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Is Gender relative?

RedDragon94

RedDragon94

Love everyone, meditate often
Are male and female actually one and the same? My thoughts from Buckland's Complete Book of Witchcraft is that they might be. The reason being because of the last example I shared in the religious identity journal I started yesterday, the one about the eclipse. I mean, it seems to me that if people can change their gender via surgery it's not exactly something set in stone. Thoughts?
 
Mister Silver

Mister Silver

Faith's Nightmare
I remember reading something through biology that indicated the early stages of the fetus is always female, that the male status arrives later when the proper Y chromosome activates.

Otherwise, I personally believe there is a distinctive biological difference between the male and female gender.

Those who change their gender do so because they were apparently born in the wrong body. The mind may be male while the body is female, but biologically the body is still female and must changed to match the mind.
 
Sunstone

Sunstone

De Diablo Del Fora
Premium Member
Sex and gender are separate concepts. Sex refers to whether or not one is biologically male or female, and all but a tiny fraction of humanity fall squarely into one camp or another.

Gender, on the other hand, refers (among other things) to how one defines, sees, or perceives oneself in terms of masculinity and femininity, and people come in all imaginable flavors of it. Gender seems to be all but entirely a matter of one's culture and psychology.



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RedDragon94

RedDragon94

Love everyone, meditate often
Sunstone said:
Sex and gender are separate concepts. Sex refers to whether or not one is biologically male or female, and all but a tiny fraction of humanity fall squarely into one camp or another. Gender, on the other hand, refers to one's orientation, and people come in all imaginable flavors of it.
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I saw on a site called apath.org there are like 63 genders. You have explained this for me.

Okay, is sex relative?
 
Quintessence

Quintessence

Consults with Trees
Staff member
Premium Member
Okay, I'm not sure how to respond to this since there's the typical conflating of the terms "sex" and "gender" going on, but...

... either way, both terms are something of a social construct, which makes them at least somewhat relative. With respect to sex, the biological realities of it are more complicated than the binary system that is typical of Western culture. With respect to gender... well... everything about it looks to be a cultural construct.
 
Liu

Liu

Well-Known Member
Regarding sex: Depends on your definition. You can't change the chromosomes, and also sexual re-assignment surgeries are far from perfect (I'm a transguy, and while I haven't undergone any surgeries yet myself, I know enough about that topic to state that as a fact). At least for transwomen however, surgery is possible in a way that people seeing the person naked would never know she was born male.

Regarding gender: There are quite a lot of aspects to that. Some of these one is born with (e.g. a subconscious image of what one's body should look like, which is that aspect which leads to disphoria in transpeople), some are social constructs.
 
Liu

Liu

Well-Known Member
RedDragon94 said:
I saw on a site called apath.org there are like 63 genders. You have explained this for me.
Click to expand...
Interesting article (here's the link: https://apath.org/63-genders/), and it doesn't even take into account the gender identity etc. (only one's biological characteristics, how much one's personality is typical for one's sex, and one's sexual preference, the first and last of which imo have not much to do with gender).
 
RedDragon94

RedDragon94

Love everyone, meditate often
Liu said:
Interesting article (here's the link: https://apath.org/63-genders/), and it doesn't even take into account the gender identity etc. (only one's biological characteristics, how much one's personality is typical for one's sex, and one's sexual preference, the first and last of which imo have not much to do with gender).
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Yeah, parental controls suck balls.:eggplant: I can't see it.
 
SabahTheLoner

SabahTheLoner

Master of the Art of Couch Potato Cuddles
From my understanding gender is a social construct that originally was determined by not just a person's sex but in some cases also sexual orientation and status. There is "male" and "female" but in some cultures there are biologically men who, socially, are categorized as women by adopting a female identity (and are usually gay). Such as;

Hijra: Hijra

Khanith: Khanith

Fa'afafine: Fa'afafine

Muxe: Muxe

Many cultures have identified gender-queerness as somewhat of a unification between male and female, however not all third-gender identities are explicitly male and/or female. Similarly not all people with binary gender identities tend to stick to their cultural gender expectations. I'm female by birth however I've dressed and acted in ways that would be more attributed to males. Hell, as I'm writing this I'm dressed in a t-shirt and jean-shorts and you can tell that I've never shaved my legs. With the short hair I actually look more like a guy than a girl. And people have called me "sir" in the past. I didn't mind that, actually. I was bothered when people called me "madam" those few times where I was dressed feminine and expected to act like a social girl but I was never bothered by people thinking I was a dude.
 
L

lostwanderingsoul

Well-Known Member
People play a lot of games with their minds. If you have a male body, you are male. If you prefer to wear dresses or put flowers in your hair you are still male. You are just playing a game with your mind. Anyone with a male body who calls himself female is not being realistic with himself. What if a person had absolutely no ancestors from France but decides to call himself French. Wouldn't that be a little strange? A person with a male body can call himself anything he wants to be he is still male. I can think of myself as a 250 pound football player but if I am really a 140 pound nerd, I am only fooling myself.
 
Shadow Wolf

Shadow Wolf

Certified People sTabber
Sartre said:
While it might seem like this is what people are claiming from your perspective, this is not what trans people claim.
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And when you really want to just die trying to live as you were born, and then start to enjoy being alive when you begin living as your brain has your configured, who the **** cares? And plus there is the benefit of having science to support a transsexual undergoing a transition.
 
Sunstone

Sunstone

De Diablo Del Fora
Premium Member
lostwanderingsoul said:
People play a lot of games with their minds. If you have a male body, you are male. If you prefer to wear dresses or put flowers in your hair you are still male. You are just playing a game with your mind. Anyone with a male body who calls himself female is not being realistic with himself. What if a person had absolutely no ancestors from France but decides to call himself French. Wouldn't that be a little strange? A person with a male body can call himself anything he wants to be he is still male. I can think of myself as a 250 pound football player but if I am really a 140 pound nerd, I am only fooling myself.
Click to expand...

I can see the distinction between sex and gender is lost on you, lostandwanderingsoul. I'm wondering how long you'll wander until you get it?
 
Liu

Liu

Well-Known Member
lostwanderingsoul said:
People play a lot of games with their minds. If you have a male body, you are male. If you prefer to wear dresses or put flowers in your hair you are still male. You are just playing a game with your mind. Anyone with a male body who calls himself female is not being realistic with himself. What if a person had absolutely no ancestors from France but decides to call himself French. Wouldn't that be a little strange? A person with a male body can call himself anything he wants to be he is still male. I can think of myself as a 250 pound football player but if I am really a 140 pound nerd, I am only fooling myself.
Click to expand...
Again, it's a matter of definition. Transpeople have the brain structure of the opposite sex, or that's at least what studies suggest. So, in that way I'm actually a male.
 
crossfire

crossfire

LHP Mercuræn Feminist Heretic ☿
Premium Member
Of course gender is relative. An example would be a girly girl as compared to a tomboy. The gender of the girly girl would be more feminine than the tomboy, while both of them are sexually female.
 
L

lostwanderingsoul

Well-Known Member
There is nothing wrong with a female who wants to do "manly" things. But when she starts calling herself a male she is just playing games with her mind. And if she starts doing medical things to change her body or appearance she is being unrealistic to herself and everyone else. To want to act like a male is one thing but to try to be a male is different.
 
DavidFirth

DavidFirth

Well-Known Member
RedDragon94 said:
Are male and female actually one and the same? My thoughts from Buckland's Complete Book of Witchcraft is that they might be. The reason being because of the last example I shared in the religious identity journal I started yesterday, the one about the eclipse. I mean, it seems to me that if people can change their gender via surgery it's not exactly something set in stone. Thoughts?
Click to expand...

If you're a Christian you need to leave books of witchcraft alone. Just my two cents.
 
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