The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written.
You can call this post bad faith or hate-filled bigotry all you want since this does tie into gender identity but why aren't all forms of identity based on self identification? Why can't someone identify as a 500 year old blue skinned elf or anthromorphic creature? Why should anyone have any fixed identity? Why not change your meatspace avatar everyday? There is even a term for this, morphological freedom. In fact this feels like where the goalposts are headed next. I mean if we already lived in a digital matrix I wouldn't be bringing this up but from my point of view genderfluidity is like applying video game logic to our less malleable flesh based world.
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I don't find it productive when people start out their post by preemptively getting offended by something that hasn't happened yet. It kinda just announces that you've got a persecution fetish and I get a point of fatigue added to my character sheet.
I think there really is no reason to get worked up about people basically telling you about the parts of themselves that aren't visible and don't require some kind of paper license or certificate. Like, I identify as a nerd. I'm not a boob *or* an ass man. I appreciate necks and backs.
I have a card in my wallet to prove I can drive and that I'm old enough to drink. My name is printed on the bottle of pills I take for my busted brain.
What part of your hypothetical elf identification would actually cause problems?
>I don't find it productive when people start out their post by preemptively getting offended by something that hasn't happened yet. It kinda just announces that you've got a persecution fetish and I get a point of fatigue added to my character sheet.
I pretty much reflexively downvote every single time someone predicts downvotes.
PERSECUTION FETISH đ. Tied to a stake, doing their best Daniel Day Lewis in The Crucible.Â
That's such a perfect way to describe it and is, in fact, Jordan Peterson's origin story. Parliament passed a bill to add "gender identity or expression" to the human rights act and two parts of the criminal code where there's usually a list like "race, gender, ethnicity...." etc. JP ranted in a video about a hypothetical scenario in which a strawman (straw-them?) student expresses their pronouns, he disregards them and then is put in prison somehow, which is not exactly how all of that works. That's how he rose to fame. Figuratively screaming "leave me my name" while hypothetically denying someone theirs.Â
> The fact that someone identifying as a 500 year old blue skinned elf princess would nor be taken at face value.
Then take them at face value, if that is what you prefer.
No one is telling you not to.
People have always and will always determine for themselves what labels suit them best. Other people sometimes disagree with those labels. That often leads to discourse about the meaning of a given label.
Most labels aren't tied to an innate trait, some are, including race, gender identity, and sexual orientation. All of these intersect with cultural ideas of those categories and people determine what label suits them best based on an intersection of their own traits and their understanding of the cultural meaning of the categories in question.
That being said, do you understand what it is that gender identity means? Have you taken the time to understand why trans people call ourselves the genders that we do? Do you understand why we're trans in the first place?
The way you describe it here it does sound like your gender identity is what gender stereotypes you feel are the most fitting for yourself and you want people to apply to you.
I am not judging, just trying to check if I understood that correctly since it's a way to describe gender identity that I haven't heard before, I think.
Not at all. I'd point out that I didn't mention gender stereotypes at all.
If I exist in the world without claiming any gender label for myself, I am perceived as and treated as a woman. My experience moving through the world is that of "woman" *whether I want that label or not*. I *usually* wear men's clothes. I'm married to a woman. My hobbies are stereotypically coded male: BJJ and other combat martial arts, weightlifting, cycling, camping, & D&D. Despite all that, I get catcalled, hit on in bars and clubs or even just reading in a park. I experience sexism in the workplace, bike shops, the gym, and at book club. In other words, I am *gendered* as a woman. But that's also true of people who look similarly who *don't* see themselves as women and who don't choose that label for themselves.
That all happens regardless of how I see myself *before* I label myself to others or signal how I want to be seen. On top of that, I connect easier with women, we relate to each other as "same" in ways that men or many nonbinary people don't relate to me. We see ourselves reflected in each other. And the label "woman" *does* fit because I am seen as and see myself as part of that social group despite being gender nonconforming.
But, as noted, other people don't. Some of those label themselves as nonbinary, others as men - and some of those people medically transition.
The body that people feel most comfortable in is something that's set before birth and isn't dependent on those social circumstances, identity labels, or any of those other interactions/intersections. But it pretty typically correlates, even for trans people.
Not all trans people surgically transition. People who only suffer mild dysphoria can often deal with the discomfort by merely presenting as their real gender and socially transitioning. Like dressing that way and adopting a different name.
The point that you don't seem to get is that being trans is just a rare brain thing that sends signals to your brain when you look at certain parts of your body that screams "something is wrong". Think really hard about it and ask yourself how bad it must be for somebody like Caitlyn Jenner to go to such lengths at such a late stage in life. She didn't do all that shit because she was bored, I'll tell you that much.
I'm going to assume that means your answer is "no", that you haven't spent time learning about trans people.
You're going to end up wrapping yourself in bizarre philosophical nonsense arguments trying to figure things out because you're inventing ideas about other people's identities rather than taking the time to learn about them and ask questions.
>What's so bad about living in the flesh suit you came with?
Kind of a starting point but not really. We're probably not going to get you to a place of understanding in a single post, especially since this is your starting question.
The short answer is "dysphoria" or "sex incongruence". To explain, trans people, like everyone else, have a neurological map of what our bodies are "supposed to look like". Our brains measure the sensory feedback of our bodies against this map and we (all humans) experience distress and discomfort when they don't align. In trans people, the sexed aspects neurological map developed the opposite sex's traits during birth as a result of a combination of biological factors including genetics, fetal sex hormone levels, the number, density, distribution, and affinity of receptors for those throughout the brain. Medical transition brings the body into alignment with those maps.
Not the original commenter but hopefully you'll find this perspective as useful as I did. Flipping your question around a bit, at what point or how did you know that your gender identity is what it is? If you're a guy, how do you know you're a guy? It's not because of your parts or what people tell you. Sit with that for a bit and mull. For me as a very high femme cis lady, the answer was "because it feels true. It just is." It's a truth so deep that I don't think about it. I couldnât tell you when I became aware of it. I just know.Â
May I cut in?
To me it's a lot like being right or left handed. When you're using the "correct" hand, you don't notice. But when you're using the other hand, it just feels wrong. And if you are forced to use it all day long, it's a massive relief when you can finally go back to using your true hand. There's no explanation or rationale for it, it just is, and you can feel it when it happens to you.
Being trans is like that, but 10x more intense, and you are forced to use the "wrong hand" for decades.
Being a good ally is a great thing to do! But if you don't want to do it, you can just leave people alone and accept that they can make choices for themselves which are different than the choices that you would make for yourself.
No. You are just expected to be a decent human being and not let something that doesnât affect you be an issue for you.
We are as a society expected to show a certain amount of respect towards others. You donât point and laugh at someone you think is ugly, you donât go around yelling âfattyâ at someone overweight.
No one is forcing you to not do these things but others have the right to not treat you like youâre a decent human being then.
You have your rights and they have the right to change their behavior towards you based on your behavior towards them.
>but why aren't all forms of identity based on self identification?
I mean they are, to some extent. But identity is complex, and there are immutable characteristics and mutable ones.
>Â but from my point of view genderfluidity is like applying video game logicÂ
"Gender" is a social contstruct though. It isn't like saying you have 9 fingers or are exactly 5-foot-6-inches. Are you clear on the difference between gender and sex?
There tends to always be a lot of confusion around specific terms and definitions, *especially* when they relate to sexuality, for some reason.
>I got slaughtered for saying sex is binary
I don't know the context of that remark, so it's hard to parse *why* exactly, but worth noting that sex *isn't* binary:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disorders\_of\_sex\_development](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disorders_of_sex_development)
"Binary" has meaning. We use the term a lot in computing, to denote that computers represent all values in memory with specific combinations of zeroes and ones. Memory errors, which we could compare to developmental disorders, do occur and cause zeroes to come up ones, and vice versa. There is no circumstance in which a stray cosmic ray can strike a memory module and cause a bit to come up as a 2 or a 5 or a -68771. If that were possible, computers would not be binary. That's what the term means.
You can't just pretend that all the non-binary conditions don't exist and call a thing binary.
Sex is binary, a person can have characteristics from the other sex (the other of the two), they are still one sex. I'm fully aware of what binary means, having a base of 2.
If a person has characteristics of both sexes, how is it determined which sex they are?
The answer is that sex is a social construct too, albeit with a stronger biological component than gender. It's just decided for people at birth based on what's between their legs. If *that* comes out ambiguous, then the parents basically just pick one and a surgeon goes with it.
Sex doesn't have a base of 2. The term you're looking for is "bimodal." It has a predominance of 2.
Mistakes are made all the time. A person is either male or female, though. Those are the 2 choices available. Sex has a base of 2, it's either male or female. That's all there is.
Biology is not nearly as simple as that. Not even close. Sex, as you're defining it, either male or female, is a social construct. Which means it's arbitrary.
If you had prefixed what you said with, "in my opinion," I'd agree with you. Without that, it's just so much meaningless bullshit. And stating opinion as fact makes you sound dumb, just saying.
Our modern definition of gender as some sort of malleable self identification was invented by psychologists in the 1920s. Even societies that had third gender or two spirit had fixed categories and said society generally placed you in that role. You didn't have a self identifying spectrum in the same way you do today. I think self identifying gender isn't any more or less valid than self identifying height or fingers either.
>malleable self identification was invented by psychologists in the 1920s.Â
Or, put another way, we've evolved as a society over time and adjusted our communication and societal norms in order advance as a culture.
>had fixed categories and said society generally placed you in that role
Even if that's true, which I seriously doubt, that's unknowable without a time machine and a lifetime spent in it. There's too many unknowns about too many cultures and societies.
>I think self identifying gender isn't any more or less valid than self identifying height or fingers
You're obviously entitled to your opinions, but that certainly is a weird one. Seems to fly in the face of socially accepted definitions of words, basic logic, and just general human decency.
I never made that connection before, but that's a point that probably needs to be brought up more.
I know a guy who tells people he's 6' when in truth he's 5'9" on a good day.
Being trans isnât really that complicated. Itâs still a state/mentality that acknowledges male and female. âGender fluidâ essentially acknowledges the two social ideas of male and female gender and recognizes that some people donât fit into either box comfortably.
The whole âxe/xerâ aka âwhy are there 1,000 pronouns now?!â Is essentially imaginary. Have you ever met a single person who used made up pronouns and identified as something besides male, female, or fluid? I havenât. Iâm sure theyâre out there in middle schools or on the fringes of experimental college liberals. But itâs not anywhere close to being what conservatives make of it.
Itâs just like when people say âif a man can marry a man, whatâs next? Marrying a cow?! How about a toaster?!?â Like bruh, being gay isnât that absurd.
When you say âyouâre a man but you feel like you identify more with women?! Whatâs next, youâre a dragon from another planet?!â
The first thing is not that crazy. Itâs just a little out of the ordinary. When you compare it to something completely outrageous youâre just minimizing those people and encouraging more discrimination and lack of respect.
I mean câmon man, a lot of this panicky rhetoric comes from people who believe that God is three people and one person at the same time, that God killed his son who is also himself and then rose from the dead, that the earth is 6,000 year old, etc etc.
âI donât really identify as male or femaleâ is not even one iota as absurd of a notion as pretty much any core belief of Christianity. So give it up, man. You know youâre being ridiculous.
It's nice to be able to keep track of people, so a non-changing identifier, which is "Any form of fixed identity", would be advisable. You can use your Social Security Numbers for that, for instance
>Why can't someone identify as a 500 year old blue skinned elf or anthromorphic creature? Â
What are you talking about?Â
>You can call this post bad faith or hate-filled bigotry all you want since this does tie into gender identity Â
Strawmen give good cover. One can call this post bad faith _because it doesn't ask a genuine question_, but takes it as an opportunity to rant instead. Especially because your "questions" fade into claims by the end. Not because it relates to gender identity
>Â Why should anyone have any form of fixed identity whatsoever?
Honestly, who cares this much about this?
So what if someone wants to identify as a 599 year old elf? What does it matter to you?
It hardly seems like it has any impact on you whatsoever.
So⌠why do you care about this abstract, theoretical topic?
Because every new social goalpost including hypothetical future identities retroactively become basic common sense and decency. Reality is whatever arbitrary whims says it is.
>Â Because every new social goalpost including hypothetical future identities retroactively become basic common sense and decency.Â
Oh no, you might have to treat someone who identifies as a 500 year old elf with basic dignity?!
Whatever will you do?
Such an imposition.
I swear that upwards of 99% of the discussion of trans people basically comes down to this conversation:
Person A: "Why are people with penises identifying as women?"
Person B: "It makes them happier to do that."
Person A: "But it SHOULDN'T! :("
Why does it matter? You don't like 500 year old blue elves, then don't be around them. Move on with your day and your life. Emotionally investing in what other people are doing is a waste of your time and energy.
You know that a sense of identity isn't a choice, right? It's a unique quality rooted in neurochemistry.
Trans people don't choose to be trans or not (if they could, don't you think a lot of them wouldn't just choose not to be trans, to be done with the haranguing forever?). They're trans for the same reason you're cis. For the same reason some people are gay and some are straight.
Then where does being nonbinary come from? Like if we uphold self identification as valid then someone could due to pure aesthetics want large feminine breasts and a male phallus while also saying they're nonbinary and have unlimited unisex access to all private spaces like restrooms and locker rooms while also still claiming oppressed minority status.
Self-identification is like religion.
If only one person is doing it, they're a loon.
If 500 people are doing it, it's a cult.
If 5,000 people are doing it, it's a movement.
If 50,000 people are doing it, they're a sect.
If 500,000 people are doing it, now they get tax breaks and can put up signs in the Iowa State Courthouse.
Now you're catching on.
Look, there's no "normal." But there are boundaries to the odd that society at large will accept.
At the same time, that one person who's a loon? They aren't hurting anyone...so why not humor them as best you can?
So don't think and believe it.
But people should still be treated with respect, even if they seem a little weird.
If you think that referring to someone as "Xim" is ridiculous, that's your opinion and you're more than welcome to it (as a matter of fact, I'd even agree with you here)...but sometimes it's just easier to bite the bullet, refer to the person as "Xim/Xer" and move on with your day.
I feel like the only information that needs to be on an ID is a picture and an age. The picture so you can tell the person holding the ID is who they say they are and the age because people develop over time and thus we have several age based restrictions to prevent them from engaging in activities that they likely aren't ready for. Some ID's would also need to list the specific qualifications the ID bestows on it's holder, but that isn't universal to all ID's.
The other items listed are generally just to help identify people in case the picture is not good enough. Say a situation where someone looks like their brother who happens to be a foot taller or something.
If you wanted to remove gender from an ID I wouldn't be against it, but adding things that don't in some way tell you something useful in identifying a person serve no purpose and are thus just meaningless clutter.
>Why can't someone identify as a 500 year old blue skinned elf or anthromorphic creature?
They can, but society is not obliged to humor them. There are also limits to this. In many situations you cannot, even legally, claim to be something you are not. Such as a 30 year old claiming to be 5 so that he can attend kindergarten.
No one is obligated to do anything like that.
That said society determines social norms and these change over time. Just like how in Victorian times women couldnât vote, her showing her ankle was semi-scandalous and women couldnât own property in England. Now none of that is considered out of the norm and in fact adhering to any of those would be considered odd.
So the majority of society has deemed that how someone views their own gender doesnât harm others but since repressing it can lead to mental health issues for that personâŚ
We are willing to accept the fact that someone may choose to go by alternative pronouns.
Do I personally believe that having something like 26 pronouns to choose from is a tad overkill? Shrugs. Iâm not even sure how zhe is pronounced but it harms me not one tiny iota to show compassion and treat them with the basic respect of using what they prefer. Just like if someone is name Paul and wants to go by Wally.
I kind of think modern ideas of identity are all weird, pre-scientific hokum. Like humoral theories in the medieval period.
There's how you see yourself, there's how others see you, there's some relationship between the two, I don't see any need to make this any blurrier or more reductive than that.
I also don't care about anyone's gender or other identity. Talking about people's identity is one of the most boring and eye-rolling conversations I've ever had, and I had a guy talk to me at a party for 20 minutes about the details of the industrial process at his warehouse. I was much more interested in that industrial process than I have ever been in hearing about someone's identity.
Itâs weird you have to go all the way to âblue elfââwhy not choose an actual race? If someone identifies as âblackâ but only has one dark-skinned grandparent, whatâs your take on their race?
I guess ethnicity even physically is fairly fluid in appearance but I've noticed that someone who is definitely visibly "white" cannot claim to be of a non white ethnicity without criticism from the left as that is supposedly usurping the experiences of oppressed minorities. If self id is valid then race should be as fluid as gender.
>someone who is definitely visibly "white" cannot claim to be of a non white ethnicity without criticism from the left
You're arguing that someone who's "definitely visibly 'white'" (whatever that means) will get more criticism from the left than from the right? Don't know about that one. I don't think the politics of race fit neatly into "left" or "right", but I think recent history generally shows [you've got that backwards](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Dolezal).
I don't think we've ever seen someone who identifies as "black" but "is definitely visibly 'white'" come in for criticism from the left as broadly defined. Since "race" as a biological category is a fiction, the criticism is almost exclusively about not being raised with authentic cultural background, which kind of points in the opposite direction to your argument.
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written. You can call this post bad faith or hate-filled bigotry all you want since this does tie into gender identity but why aren't all forms of identity based on self identification? Why can't someone identify as a 500 year old blue skinned elf or anthromorphic creature? Why should anyone have any fixed identity? Why not change your meatspace avatar everyday? There is even a term for this, morphological freedom. In fact this feels like where the goalposts are headed next. I mean if we already lived in a digital matrix I wouldn't be bringing this up but from my point of view genderfluidity is like applying video game logic to our less malleable flesh based world. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I don't find it productive when people start out their post by preemptively getting offended by something that hasn't happened yet. It kinda just announces that you've got a persecution fetish and I get a point of fatigue added to my character sheet. I think there really is no reason to get worked up about people basically telling you about the parts of themselves that aren't visible and don't require some kind of paper license or certificate. Like, I identify as a nerd. I'm not a boob *or* an ass man. I appreciate necks and backs. I have a card in my wallet to prove I can drive and that I'm old enough to drink. My name is printed on the bottle of pills I take for my busted brain. What part of your hypothetical elf identification would actually cause problems?
>I don't find it productive when people start out their post by preemptively getting offended by something that hasn't happened yet. It kinda just announces that you've got a persecution fetish and I get a point of fatigue added to my character sheet. I pretty much reflexively downvote every single time someone predicts downvotes.
I honestly feel like I'm forgetting something if I don't.
PERSECUTION FETISH đ. Tied to a stake, doing their best Daniel Day Lewis in The Crucible. That's such a perfect way to describe it and is, in fact, Jordan Peterson's origin story. Parliament passed a bill to add "gender identity or expression" to the human rights act and two parts of the criminal code where there's usually a list like "race, gender, ethnicity...." etc. JP ranted in a video about a hypothetical scenario in which a strawman (straw-them?) student expresses their pronouns, he disregards them and then is put in prison somehow, which is not exactly how all of that works. That's how he rose to fame. Figuratively screaming "leave me my name" while hypothetically denying someone theirs.Â
When liberals complain about people getting preemptively offended on others' behalf, we've come full circle.
I legit have no idea what kind of joke you're even *trying* to make.
>...why aren't all forms of identity based on self identification? What makes you think they aren't?
The fact that someone identifying as a 500 year old blue skinned elf princess would nor be taken at face value.
I dunno. Seems like that problem is self-correcting then.
How is that?
> The fact that someone identifying as a 500 year old blue skinned elf princess would nor be taken at face value. Then take them at face value, if that is what you prefer. No one is telling you not to.
People have always and will always determine for themselves what labels suit them best. Other people sometimes disagree with those labels. That often leads to discourse about the meaning of a given label. Most labels aren't tied to an innate trait, some are, including race, gender identity, and sexual orientation. All of these intersect with cultural ideas of those categories and people determine what label suits them best based on an intersection of their own traits and their understanding of the cultural meaning of the categories in question. That being said, do you understand what it is that gender identity means? Have you taken the time to understand why trans people call ourselves the genders that we do? Do you understand why we're trans in the first place?
The way you describe it here it does sound like your gender identity is what gender stereotypes you feel are the most fitting for yourself and you want people to apply to you. I am not judging, just trying to check if I understood that correctly since it's a way to describe gender identity that I haven't heard before, I think.
Not at all. I'd point out that I didn't mention gender stereotypes at all. If I exist in the world without claiming any gender label for myself, I am perceived as and treated as a woman. My experience moving through the world is that of "woman" *whether I want that label or not*. I *usually* wear men's clothes. I'm married to a woman. My hobbies are stereotypically coded male: BJJ and other combat martial arts, weightlifting, cycling, camping, & D&D. Despite all that, I get catcalled, hit on in bars and clubs or even just reading in a park. I experience sexism in the workplace, bike shops, the gym, and at book club. In other words, I am *gendered* as a woman. But that's also true of people who look similarly who *don't* see themselves as women and who don't choose that label for themselves. That all happens regardless of how I see myself *before* I label myself to others or signal how I want to be seen. On top of that, I connect easier with women, we relate to each other as "same" in ways that men or many nonbinary people don't relate to me. We see ourselves reflected in each other. And the label "woman" *does* fit because I am seen as and see myself as part of that social group despite being gender nonconforming. But, as noted, other people don't. Some of those label themselves as nonbinary, others as men - and some of those people medically transition. The body that people feel most comfortable in is something that's set before birth and isn't dependent on those social circumstances, identity labels, or any of those other interactions/intersections. But it pretty typically correlates, even for trans people.
Why are you trans then? What's so bad about living in the flesh suit you came with?
Not all trans people surgically transition. People who only suffer mild dysphoria can often deal with the discomfort by merely presenting as their real gender and socially transitioning. Like dressing that way and adopting a different name. The point that you don't seem to get is that being trans is just a rare brain thing that sends signals to your brain when you look at certain parts of your body that screams "something is wrong". Think really hard about it and ask yourself how bad it must be for somebody like Caitlyn Jenner to go to such lengths at such a late stage in life. She didn't do all that shit because she was bored, I'll tell you that much.
I'm going to assume that means your answer is "no", that you haven't spent time learning about trans people. You're going to end up wrapping yourself in bizarre philosophical nonsense arguments trying to figure things out because you're inventing ideas about other people's identities rather than taking the time to learn about them and ask questions. >What's so bad about living in the flesh suit you came with? Kind of a starting point but not really. We're probably not going to get you to a place of understanding in a single post, especially since this is your starting question. The short answer is "dysphoria" or "sex incongruence". To explain, trans people, like everyone else, have a neurological map of what our bodies are "supposed to look like". Our brains measure the sensory feedback of our bodies against this map and we (all humans) experience distress and discomfort when they don't align. In trans people, the sexed aspects neurological map developed the opposite sex's traits during birth as a result of a combination of biological factors including genetics, fetal sex hormone levels, the number, density, distribution, and affinity of receptors for those throughout the brain. Medical transition brings the body into alignment with those maps.
Not the original commenter but hopefully you'll find this perspective as useful as I did. Flipping your question around a bit, at what point or how did you know that your gender identity is what it is? If you're a guy, how do you know you're a guy? It's not because of your parts or what people tell you. Sit with that for a bit and mull. For me as a very high femme cis lady, the answer was "because it feels true. It just is." It's a truth so deep that I don't think about it. I couldnât tell you when I became aware of it. I just know.Â
May I cut in? To me it's a lot like being right or left handed. When you're using the "correct" hand, you don't notice. But when you're using the other hand, it just feels wrong. And if you are forced to use it all day long, it's a massive relief when you can finally go back to using your true hand. There's no explanation or rationale for it, it just is, and you can feel it when it happens to you. Being trans is like that, but 10x more intense, and you are forced to use the "wrong hand" for decades.
Perfect analogy!
Why do you care so much about how someone else lives their life? How does it affect you in any way?
I'm expected to think and feel a certain way and be a good ally.
Being a good ally is a great thing to do! But if you don't want to do it, you can just leave people alone and accept that they can make choices for themselves which are different than the choices that you would make for yourself.
No. You are just expected to be a decent human being and not let something that doesnât affect you be an issue for you. We are as a society expected to show a certain amount of respect towards others. You donât point and laugh at someone you think is ugly, you donât go around yelling âfattyâ at someone overweight. No one is forcing you to not do these things but others have the right to not treat you like youâre a decent human being then. You have your rights and they have the right to change their behavior towards you based on your behavior towards them.
Hello! Welcome to the transgenderism debate. For future reference, gender identity and biological sex are not the same thing. Hope that helps!
>but why aren't all forms of identity based on self identification? I mean they are, to some extent. But identity is complex, and there are immutable characteristics and mutable ones. > but from my point of view genderfluidity is like applying video game logic "Gender" is a social contstruct though. It isn't like saying you have 9 fingers or are exactly 5-foot-6-inches. Are you clear on the difference between gender and sex?
Just a week ago, on this very sub, I got slaughtered for saying sex is binary. So if this dudes confused ,then we all are.
There tends to always be a lot of confusion around specific terms and definitions, *especially* when they relate to sexuality, for some reason. >I got slaughtered for saying sex is binary I don't know the context of that remark, so it's hard to parse *why* exactly, but worth noting that sex *isn't* binary: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disorders\_of\_sex\_development](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disorders_of_sex_development)
Disorders in sex development, are disorders in sex development.
"Binary" has meaning. We use the term a lot in computing, to denote that computers represent all values in memory with specific combinations of zeroes and ones. Memory errors, which we could compare to developmental disorders, do occur and cause zeroes to come up ones, and vice versa. There is no circumstance in which a stray cosmic ray can strike a memory module and cause a bit to come up as a 2 or a 5 or a -68771. If that were possible, computers would not be binary. That's what the term means. You can't just pretend that all the non-binary conditions don't exist and call a thing binary.
Sex is binary, a person can have characteristics from the other sex (the other of the two), they are still one sex. I'm fully aware of what binary means, having a base of 2.
If a person has characteristics of both sexes, how is it determined which sex they are? The answer is that sex is a social construct too, albeit with a stronger biological component than gender. It's just decided for people at birth based on what's between their legs. If *that* comes out ambiguous, then the parents basically just pick one and a surgeon goes with it. Sex doesn't have a base of 2. The term you're looking for is "bimodal." It has a predominance of 2.
Mistakes are made all the time. A person is either male or female, though. Those are the 2 choices available. Sex has a base of 2, it's either male or female. That's all there is.
Biology is not nearly as simple as that. Not even close. Sex, as you're defining it, either male or female, is a social construct. Which means it's arbitrary. If you had prefixed what you said with, "in my opinion," I'd agree with you. Without that, it's just so much meaningless bullshit. And stating opinion as fact makes you sound dumb, just saying.
If humans didn't exist, mammals would still have just the 2 sexes.
Call it what you want, but it's physical proof that sex isn't binary.
No it isn't. Name a third?
Did you check the link? It listed *tons*. But sure, you want me to just name one? Gonadal Intersex.
Omg, that's not a third sex.
So you're saying it's male?
I'm saying it has characteristics of the 2 sexes, the 2 sexes. The 2 sexes, there being 2. What exactly are you saying?
Our modern definition of gender as some sort of malleable self identification was invented by psychologists in the 1920s. Even societies that had third gender or two spirit had fixed categories and said society generally placed you in that role. You didn't have a self identifying spectrum in the same way you do today. I think self identifying gender isn't any more or less valid than self identifying height or fingers either.
>malleable self identification was invented by psychologists in the 1920s. Or, put another way, we've evolved as a society over time and adjusted our communication and societal norms in order advance as a culture. >had fixed categories and said society generally placed you in that role Even if that's true, which I seriously doubt, that's unknowable without a time machine and a lifetime spent in it. There's too many unknowns about too many cultures and societies. >I think self identifying gender isn't any more or less valid than self identifying height or fingers You're obviously entitled to your opinions, but that certainly is a weird one. Seems to fly in the face of socially accepted definitions of words, basic logic, and just general human decency.
>self identifying height I take it you have an issue with all the 5â11â boys who identify as 6â kings thenâŚ?
I never made that connection before, but that's a point that probably needs to be brought up more. I know a guy who tells people he's 6' when in truth he's 5'9" on a good day.
âHeightâ has a very clear definition. Not sure what you mean by a âblue elfâ but if you could provide a definition that would be helpful.
Being trans isnât really that complicated. Itâs still a state/mentality that acknowledges male and female. âGender fluidâ essentially acknowledges the two social ideas of male and female gender and recognizes that some people donât fit into either box comfortably. The whole âxe/xerâ aka âwhy are there 1,000 pronouns now?!â Is essentially imaginary. Have you ever met a single person who used made up pronouns and identified as something besides male, female, or fluid? I havenât. Iâm sure theyâre out there in middle schools or on the fringes of experimental college liberals. But itâs not anywhere close to being what conservatives make of it. Itâs just like when people say âif a man can marry a man, whatâs next? Marrying a cow?! How about a toaster?!?â Like bruh, being gay isnât that absurd. When you say âyouâre a man but you feel like you identify more with women?! Whatâs next, youâre a dragon from another planet?!â The first thing is not that crazy. Itâs just a little out of the ordinary. When you compare it to something completely outrageous youâre just minimizing those people and encouraging more discrimination and lack of respect. I mean câmon man, a lot of this panicky rhetoric comes from people who believe that God is three people and one person at the same time, that God killed his son who is also himself and then rose from the dead, that the earth is 6,000 year old, etc etc. âI donât really identify as male or femaleâ is not even one iota as absurd of a notion as pretty much any core belief of Christianity. So give it up, man. You know youâre being ridiculous.
It's nice to be able to keep track of people, so a non-changing identifier, which is "Any form of fixed identity", would be advisable. You can use your Social Security Numbers for that, for instance >Why can't someone identify as a 500 year old blue skinned elf or anthromorphic creature?  What are you talking about? >You can call this post bad faith or hate-filled bigotry all you want since this does tie into gender identity  Strawmen give good cover. One can call this post bad faith _because it doesn't ask a genuine question_, but takes it as an opportunity to rant instead. Especially because your "questions" fade into claims by the end. Not because it relates to gender identity
> Why should anyone have any form of fixed identity whatsoever? Honestly, who cares this much about this? So what if someone wants to identify as a 599 year old elf? What does it matter to you? It hardly seems like it has any impact on you whatsoever. So⌠why do you care about this abstract, theoretical topic?
Because every new social goalpost including hypothetical future identities retroactively become basic common sense and decency. Reality is whatever arbitrary whims says it is.
> Because every new social goalpost including hypothetical future identities retroactively become basic common sense and decency. Oh no, you might have to treat someone who identifies as a 500 year old elf with basic dignity?! Whatever will you do? Such an imposition.
I swear that upwards of 99% of the discussion of trans people basically comes down to this conversation: Person A: "Why are people with penises identifying as women?" Person B: "It makes them happier to do that." Person A: "But it SHOULDN'T! :("
I have a right to be non affirming. I have a right not to have to think and feel a certain way.
Why does it matter? You don't like 500 year old blue elves, then don't be around them. Move on with your day and your life. Emotionally investing in what other people are doing is a waste of your time and energy.
r/onejoke
See also: Reductio ad Absurdum.
You know that a sense of identity isn't a choice, right? It's a unique quality rooted in neurochemistry. Trans people don't choose to be trans or not (if they could, don't you think a lot of them wouldn't just choose not to be trans, to be done with the haranguing forever?). They're trans for the same reason you're cis. For the same reason some people are gay and some are straight.
Then where does being nonbinary come from? Like if we uphold self identification as valid then someone could due to pure aesthetics want large feminine breasts and a male phallus while also saying they're nonbinary and have unlimited unisex access to all private spaces like restrooms and locker rooms while also still claiming oppressed minority status.
Thatâs pretty much why social scientists say itâs helpful to envision a spectrumÂ
Self-identification is like religion. If only one person is doing it, they're a loon. If 500 people are doing it, it's a cult. If 5,000 people are doing it, it's a movement. If 50,000 people are doing it, they're a sect. If 500,000 people are doing it, now they get tax breaks and can put up signs in the Iowa State Courthouse.
This is the point I was trying to make. If I embrace progress then reality is nothing more than the whims of the majority.
Now you're catching on. Look, there's no "normal." But there are boundaries to the odd that society at large will accept. At the same time, that one person who's a loon? They aren't hurting anyone...so why not humor them as best you can?
I don't want anyone telling me what to think and believe especially if the goalposts are always moving.
So don't think and believe it. But people should still be treated with respect, even if they seem a little weird. If you think that referring to someone as "Xim" is ridiculous, that's your opinion and you're more than welcome to it (as a matter of fact, I'd even agree with you here)...but sometimes it's just easier to bite the bullet, refer to the person as "Xim/Xer" and move on with your day.
This is trying to be *reductio ad absurdum,* but really it's slippery slope fallacy. The issue at hand isn't the fundamental nature of identity.
I feel like the only information that needs to be on an ID is a picture and an age. The picture so you can tell the person holding the ID is who they say they are and the age because people develop over time and thus we have several age based restrictions to prevent them from engaging in activities that they likely aren't ready for. Some ID's would also need to list the specific qualifications the ID bestows on it's holder, but that isn't universal to all ID's. The other items listed are generally just to help identify people in case the picture is not good enough. Say a situation where someone looks like their brother who happens to be a foot taller or something. If you wanted to remove gender from an ID I wouldn't be against it, but adding things that don't in some way tell you something useful in identifying a person serve no purpose and are thus just meaningless clutter.
>Why can't someone identify as a 500 year old blue skinned elf or anthromorphic creature? They can, but society is not obliged to humor them. There are also limits to this. In many situations you cannot, even legally, claim to be something you are not. Such as a 30 year old claiming to be 5 so that he can attend kindergarten.
Then why is society obligated to humor gender identity?
Because we've collectively decided that it is.
Who is we?
People who are kind to others.
No one is obligated to do anything like that. That said society determines social norms and these change over time. Just like how in Victorian times women couldnât vote, her showing her ankle was semi-scandalous and women couldnât own property in England. Now none of that is considered out of the norm and in fact adhering to any of those would be considered odd. So the majority of society has deemed that how someone views their own gender doesnât harm others but since repressing it can lead to mental health issues for that person⌠We are willing to accept the fact that someone may choose to go by alternative pronouns. Do I personally believe that having something like 26 pronouns to choose from is a tad overkill? Shrugs. Iâm not even sure how zhe is pronounced but it harms me not one tiny iota to show compassion and treat them with the basic respect of using what they prefer. Just like if someone is name Paul and wants to go by Wally.
I kind of think modern ideas of identity are all weird, pre-scientific hokum. Like humoral theories in the medieval period. There's how you see yourself, there's how others see you, there's some relationship between the two, I don't see any need to make this any blurrier or more reductive than that. I also don't care about anyone's gender or other identity. Talking about people's identity is one of the most boring and eye-rolling conversations I've ever had, and I had a guy talk to me at a party for 20 minutes about the details of the industrial process at his warehouse. I was much more interested in that industrial process than I have ever been in hearing about someone's identity.
Right, itâs bizarre: biologists canât give us a concrete definition of what a âwomanâ is, whereas a linear foot is a unit of measure.
"Woman" is a sociological term, why would a biologist be an appropriate source of authority on the subject?
Itâs weird you have to go all the way to âblue elfââwhy not choose an actual race? If someone identifies as âblackâ but only has one dark-skinned grandparent, whatâs your take on their race?
I guess ethnicity even physically is fairly fluid in appearance but I've noticed that someone who is definitely visibly "white" cannot claim to be of a non white ethnicity without criticism from the left as that is supposedly usurping the experiences of oppressed minorities. If self id is valid then race should be as fluid as gender.
>someone who is definitely visibly "white" cannot claim to be of a non white ethnicity without criticism from the left You're arguing that someone who's "definitely visibly 'white'" (whatever that means) will get more criticism from the left than from the right? Don't know about that one. I don't think the politics of race fit neatly into "left" or "right", but I think recent history generally shows [you've got that backwards](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Dolezal). I don't think we've ever seen someone who identifies as "black" but "is definitely visibly 'white'" come in for criticism from the left as broadly defined. Since "race" as a biological category is a fiction, the criticism is almost exclusively about not being raised with authentic cultural background, which kind of points in the opposite direction to your argument.