions is going to happen, it's the not correcting them when new data shows them to be wrong that's the problem.

[KSF]

Krensky wrote:

or the, frankly strange, view of the world that everything is always about oppression, all the time and everywhere.

Well, societal notions of gender certainly do factor into sexism, homophobia and transphobia. That's a pretty straightforward, and not at all strange or controversial statement. And given that sexism, homophobia and transphobia are things that many of us who post here have had to deal, I'm not sure what's wrong with having a discussion about gender in relation to these issues. Having that sort of discussion is not the same thing as saying "everything is always about oppression, all the time and everywhere."

[Krensky]

For most of mechPoet's posts, it appears to be.

See their above comment about grammar being a tool of oppression for an example.

[mechaPoet]

I understand that human brains rely on heuristics, but again, I'm talking about the current, Western, normative function of gendering.

You say, "It's useful," but the question is: for what? The act of gendering is based on what we have been taught is indicative of gender, and therefore inseparable from oppressive definitions of gender and sexuality.

So, yeah, I guess theoretically the act of gendering is not in itself, in the context-shorn platonic form of itself, a problem. But because of the gender norms that it's linked to in much of the world, the majority of the time gendering relies on a problematic model, and is therefore a problem.

[mechaPoet]

Krensky wrote:

For most of mechPoet's posts, it appears to be.

See their above comment about grammar being a tool of oppression for an example.

If someone uses "they" pronouns, dismissing that by saying "you can't use 'they' as a singular pronoun, because it's not proper grammar" is oppression.

Would you like to argue that "words are just words" to excuse the use of slurs, next?

[thejeff]

mechaPoet wrote:

I understand that human brains rely on heuristics, but again, I'm talking about the current, Western, normative function of gendering.

You say, "It's useful," but the question is: for what? The act of gendering is based on what we have been taught is indicative of gender, and therefore inseparable from oppressive definitions of gender and sexuality.

So, yeah, I guess theoretically the act of gendering is not in itself, in the context-shorn platonic form of itself, a problem. But because of the gender norms that it's linked to in much of the world, the majority of the time gendering relies on a problematic model, and is therefore a problem.

What I'm saying is that if you try to do away with the notion of gendering people, you're going to fail. You're not even going to make a dent. That's far too hardwired.

If you work on making it acceptable to not fit into the simplistic gender categories you'll do much better.

[Pillbug Toenibbler]

Jessica Price wrote:

Pillbug Toenibbler wrote:

Jessica Price wrote:

Krensky wrote:

You were good until the last sentence descended into post-structuralist gobbledygook. It's also a run-on sentence.

No, it's not. I might break it up for being too long, but there's no grammatical problem with the way the clauses are joined.

{wanders off to fetch a cordless drill to get "Conjunction Junction (What's Your Function?)" out of her head}

<wry> Well, if you're going to call out someone for their grammar on the messageboards of a publishing company... :-)

Apologies. I didn't mean my comment as a critique on anyone's grammar, merely that the discussion immediately set off the Schoolhouse Rock! earworm in my mental jukebox, which I'll be stuck listening to for hours.

[Todd Stewart]

Gendering people we meet isn't a social thing, or a Western thing, or an oppression thing, it's a mammalian thing, or really more just any species with a gender binary*. We add social gloss on top of biology, but biology is there regardless of what words we use or customs we develop. Evolution biases us to see a strict binary, but thankfully as a species we can adjust to seeing beyond just two options even if those two options are a vast majority. Let's also not shame the act of gendering when its hard coded into our brains to do just that (studies have looked at infants differentiating male and female faces well before social influence has any role at all).

*(and even some species with only one gender, because those parthenogenesis reproducing all female lizards frequently mate with males of other species to introduce genetic diversity)

[Krensky]

mechaPoet wrote:

Krensky wrote:

For most of mechPoet's posts, it appears to be.

See their above comment about grammar being a tool of oppression for an example.

If someone uses "they" pronouns, dismissing that by saying "you can't use 'they' as a singular pronoun, because it's not proper grammar" is oppression.

Would you like to argue that "words are just words" to excuse the use of slurs, next?

I have no idea what you're on about here or what imagined violence or oppressive act you're accusing me of.

Which pretty much reinforces my comment about everything always being about oppression for you

[pH unbalanced]

mechaPoet wrote:

Krensky wrote:

For most of mechPoet's posts, it appears to be.

See their above comment about grammar being a tool of oppression for an example.

If someone uses "they" pronouns, dismissing that by saying "you can't use 'they' as a singular pronoun, because it's not proper grammar" is oppression.

There's also the fact that standard grammar doesn't stay still.

"They" as a singular pronoun of indefinite gender has been slowly moving into the grammar of standard English over about the last hundred years (or more). At the moment, it isn't standard, but it's no longer solidly ungrammatical. I fully expect that within twenty years (maybe ten) it will be considered an explicitly grammatical construction.

[Krensky]

Pillbug Toenibbler wrote:

Jessica Price wrote:

Pillbug Toenibbler wrote:

Jessica Price wrote:

Krensky wrote:

You were good until the last sentence descended into post-structuralist gobbledygook. It's also a run-on sentence.

No, it's not. I might break it up for being too long, but there's no grammatical problem with the way the clauses are joined.

{wanders off to fetch a cordless drill to get "Conjunction Junction (What's Your Function?)" out of her head}

<wry> Well, if you're going to call out someone for their grammar on the messageboards of a publishing company... :-)

Apologies. I didn't mean my comment as a critique on anyone's grammar, merely that the discussion immediately set off the Schoolhouse Rock! earworm in my mental jukebox, which I'll be stuck listening to for hours.

Ms Price needs to stop oppressing me by insisting on the accepted definition of 'run on sentence' rather than my personal one.

[pH unbalanced]

Caineach wrote:

I know a number of people who use Ze.

Personally a fan of zie/hir, but I think that ship has probably sailed.

[mechaPoet]

thejeff wrote:

mechaPoet wrote:

I understand that human brains rely on heuristics, but again, I'm talking about the current, Western, normative function of gendering.

You say, "It's useful," but the question is: for what? The act of gendering is based on what we have been taught is indicative of gender, and therefore inseparable from oppressive definitions of gender and sexuality.

So, yeah, I guess theoretically the act of gendering is not in itself, in the context-shorn platonic form of itself, a problem. But because of the gender norms that it's linked to in much of the world, the majority of the time gendering relies on a problematic model, and is therefore a problem.

What I'm saying is that if you try to do away with the notion of gendering people, you're going to fail. You're not even going to make a dent. That's far too hardwired.

If you work on making it acceptable to not fit into the simplistic gender categories you'll do much better.

I'm not really trying to do away gendering. I do it all the time, because I've been taught to. But I try to recognize when I do it, and understand what effect it has.

In order to reach the point of getting people to accept gender variance, though, you have to recognize the problems that are associated with the act of gendering. Although "have to" is perhaps a strong choice of words? I think it's important to understand, or at least that I considering my own understanding of it important to me. Obviously, having a widespread acceptance of gender variance is more important than theoretically exploring how the meaning of gender is constructed, but I'm interested in both.

[Krensky]

pH unbalanced wrote:

mechaPoet wrote:

Krensky wrote:

For most of mechPoet's posts, it appears to be.

See their above comment about grammar being a tool of oppression for an example.

If someone uses "they" pronouns, dismissing that by saying "you can't use 'they' as a singular pronoun, because it's not proper grammar" is oppression.

There's also the fact that standard grammar doesn't stay still.

"They" as a singular pronoun of indefinite gender has been slowly moving into the grammar of standard English over about the last hundred years (or more). At the moment, it isn't standard, but it's no longer solidly ungrammatical. I fully expect that within twenty years (maybe ten) it will be considered an explicitly grammatical construction.

Stuffy grammarians have been having back alley knife fights over it as long as modern English has existed.

The Chicago Manual of Style has flip-flopped on it at least twice in the past decade if memory serves.

[mechaPoet]

Todd Stewart wrote:

Let's also not shame the act of gendering when its hard coded into our brains to do just that (studies have looked at infants differentiating male and female faces well before social influence has any role at all).

I'm gonna nitpick here, so apologies in advance. :P

I believe I've heard of a similar study, if not that one. I know there are techniques to determine whether infants make a distinction between different stimuli, but as I understand it, human infants have pretty bad eyesight. So the main thing they were looking for was "does the infant think this face is more mom-like or dad-like?," which pretty much came down to hair length (because despite humans' incredible talent for facial recognition, babies have bad, blurry vision). Which, again, comes back to gender norms for hair length. It could be a different study entirely, or that all could have been accounted for.

[Sissyl]

Todd Stewart wrote:

Gendering people we meet isn't a social thing, or a Western thing, or an oppression thing, it's a mammalian thing, or really more just any species with a gender binary*. We add social gloss on top of biology, but biology is there regardless of what words we use or customs we develop. Evolution biases us to see a strict binary, but thankfully as a species we can adjust to seeing beyond just two options even if those two options are a vast majority. Let's also not shame the act of gendering when its hard coded into our brains to do just that (studies have looked at infants differentiating male and female faces well before social influence has any role at all).

*(and even some species with only one gender, because those parthenogenesis reproducing all female lizards frequently mate with males of other species to introduce genetic diversity)

What I do not understand is: Biology is getting hard data that shows pretty clearly that nature, not nurture, is the primary driver of all mammalian behaviour, at least for the studied points. Sociology has no data whatsoever, only theory-building consisting of a thin veneer of science over a vast, noxious mass of politics, stating for the umpty-gajillionth time that it is all down to culture. Originally, the idea for the nurture crowd was to devise a philosophical underpinning for the idea that with a system designed for it, you could shape every citizen to be a perfect, changeable cog in the great society machine.

And even so, people turn to the side of the debate that produces no data to back up their theory, going so far as to call the other side politically tainted. I do not understand this.

[Freehold DM]

Jessica Price wrote:

Pillbug Toenibbler wrote:

Jessica Price wrote:

Krensky wrote:

You were good until the last sentence descended into post-structuralist gobbledygook. It's also a run-on sentence.

No, it's not. I might break it up for being too long, but there's no grammatical problem with the way the clauses are joined.

{wanders off to fetch a cordless drill to get "Conjunction Junction (What's Your Function?)" out of her head}

<wry> Well, if you're going to call out someone for their grammar on the messageboards of a publishing company... :-)

giggles uncontrollably at immature family guy version

[Freehold DM]

Krensky wrote:

pH unbalanced wrote:

mechaPoet wrote:

Krensky wrote:

For most of mechPoet's posts, it appears to be.

See their above comment about grammar being a tool of oppression for an example.

If someone uses "they" pronouns, dismissing that by saying "you can't use 'they' as a singular pronoun, because it's not proper grammar" is oppression.

There's also the fact that standard grammar doesn't stay still.

"They" as a singular pronoun of indefinite gender has been slowly moving into the grammar of standard English over about the last hundred years (or more). At the moment, it isn't standard, but it's no longer solidly ungrammatical. I fully expect that within twenty years (maybe ten) it will be considered an explicitly grammatical construction.

Stuffy grammarians have been having back alley knife fights over it as long as modern English has existed.

I'd pay good money to watch such a brawl.

Quote:

The Chicago Manual of Style has flip-flopped on it at least twice in the past decade if memory serves.

I believe so, yes.

[Paladin of Baha-who?]

Isn't the testimony of people who feel harmed by others assigning them a gender and treating them a certain way as a result evidence that there are problems associated with the act of gendering?

Sissyl, there is actually a lot of evidence that when animals get smart enough to have culture, that a lot of activity is culturally driven rather than instinct driven. Chimpanzees learning to make tools from each other, for instance. Birds learning songs from each other. Given how much of human behavior is culturally shaped, asserting that any particular phenomenon in humans is biologically fixed rather than a result of culture requires positive evidence, just as much as asserting that a phenomenon is entirely a result of culture rather than biologically determined. I'm not entirely sure what the null hypothesis should be, but there's plenty of reasons that the default shouldn't be "assume that things are the result of fixed biology until proven otherwise".

[Sissyl]

A lot of evidence? Are you claiming that using tools or wanting to learn ways to make your life easier is evidence of culture? You could make a case that when animals get smarter, they start behaving in different ways, simply because they are smarter, and are able to learn more effectively, touch on abstract reasoning, and so on.

Also note that most people seem to accept the idea that "everything is culture until proven otherwise". Now that data is pouring in, these people try to cast biology as politically tainted, not even trying to see where their culture arguments come from.

[mechaPoet]

Krensky wrote:

mechaPoet wrote:

I'm not really trying to do away gendering. I do it all the time, because I've been taught to. But I try to recognize when I do it, and understand what effect it has.

In order to reach the point of getting people to accept gender variance, though, you have to recognize the problems that are associated with the act of gendering. Although "have to" is perhaps a strong choice of words? I think it's important to understand, or at least that I considering my own understanding of it important to me. Obviously, having a widespread acceptance of gender variance is more important than theoretically exploring how the meaning of gender is constructed, but I'm interested in both.

Facts not in evidence.

You want some problems with gendering? Okay.

tw transphobia, sexual violence, suicide:

One of the most harmful aspects of the way oppressive gendering operates is to dismiss, invalidate, and ridicule trans people by saying they're "really" the gender they were at birth. This has many dire consequences:

-The average chance of being murdered in the US is 1 in 18,989. The average chance of being murdered in the US if you're a trans woman is 1 in 12, and 1 in 8 if you're also not white.
-The average suicide rate in the US among the general population is less than 1%. The average suicide rate among transgender and other gender-nonconforming people is closer to 50%.
-Gendered bathrooms cause extreme anxiety for people who aren't perceived as the gender they identify as. Because of threats, assault, or the fear of such, some trans people just plain don't use public restrooms, and many suffer from related afflictions such as anxiety and urinary tract infections.
-Because it can be extremely difficult to get hired as a trans person, many (especially trans women) have to resort to sex work just to pay their bills. Needless to say, this puts them at an even higher risk for violence, sexual or otherwise.
-The hormone treatments and surgery that a trans person might need to relieve their gender dysphoria is often prohibitively expensive and difficult for trans people to access. In contrast, cisgender people(that is, people who identify with the gender they were assigned at birth) can obtain these same exact drugs and procedures cheaper and more readily (this includes older women getting estrogen supplements, genital reconstruction after damage from a fire or car accident or whatever, men getting treatment for a not uncommon condition that causes their breasts to grow).

This is just the tip of the ice berg.