How can anyone identify their gender? I’ve actually asked a few people, but each answer seems so ridiculous.
“I’m a boy, because I have a dick,” completely disregards all transsexuals.
(My least favourite>) “I’m attracted to boys, so I’m a girl,” As a pansexual, that would mean I am all genders. It would disprove homosexuality, and just seems stupid in itself.
“I just relate more to girls. I can just tell,” Is only based off stereotypes. Girls relate to more typically feminine things, but if we switch it around, where makeup and shopping and dresses were all seen as masculine stereotypes, we would just switch genders. The most respectable answer I got was “I relate to more traditionally male stereotypes, so I choose to identify myself as a male,” and even that shows it isn’t a gender, but a group selection.
It’s like in high school, where you could choose to be either a nerd or a cheerleader (all I could come up with off the top of my head – sorry), we would make our decision based on what we associate each class with.
I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and can’t really come up with a solution, nor do I understand it. That’s why this is being posted.
Oh, and just so everyone knows: 1. This post is not transphobic (if it’s anything, it’s gender-phobic in general) 2. Technically, since I don’t understand genders, I don’t understand sexualities aswell aside from things like fetishes or whatever. When I refer to myself as a pansexual, I’m more or less saying I’m attracted to whatever I find attractive, without actually having a sexuality.
I’d appreciate all your opinions on this topic. Thanks 🙂
Love, From, the Midnightcrisis
(Sorry this wasn’t uploaded at midnight, I don’t know when I’ll get the chance to go on this site again. Oh, sorry about any spelling mistakes. I needed to make this quick)
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Everything in this world is about how you feel. You don’t have to follow anyone’s opinion. Sex is the same thing too – it is based on beliefs. We are humans and that’s it.
But yeah, you must remember that there is biology, too. Saying that one’s a man because ge has that funny addition to his body is very justified. But it is only biology. Mentally I may be whoever I want.
And it happens that I am nothing.
Interesting thoughts Midnightcrisis. What defines us… I think a large part is neurological and intrinsic to our make up, we are to some extent hardwired. Our mind reacts to stimuli and then we view our environment to see where we fit. A lot of actions are also based on the environment, we are taught to act a certain way.
As for girls relating to more feminine things at first I thought this was a learned behaviour until I saw a study where they had a group of babies decide what to play with and almost stereotypically the females went to play with the doles and the males went to play with the trucks suggesting their behaviour was one of nurture. A criticism I had of this study was that it would be difficult to find an objective control group.
A simple method which is used although ignores any neurological input is to base our gender upon our body parts. I believe this is common practise although is starting to change. This of course may be different to what the person defines themselves as but meets a certain criteria. It may be one of the reasons why people have surgery, so that their outsides match what is inside their mind.
I see the world becoming more tolerant, as more people are informed more people understand that not everything is so black and white and that their is a lot of grey in between.
@night in atlantis: is in in part hard wired into us as birth. I tried my damnedest to raise my kids in a gender neutral environment but in the end my son definitely plays with “boy” things and my daughters definitely play with “girl” things. What me doing did for them was give them a sense of freedom to chose things more traditionally the other gender if they found it interesting. For example my son really loves colors that are traditionally girl colors, purple, pink, yellow. My daughter is up to her eyeballs in mud most days and up a tree the balance of the other days. When they were babies however, they were attracted to boy things. My son cars and transformer plushies (yes they do make such a thing) my youngest animal plushies. Here is something interesting, none of them like baby dolls or barbies or American Girl dolls. Their grandmothers think they are a little strange, I think i did it exactly right. I won the kid lottery on that one. My sister-in-law and her wife have desperately tried to raise their son gender neutral with absolutely no success. This little boy is so hard wired to seek boy things that no matter what they do or how they try he just goes extreme smack down on them. And they really tried, I mean these are two married Canadian lesbians for cripes sakes, you’d think they could be successful at it? Nope. No luck at all. Even baby dolls play hockey apparently.
*when they were babies they were attracted to traditionally boy and girl things. sorry type.
@hazy… welcome back to the disco… have a dance
Jeebus sportsnut, don’t you sleep? LOL.
lol.. i just always beat you in… i actually slept fairly normally last night… 1am to 7 am.. how goes the battle this morning
@Hazy. It’s interesting observing how children behave, sometimes their is indeed no correlation. I don’t have any children yet so perhaps I should exclude myself from debate, however my nieces and nephews definitely keep me entertained. Or rather vise versa I keep them entertained!
When I was young and idealistic I thought that gender was cultural. That we learn to be what we are. But after having my first child I realized that nope it isn’t. I bought her race tracks and trucks took her hiking and fishing. She hated it all. She hates being outdoors and anything to have to do with mud or dirt, frogs or bugs. Now my youngest, she and I are eyeball deep in mud and bugs most weekends weather permitted while my son is a bit more finicky and likes everything orderly and clean. He’s a cat guy though. And no, you are included in this conversation because: 1) you were once a child 2) you are human 3) your opinion counts. It is the responsibility of all adults to care and protect all children, regardless of their own parental status.
@sportsnut: can’t complain. I didn’t wake up with a hang over despite fantasizing for hours about getting blind drunk last night. Nothing has changed, still married to a guy that won’t divorce me and wish daily just to float in the warm sea of the gulf.
How about you?
things are looking up for me in the last 24 hours.. have had some unexpected blessings.. trying to also take it easier on myself.. learning to be happy.. trying to figure out how to get more hazy time in my life.. glad there is not too much hang over for you…
@Hazy good morning. just so you know I would divorce you.
@totrees: dear jeebus THANK YOU. At least someone in this fucking nightmare of a world will listen and leave me.
LOL hazy time. Not sure what that means but it cracked me up.
So I am thinking it is one of three things:
1) time obsessing why someone won’t leave you
2) time sorting through 73 different projects you gave yourself 87 minutes to do (a little more than 1 minute per project).
3) Or (and this one is my favorite) counting down the minutes to crashing and thinking about binge drinking.
Hmmm.. decisions decisions.
@Hazy. Thanks for the validation.
Oh, and no. 3 sounds like fun 🙂
When I was little I used to think I wished I was a boy because my brothers seemed to have interests in common and I wasn’t taken into account for being the girl. Because they could skate and talk about boy’s things and play in a way I wasn’t. Because they went to a school more structured than mine (now I know mine was better in that regard ) and learned more history and literaure and maths than me. And because they didn’t need to care so much about being neat and nice and demure. Or about their bodies.
But now I feel them, as men, are so much different than me, because of cultural things , but also in the way the think and feel (maybe exactly because of those cultural impositions).
And I talk a lot more than they do even when we at home were all taught not to talk, and my cicles of moods are shorter and more explosive even when at home we were all taught not to express our feelings, and my search to comprenhend is more similar to the one of my friends that are girls. and they, my brothers, just want to understand things in a more one way track mind way. They are not as caring about how things look or feel at home, and don’t care as much to keep things clean even if they are organized. But they are more vain than me sometimes so I am not talking about personal hygiene and care.
And my need for care and attention is more intense. How I need to be asked things and how I need to be touched. But yep, I am not saying they don’t have emotional needs, it’s just theirs are so different to mines.
But we can’t separate cultural roles from gender some times. And I don’t know, I don’t think gender and sexuality are connected in that dependence level. Of course, each influence the other, but it’s important to think them as separated concepts. A person’s gender doesn’t defines his or her sexuality.
Meeting people here shows me, sometimes, cultural differences are not so strong within countries when we are talking about gender and sexuality. Curious.
Well, scientifically, whatever private parts you have defines your gender. But now people consider themselves to be a different gender because they think they were born with the wrong parts. Like transgenders.
But you seem to combine “gender” with “gender roles”. And they’re entirely seperate things.
For example, a gender role. Something like “stay at home mom” is a common one that comes to mind. Up until the 1970’s, in almost every home the mother was expected to stay home and clean and take care of the kids. So a gender role is just something tradiationally expected of someone with a certain genitalia.
Homosexuality means the person is attracted to people with the same genitalia. Heterosexuality means the person is attracted to people with the oposite genitalia.
How old are you? Because if you havent realized the difference between genitals yet, thats a little concerning. That’s something children understand.
“How old are you? Because if you havent realized the difference between genitals yet, thats a little concerning. That’s something children understand.”
I think the OP was looking for something a little deeper than physical differences or dictionary meanings.
“But you seem to combine “gender” with “gender roles”. And they’re entirely seperate things”
Of course gender and gender roles are two separate things, however when discussing gender they are both relevant. Gender roles have been defined by society and have become a stereotypical marker for gender.
Gender is a hard thing…. I personally don’t understand how it works entirely either as I am not certain of my gender identity…. But I will try to help by offering what I have gathered over the years (at least what seems like it is relevant to you) The first way you listed as people defining their genders (matching their physical sex) seems to be the most common, I feel that can either be due to them really not caring much about their gender identity, or just them feeling like it does in fact match…… The second argument just shows somebody’s stupidity, I would disregard that, although it’s funny that that argument would make me gender-less LOL :s But that is mostly mixing up sexuality and gender, and those are fairly different things, they relate slightly but not like that…… Gender roles are more of a different things too, they just seem to be what’s expected out of somebody due to their gender, also there seems to be a social expectation for somebody’s gender to match their physical sex so most people you ask are probably going to just offer an answer much like your first example…… Even if you ask people who are transgender they tend to not be able to offer a solid reason as to why their gender is what it is, just normally is just how they feel….. So really it is best to just go with whatever you feel like your gender is…… It also really doesn’t have to be something set in stone, and doesn’t even have to be something that is strictly male or female….. Like you could feel differently about your gender everyday, and you can feel feminine and masculine at the same time. You don’t really even need to feel masculine or feminine, there are other options…… Really however you feel accurately describes your gender (if you even care to) is correct. You don’t even need a good reason, any reason you have for feeling that way is also correct, you also don’t even need a reason to feel that way…… It’s subjective is basically what I’m trying to say -_- I hope that I made sense and expressed what I was trying to express……
Sometimes I think that people identify with being transgender because of old-fashioned gender norms. They say, “If I like these things and think this way and I’m a guy, it must mean I should be a girl!!!”
However, if a guy really wants female anatomy, or a girl wants male anatomy, that’s their own choice and I respect that, but in the future I hope to see men and women become more comfortable with changing gender roles while in the bodies they were born with. Society has conditioned us to believe that our outward appearance is more important than it is, but what it really comes down to a state of mind, and self-acceptance.
I think gender is conferred by societal association. So for most people, it really is as simple as ‘I have a dick. Therefore I am a man.’
For whatever reason, some people reject those associations, whether it be from a feeling that their bodies should be different, or that they identify with certain personality traits.
Some people may not feel any association with either gender.
And that is all totally fine.
The scientific and medical communities are moving toward more of a sliding scale in terms of sexuality and gender. Which is nice to see, since there are no hard and fast rules concerning this.
When I was younger I was gender fluid. I never considered myself gay or straight or bi when I was a young adult. When I was a child I wished I was born a boy many times but it had no connection to being attracted to boys or girls. I just identified with the boys in my life better. To some extent I am still that way, I have far more male friends than female friends.
So I really get the OP confusion on this one. What makes us make or female or other? I think that is personal and subjective. I also think it is besides the point. We love who we love. The heart wants what it wants. I think a unifying thing for all us is that we want love, not necessarily sexual love, but love.
Great post, Midnightcrisis. Just like “race”, gender can’t easily be defined by physical characteristics. Your private parts don’t necessarily define you any more than your skin color defines you. It’s ridiculous to cling to a (pseudo-)scientific definition when the question is much more complex. And by the way, the “scientific” definition isn’t simply what private parts you have, it would probably be a genetic analysis (XX, XY, XXY), because private parts, just like skin color, can be modified artificially or even sometimes naturally by biochemical processes over the lifespan of an organism.
Besides, you weren’t asking what the scientific definition is, you asked the great question “how does anyone identify their gender?” I think it’s a lot like asking “how does anyone identify the color blue?” The answer seems obvious at first glance, and some people may be quick to jump in with the scientific definition “light wavelengths of 400-495 nm” but that doesn’t answer it. The question is “how does anyone IDENTIFY.”
Short of performing a spectral analysis on a color, or a genetic analysis on a human, we can’t immediately define what the color is or what the person is just by what we observe. And when we consider the many psychological aspects of gender (sexuality, group association, etc) it turns into a big mess.
I agree that the best answer came from the person who said he relates to a traditional male stereotype, so he identifies himself as male. I’m assuming he’s XY so he could back it up with science.
That works for him, but yes there are so many grey areas as you pointed out. What about XXY hermaphrodites? What about transgendered people (whether or not they undergo surgical/hormonal procedures to change their private parts)? And what about people who simply disagree with science and stereotypes by free will?
I’m one of those people with a very strong scientific gender definition, but in general I am nothing like my cultural/stereotypical gender. Meaning, I know which public restroom to use, but I feel totally awkward in a room of people my own gender because I have little in common with them aside from the way I look.
Maybe in the future there will be less of a cultural distinction, much like race & skin color is becoming today. Probably something we can all agree on is that labels suck.
@ Shortcut. You raise some valid points, I enjoyed the read.