Return to Gender 101

[LadyShea]

Another thought experiment. Alex is biologically female and being evaluated for FTM sex reassignment surgery. One of the requirements is that Alex lives as a man, full time, during the presurgery transition.

How does Alex "live as a man"? What does "living as a man" look like? What steps would he take to live as a man, if any?

[Ensign Steve]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

Another thought experiment. Alex is biologically female and being evaluated for FTM sex reassignment surgery. One of the requirements is that Alex lives as a man, full time, during the presurgery transition.

How does Alex "live as a man"? What does "living as a man" look like? What steps would he take to live as a man, if any?

Good one.

[LadyShea]

So you understand what I am talking about ES? Thank goodness I thought I was talking gibberish.

[Ensign Steve]

Well, yeah, I mean, it cuts right to the point. It's not like Alex can go around impregnating women, so he needs to find some non-biological* way to express his gender identity. I can't imagine any answer to that question that doesn't involve to a whole bunch of arbitrary cultural standards. I'm not all that creative, though, so maybe I'll be surprised. I'm looking forward to see where it goes. So, yeah, totally sincere on the "Good one."

* I suppose he could start lifting weights, but if he's biologically female, he'll just show that women can bulk up with muscles, too, and just choose not to in general because it doesn't fit the cultural definition of female. Unless he takes steroids, or something.

Can we say that hormone therapy is part of the surgical process, and that he has to present as a man for a while before even being approved for that? Like, all he has is his female physiology to work with. What can he do to present as male then?

[LadyShea]

I think hormones could be considered part of the pre-surgical transition.

My thinking is along the lines of anything he can or must do to live as a man, that is something that anyone can do regardless of their self identified gender, is necessarily cultural.

For example, I am a woman, physically and mentally. There's a whole lot of stuff involved in that statement. But, is there anything at all that could prevent me from living as a man? Is there any reason I could not go through a list of things I think would be necessary to live as a man and do them? I could even take hormones. I am not a man, but I could live as a man. Would living as man or taking hormones make me a man? No, because I am a woman. Hell, I could have a penis attached and it still wouldn't make me a man, though it would make me male.

Alex is a man, but with the wrong physical body parts. To live as man Alex would have to take the exact same steps I would.

If a man and a woman can both live as a man, without affecting their own gender identity, that whole aspect of existence has to be socially constructed.

[Ensign Steve]

Yeah, I was even thinking after I made my post that plenty of women athletes take steroids or testosterone, and they're still women.

[LadyShea]

In my opinion if we take it down to pure biology/sex (and giving the brain the priority status is warranted I think), removing all cultural aspects/gender, Alex is a man with a physical condition that can be addressed medically.

Everything else is arbitrary social stuff.

[seebs]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

You're still not getting what I am saying (and I think what Jhalla was saying). What body type one cognitively feels they should have is still sex, IMO, it's still biological. The brain is part of the body.

Jhalla could have meant this. Goffman couldn't. Jhalla was describing what Goffman said in 1978.

Furthermore... It's a sort of unusual claim, simply because the term "sex" has so consistently been used for the mechanical parts of the body, and the term "gender" for cognitive state. Back in the 1970s (and 1980s, and even most of the 1990s), it was assumed that cognitive state was purely learned, so it was discussed entirely in terms of how you got your cognitive state.

[seebs]

(Separating this out because it is a very interesting discussion in its own right.)

Originally Posted by LadyShea

When a woman who was born with a penis and male chromosomes says "I am a woman" does she mean only "I shouldn't have a penis and I should have breasts" or does she mean "I possess this set of characteristics and traits that define the category women and therefore I am a woman"? Or both? Is it a statement of what she is or what she isn't? Is "I am a woman" synonymous with "I am not a man"?

Okay, I am at this point gonna speculate: I am guessing that you do not have a very strong innate biological sense of gender identity, because this is exactly the kind of stuff that I kept asking people, because what they're saying sounds semantically null to me.

What she means, apparently, is that her brain has a division of the species into male and female, and that she is unequivocally on the female side of it. You keep trying to translate this into other things, but it's not an other thing. Any other thing you could possibly say is a conclusion drawn from this. It's an implication, not the meaning. The meaning is that there is a sense-of-gender and hers says "female".

It definitely does not mean "women posess these characteristics, so do I, therefore I am a woman". That was a theory people had; that theory failed. I know an MTF who is an electrical engineer and hates a lot of girly things. She wants to be a tomboy.

When she says "I shouldn't have a penis (nor body hair, nor a deep voice, etc.)" that is sex, not gender.

To the best of my knowledge, this is not a way that the term has ever been used in psychological literature.

The essential division is:

1. Sex is physical.
2. Gender is cognitive.

This led to the inferences, last century:
1. Sex is innate.
2. Gender is learned.

That division has been in place since last century, and is the one in terms of which Goffman was writing, and appears to be what Jhalla is referring to.

The problem is that, just as we have learned that "male" and "female" are not really completely distinct states, so too are "physical" and "cognitive" not really completely distinct states.

The evolution of the terminology is that "gender" has continued to include all cognitive traits. Even the traits that appear to be caused by physical things, such as the brain.

Thus, a MTF transgendered person isn't a person with both male and female sexual attributes; it's a person with unambiguously male biology and female gender.

This terminology is mostly-consistent. I don't think you'll find anyone actually working with gender identity issues (whether intersex or trans or whatever) who would consider cognitive sense of being male or female to be sex rather than gender. But that sense is not cultural.

The characteristics and traits that constitute gender, rather than the physical attributes that constitute sex, are culturally derived.

Again, this definition dates back to the assumption that cognitive and physical were wholly separate categories, and that assumption failed us.

I feel there is a lot more in the seemingly simple statement "I am a woman" or "I am a man" than physical primary and secondary sex characteristics. And the more is all cultural

Except, and this is the big point:

No, it isn't all cultural. There is a part of it which is simply a self-contained hunk of white matter (it's not in the grey matter, according to the most recent stuff I've read) which is wired in advance to anticipate that one's species comes in two types, and that the self is of one of those types.

That part is biological, but because it's not part of the genitalia or chromosomes and isn't something a doctor can test conclusively except by talking to the patient, and the only solid information we have it is self-reporting of cognitive states, it is called "gender" by, well, basically every researcher, every paper, every standard-of-care document, I have ever seen.

It's gender because it's feelings and beliefs, not physical layout of body. And it's not cultural.

See for example:
http://www.dsm5.org/ProposedRevision...n.aspx?rid=482

[seebs]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

Another thought experiment. Alex is biologically female and being evaluated for FTM sex reassignment surgery. One of the requirements is that Alex lives as a man, full time, during the presurgery transition.

How does Alex "live as a man"? What does "living as a man" look like? What steps would he take to live as a man, if any?

I think you're conflating an unrelated thing. "Living as a man" is a social construct.

But wanting to is an innate cognitive trait. It's not a social construct, it does not result from social constructs. But, by consensus of everything I have ever seen written on the topic, it is "gender", not "sex", because it is a cognitive trait.

I think what we're disagreeing on here is how to resolve the ambiguity of a trait which is simultaneously cognitive and biological. You're asserting that all biological traits are always sex rather than gender. The conclusion that has been consistent among therapists, trannies, researchers, and so on, is that cognitive traits are always gender rather than sex.

So gender comes in two flavors, innate biological awareness and cultural roles and norms.

We could, I suppose, have resolved this the other way, and said that sex comes in two flavors, physical genitalia and brain identity. We didn't, I think, simply because all of the study of sense-of-self was done in terms of the assumption that it was a learned thing, so all the writings talked about it as "gender".

So at some point, the definition of the thing and the reality clashed, and the reality won, and the definition had to get nudged a bit. Since the sense that one is male or female was always called gender, it's still called gender, but now we acknowledge that it appears to be biologically innate in some (most?) people.

[seebs]

Originally Posted by Ensign Steve

Can we say that hormone therapy is part of the surgical process, and that he has to present as a man for a while before even being approved for that?

We could, but it would be a pretty awful standard of care. Hormones are generally approved pretty early on if the patient has a strong preference. There are reasons:

1. Hormones are basically reversible.
2. A sense of progress and acknowledgement is vital to the patient's survival in many cases.
3. Lots of trannies would have an extremely hard time passing.
4. Who the hell cares? You don't get high off the hormones, so there's not a big problem of people faking gender dysphoria.

[Ensign Steve]

Originally Posted by seebs

We could, but it would be a pretty awful standard of care.

I hate to break it to you, but trans-care in this country is absolutely abysmal. Also, this was presented as a thought experiment, not an actual suggestion of care. Not that I'm surprised that you blew it off to keep spouting your same BS.

[seebs]

Originally Posted by Ensign Steve

I hate to break it to you, but trans-care in this country is absolutely abysmal.

I was aware.

Also, this was presented as a thought experiment, not an actual suggestion of care.

Ahh. See. I was answering it as a thought experiment at the level of "what would happen if we did this"? That's because "can we..." is a suggestion of a course of action, usually. Hypotheticals are "what if we...", not "can we..."

Not that I'm surprised that you blew it off to keep spouting your same BS.

That's a pretty nasty thing to say. I engage in good faith. Yes, I sometimes misinterpret things. Yes, I sometimes focus on details when they weren't part of the point someone was getting at. But I didn't blow you off; I responded to what you said. I did not mind-read and respond to your unstated intent. Horrors! How can I be such a monster?

And what do you mean "usual BS"? Am I saying a thing which isn't true? If so, show me the evidence. I've said repeatedly: If you present evidence that I'm wrong, and it's stronger than the evidence I've had so far, I will change my mind. And if I'm not saying things which aren't true, how can it be BS?

So to get back to the thought experiment, rephrased in a way that makes me happier:

What if the doctors say that hormone therapy is part of the surgical process, and that he has to present as a man for a while before even being approved for that? Like, all he has is his female physiology to work with. What can he do to present as male then?

Answer: Binding, clothes, posture, haircut, etcetera. All but binding (and maybe a pair of socks) are purely cultural, and the way you express them is cultural.

But then, no one's disputed that the communication of gender is a cultural thing.

[lisarea]

This is kind of an interesting thing that's been happening that probably belongs here:

Can Reddit handle the truth? « man boobz

The backstory is that, some time ago, people who'd been bothered by Reddit hosting and enabling child porn and frustrated by Reddit ignoring their complaints, managed to draw some major media attention to the subject, which finally resulted in them shutting down the Jailbait subreddit, which was where most of the media focus had been.

However, they continued to host a number of other subreddits sexualizing children, and again, dutifully ignored complaints about them; until again, there was a media push that FINALLY resulted in Reddit officially adopting a "no sexualizing children" policy.

There was and remains much wailing and gnashing of teeth; and it appears that this has resulted in some effort on Reddit's part to eliminate the people who tattled about the kiddie porn.

What's really funny is that I quit reddit years ago because it really is vile; but I have recently been drawn back in by the anti-reddit subreddit, so I've been giving those assholes pagehits again.

[seebs]

Wow. That's... Well, it totally fits my model of the ethics-free geek mentality. "People like this, therefore we should let them do it since anyone hurt by it wouldn't be posting here."

[LadyShea]

Okay, I am at this point gonna speculate: I am guessing that you do not have a very strong innate biological sense of gender identity, because this is exactly the kind of stuff that I kept asking people, because what they're saying sounds semantically null to me.

WTF are you talking about? I am a woman. That is a part of my individual human identity. I am a woman in the same way I am me. It's just there.

To the best of my knowledge, this is not a way that the term has ever been used in psychological literature.

The essential division is:

1. Sex is physical.
2. Gender is cognitive.

Dude, I have shown you current, contemporary statements from places like the World Health Organization that say sex is biological and gender is social/cultural. I have heard and read this this so many times I have to assume it is how it used ubiquitously. In my understanding biology applies to the brain too.

If the current psychological literature says gender is cognitive and sex is genitals/chromosomes then that has not permeated through to us laypeople at all. TA least not to me

So really, this whole argument with the frustrations from all sides is about the definitions we are working with. I have spelled out the definitions I am working with, several times, did you read them? If you saw we were using different ones why didn't you say so? I don't feel you were clear on your working definitions until JUST NOW.

[LadyShea]

Originally Posted by seebs

I think you're conflating an unrelated thing. "Living as a man" is a social construct.

But wanting to is an innate cognitive trait. It's not a social construct, it does not result from social constructs. But, by consensus of everything I have ever seen written on the topic, it is "gender", not "sex", because it is a cognitive trait.

I think what we're disagreeing on here is how to resolve the ambiguity of a trait which is simultaneously cognitive and biological. You're asserting that all biological traits are always sex rather than gender. The conclusion that has been consistent among therapists, trannies, researchers, and so on, is that cognitive traits are always gender rather than sex.

So gender comes in two flavors, innate biological awareness and cultural roles and norms.

We could, I suppose, have resolved this the other way, and said that sex comes in two flavors, physical genitalia and brain identity. We didn't, I think, simply because all of the study of sense-of-self was done in terms of the assumption that it was a learned thing, so all the writings talked about it as "gender".

So at some point, the definition of the thing and the reality clashed, and the reality won, and the definition had to get nudged a bit. Since the sense that one is male or female was always called gender, it's still called gender, but now we acknowledge that it appears to be biologically innate in some (most?) people.

Oh for fucks sake. I give up.

[seebs]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

Dude, I have shown you current, contemporary statements from places like the World Health Organization that say sex is biological and gender is social/cultural. I have heard and read this this so many times I have to assume it is how it used ubiquitously.

It is used that way very often with the incorrect presupposition that this is a valid and unambiguous dichotomy. Everyone thought they were being very progressive by clarifying that the cognitive experience was purely cultural and social, but they turned out to be wrong.

In my understanding biology applies to the brain too.

It does, but there is nothing in the literature prior to the 1990s and 2000s suggesting that biology can create a cognitive sense of identity as male or female in the brain, because we all knew that was obviously impossible.

If the current psychological literature says gender is cognitive and sex is genitals/chromosomes then that has not permeated through to us laypeople at all. TA least not to me

The problem is, again: The division between "cognitive" and "biological" was believed to be pretty close to absolute, so everyone believed that cognitive traits were learned, thus social or cultural.

All research on sex/gender I've ever seen has called all cognitive traits "gender".

So really, this whole argument with the frustrations from all sides is about the definitions we are working with.

Not quite, but very close.

I have spelled out the definitions I am working with, several times, did you read them? If you saw we were using different ones why didn't you say so? I don't feel you were clear on your working definitions until JUST NOW.

I did say so, repeatedly. Only, the thing is.

The statement "gender is purely a social trait" can be either of two claims:

1. A claim that any non-social trait is not gender.
2. A claim that all things we could call gender are purely social.

In practice, it has usually been both of these, because that was the generally accepted view of human gender experience throughout the 20th century, and is still widespread today, though basically dead among researchers working with trans or intersex people.

There is nothing in any literature referring to an innate cognitive sense of male-vs-female as "sex" as contrasted with "gender". Everyone agreed that the cognitive experience was gender. The separation of things into physical and social traits presupposes that there is no such thing as a cognitive trait which is biological.

That's what I keep trying to argue: The definitions there are like a naive definition of "male" and "female" that presupposes that everything you ever encounter will be unambiguously one or the other.

All cognitive experience of identity as male or female is consistently referred to as gender. The claim that "gender" is purely social is a claim that all cognitive experience of identity as male or female is purely social, and is a false claim.

Again: I will totally concede this point, and apologize for wasting your time, if you find something in the literature which acknowledges all three of these things (outward physical form, innate cognitive state, socially-acquired notions) and categorizes the cognitive state as sex rather than as gender.

And I am pretty sure I have totally stated these definitions more than once, and said that I was disputing those definitions, and that they had been invalidated by research.

[seebs]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

Oh for fucks sake. I give up.

I don't see why. This was the point of dispute, now it's clarified, we can all go on to agreeing that gender presentation is purely cultural and has no known inherent traits or patterns.

Everyone consistently used the term "gender" to refer to the cognitive states, which they believed were purely learned. When some of them turned out not to be learned, though, they were still being talked about as "gender" because cognitive states had always been called gender.

[seebs]

Okay, had some time to think, gonna clarify some points.

The big issue here is that a whole lot of writing and term-defining was done with the premise that cognitive experience of gender categories, including the sense of what category the self comes in, were purely learned things. If that's true, then "cognitive" and "socially determined" are identical categories. So you can use them interchangeably. You can refer to either by describing the other. And people did.

But I call to attention three terms:
1. Intersex.
2. Transgendered.
3. Transsexual.

You will note that, when people discuss "intersex", they are discussing only things like chromosomes, hormones, genitalia, and secondary sexual characteristics. A person who is an otherwise completely ordinary XY male who self-identifies as female is never called "intersex".

The distinction between transsexual and transgendered, again, distinguishes between "body" and "mind".

That the mind turns out to reside in part of the body threw a wrench in all the works, because it broke all the nice clean theories.

I know this stuff may seem fairly irrelevant to most people. Let me point something out: After multiple years of therapy, counseling, and suicidal ideations caused by trying bravely to overcome the "purely social" conditioning that led to a cognitive sense of gender, people stop thinking it's irrelevant.

It turns out that the division of things into "sex" which is purely biological and not cognitive, and "gender" which is purely cognitive and not biological, failed. There is a category of things which are both biological and cognitive. Since the therapists studying cognition understood themselves to be studying "gender", and the doctors looking at surgical and hormonal interventions understood themselves to be studying "sex", the way in which the brain itself can assign a tag of "male" or "female" to the sense-of-self has been studied as "gender", and everything to do with treating trans or intersex conditions calls it "gender".

Given that discovery, the historically popular claim that "gender" is purely socially constructed is not a definition, it's an assertion, and it turns out to be roughly as accurate as the claim that there is no difference between sex and gender, because people are either male or female and there is no ambiguity.

[Watser?]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

Oh for fucks sake. I give up.

[wildernesse]

There are three things being talked about here
1. sex
2. gender/gender identity
3. gender display

seebs, you are conflating gender/gender identity with gender display, imo. The convo is about gender display in visual form. You have mentioned that you aren't paying attention to the visual parts, which means that you aren't talking about what everyone else is talking about and you are fixated on one sentence that is not important to the conversation about visual forms of gender display in ads.

[seebs]

Originally Posted by wildernesse

There are three things being talked about here
1. sex
2. gender/gender identity
3. gender display

On this, I totally agree with you. Thank you! I was starting to think I was going crazy.

seebs, you are conflating gender/gender identity with gender display, imo.

What I've been trying to do is point out that the original writer, in 1978, was necessarily conflating the concepts, because there was no evidence known to science at the time that they were distinct.

So I'm not conflating them. I'm pointing out that the words in this transcript very clearly conflate them, and make claims about gender identity which are true only of gender display (and recognition). And that, in 1978, these claims would have been believed to be true about gender identity as well by basically everyone who understood that gender display was cultural.

The convo is about gender display in visual form. You have mentioned that you aren't paying attention to the visual parts, which means that you aren't talking about what everyone else is talking about and you are fixated on one sentence that is not important to the conversation about visual forms of gender display in ads.

I almost agree with this.

1. I am not talking about "one sentence", but about an entire multi-paragraph section which repeatedly makes assertions that gender identity is purely social, or makes claims which are nonsensical without that premise. I will grant that I am fixated on this one part. This might be because, as noted, issues related to gender identity are a much larger deal in my life than they are in most peoples' lives.
2. I am not sure at all that this turns out to be unimportant. If it's unimportant to the conversation about visual forms of gender display, why is it part of the piece? The author presumably thought it was important.

If someone says "look at this material on gender", and two pages in it has claims that are definitively false, that really undermines my view of the material as authoritative. It can still be interesting, but it's hard for me to trust it.

[wildernesse]

Originally Posted by seebs

What I've been trying to do is point out that the original writer, in 1978, was necessarily conflating the concepts, because there was no evidence known to science at the time that they were distinct.

So I'm not conflating them. I'm pointing out that the words in this transcript very clearly conflate them, and make claims about gender identity which are true only of gender display (and recognition). And that, in 1978, these claims would have been believed to be true about gender identity as well by basically everyone who understood that gender display was cultural.

And yet, this is still off-focus, because the thread is about the video which uses the 1978 material as a jumping off point. Even if the material does what you say it does, it's not the topic.

I almost agree with this.

1. I am not talking about "one sentence", but about an entire multi-paragraph section which repeatedly makes assertions that gender identity is purely social, or makes claims which are nonsensical without that premise. I will grant that I am fixated on this one part. This might be because, as noted, issues related to gender identity are a much larger deal in my life than they are in most peoples' lives.
2. I am not sure at all that this turns out to be unimportant. If it's unimportant to the conversation about visual forms of gender display, why is it part of the piece? The author presumably thought it was important.

If someone says "look at this material on gender", and two pages in it has claims that are definitively false, that really undermines my view of the material as authoritative. It can still be interesting, but it's hard for me to trust it. [emphasis added]

Ok, I think all you have to say is in the underlined part. Fine. But the video is not stuck in 1978, and no one else really wants to talk about it in that light because it makes other interesting points that remain valid apart from that. I recently read a book that started off with a stupid and uneccesary underlying premise that had other interesting and potentially valid ideas, so I get what you are saying.

I'm not really interested in talking about this any more.

[seebs]

Originally Posted by wildernesse

And yet, this is still off-focus, because the thread is about the video which uses the 1978 material as a jumping off point. Even if the material does what you say it does, it's not the topic.

The thread's "topic" is either a specific instance of parents raising a kid and not telling people whether it was a boy or girl, or "gender".

I am pretty sure there is no general rule against talking about an interesting aspect of a thing which is not the primary reason that thing was brought up or mentioned, when that aspect is also on-topic for the thread.

Ok, I think all you have to say is in the underlined part. Fine. But the video is not stuck in 1978, and no one else really wants to talk about it in that light because it makes other interesting points that remain valid apart from that. I recently read a book that started off with a stupid and uneccesary underlying premise that had other interesting and potentially valid ideas, so I get what you are saying.

See, the thing is.

If someone had just said "yeah, but the rest of the piece doesn't really rely on that", I'd probably have just written it off to "people doing academic and cultural stuff on gender often gloss over the special-case psychology, whatever". What confused me was multiple people giving me a variety of mutually-exclusive and/or anachronistic explanations of why Goffman's 1978 book didn't really contradict neuroscience results from 2004.

So I guess that answers my question, and confirms that the rest of the video is worth the effort despite that start making me distrustful. I'll give it a look Real Soon when I have more bandwidth.