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. 🙂
Among other social constructs such as gender, as useful as they can perhaps be when looking for a generalisation of "what are the terms for you to be understood in?" I have recently been questioning sex. Sex is often referred to as the biological bits, but is that true? No, because it's an incomplete picture.
Biologists seem to currently accept sex is a mosaic of sexual characteristics. This includes but is not limited to genitalia and chromosome—the two most thought about elements I'd wager—and your chest, your hormone balance, but also measurements like around the hips, waist, shoulders... And of course, your role in reproduction, especially if you can reproduce.
Many of these characteristics are mutable, especially in today's society with hormones and surgeries. Functionally speaking, they don't matter, we as a species are not at risk of extinction and simply do not need to care about it. Sex was fraught even as a measure of reproductive capabilities anyway. We should care for each other's happiness first and foremost.
But even mutability aside, sex isn't consistent between men and women, with different hormone balances and even some variations in chromosomes or the capacity for sexual reproduction. Also, see the existence of intersex people, who, by their existence alone, shatter the binary.
I don't believe sex is a useful categorisation. Sex and gender and expression and the things you enjoy are different, but they're also both still constructions with your presumed gender being extrapolated from the most visible elements of your sex and huge variability for each person therein, but the correlation is starting to feel weak.
Sex and genders, as structures, are the product of cisheteropatriarchy, ie sexism. Even in sports. Social constructs generally arise as a necessary division for societies to make given their material conditions, and it was used to increase populations. I would say it is time to leave such vestigial logic behind.
For purposes of conversing with people who don't share the same life it is useful to have terms differentiating they physical and the psychological though. It seems recently that people have finally moved away from the 'gender is what's in your pants' narrative when dismissing trans people out of hand, why muddy that when all the traits you mentioned regarding sex are physical markers?
I think I can see the point of confusion- the reason for illustrating physical sex as a spectrum is that it’s easier to lay out the concept of gender identity as an analogue.
It’s also possible that gender identity is structural but brains are complicated and linking mechanisms to behavior is hairy.
It's less the notion of it being spectrum based, but more in identifying the difference between the tangible/measurable things of the physical body, and those that are created of the mind and societies expectations. My understanding coming into this is that sex=physical / gender=emotional/mental/social, but some comments here have me questioning that understanding.