Hey all,

So I’m looking to take an active step here to understand better some things that my straight/white/cis/middle-aged male brain has had a tough time wrapping itself around, particularly in the gender identity front.

I’m working from the understanding of physical sex as the bio-bits and the expressed identity as being separate things, so that part is easy enough.

What’s confusing to me though is like this. If we take gender as being an expression of your persona, a set of traits that define one as male, female, or some combination of both then what function does a title/pronoun serve? To assume that some things are masculine or feminine traits seems to put unneeded rigidity to things.

We’ve had men or women who enjoy things traditionally associated with the other gender for as long as there have been people I expect. If that’s the case then what purpose does the need for a gender title serve?

I’ll admit personally questioning some things like fairness in cis/trans integrated sports, but that’s outside what I’m asking here. Some things like bathroom laws are just society needing to get over itself in thinking our personal parts are all that special.

Certainly not trying to stir up any fights, just trying to get some input from people that have a different life experience than myself. Is it really as simple as a preferred title?

Edit: Just wanted to take a second to thank all the people here who took the time to write some truly extensive thoughts and explanations, even getting into some full on citation-laden studies into neurology that’ll give me plenty to digest. You all have shown a great deal of patience with me updating some thinking from the bio/social teachings of 20+ years back. 🙂

  • AdaAEnglish
    17·
    9 months ago

    XX and XY don’t come in to it. You almost certainly don’t know yours, just like most people don’t. They assume them based on sexual characteristics. Which is to say, when “evaluating” someone’s sex, it’s just sexual characteristics that come in to it.

    And they change. If you looked at my sexual characteristics, you’d assume I’m XX, but I’m almost certainly not.

    And again, the fact that you are placing so much relevance on what sex is and how it’s determined so that you can categorise people according to the rules of that classification? That’s purely social…

    It goes to one of my other replies then of what differentiates a ‘boyish woman/tomboy’ from a MTF transgender?

    One is cis, one is trans…

    It really has nothing to do with identity but more for things like someone who grew up male, with all the associated hormonal traits to that, most specifically testosterone and the typically associated muscle difference transitioning

    As I said, if you don’t understand it, don’t get involved, because you end up spouting stuff like this. Content that “makes sense”, but is misleading and used to harm

    You don’t understand it, so exactly why do you need to have an opinion on it? The harm done by people who don’t understand a topic, but push for exclusion because it “makes sense” can’t easily be undone. It’s going to take us decades to undo the hurt caused by people driving this conversation. Until you can speak from experience on the topic, just stay out of it, rather than being part of the harm machine