i've got a bone to pick with gender

S

SwedishFish

Conspirator
Registered Senior Member
i'm seriously sick of people classifying people according to their "gender" and calling it inherent. gender is based on sex but not determined by it. it is simply how you act out being your sex. it is all learned. leeeearned i tell you.

i've had this fight with my mom a million times. she claims she didn't do anything to steer my brother and myself to our genders. she claims my brother was just attracted to guns and "boy things" while i naturally was fascinated by nails and make-up. her proof is that she never allowed my brother ot play with toy guns. but how, i ask you, did he know to make random objects into guns without input? he did not pop out of the womb knowing what a gun was and how it is used well enough to turn a popsicle stick into a makeshift gun. children do not live in a bubble. we live in the world. i wasn't a stupid kid. i saw other people of my sex and tried to compy them. i saw the women in high heels and bright colors and tried desperately to like it because i was supposed to. i would stare at the barbies people would give me as gifts trying to figure out what the hell i was supposed to do with it. the truth is that pink makes me shudder. i shied away from anything "girly" even as a child. but according to mom it is inherent.

today...there are a bunch of birthday presents on the bed waiting to be wrapped for my nephew's birthday. his baby brother and female cousin are also getting presents to keep them occupied while the birthday boy gets his gifts. in the toy store my mom made a beeline for the "boy" toys and stuck her nose up at anything i picked out that she perceived as too feminine. she was going to get a care bear in blue but made faces when i suggested the leader of the pack, cheer bear, who is pink. insisting that cheer bear is a male bear did not help. colors do not have a gender! they are waves of light! waves of light do not have intercourse so they do not have sexual organs so they do not have a gender. she came home with a scary looking white and pink unicorn purse that has fur around all it's hooves and glitter for the girl. i was honestly frightened. not gendering, eh?

flip on a tv. on oprah today there was a show about a transgendered women- a woman trapped inside a man's body. after transitioning to her normal body, the changes she noticed was that people wanted to protect her but protection never crossed their minds when she was living as a man. flipping through soaps during the day, the concept of protecting the woman-folk comes up at least twice an episode. the women are always being kidnapped while their manly men are doing everything they can to get them back. god almighty i think i'll lose my lunch. when there is a baby and it is a boy they refer to it as "my son" and ideas about inheritance and carrying on the family name come up. when it is a girl they refer to it as "that little girl" and call her things like precious. again, it is all about protecting that little girl.

screw gender. i don't have a gender. if i were forced to pick a gender at knifepoint (well i'd kick the sucker in the face but let's pretend there was a situation i had to pick one) i'd choose to be a guy.

end of rant. if you stuck through the whole thing, i thank you.
 
Gender is a social construct and as parents in a mostly homophobic society they are expected to steer childern into a certain path. Ask mostly any parent will they allow their boy to play with barbies and they will shudder at the thought. The funny thing is most parents don't even realize that everyday they instill gender roles and differences in their childern because in their society it is expected to do so.

In saying that i agree with you swedishFish.
 
Wrong

Sorry sistah, but I'm almost sure you're wrong. I used to exactly agree with you but now I'm a father. What I realized the very moment that I became a father is that I'm a MAN. Not by society, but by biological function. With that comes generalized behavioral content or fulfillment of the male role in the family. I realized all that because there (for me anyway) intincts that I did not know I had that suddenly sprang to life as my wifey was preggered up and had the kiddo (and then another!). Same thing happened to her.

As much as you or we might enjoy the thought of an existence segragate from the dirty details of our biomechanics (which we have to an extent) we are just as much still a version of the primitive humans huddling around a fire wondering if they were going to live through the night. It is not logical to assume we are not exactly animals. Gender is part of that.

I should also say:

RIGHT! Choices of material interaction like "pink things" or barbies are not necessarily an indicator of gender. Learning is a huge part of it.
 
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can fully transitioned Transgendered people marry people of thier birth sex?
I beleive you can because ive heard that part of th process is actualy getting your birth certificate legaly changed so that for all official purposes you are your new sex.
 
Disagree.
Boys and girls of every species naturally act different. Maybe it is encouraged as well but the idea to encourage boys to act one way and girls to act another has obviously stemmed from somewhere. There is an instinct in parents telling them to raise their children to act as a certain gender. Its starting to wear thin and mothers will raise their sons like daughters because they can afford to(the kid isn't going to be beaten to death by the kids from a neighbouring clan, so he doesn't have to be so "rough and tumble")
But originally the homo-sapien species(like all others) had very clear cut defined genders, both in physical and behavioural aspects.
 
That sciam article looks like it sums things up. But i ahve also come across various bits of real research in new scientist magazine over the past couple of years, showing that there is a definite sex difference. boys prefer playing with blocks and stuff liek that, girls go for the dolls etc more readily, in general. The researchers did seem to take just about everyting into consideration, so that you had fairly clean slate children being used for it, in an environment that gives as little cues as possible. I just cant remember any refeernces, sorry.

But yes, there is also societal pressure to conform, and very strong it is too. parents seem conditioned to want their children to grow up and have more children ( presumably to inflict the same amount of annoyance on them as they did to their parents.)
 
the only evidence i need to prove i'm right is anthropological studies. the differences are so drastic between cultures, we might as well be different species. you need only to compare a few cultures to see how gender is socially constructed.

now that my personal rant has turned into a debate, i might as well back it up
 
"peeing standing up"

is this a joke? all children need to be potty trained. i tried peeing standing up too until i was instructed out of it. but goddamn it would come in handy on rockclimbing trips.

i don't think anyone doubts there are differences between the sexes. hello, chromosomes. karyotyping my and my boyfriend's spread is quite telling. (i really did drag him to the lab one day :eek: ) i'm talking about gender fictions.
 
compromise, compromise, compromise

To piggyback on what I believe Swede was getting at (correct me if I'm wrong) the answer is both. Some things have their roots from an evolutionary standpoint. (In the caveman days, women picked berries, while men clubbed mammoths. Therefore, men instinctively want to pick berries, and men instinctively want to go clubbing. No, that's not right.) While others just sort of got tacked on along the way. The trick is figuring out what stuff is effectively arbitrarily assigned to one gender or the other so we can scrap those ideas that just confuse and clutter our heads.
 
as inherent behavior, i expect to have maternal insticts: knowing how to give birth, how to breast feed, etc. (however, most women in 1st world countries do not and need to be taught this- what that means....dunno)

but the rest of our behavior varies in different cultures. i've mentioned before that seneca women are in charge of all aspects of food: obtaining it, growing it, harvesting it, killing it, cooking it, serving it. it is/was believed that this is women's work as it is natural to them. it is some sort of connection between the female body & its functions and the earth. in more modern towns, women's connection is solely to her children & family matters. unlike the seneca tribe, she is interested in her own brood instead of "the village". in some african tribes, only women do "magic" or perform religious fuctions. in other tribes, only men do. in catholicism, only men may be preists. in episcopalian both men and women may be preists. in wiccan, usually only women are allowed to. in some wild tribes, men are responsible for physical protection from outside threats and women sat at home doing the thinking, brain power work. now that there are few threats of animal attack, men do the thinking and keep women from doing it cause it would put them out of a job, if you know what i mean.
 
I'm all for equality, babe, but you've rocked my boat here. Sorry.

Gender roles are a social construct because they were needed (and still are.) GENDER is not a social construct, it is a fact of life that we must live with. Wes put it best.

In a way, gender roles are still needed to maintain a society that works. If you look at any ethnicity, you'll find that those with defined gender roles, yet not too extreme(recognizing that women are people, too), you'll find that their kids are happier, healthier, and stronger.

Mother nature made us that way. Now how could a biology major argue with that. PMS, maybe?

*slaps Swede on the ass*

Just kidding tootz :cool:
 
I hear you loud and clear, Swedish. I, to, am just about sick and tired of being stereotyped and judged based on what's inbetween my legs. I anxiously await the day when people will be free of gender stereotypes. Alas, I think I was born in the wrong time period.
I am well aware that each gender is, statistically and biologicaly, biased tward various amounts of "butch" and "femminine" behavior. This is just a left over evolutionary trait to increase chances of survival in the wilderness, nothing more, nothing less. And there are exceptions, SwedishFish and I are living examples of that. It may have something to do with genetics, brain wiring, chemical exposure in the womb, childhood environment or all or none of these, I don't know. I have no problem that these predispositions exist in many people.
What I do have a problem with is the stereotype that, because I am gender A, I must be into this, that and the other thing. I feel trapped.
I don't want any operations, however. There are some times I feel like a girl, and others I feel like a guy. But most of the time, I am mentally androgynous. I guess what I'm trying to say here, is, no matter how society evolves, there will probably always be behavioral differences between men and women, but for the love of god just let people live how they want to, and be themselves.
 
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Originally posted by Elbaz

*slaps Swede on the ass*
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::giggles like a school girl::

obviously the sexes are different. but gender is something that parents teach their children. or the village. i'm exhibit A. i had a mostly male influence in my life so my sex is female and my gender is guy (cause 'male' is a sex not a gender).

i object to gender rolls but if the community needs it for survival it's fine to assign a roll. it's assuming behavior based on biology that irks me.
 
Originally posted by SwedishFish
it's assuming behavior based on biology that irks me.
Click to expand...

Part of behavior is based on biology. You already conceded that and obviously recognize it, so you can stop being irked now. There is strong reasonable evidence to conclude that women have certain behaviors because they are inclined to raise children. Further every man and woman is constrained to some extent by their biology. I think it's thusly valid to establish generalizations based on peer-reviewed biological facts that describe differences in behaviors based on sex. It's holding to assumptions based on these differences that causes problems, not the assumptions themselves. (in other words, assumptions must be defensable)
 
To elaborate on Pete's post, here is the full story of the boy who was raised as a girl. The problem is, though she looked like a girl, was treated and raised as a female, "she" knew that something wasn't right.

As children, their physical differences were, if less pronounced, equally deceptive. Photographs of them as preschoolers show a puppy-eyed little boy with a crew cut and a slim, brown-eyed girl with wavy chestnut hair framing a face of delicate prettiness. But by all accounts, this illusion of two children occupying opposite sexes disappeared the second that Joan moved, spoke, walked, gestured. "When I say there was nothing feminine about Joan," Kevin laughs, "I mean there was nothing feminine. She walked like a guy. She talked about guy things, didn't give a crap about cleaning house, getting married, wearing makeup.... We both wanted to play with guys, build forts and have snowball fights and play army." Enrolled in Girl Scouts, Joan was miserable. "I remember making daisy chains and thinking, 'If this is the most exciting thing in Girl Scouts, forget it,' " John says. "I kept thinking of the fun stuff my brother was doing in Cubs."
Click to expand...

The full story from Rolling Stone, http://www.pfc.org.uk/news/1998/johnjoan.htm .
 
great thread, swedish

y'know i used to feel this way but now i just accept it.
you can do whatever you want, go out and do things guys do, except the really rigorous jobs such as construction work(it'd be kind of scary to be all the way 150 floors and pretend i'm walking on clouds) but the feeling of that gender-prejudice is due to the fact that at times i'm not taken seriously. It used to irk me because i was female and the male gender of my generation just treated me as some kind of, well, not necessarily a sex object but as someone who was just suppose to look feminine: sweet, pretty, etc and do feminine things. Which is fine for me, i like feminine things BUT i also want to be treated with seriousness, I think that's the only complaint i would want to address about gender. i don't know, perhaps some males dont get treated seriously either O_O
 
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