Transgender is it just me that is totally perplexed?

[belboid]

That's not me saying that. My quote was from News Medical in the article (linked to previously) at Causes of Gender Dysphoria.

Why do you think it implies babies are crafty?

The word fooled does not appear in that link. Why claim it does?

 

[Jonti]

The quote was from news medical. I was speaking ordinary english when I used fooled to describe a confusion that results in an incorrect assessment.

But you know that.

 

[pengaleng]

the AFAB does not mean 'assessed' it means 'assigned'

 

[Jonti]

That's a big issue, isn't it? Are we in some way genetically predisposed to search for a gender identity? It's not impossible that we are, in the same way that we're predisposed to look for language and there is now growing evidence that we're predisposed to look for moral concepts like right and wrong.

That author suggests that we are predisposed to look for gender id. I don't know but the seeming ubiquity of gender id in human cultures is certainly consistent with the idea.

It's a very suggestive idea.

Presumably bonobos and other animals (although they may exhibit various personalities) are not bothered with gender ID as such (sex roles are enough for them). Nor, one would think, Australopithecus.

So at some point in our evolutionary journey we acquired this new mental organ of gender ID, to map flexible social gender categories to the unforgiving underlying biology.

It's easy to imagine that such a development would have increased the behavioural flexibility of the species. I find it harder to imagine that such a profound change in the nature of our personhood would have left no trace in the archaeological record

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Presumably bonobos and other animals (although they may exhibit various personalities) are not bothered with gender ID as such (sex roles are enough for them). Nor, presumably Australopithecus.

The book 'Elephants on the Edge' by GA Bradshaw tackles elephant psychology and psychiatry using the tools developed for human psychology and psychiatry. She proposes that the aberrant behaviour seen in traumatised elephants is a product of lack of proper socialisation. Among other things, she suggests the violence seen in certain groups of males is the product of their not having learned how to be a responsible adult male from older males, because those older males are absent generally due to humans having killed them. A Lord of the Flies situation arises in groups of elephants that have no elders to teach them.

I certainly wouldn't rule out the idea that elephants have the concept of gender ID in their mentality. If you have to learn your sex role, that then becomes a gender role, no?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

It's easy to imagine that such a development would have increased the behavioural flexibility of the species. I find it harder to imagine that such a profound change in the nature of our personhood would have left no trace in the archaeological record

I certainly agree with this - easy to see why it might have evolved. But I wouldn't rule out its having begun to evolve long before modern humans, nor its having evolved independently among other big-brained social animals like elephants or whales.

 

[Jonti]

But as far as we know, other animals have only two genders to worry about. They have no need for a part of the personality (a mental organ, one might say) that can map many genders to the binary biology.

ETA That was very badly expressed. I'm using ‘gender’ in the connotation of cultural or attitudinal characteristics. I mean not many genders as such, but gender behaviours.

 

[pengaleng]

animals only have sexes, they dont have genders unless yer into anthro.

 

[belboid]

The quote was from news medical. I was speaking ordinary english when I used fooled to describe a confusion that results in an incorrect assessment.

But you know that.

You used an emotive term that betrays your opinion.

But you know that.

 

[Jonti]

So you came out with some guff, rather than saying what you meant.

 

[Jonti]

na·tal (nāt′l)
adj.
1. Of, relating to, or accompanying birth: natal injuries.
2. Of or associated with the time or place of one's birth: a natal star.

natal

 

[littlebabyjesus]

animals only have sexes, they dont have genders unless yer into anthro.

Hmmm. The history of the study of animal behaviour is that there have been a long line of 'only humans do/possess x' statements, only for the assertion to be proved wrong.

 

[campanula]

Hmmm. The history of the study of animal behaviour is that there have been a long line of 'only humans do/possess x' statements, only for the assertion to be proved wrong.

Yep, I would be very wary of dividing sex (biological gamete size for instance) from gender...and just where the borders between biological Darwinian selection and a more fluid gender construct operates. There have been studies of non-normative behaviour in animals so I would approach this binary differentiation with some caution...but as I do not have a qualified biological/scientific background, I could be talking bollocks (literally?)

 

[smmudge]

...binary biology.

There is no such thing in nature as a sex binary, scientists have not found a set of conditions that are individually necessary and jointly sufficient to define biological femaleness and maleness. It doesn't exist. Not chromosomes, not hormones, not physical reproductive organs, not neurologically. Have you ever noticed in these studies, where they are trying to categorise sexes, they already know who is male and female, and they are trying to fit the world to match it??

 

[Jonti]

My impression is that biologists and medical scientists have a very good grasp of what they mean when they talk about male or female animals (or even plants).

 

[belboid]

So you came out with some guff, rather than saying what you meant.

Is that meant to be a reply to me? It makes (your usual) fuck all sense, if so.

 

[Jonti]

animals only have sexes, they dont have genders unless yer into anthro.

I've been reading Wikipedia's entry on gender, and thought you'd be interested to note

In other contexts, including some areas of social sciences, gender includes sex or replaces it.[1][2] For instance, in non-human animal research, gender is commonly used to refer to the biological sex of the animals.[2] This change in the meaning of gender can be traced to the 1980s. In 1993, the USA's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) started to use gender instead of sex.[6] Later, in 2011, the FDA reversed its position and began using sex as the biological classification and gender as "a person's self representation as male or female, or how that person is responded to by social institutions based on the individual's gender presentation."[7]

 

[mojo pixy]

I was under the impression that 'male' and 'female' are only descriptors for an individual's (potential) reproductive function, be that individual a plant, animal or other life form. If a body has certain parts included it's 'male' and if others, 'female'. Loads of other stuff is then crammed into those two groups whether it belongs there or not.

 

[pengaleng]

oh yeah because people were well iffy with the word sex so used gender everywhere it means animals have a gender cus scientists used it as early as 1980.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I was under the impression that 'male' and 'female' are only descriptors for an individual's (potential) reproductive function, be that individual a plant, animal or other life form. If a body has certain parts included it's 'male' and if others, 'female'. Loads of other stuff is then crammed into those two groups whether it belongs there or not.

I think there's tons of confusion over terms. Doesn't help that male/female and man/woman are both used to mean gender or sex or both at the same time.

So there is biological sex and there is gender, which is the culturally determined sex role. Biological sex relates to the thing that we have in common with plants. Humans may or may not be the only animals with culturally determined sex roles (I suspect we're not). There may or may not be some genetic component to the existence of gender as there is for the existence of other culturally acquired things like language and morality. Again, I suspect there is, and would be surprised if there isn't: our cultures and genes coevolved after all. Even if there is, the very reason it's evolved is to allow a plasticity of expression, so that doesn't say anything about what those roles should consist of.

Again, it seems to me the terms for transgender are also not helpful, as many trans people strongly feel that their sexual identification is wrong, not just their gender identification, hence the desire for medical intervention, altering the biological component as well as, or even rather than, the cultural component. Isn't 'transsexual' more apt here?

Some so-called 'terfs' such as Maria Mac seem to seek to ignore or downplay the desire for bodily transformation that goes beyond culturally conditioned gender roles. No trans woman can ever achieve a fully biologically female body, but despite that, this is clearly not what Maria Mac and others seem to want it to be - just a case of 'feminine men'. And that's about where I get stuck.

 

[pengaleng]

Again, it seems to me the terms for transgender are also not helpful, as many trans people strongly feel that their sexual identification is wrong, not just their gender identification, hence the desire for medical intervention, altering the biological component as well as, or even rather than, the cultural component. Isn't 'transsexual' more apt here?

it's transgender instead of the outdated transsexual because not everybody needs or wants to have surgery but it's still the same thing, the people who think you cant be trans unless you have surgery call themselves transexuals but really it's a term that no one uses even tho it might medically be more apt in describing and also because it's not a sexuality so got conflated as a sexual deviancy like homosexual < but then you get people using a similar argument to remove the T because the LGB refers to sexuality, but usually thats rooted in LGB people who are transphobic

 

[littlebabyjesus]

it's transgender instead of the outdated transsexual because not everybody needs or wants to have surgery but it's still the same thing, the people who think you cant be trans unless you have surgery call themselves transexuals but really it's a term that no one uses even tho it might medically be more apt in describing

Yeah. I think it adds to the confusion, though. In this, words clearly matter.

 

[pengaleng]

I dunno, I was never confused

 

[smmudge]

My impression is that biologists and medical scientists have a very good grasp of what they mean when they talk about male or female animals (or even plants).

Yes they do, that's what I said. When they are trying to find differences & similarities between sexes they have already divided them into male and female. Biological sex is as cultural as gender.

 

[Sea Star]

These days people would be telling me I was trans and maybe suggesting I should present as a boy..

No. They wouldn't. Not if you didn;t say you were a boy or wanted to be a boy and insisted on it consistently over a long period of time. This is such a straw man!

The reality is trans kids in general have to fight to be recognised as their true gender and most (probably) don't get the chance until adulthood by which time they've suffered their way through a puberty they did not want and survived their teenage years, often suicidal, almost certainly suffering some sort of mental illness before they reach adult hood.

I speak from experience.

And this is what I mean by people talking out of their arses and just not listening to what trans people are saying.

 

[Sea Star]

Yeah. I think it adds to the confusion, though. In this, words clearly matter.

no - extra words adds to the clarity. Only when trans people add to the human lexicon, apparently, does more precise language cause more confusion.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

no - extra words adds to the clarity. Only when trans people add to the human lexicon, apparently, does more precise language cause more confusion.

Come off it. I explained why I thought it added to the confusion. We've seen it on this very thread, and it's exactly what the likes of Maria Mac feed on - 'it's just gender and gender's just a bullshit social construct we should all be throwing away'.

 

[Sea Star]

Come off it. I explained why I thought it added to the confusion. We've seen it on this very thread, and it's exactly what the likes of Maria Mac feed on - 'it's just gender and gender's just a bullshit social construct we should all be throwing away'.

it's all online for anyone to look up

Why is ignorance acceptable for people who want to discuss this stuff? - they should at least look up the basic lingo before entering the argument.

(i haven't got time to explain it all to everyone)

 

[littlebabyjesus]

it's all online for anyone to look up

You've completely missed the point of what I was saying. I wasn't saying that I'm confused, but that the language surrounding these issues is a source of much of the confusion in debates.

 

[Sea Star]

You've completely missed the point of what I was saying. I wasn't saying that I'm confused, but that the language surrounding these issues is a source of much of the confusion in debates.

so what do you suggest? Dumbing down our language so none of us know what we're talking about?

Have you not considered that it might be a deliberate strategy?