I thought this meme was a comical exaggeration. It’s obvious that gender is much more complex than a simple distinction between two categories, that there is a great deal of scientific support for that observation, and no one would be deluded enough to deny the science.
But then I read the comments. Apparently there are a lot of assholes out there who are eager to line up behind the asshole statement and flatly assert a) there are only two genders, men and women, and b) there is no scientific evidence otherwise.
So the author throws comment after comment at them, each one citing the scientific literature; she cites Science and Nature. You’d think just the obvious fact that there are human beings who don’t fit neatly into the stereotypical male and female pigeonholes would be sufficient to tell you that this binary model is inadequate.
But no. Commenters continue to assert that assert a) there are only two genders, men and women, and b) there is no scientific evidence otherwise.
I’ve been dealing with this phenomenon for decades, and you’d think I’d be used to it by now. I’ve dealt with it with my own binary thinking: there are people who arrive at conclusions by following the evidence, and they are the secular, pro-science community; and there are people who deny evidence to accept conclusions based on dogma, and they are the conservative religious, poorly educated masses. Some of those deniers in that facebook thread are certainly going to be conservatively religious, but as has become increasingly apparent, there are a lot of secular atheists who also engage in this behavior on certain issues. YouTube atheists, for instance, are dominated by looney-tunes dogmatists who assert that feminism is a cancer, who deny the significance, even the utility, of sociology and psychology and philosophy, and who have a simplistic and ultimately racist and misogynistic worldview that denies basic realities of the equality of all members of our species to prop up uncompromising doctrinaire notions of White Nationalism or Western Superiority or Manly Virtues.
They’re everywhere. They’re attending Mass and they’re going to atheist meetups. And there are egalitarians in churches and signing up for lifetime memberships in American Atheists.
If you want to understand what’s behind the erosion of support for the “New Atheists” and the Deep Rifts in our godless groups, all you have to realize is that the evidence-based community is looking at the evidence and seeing that assholes populate both the atheist and religious side of the pigeonholes, so the labels aren’t aligning well with our actual, substantial goals. And if your priority is following the evidence honestly where ever it leads, slapping the atheist label on someone does a piss-poor job of identifying your fellow travelers.
Science matters to me and it should matter to everyone. There are far too many obnoxious incompetents who think atheism is an acceptable substitution for science. It is not sufficient.
Even if we ignore the science- which we absolutely don’t have to- within the atheist community, we should recognize that one of the fundamental challenges of atheism is the problem of meaning- from Nietzsche to Sartre, a world without an intention behind it leaves humans to create their own meaning in the world.
This is supposed to be a liberation! Sartre recognizes that the liberation is itself a kind of stifling prison, but concludes that only by embracing the freedoms offered by a world where we must create meaning, can we find our true selves. I bring this aside up because… why on Earth do people feel the need to police the identities of others? No, don’t answer that, I know why, but they’re on such shaky ground- philosophically, scientifically, and just up to the challenge of being decent human beings.
The hierarchies that put men above women, straight people above queer people, and white people above everybody else are all reinforced by major Christian sects. These guys don’t want to have to give up that reinforcement, they just don’t want to have to get up for church on Sundays. So they cling to the dogmas that let them maintain their status in these areas and get to add on the sense of intellectual superiority associated with atheism. In the meantime, they fight tooth and nail to keep conservative Christians in power to ensure those hierarchies don’t change.
Isn’t asshole itself a third gender? One of the asexual ones?
mikehuban @3-
Dude, what the fuck?!?
Yeah, the neo-nazis being so prevalent in the atheist movement is what tempered a lot of the fire of my atheism. Like, I’m atheist. I’ll always be atheist, but I’m not interested in hanging out with people who are going to stalk and harass me because of who I am and who try and murder friends of mine for existing.
Pharyngula is a place I’ll always consider home and I’ll always stand up for atheist rights, but I don’t have the same pride in being an atheist I once did in similar ways to which I’ve lost any semblance of pride in being a Nerd or a Gamer or a Comic Book Fan. And largely due to the same people.
“There are atheists who don’t belong in the reality-based community.”
You’re a bit late, but that’s better than never.
Bigoted skeptics/atheists reside in YouTube of course but many others are also not tuned to reality. Have you read the comments on Jerry Coyne or Jason Colavito’s blog? It can get really Right-Wing and bigoted.
Cerberus:
The common thread there is of course people. Being disillusioned by them or being less proud about it (or “losing faith in humanity” to put it dramatically) is certainly a reasonable response, given the very general circumstances of being surrounded by assholes. But I don’t think I would’ve said in the first place that “slapping the atheist label on someone” would necessarily identify them as non-assholes or as some kind of super-person. That’s not what that kind of label was ever for, even if that was thought to be a useful heuristic most of the time.
PZ:
Besides, there’s more to worry about than only what our best science says. I realize you’re a scientist, but your audience here isn’t at a scientific conference or a biology lecture or whatever. Narrowly accepting or valuing only science (as a set of conclusions reached by certain academic disciplines) is exactly the sort of position you don’t want to be implying here, as you hinted elsewhere.
In any case, I don’t think they’re substituting atheism as such, because as you said, they’re doing it wrong and aren’t “reality-based,” since in reality atheism is true. A weird mix of worldviews slathered on top does it for them, which come from longstanding traditions like religion and conservative political philosophies, as well as popular culture, current events, and whatever random shit that happens to fly out of their heads at any given. In other words, they’re people, which always come with a whole lot of baggage. That kind of stuff is clearly not atheism, and we don’t have analogous reasons to believe that stuff corresponds to anything about reality, as we do with atheism or numerous other views/beliefs/etc.
This actually somewhat puzzles me. My experience is that there is a significant percentage of atheists who were, at one point, religious. This means that there should be quite a large percentage of atheists who know, either from personal experience or knowing such a deconvert, or even from simply knowing of this, that it is possible to have a very fervent, but incorrect belief about something. So why would they be so resistant to the idea that their belief about there being only two genders is incorrect, especially given the information provided? Maybe I’m just putting too much faith in the logical reasoning skills of human beings in general.
There are more than two genders. Great. Would someone be willing to complete the following chart?
Existing genders:
1) Female
2) Male
3)
4)
5)
6)
etc.
I’d find it super helpful. Thanks much!
Outside of the veritable mountain of culturally limited ones like two spirit/mahu/kathoey/hijra/etc? Agender and genderfluid come to mind.
Cressida:
Help yourself by first explaining what you think you mean by “male” and “female.” I do not see masculinity, whatever the fuck that might consist of, as constituting who or what I am. I do not accept, for myself or for others, all sorts of prescribed gender roles that others have cooked up, whether they think those are for good reasons or bad or if it’s just pure bullshittery.
I think I’m actually a fairly normal or unremarkable person in that respect. In whatever sense I’m male (a term I’ll freely use for myself, along with pronouns like “he”), it’s very hard to see how anything like that could be the type of thing one could conceivably use to carve up humanity into two neat little categories with some set of definite properties, behaviors, etc., to differentiate them. There is no sense in which my understanding of my gender, or my relationship to such standards as may be imposed by others, must apply to every other person in the same way. It isn’t even clear what I’d be volunteering for to begin with, if that’s what’s on the table. But I know for sure that (1) I’m not signing up for all sorts of arbitrary and repugnant bullshit, and (2) other people have different sets of experiences and attitudes that would lead to them having a very different type of outlook than I do (some appropriate and constructive, others not).
So, I think it’s already problematic to be thinking of “male” and “female,” as two (and only two) coherently defined items in a list, so that you can then move on to whatever may be next in the list. You haven’t even gotten as far as having two items, if that’s how you’re thinking about it. You need to start by first assessing what this list is supposed to be for and how it is that certain things will or will not make their way onto it. What’s it for? How exactly did you go about understanding that “male” and “female” are two items which should make their way onto your list, and what are they doing in it? What is supposed to help me (or anyone else) tell that I fit into this or that category, since a single word doesn’t tell me anything like that?
Cressida, it would help if you put “male” and “female” on a scale with all points in between being possible. Gender is not just about visible genitalia, there’s a brain and other bits involved too.
Cressida @11: To someone stuck in a rut, there are only two directions. The scenery’s much more interesting out of it.
Cressida:
Transgender. Cisgender. Gender Fluid. Androgynous. Two Spirit. That’s enough to start, ennit?
Consciousness razor:
So you’re saying “female” isn’t a gender? What if a person identifies as specifically female? Aren’t you erasing that person if you say “female” isn’t coherently defined?
Cressida:
It’s quite obvious CR did not say that. Once again:
You know binary. You’re comfortable with binary. Fine. What you need to do is learn that it isn’t a matter of just binary, and they are not the only coherently defined ones. You’re getting terribly defensive, when people have simply tried to help you expand your thinking a bit.
There’s nothing wrong with identifying as cisgender, lots of people do so. It’s wrong to assume that only binary cisgender is properly and coherently defined, while all the other genders are not.
I think this becomes one of those narrow definition problems. People don’t just fall into the silly argument of whether there are purely binary genders, but even the pro-philosophy people end up trying to cram everything into “science and stuff that isn’t science”. So.. what definition are you using for “science”. Sure, there is the one which involves data, and lots of rules on how you determine whether or not a result is reality or not, but.. how does that not apply to stuff that “isn’t science”? Are you honestly going to tell me that you can’t make an objective observation of say, someone’s moral code, ask the question, “Does this actually produce the result being aimed for?”, and collect some sort of data that either supports, or calls into question, whether or not it makes sense? If not, then what the hell are we talking about when apposing *any* idea? Rational thought is scientific thought. Sometimes the very best we can manage is, “We have almost no data, just a hunch.”, but that is the “start” of the process by which you eventually test a hypothesis, not some magical separate thing, which happens outside scientific thinking. It is, by necessity, sloppier, and harder to pin down, but you can’t reach a conclusion unless you are seeing data, and drawing conclusions from it. So, sure, there is no double blind experiments you can run with some of it, but you can still tell bullshit that doesn’t work, because it makes things worse, from ideas that make things better, and you don’t do this in some sort of informationless vacuum, in which the decision on which path worked best is purely opinion. On the contrary, the whole freaking argument against such ideas is, “We have evidence it doesn’t work, makes this worse, or only benefits the people that insist it is the right answer, while everyone else is screwed.”, and the argument against every bloody person making the argument that continuing to do them, while ignoring everyone else, including (or especially in most cases) the victims of it, is that they are bloody ignoring the evidence.
Where the F in any of that is there not “science”? Unless you see people forming “dictionary science” groups (and, yeah, I suppose there are some that are doing exactly that), which deny any ideas that don’t have decades of success/failure already lined up, to give them “data” to work off, and even then ramble on about how none of the conclusions can be science, then.. who exactly is being argued against with this stance that there is some magic dividing line between science and… what ever the F is not science?
To the broader picture, I keep thinking we badly need a “Rational Party”, or some such in politics, but, then I keep getting stuck on this sort of thing, and realize it wouldn’t start out rational in the first place, and it would be almost impossible, even if you have clear rules involved, to bloody keep it from sliding further into the irrational, as it started taking on stances on every bloody subject imaginable that defaulted to, “I don’t like this, so I will ignore failure, ignore alternatives, and ignore possible reasons new ideas failed, in favor of just assuming we need to go back to disliking/hating/fearing thing X, and trying to arrest it out of existence.” Seems like the number one complaint from pretty much every freaking group, no matter who they are, which is being disadvantaged, and no matter what the disadvantage is (including pollution), is always, “I know you want to be my ally, but why the F are you not listening to me then?” How exactly do you create a party that breaks that cycle, instead of just becoming a different version of the, “I know what I am doing, so shut up, I am trying to help you!”, parties? Because.. nearly bloody everyone does this at some point, on some issue, and entirely organizations end up following along.
I think the greatest problem we face is a bloody inability to recognize that, even when something more or less works, once you get past simple chemical reactions, “more or less works”, stops meaning, “its actually the right solution”. That, and the habit of doubling down, when we are “certain” the thing we are trying to change is the problem, and not every other bloody thing around it. We act like modern car repair people (mechanics being about as rare as feminists in a New Atheist convention) – we have no clue how to diagnose the real problem, so we keep replacing the parts, until things seem to work again, despite the fact that the real flipping problem is a results of a badly engineered set of ideas, by someone else, possible thousands of years ago, which we stubbornly refuse to even reconsider. So.. how is the, “Maybe its this part that is the problem…”, solution to issues working for you? lol
Kagehi:
Apparently, the question’s for me. If not, I’ll respond anyway. I was talking about “a set of conclusions reached by certain academic disciplines,” by which I meant those classified as such in universities and the like. I’m aware of the demarcation problem (can’t say I have anything like a solution), as it relates to specific scientific vs. pseudoscientific theories/claims/activities, but I don’t think it’s much of a practical concern for entire academic disciplines like chemistry or anthropology or what have you.
Well, I think I understand. (Your spelling/grammar can be confusing at times.) This goes back to what I was responding to from PZ. Atheism, for example, is a philosophical position, which is not be confused with science. The claims are metaphysical ones, as they pertain to the nature of reality (simply that it has no gods). To say that it isn’t science is emphatically not to dismiss or undermine it, to characterize it as non-objective, as not about reality, as less rigorous, less intellectually demanding, less certain, as lacking evidence or logical/mathematical support, etc. We ought to be rejecting various absurd assumptions that only science could do stuff like that or only it (by definition perhaps) satisfies such criteria, because that’s simply not true unless your definition of “science” is rather implausibly and uselessly expansive. We obviously should still be concerned about what reality is like, as we transparently are when criticizing views which aren’t “reality-based.” Thus, only talking about whether or not it’s established science, or whether it fits the definition of science whatever that may be, would not settle such questions.
It’s not clear if you’re arguing that we should expand “science” to include lots of things beyond the conventional limits I described before. I think that would be a mistake, and it wouldn’t get us anywhere anyway, as I said.
I think scientism, which seems to be the basic issue, typically comes from scientists, unsurprisingly. But in my experience, the atheist community in general has eaten it up too, as ardent supporters of science (obviously many are scientists, so it’s hard to disentangle these things). Anyway, they’re used to having some notion of science as the standard. When that’s basically what every work day is like for you, what gets drilled into your head throughout your higher education, etc., then I bet it’s pretty easy to think it would/could/should generalize to everything under the sun (or much more than that, but that’s what came out and I may as well quote Ecclesiastes while I’m making these people nervous).
Sometimes I try to get myself into the mood by thinking something like this…. What if musicians routinely talked as if being a sound music theoretic principle (excuse the pun) was the standard according to which literally everything was judged/understood? They’d look suspiciously at all of the sciences, math, engineering, political/moral philosophy, even other artforms, etc., remind themselves of how prestigious and hard-working (and humble!) they are as musicians, and then proclaim “well, that’s not music theory…” as if that settled anything of interest to anybody but them. Or it’ll be “music theory doesn’t say that, so where’s your evidence, and speaking of which, why are there still monkeys?” The right kind of response to that kind of silliness is “well fuck, we’re not all doing your kind of work here, so just give it a fucking rest with the ‘music’ crap and try to evaluate this thing on its own terms.” That’s what I would expect to hear, if I ever considered pulling that shit on anybody. Of course musicians aren’t any more/less humble or whatever; but they do have a very different status or social function compared to scientists, which I think makes it an entertaining (and for me, relatable) example.
Sorry, your spelling is fine. I should’ve said punctuation, which really isn’t so bad either. I had “try not to sound like a grammar Nazi” in my head, but it didn’t work out. That’s what I get for trying to be ironic.
Caine,
If you leave out the parentheses, CR did say that. The rest of CR’s paragraph makes that clear:
@20 I would argue that it misses the point to talk about art, and the like, in this context. No one is talking about whether or not they like a painting when the disagreements crop up over atheism and social justice. Well, not unless its related to some category of atheists deciding they just hate that art work, because its in some arbitrary category they hate. I would argue that nearly all of the social justice issues are not in the category of, “Just something people feel, so you can’t analyze them.” And, those are the things I am worried about.
So, I am hardly calling for a throwing away of the lines of demarcation. Rather, I think the category of, “opinion”, and “subjective view”, etc. is what has been broadened unnaturally, to the point where, say, sexual harassment is not a matter of observable harm, but a mere difference of opinion over what is acceptable. Problem is, it doesn’t stop with that. You have feminists, as another example, doing things that harm women, because they think what they are “solving” is a bigger problem than the fact that their solutions don’t work, and its mostly women who are victimized by what they are trying to accomplish. So.. choices – keep doing it anyway, because you can’t see any other option (and won’t), or reexamine the whole equation. To use a truly scientific analogy, do you keep trying to bloody “fit” the world into Newtonian physical models, or do you turn that on its head and invent General Relativity? At what point does something not working mean you have probably been looking at a narrow range of situations, where it sort of works, but ignoring every single case, in the wider world, in which it just plain doesn’t?
That is what I mean. Scientism is doing “exactly” this – ignoring that the evidence says, “This doesn’t work outside your lab, so rethink your hypothesis.” Its just.. almost everyone ends up doing this. The scientists pulling it are just the more ironic of the people doing so, because its not science to reject the idea that your model has huge flipping gaps in it.
@16 Caine:
Transgender, cisgender and (possibly) gender fluid seem to be ways of relating to gender as opposed to themselves being genders such as male,female, androgynous, hijra or two spirit.
The problem with Cressida’s list is that they don’t seem to know enough to even ask a useful question. “Gender” covers a multitude of assumptions and beliefs, most of which are so far from reality that you can’t even say they’re false.
The most you can say is that, in our culture (cis white Euro-derived) at this time there are two dominant social constructs into which the culture presumes are mutually exclusive and comprise all human beings. That is, the use of gender terms already moves you out of discussing the reality of how people are and into society’s assumptions and prejudices about how people are. Once you get into how people actually are, terms like “male” and “female” aren’t all that useful.
BTW, this isn’t just a scientific question. A lot of us aren’t so much studying as living these realities. Trans people, for instance, have had to make up a whole bunch of new gender-related terms just to be able to talk about the reality of their lives.
If Cressida actually wants to know more, rather than just drop in for a bull session, I suggest that they actually spend a few years studying the topic “Gender Studies.” Me, I can’t be bothered; I have my hands full just living my life.
Allison, you say:
I’ll repeat the question I raised to Consciousness razor: What if a person identifies as specifically female? Aren’t you erasing that person if you say “female” isn’t a useful way to describe that person?
Cressida:
For fuck’s sake, no, I didn’t. If I wanted to leave things out, I would write shorter comments.
Anyway, I haven’t erased anybody, including myself, a straight cisgender dude. My understanding is that having lists and failing to ask yourself what is meant by the items contained in it are not a part of anyone’s gender identity. But if it is, then I stand corrected, and you can certainly add it to your list, whatever that’s supposed to accomplish, if anything.
Kagehi:
I wasn’t talking about liking a painting or not liking it. Look, I went to school for a bunch of years and learned a bunch of things about music. Visual artists also go to school and learn presumably about the visual arts. What we didn’t do that whole time in academia was sit around idly and like paintings, sonatas, etc. And we didn’t learn that it’s unanalyzable as something people just feel, because in fact it is stuff you can analyze, which is for real what a lot of people really do in reality, believe it or not. There’s a whole world of facts out there (analyzable ones, no less) that you may simply have no clue about, maybe just a vague inkling that some such things are transpiring in the darkest corners of the non-scientific parts of society. Leaving you aside, since you seem decent enough, some very prominent scientists clearly are supremely ignorant about all sorts of shit like that, because they’re going around “informing” or “teaching” the public that the sciences are the only way to know anything about anything.
That’s just plainly and obviously false. And of course that’s just one way how that ignorant presumptuousness plays out, conveniently based on what I know and do myself. If you had some idea of what specifically you thought these disagreements are about, okay. I wasn’t trying to take it in that direction. But I think that is what the broader context is like, in the background of many of these disagreements and even the assumptions you’re making while complaining about it.
Sure, I agree with that. And fake skeptics who think they’re supposed to ask for a peer-reviewed journal article about the time a particular individual was harassed are obviously a part of the problem. And I guess there are other varieties of people with other sophisticated-sounding views, who also apparently have no clue what the fuck they’re doing with them, but there’s plenty of blame to go around.
Anyway…. so what exactly could you have meant by the formula “Just something people feel, so you can’t analyze them”? If now you say it just isn’t true that people feeling stuff is unanalyzable or unobservable or a mere difference of opinion, then my guess is that you didn’t really mean it the first time either. But how did it sneak in the backdoor for you as well? It was apparently something that you weren’t putting much thought into, because you didn’t think you were “supposed to” right now or didn’t think it’s important/relevant, which led to some bullshitty conclusions. If people think to begin with, “oh, sexual harassment, probably no big deal, doesn’t concern me, just a bunch of drama, blah, blah, blah,” then I don’t think it’s a surprise that they’re doing the same things, based on very similar reasoning which just doesn’t hold any water. They think they’ve got a handle on what’s real or factual or to be taken seriously, etc., so they come up with an easy excuse to brush it off to the side and get to the real business that think they need to worry about.
Consciousness razor:
Statements containing parentheses are supposed to make sense without the parentheses. Your statement, without parentheses, reads: “I think it’s already problematic to be thinking of “male” and “female,” as two coherently defined items in a list.” So yes, you are saying “female” isn’t coherently defined. If that’s not what you meant, fine, but it’s what you said.
Also, I’m not sure why you conclude that I haven’t “asked myself” what “male” and “female” mean. All I did was put them on a list of genders. If you think that indicates that I don’t know what they mean, then that’s just further evidence that you don’t think “female” is a gender, despite your having denied saying that.
It’s problematic to conclude you must be dealing with two such things, which I said because by my count there are two words corresponding to two items on your list, a list you even numbered for us. I meant exactly or precisely two, no more and no less, which is why I used that word. It doesn’t mean anything other than that specific number in my vocabulary, but I did explicitly add (in parentheses, which I know you can read) that it’s “only two,” in order to be clearer about this point.
Suppose you said, “there are fruits and vegetables: that’s two things to put on my list, and I can’t think of anything else. I need help with that.” Alright then, time for some help, since you acted like that’s what you wanted. First, in order to help, it would be good for at least one of us to understand something: why the hell are we doing this? I know there are thousands of species and varieties of each, billions of individual specimens (or more). And then there are other types of questions: is this distinction for culinary purposes, are we doing biology, or WTF? Even worse, it could be about their colors, shapes, the number of letters in the English words for these objects, etc. They’re all normal matter, they’re all biological organisms on Earth, they all exist right now, so maybe it’s only one thing…. At this point, who knows what the fuck you think it is or isn’t about. There are lots of valid and useful ways to count such things, and simply going by the number of words in a list somebody happened to write down isn’t a reliable or informative method of learning anything or gathering some kind of insight about the subject, if that were the goal.
Your choice to count that as two items, as opposed to some other number which may be more appropriate/useful depending on what this is for, is at least questionable, which is a decent place to start if you’re going to receive/accept/comprehend/use some kind of help with this issue, as requested. That makes sense in the context of everything else I wrote, and your interpretation didn’t.
Cressida:
Ahem.
Your question implicitly relies on the unstated assumption that gender identity is the determinant for the description of a person’s gender for it to make good sense; from that it follows that if someone were to identify as other than male or female you should acknowledge its existence.
(Well, given my own unstated assumption that you are intellectually honest)
To reiterate what Caine has already written, saying that “female,” as it exists in a false binary, is not useful is distinct from saying individuals cannot freely identify as female. The objection is that “male” and “female” are too broad and imprecise a set of terms to accurately describe and encompass the identities and experiences of all humans. Pretending that necessary inclusion (provided you want to be accurate, rather than that you want to preserve the concept of gender as it has been socialized into you and all the rest of us) somehow erases female people, or would even have the capacity to do so, is bizarre. The objection is that “female” and “male” can only, at present, be defined as the other’s opposite in a world where a person must be one or the other, not both, not neither; that practice leaves everyone else out in the cold and places “female” and “male” in a precarious position, in which their continued survival depends on preserving the notion that femininity and masculinity are complementary, ubiquitous, and benign, and are under attack when people eschew them altogether or express them simultaneously and in transgressive ways.
But there is more to gender than just cooking up a finicky little taxonomy that will satisfy some cis person’s fetish for order, hierarchy, and classification. Feeling threatened that what and who constitute female is both greater and lesser than is commonly believed is understandable, but it’s also irrational, as is the paranoia about gate-keeping who belongs to what community. And this is not a costume party, the world is not a cis playground, and no has to RSVP to partake or ask for an invitation to begin with. The freedom of a female person to identify as female ends where I express my equal right to do so, or not, when and how I please. My identity is not attacking or demeaning anyone — indeed, it is straight from the TERF playbook, this notion that cis women are harmed when they lose their coveted second-place in a phony two-person race — and it would everyone a world of good if cis people stopped pretending to be arbiters whose permission is needed or input desired.
Cressida @26:
No.
Black. White.
Nononono not “red” or “yellow” okay? Those aren’t real colors ’cause they don’t fit in the black-and-white scheme. They’re just black or white thinking they are different colors.
Cressida what do you even mean by “male” and “female”?
rietpluim:
Penis! Vagina! There’s a Terfy stench wafting about, I doubt Cressida is here in good faith.
There are two, and only two genders in asshole culture. Thou shalt count to two. No more. No less. Two shalt be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be two. Three shalt not count, nor either count thou one, excepting that thou then proceed to two. Four is right out. Once the number two, being the second number, be reached, then, lobbest thou thy Holy Bullshit of Assholes towards thy foe, who, being naughty in My Sight, shall snuff it.
— with apologies to Monty Python
Allison @32, then what if person A identifies as specifically “genderqueer”? If person B says that “genderqueer” isn’t a useful way of describing person A, is person B erasing person A? If the answer is yes, then why isn’t the answer to my earlier question also yes?
rietpluim @34, why on earth are you asking me? Aren’t you people supposed to the ones who’ve figured out the answer to that question?
Cressida @37: You used the terms in #11, so it’s certainly fair to ask what you mean by them.
Arguing about terminology (if it’s good faith argument, and not just trolling) is not necessarily erasure.
Cressida:
Because you are the one hung up on male and female. As you are, this shouldn’t be difficult, define those words as to what they mean to you. It’s important because it’s an insight to how and why you think the way you do.
Also, just why are you so obsessed with ‘erasure’? I’d like to know just how you define that one, too. Honestly, this couldn’t be simpler: people are whatever gender they say they are, and this is why many people helpfully provide personal pronouns which fit them comfortably. If a person says to you, I identify as _____ and my personal pronouns are ____, then you know how to address that person correctly, and to accord them respect. Doing that does not ‘erase’ anyone else out of whatever picture you have in your head. The reason people are asking you questions is because we don’t have any sort of idea of just what picture you do have going at the moment.
Instead of being increasingly defensive for no good reason, try your best to answer the questions people are posing. You might learn something, and we certainly would do so.
Two genders or n-genders? I’m apparently CIS-gendered, but those who embrace another reality simply impress me with the richness of human diversity and spirit. My only demand? That no one try to force me to experience sex in a way that doesn’t feel good physically or emotionally.
If one uses male/females based on genitals, then there are no absolutes. Only imaginary deities give you absolutes. Which makes your claim prima facie being a troll, not somebody who understands that there is such a thing a undetermined female/male. When you refuse to see that the biological expression, both in body and mind, might not be subject to developmental absolutism and can be a result of fuzziness in the genetics and development, you finally grasp what PZ, and scientists like myself claim. Which is the truth.
Quit being a goddist. Only those who believe in imaginary deities believe in absolutism.
Caine, where was I defensive? I don’t see any comments where I’m defending myself.
Nerd of Redhead, who are you addressing?
Jon Morales, that was precisely my point, yes. I’d call it the Socratic method, not intellectual dishonesty.
CR @8
Yeah, like I’d never doubt that they are also atheists, but it sucks that they’ve hijacked so much of the community and that’s just a depressing fact of life.
Cressida-
Here you go, knock yourself out: http://gender.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Gender_Identities
Cerberus – sorry, just to be clear: are you asking me to take seriously a list that includes “legogender”?
http://wondermark.com/1k62/
YOU!
Nerd of Redhead, dude, I haven’t mentioned gods once. I don’t know why you’d assume I’m a “goddist.”
Cressida
What makes you think that Nerd is a “dude”?
Who are you?
Have you commented here in the past?
What are you hiding?
Cressida, how many times are you going to avoid answering how you define “male” and “female”? We need to know where *you* are coming from in order to choose which of the many refutations of your premise to provide you.
Are you using a cultural definition? This is easily refuted.
Are you using a chromosomal definition for mammals? Also easily refuted as I know of XX, X, XXY, XYY, and XY at minimum.
Are you using a genitalia based definition? Also easily refuted. We recently had a canine at my shelter that had a vulva, vagina, os-clitoris, scrotum, a uterus and testes attached to the uterus rather than ovaries. One of those testes was in the scrotum and had pulled that particular uterine horn through the inguinal ring. We confirmed this through biopsy; it was uterine tissue and it was definitely testes.
So, cultural definitions vary wildly. No set binary across multiple cultures. No binary in chromosomes. No binary in sexual organs.
Hi Rowan (nice to see you)
Cressida is talking about human, white, cis, hetero, XX, females.
Not every other living thing on Earth.
Ah, so Cressida is talking about two specific individuals and asking us, in this group of two specific people, to find a third person! Suddenly it makes so much more sense.
Yes.
For certain values of Sense™.
Rowan, you said
Which premise is this? Have I stated a premise? Where did I do that?
Cressida
Who are you?
When you commented here, in the past, what was your nym?
What are you hiding?
Cressida: define male and female.
Stop avoiding making your definitions plain.
By repeatedly ignoring, and thereby refusing, to define what you mean by male and female as has been requested many times, you are being intellectually dishonest.
You asked for more than two genders. There are cultures in which more than two genders are recognised. Chromosomes can’t be used to offer a gender binary as there are at least 5 configurations of sex chromosomes that result in viable humans. Sexual organs can’t be used for a gender binary because a human is capable of having a vagina, uterus, and testicles.
So. Define male and female so we can add the appropriate information to the blank spots on your list.
Cressida
While you’re at it
tell us the difference between sex and gender
I am confused. Why can’t you use your own definitions for male and female, and fill out the list accordingly? Why do you need mine? Why are we assuming they’re different?
Moreover, if you don’t want to fill out the list, don’t. I’m not your boss.
chigau, I’m not sure why this is so important, but I’ve never commented here under another nym. I haven’t commented much. The last time was a little over a month ago.
Sooo… you’re being intellectually dishonest. Got it. We’ve filled out your list multiple times. You’ve been shown many ways in which there is no gender or sex binary. You are done now.
Cressida came here to troll.
mission successful.
Caine had their number early on.
why are you all bothering with it?
Ichthyic, Caine does not have my number. The only person here who’s had my number is John Morales #30.
Rowan, I did not question the statement “there is no gender or sex binary,” as that statement did not arise in this thread until your comment #58. I addressed the original post, “there are more than two genders,” and asked for examples of this population of genders. It’s a clear and specific question, and one that was “answered” in multiple contradictory ways in subsequent comments. For example: some posters (#14) accept “male” and “female” as genders, while others (#25) do not. Other posters (#13, #34, #55) are unwilling to offer an opinion until I personally provide a definition of “male” and “female,” which seems weird, since (1) surely these posters already have an understanding of what these words mean, and (2) I was asking about OTHER genders, not male and female. And then there’s a side controversy (#16, #24) about what counts as a gender, which at least starts to approach the question I was getting at.
Here’s what happened here. The original post stated, “there are more than two genders.” The “two genders” referred to are male and female; the “asshole” category in the original post makes this clear. I posited that there might be multiple genders including the “two” that are accepted, male and female, and asked for a list of these other multiple genders. I was answered by a mishmash of:
-maybe “male” and “female” are genders and maybe they’re not
-species! colors! shapes! that means you’re wrong! (about there being multiple genders?? something I did not state was false?)
-gosh you’re defensive
-dogs can have birth defects
-you must be white, because white people don’t understand gender
What’s clear is that no one simply completed the list I provided (apart from #16, who was then gainsaid by #24, who was ignored). I have to wonder why, if it’s so obvious that there are multiple genders. It seems like the question should be easy to answer if the two-gender presumption is so obviously ridiculous.
Cressida,
We cannot complete the list until we understand what is meant by the first two items. Everything we may want to add may already be covered by numbers 1 and 2, depending on definition. But we don’t know what definition. We could make up one, but that wouldn’t be fair, because it’s your list.
Anyway, to help you get started, I collected some things that are usually more associated with “male” than with “female”:
1. XY chromosomes.
2. Penis and testes.
3. Pants, not skirts.
4. Sexually attracted to “female”.
5. Hairy, except on the head.
6. Likes sports.
7. Likes beer.
8. Wood and iron, not fabrics and yarn.
9. Testosterone.
10. Tall.
11. Strong.
12. Doer, not talker.
13. Hides emotions.
14. Ring finger longer than index finger.
Add any to your liking. Then please specify which ones make up “male” in the number 2 of your list.
If you define gender by cultural norms, there are cultures with more than two genders.
If you define gender by chromosomes, there’s 5 different sex chromosome configurations.
If you define gender based on sexual organs/ genitalia these come in a huge variety. Which are not birth defects. The dog didn’t have a birth defect. Puppy was displaying elements from multiple areas on the spectrum. We see a few like this each year where I work.
If you define gender based on how a person perceives the binary gender role they were assigned at birth you end up with more than two genders.
And stop being hyperbolic. I brought in an example from another *mammal* because I have no desire to speak about the bodies of humans who are intersex in detailed description because I’m not intersex myself and it is not my place to pull up a human case study and describe an actual person to you. But mammals are mammals. And what that dog had is a configuration that a human can have.
Hello Cressida,
Here is a direct response to your question regarding a list of genders.
1. male
2. female
3. agender
4. intersex
Please note that this is not an all-inclusive list. Since your request was for examples of genders other than male or female, the above list should be sufficient. There isn’t a definitive list of all possible genders because gender is, in part, socially defined. Since there is no current social consensus and social understanding is non-static, “[us] people” as you referred to other commenters collectively, can’t provide an full list to cover every possible gender expression. I can only speak to American, mostly Christian-influenced culture, but that society is just starting to consider a more inclusive definition of gender than the currently understood binary, so our understanding is pretty limited. That doesn’t mean that people who didn’t “fit” didn’t exist before. It just means that their lived experience was denied.
If you google “gender spectrum”, there are resources available for anyone with a genuine desire to learn the basic information about the topic. Personally, I found reading personal/ political blogs written by trans or non-binary activists more useful to my (cis) personal understanding of the topic. If you choose to follow this suggestion, I respectfully suggest that you DO NOT COMMENT until you have a basic understanding. It’s rude to cut into a discussion of a complex topic to repeatedly demand answers to very basic question that you can find though minor research. This is called “derailing”. At best, asking remedial questions with genuine curiosity and desire to understand prevents people who already have a basic understanding of a topic from discussing more in-depth or nuanced issues. At worst, derailing is a type of trolling used to keep people with a basic understanding of the topic from discussing more in-depth issues. I apologize if I am coming off as condescending. Based on your earlier comments, it sounds like you are new to the topic and may find useful information about how to get your questions answered without the annoying push-back you are receiving above. I *think* I have a basic understanding of the topic, but do not feel confident that I can comment thoughtfully on personal/ political gender/ trans blogs ethically. Note, this ISN’T a gender issue specific blog, so the comments about derailing gender-topic discussions do not, necessarily, apply.
The reason you are getting “conflicting” responses is two part. (1) Gender is socially defined and there is no current consensus on the definition, as addressed above. (2) You’ve indicated that the responses you’ve received are unsatisfactory. Clearly, other readers are not sure what you’re looking for. The “how do you define…” questions are being asked to get an understanding of what, exactly, you are asking since responding to what we thought you were asking didn’t meet your expectations.
If you don’t have the groundwork to acknowledge that there are human people who do not fit within the popular understanding of gender binary, the follow up responses about “male” and “female” not being useful “categories” is something that you may want to put aside now and consider at a later date.
This is, of course, assuming that you are asking with a genuine desire to understand the issue and are not just a sea lion. Are you a sea lion? http://wondermark.com/1k62/
@Cressida:
I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt, and assume you are having trouble understanding the responses you got (another possibility is that you’re just a troll). The responders do have an understanding of ‘male’ and ‘female’. To me, it actually looks like they have a much deeper and more thorough understanding of ‘male’ and ‘female’ than you do (and, quite likely, that I do myself), including that those terms typically have some assumed features and properties that aren’t actually necessarily true of people who think of themselves as ‘male’ or ‘female’ – cisgendered or transgendered. What is being asked of you is for you to examine what you actually mean by ‘male’ and ‘female’, and state it. You could, for example, be defining those by making the remarkably common mistake of thinking purely about genitals. Not only is that a mistake in that it simply flat-out disregards the existence of transgender people, it also is a mistake to think there’s only two possibilities there. When you also take into account that (to my understanding, anyway) gender is actually very much social in nature, rather than any inherent property of anatomy or biology, but can be (and note that I said ‘can be’ not ‘always is’) influenced by anatomy and/or biology to some degree, then you realise that gender is actually a very complex area to discuss, so asking for a list of genders is actually a much more complicated question than you perhaps understand to be the case. However, providing what you understand ‘male’ and ‘female’ to be might give a basis to start with.
Wow. I think I’ve finally identified the disconnect here. I didn’t identify it earlier because it is so genuinely bonkers.
Y’all truly believe that any individual person can maintain his/her own personal definition of “male” or “female,” never mind how well it accords with anyone else’s definition. But words don’t work that way. Words rely on shared meaning in order to facilitate discourse. If a word can mean anything, then it means nothing.
I don’t think I have anything further to say.
So all you have is a tautological definition and don’t want to admit that you think xy=penis=male and that xx=uterus=female. And are happily ignoring xxy, xyy, and x. And that someone who is xy can have a vulva and vagina. Or that someone can have a uterus and testicles. And you’re ignoring the social implications ood makes and female entirely.
Or to be more concise, you’ve admitted that you are intellectually dishonest.
*of male
Forgot to preview.
@Cressida
It is undeniable that different people have their own definitions of ‘male’ and ‘female’. For a very simple example, some people assert that there is no such thing as a transgendered person – they say that penis=man, no penis=woman, and that’s it (and some of those people, but not all, even hold to that even in cases where a 100% cisgendered man loses his penis in some kind of accident, or something like that). Others accept that, to put it in very simple terms, you can have a woman’s mind in a man’s body, or vice versa, and your gender is your ‘mental gender’, so to speak.
So are you actually going to tell us what you mean by ‘male’ and ‘female’?
One problem is that Cressida thinks that “sex” and “gender” are the same thing.
Cressida
Bets, anyone?
Yet you’re the odd one out here, who isn’t sharing any meanings, among a rather diverse bunch of people who have come to shared understandings about what they say and mean. If that’s a new experience for you, then I’m not surprised it’s a strange realization to come to…. or I guess it would be, if it ever happens.
lol. Sex and “gender” are emphatically not the same thing.
OK Chigau, you win your bet.
Yes, I was trolling you all. In my spare time since 2015, I’ve thought about little else but gender. This is not a new topic for me. A couple of years ago, I used to agree with you all; but, then I thought about it for two seconds. Your position that a person can self-declare their “gender” is risible and unsupportable. “Gender” is a hierarchy imposed by patriarchy, not an identity. I used the term “erase” because you folks love to invoke it in defense of transwomen whenever women reference their uteruses or periods, so I thought I might be able to catch someone in an instance of hypocrisy. It didn’t work (because Allison failed to respond), but it was worth trying.
I did not come here in good faith. I came here to goad people into saying stupid shit. I was successful, and have the screen shots to prove it. I’m going to take them back to my TERF coven so that we can have a good laugh and then get back to the important work of dismantling the patriarchy. Have a nice day.
Cressida, self-declared trolls and their comments do not fare well here, but feel free to treasure your screenshots. I think I speak for others when I note that I’m all for you disseminating them far and wide. So… go for it!
Anyway,
Huh. That’s the most informative you have been hitherto.
(Not that you have any credibility)
TERFs have always baffled me because they claim to be super pro-women but then turn around and reduce people to nothing more than their genitals or chromosomes. For TERFs the most important thing about a person is whether they have a uterus or a penis. They claim to fight the patriarchy… and then play directly into it. Baffling.
But of course, they also tend to ignore the fact that someone who is xx can be born without a uterus, and that someone whose chromosomes are xy can have a vagina and will have been assigned female at birth and grown up being told they were a girl and only discover that they have complete androgen insensitivity when they fail to have a period. In fact, most of those people identify with the gender they were always told they were, which is female. Does a TERF consider them women since externally they appear to be a terf’s definition of ‘female’ and their birth certificate says ‘female’? But the chromosomes are terf-definition male.
Or how about a person with xx chromosomes who was born with a penis?
Silly me, though. TERFs never think these things through because they are intellectually dishonest.
Oh, stop lying. Your phony devil’s advocacy shone through here from the very start. Trying to solicit strawmen from people did not work out as you planned, but here you are, putting words into people’s mouths so you can claim your “gotcha.”
Pot and kettle meet again. That’s just another, less honest way of saying that cis women are harmed by yucky trans women trying to appropriate cis women’s identities, coupled with the laughable expectation that cis women alone have the right and power to decide who belongs to their exclusive club and if you disagree with that assessment you’re oppressing Real Women, the only ones who matter.
Waah, post-modernism, sniffle relativity. Yes, you are definitely well-versed in TERF talking points. Good luck dismantling the patriarchy by “trolling*” blawgs. I would, actually, prefer people like you to waste as much of your time as possible on the interwebs, away from people you’d like to harm.
*from the school of I Got Dunked On, So Now I’m Going to Pretend Doing So Was All Part of My Master Plan
I’m sure that the answers that creationists get for asking why there are still monkeys encourage them to think they’ve made their opponents look ridiculous, too.
Then please enlighten us about the meaning of the words “male” and “female” as we’ve explicitly asked you to do already a number of times. We’re waiting.
LOL
Cressida was completely full of shit, you all played along.
what a waste of time.
Ichthyic:
How so?
(We played, you spectated; who had more fun? :) )
Cressida #72:
So give us what you think ‘male’ and ‘female’ is. You have been asked that several times, and your response basically amounts to ‘LOL, don’t you know?’ The point is, from what you’ve posted so far, YOU don’t seem to know. You obviously think you do, but when challenged to actually give a .definition of those terms, you have repeatedly failed to do so.
And, in all that thinking, you seemingly never even examined the core of what you mean, such as what ‘male’ and ‘female’ actually mean when you use those terms. Seems to me that you’ve basically wasted those two years of thought.
My understanding (which may be incorrect, given I am a cisgendered man, so I am not speaking from personal experience) is that ‘self declaring’ isn’t really about the person deciding for themselves what gender they are today, which is a common claim many people, such as TERFs, make. Instead, it is more about making things which might not be obvious from simply looking at a person more obvious.
Under the binary gender idea, where there is, basically, male and not-male, named ‘female’, this is true. Given that you claim to be a TERF, the fact you seem to subscribe to this idea would appear to be a contradiction with your own position. Unless, of course, that is a lie, which is quite possible, given you are also a self-admitted troll.
Under the many-genders idea, where ‘male’ is reduced to only one of a whole spectrum of genders, this is quite obviously not true.
Actually, it didn’t work because ‘us folks’ only tend to make claims like this where it is stated or implied that the only people who are women are people with uteruses or periods to talk about, which does deny the existence of transgendered women, so there is no hypocrisy.
Well, from what I can see, the only one saying ‘stupid shit’ is yourself, so I’m not sure what screenshots of your own posts will do, but whatever floats your boat, I suppose.
Given that you’re buying into the idea that there’s only two genders, which actually seems to support the patriarchy, good luck on that.
Ichthyic:
Actually one of the things I like about reading this blog is the way even trolls can contribute, in a way – by other people ripping into what they’re saying and showing how and why it is full of shit.
I assumed Cressida’s last post was meant ironically.
When someone is being ironical, they usually mean the exact opposite of what they literally wrote.
I have no idea what Cressida really meant, not even when taking their post ironically.
I assumed that Cressida is a 馬鹿な人.