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This is a subject that came up in Ree's recent posts, and I wanted to see outside opinions on this. I've talked to my professor about it and she couldn't give me a satisfying answer. Chase wrote,
We had been studying how there's typical male/female morphology, and "male brains" or "female brains" organized and activated by hormones. The morphologies usually are congruent with the brain development, but sometimes, there are differences between the two. The research is in it's earlier stages, but there is evidence that show transgender brains are different than most other people's brains, which could explain why some men identify as a woman and vice versa.
To some belief systems, it's radical that a morphological man could be a gender-oriented women (or that it's "correctable"), to some it's not. The idea I'm drawing out is assumes that the incongruence of identity and biological sex is indeed a reality of nature, and the definitions of sex and gender (for the sake of the argument) is XX = female, XY = male, and masculine behaviors + preferences = man, feminine behaviors + prefernces = woman, respectively.
As I'm sure many of you know, there's a lot of talk going on about pronoun usage and same sex bathrooms. Personally, I don't give a fuck about the same sex bathrooms, people can do their thing inside of a stall, but think the pronoun usage thing is a bit more difficult to tackle.
People are subject to heuristics, and this is a pretty obvious one that a person looking like a man-->male. You don't even think about it. It's still a newer idea to some that there's complexities of sex and gender in people (although it there's many instances throughout history), while it becomes less rare to openly express oneself about their identification.
Even if the topic/idea became common sense, most people would still use the heuristics because of the majority of people have congruent morphologies and gender identities. The overall tendency is man like figure --> man, and our brains recognize the pattern, thus creating the heuristic. I mean, there's the english language that says gender = this, and sex = this, but the correlation between the two is so high they're synonymous.
The essence of what the individual is, is a XY male/ XX female that has female/male tendencies and preferences. But people label each other as well as themselves, and feel a strong sense of identity with that label, so there's problems that result of the conflicting ideas. There's been many reports of extreme psychological problems that result from "being mislabeled" by society, and elevated reports of suicide.
It's a complicated issue and similar to something like, homosexual marriage, because it's not anyone's legal right to control what everyday people label them as in social environments. You could say it effects one's pursuit of happiness. The widespread use of a "flawed language" results in psychological issues, so therefore a change in the language should be enforced. But this can be issue to tackle in government because one's happiness can indirectly be another's misfortune/inconvenience. Correcting all the he/she's to they would be damn near impossible, how the hell would you even do that?
There are other areas where this becomes a problem as well, such as with professional athletes. Do you take the intersex female with hyperandrogenism and place her to compete with men, where her performance wouldn't match the top athletes in that division? That seems pretty unfair. Do you take testosterone blockers to level the playing field, literally making the person handicapped to their natural abilities? "She's" too good to compete, so therefore we must disallow the optimal performance in the field. The performance, keep in mind, the individual has committed most of their life to. Does that matter? The more "fair" it is for the community the less "fair" it is for the individual. How the hell do you handle something like that?
Is the trajectory of the sex/gender labeling issue to be a slow, natural growth of widespread understanding that sex and gender are less rigid than previously thought/defined, and an eventual redefining of gender and sex?
Does the redefining of gender and sex have to be enforced by a balanced set of rules?
Do gender and sex really have to be redefined and more thoroughly differentiated?
Tough ass questions. I would love to be surprised with a convincing answer / argument, because I can't come up with a solid answer myself.
Possibly an easier question to answer:
What would you guys say to an external male with a "more female brain" that believes the culture should adopt their use of pronouns for this minority? That is, enforcing use of "they" rather than "he" or "she", to remove the possibility of using a pronoun that doesn't fit the person's internal gender.
I understand this is a controversial topic, so I tried to spell out any definitions as clear as I could.
Curious to see what you guys think!
and I think it's an extremely hard question to answer.This conversation is really about labeling: who gets what label and who doesn't.
We had been studying how there's typical male/female morphology, and "male brains" or "female brains" organized and activated by hormones. The morphologies usually are congruent with the brain development, but sometimes, there are differences between the two. The research is in it's earlier stages, but there is evidence that show transgender brains are different than most other people's brains, which could explain why some men identify as a woman and vice versa.
To some belief systems, it's radical that a morphological man could be a gender-oriented women (or that it's "correctable"), to some it's not. The idea I'm drawing out is assumes that the incongruence of identity and biological sex is indeed a reality of nature, and the definitions of sex and gender (for the sake of the argument) is XX = female, XY = male, and masculine behaviors + preferences = man, feminine behaviors + prefernces = woman, respectively.
As I'm sure many of you know, there's a lot of talk going on about pronoun usage and same sex bathrooms. Personally, I don't give a fuck about the same sex bathrooms, people can do their thing inside of a stall, but think the pronoun usage thing is a bit more difficult to tackle.
People are subject to heuristics, and this is a pretty obvious one that a person looking like a man-->male. You don't even think about it. It's still a newer idea to some that there's complexities of sex and gender in people (although it there's many instances throughout history), while it becomes less rare to openly express oneself about their identification.
Even if the topic/idea became common sense, most people would still use the heuristics because of the majority of people have congruent morphologies and gender identities. The overall tendency is man like figure --> man, and our brains recognize the pattern, thus creating the heuristic. I mean, there's the english language that says gender = this, and sex = this, but the correlation between the two is so high they're synonymous.
The essence of what the individual is, is a XY male/ XX female that has female/male tendencies and preferences. But people label each other as well as themselves, and feel a strong sense of identity with that label, so there's problems that result of the conflicting ideas. There's been many reports of extreme psychological problems that result from "being mislabeled" by society, and elevated reports of suicide.
According to research by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and the Williams Institute, 50-54% of gender nonconforming and transgender individuals experience harassment and/or bullying at school. Suicide rates for gender nonconforming and transgender individuals are disproportionately high, outpacing other demographics with staggering margin. For comparison: when surveyed, 4.6% of individuals in the total U.S. population report a lifetime suicide attempt, compared to 41% of persons who are gender nonconforming or transgender.
It's a complicated issue and similar to something like, homosexual marriage, because it's not anyone's legal right to control what everyday people label them as in social environments. You could say it effects one's pursuit of happiness. The widespread use of a "flawed language" results in psychological issues, so therefore a change in the language should be enforced. But this can be issue to tackle in government because one's happiness can indirectly be another's misfortune/inconvenience. Correcting all the he/she's to they would be damn near impossible, how the hell would you even do that?
There are other areas where this becomes a problem as well, such as with professional athletes. Do you take the intersex female with hyperandrogenism and place her to compete with men, where her performance wouldn't match the top athletes in that division? That seems pretty unfair. Do you take testosterone blockers to level the playing field, literally making the person handicapped to their natural abilities? "She's" too good to compete, so therefore we must disallow the optimal performance in the field. The performance, keep in mind, the individual has committed most of their life to. Does that matter? The more "fair" it is for the community the less "fair" it is for the individual. How the hell do you handle something like that?
Is the trajectory of the sex/gender labeling issue to be a slow, natural growth of widespread understanding that sex and gender are less rigid than previously thought/defined, and an eventual redefining of gender and sex?
Does the redefining of gender and sex have to be enforced by a balanced set of rules?
Do gender and sex really have to be redefined and more thoroughly differentiated?
Tough ass questions. I would love to be surprised with a convincing answer / argument, because I can't come up with a solid answer myself.
Possibly an easier question to answer:
What would you guys say to an external male with a "more female brain" that believes the culture should adopt their use of pronouns for this minority? That is, enforcing use of "they" rather than "he" or "she", to remove the possibility of using a pronoun that doesn't fit the person's internal gender.
I understand this is a controversial topic, so I tried to spell out any definitions as clear as I could.
Curious to see what you guys think!