I know that it has significant meaning to me but I struggle putting it into words to explain it to other people (especially other dya cis people). So like a few years ago I was thinking about if I may be trans femme. I have since realised that no, actually I was just struggling with it for a while because I don’t relate to the gender roles and expectations society puts on men. I now identify more strongly with being a man than ever before, and I love being a man in a gender-way. I just absolutely hate being a man in a “what role men have in society”-way.
Gender roles are mostly a load of nonsense.
People all have different characteristics and personality traits that make them unique. It doesn’t matter what society deems as “normal” for a man or a woman, do whatever you want.
But this is why I hate this non-binary rubbish. All that does is reinforce the traditional gender stereotypes, rather than breaking them down. Like, “I’m a man but I like this thing that’s traditionally not what men like, maybe I’m non-binary”. No, you’re just a man who likes different things to what society classes as “normal”. There’s no need to make it more complicated.
Sorry for rant
There’s a thing in sociology (or social psychology? I don’t really know the difference) called “identity salience” that I think explains gender really well. Basically, people have any number of identities that describe them and they are of varying importance/salience. For example, it can be a big part of somebody’s identity that they are a “father,” but not a big part of their identity that they are a “driver” or “consumer.” Maybe all those words can objectively be applied to this person, but he would likely identify strongly with one over the others. Similarly, right now I’m a “commenter” because I’m leaving a comment. That’s something that objectively describes me, but I don’t consider it to be an important part of my identity at all. Gender is just like any other identity; it’s more or less important to different people. There’s already a distinction between sex and gender, even colloquially to an increasing extent, and gender is widely understood to exist as a spectrum or multiple spectrums. It’s reasonable to believe that people who don’t consider a traditional gender to be an important part of their identity could consider themselves non-binary.
It’s true that gender stereotypes exist, but there are plenty of positive characteristics that are also associated with gender like “men are confident” or “women are understanding.” If somebody doesn’t identify with any of those characteristics or even stereotypes, then they might just feel like they’re not accurately described by gendered words. Of course, somebody who doesn’t fit the stereotypical idea of a certain gender can still be of that gender; it’s all subjective.
If you’re interested in simple, objective, binary gender, it’s called sex, not gender. And even sex isn’t simple, objective, or binary when you really get detailed.Wow, you are so enlightened shitting on non-binary people like that and denying them their gender experience /s
Thanks for your contribution, I can tell you thought it out, but I don’t think nonbinary people are nonbinary just because they don’t fit into prescribed gender roles. I think it has more to do with the way people see themselves and whether or not they feel comfortable with particular labels such as “woman” or “she/her”. At least for me, gender is something more innate, not something that informs how I interface with society.
I definitely agree.
I admittedly don’t really think about it.
There is no “apart”. Gender is purely social.
I had gone through the same self examination when I was younger, wondering about my sexuality and gender identity. I didn’t really identify strongly with being a “man”, and valued some of the more “feminine” traits I had. In the end, though, I found a peace in just being who I am. I still identify as a “man” and just embraced both the traits that reinforce that as well as break from the common mold. In the end, I came away from it finding gender kind of silly overall. I have no issues with individuals identifying themselves in any particular way, but don’t really understand the need for gender at all in the larger scale of society.
Agreed. I identify as a man but have almost no attachment to that gender. The most I think about my gender is to double check the sign on the restroom. This is probably a lot of privilege though.
My experience was similar, gender felt like an external expectation, mostly a limiting one, growing up as a girl. I didn’t really internalize it besides accepting that it shapes how strangers receive and respond to me just like being short or ugly does.
That was my experience as a boy and now a man. It isn’t inherently a negative thing because it is shorthand for expectations, but it becomes absolutely horrible when people try to force it on others instead of acknowledging that gender roles are generalizations and not written in stone.
My sense of my own gender?
I am a man. It was never a question for me. I am male. I feel it in my bones. I feel it the same way I feel that I am human. It’s a bedrock defining feature of me. I don’t have to wonder or convince myself or others. I am male, and I don’t feel like I have to act a certain way, because whatever I do is still male, by definition, because it’s me doing it and I am male. QED. I wanna wear a pink dress or play with dolls, doesn’t matter, still male. You don’t like it, fuck you and your insecurity. I do what I want, deal with it.
Gender in general?
I think it’s a spectrum, like almost all things. BUT, I think it’s not an even distribution. There’s a shit-ton of clustering near the ends of the spectrum (“cis male” and “cis female”). And I think for anyone who isn’t heavily to one end or the other, there’s a lot of confusion and “figuring out”, especially because people love labels, and kids love labels even more than anyone else. And gen Z kids love labels even more than previous generations, for some reason.
And then compounding this issue is the social factors, which you’ve asked me not to discuss. But it’s important to realize what is social pressure and what is just “gender”.
Edit: and I’ll also add that I feel bad for people closer to the middle of that spectrum, because the world we live in was not designed around them.
Similar to another poster, I break it down like this:
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Sex is your physical binary biological gender. If you have a penis and testicles that produce sperm, you are a dude; if you have a vagina, ovaries, and a womb to carry a baby, you are a female. No ifs, ands, or buts about this imo.
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Gender identity is what you identify as. This is where we go he/she/they, and can be completely removed from the biological sex of the person because gender is psychological and belongs to the sense of self. We use “he” and “she” as binary identifiers of male and female species respectively, but with humans it becomes more complex as perhaps a male may identify as a female-gendered person, or a female may identify as a male-gendered person - or both of them identify as a non-gendered person.
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Gender roles could (and I personally think should) be separated from both biological sex and psychological gender. This is what we, as human society as a whole, determine the division of labor and what activities, habits, and behaviors are acceptable for men and women. In the past when we were still growing as a species, this was actually important since men were needed to hunt down animals due to biologically being more suited to it and women were needed to do other things while the men were out; nowadays, however, this is a dated concept as anybody can earn money and we don’t live in a world where we need to hunt to survive. Women can just as easily put food on the table and enjoy riding motorcycles or chopping down wood just as easily as men could stay at home, clean the house, take care of the kids, and cook meals for the family for when their partner gets home. If anything, I would say that we could consider the “Masculine/Feminine” dichotomy as a sliding scale at best, but what society considers “masculine” or “feminine” changes all the time, so it’s arguably ultimately worthless trying to categorize this.
TL;DR Biological sex, gender identity, and gender role aren’t all mutually inclusive. If I am a man, I am not beholden to the expectations of being a macho man who slams IPAs and lifts weights while talking about cars; on the flip side, if I am a man who identifies as a female, I am also not beholden to obtaining a Blåhaj shark plushie, wearing kneesocks all the time, losing 60 pounds, and becoming a software engineer who only runs Arch or some other Linux distro.
Just because I’m interested in archeology I thought I would share that evidence supporting a strong division of labour based on sex in ancient societies is pretty thin. There have been several articles lately arguing against that hypothesis due to finding skeletons of women buried with weapons and weapons that appear to be designed for lighter frames.
Oh sick - I did not know that! That’s really cool actually. Would this be from something like the Smithsonian Museum if I wanted to read up on this kind of stuff?
It’s worth noting that humans do not come in a sex binary. Intersex is a lot more common than people think it is, just often in ways that are invisible. I know 3 intersex people personally that are all intersex in different ways. None of them would fall into either “binary” category.
Edit: To add to this, what about people with testicles that CANT produce sperm? Or people with a vagina but have had to have their womb removed due to a medical complication? These also don’t fall under either definition given. Oftentimes rigid systems are only good for excluding people even if that isn’t the intention.
Even if it’s twice as common as most scientific studies believe it is, it’s still less than a tenth of a percent of the population.
The fact that you know 3 intersex people says more about the company you choose to keep than it does about the prevalence in the average population.
Intersex people are important to keep in mind but we also need context here. Statistically, they’re not a 3rd gender, they’re a rounding error. They exist, but it’s disingenuous to say something like “AHA, but you have failed to consider the tiny percentage of people who do not fit into your description!”
I think it’s fair to say something like “sex is binary” in the same way it’s fair to say something like “dogs have four legs”. Yes there are dogs with 3 legs, but if we had to include every statistical rounding error every time we talked about something we’d never be able to say anything. Given the topic, I think Poggervania should have at least included a mention of intersex people, but let’s not pretend that the world is split equally into male, female, and intersex.
If this bothers you, I challenge you to pick any noun and describe it. Literally any physical thing. Describe it to the best of your ability. I’ll find something that you didn’t include in your description.
I simply don’t care about the rest of the argument. It is disgusting to call millions of people a rounding error.
Reality is often disappointing. But it is real.
Reality is, these people exist. Despite your protests they are real. Your argument is based on them either not existing or being a mistake.
There is simply no way we can ever align on this issue if we can’t fundamentally agree that all people are people. Enjoy the rest of your day. I’m not continuing this.
Well if you keep pretending I said things I didn’t say, you can get offended at whatever you want. Please leave me out of it though. I didn’t ask to be party to the made up argument in your head.
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Straight white male here.
Are you trying to sleep with me / I’m trying to sleep with you? I’d like for you to have a vagina and preferably be straight or bi.
Otherwise I don’t care about what’s between your legs. Men can be caretakers, women can be construction workers, some random gender can be a computer programmer. I don’t care, as long as the job gets done.
If it’s outside of the bedroom, gender / sex, means nothing to me.
Well, I just went to reply to someone’s comment on mine and found that my comment no longer exists.
Why was it removed?
Could be because I reported it for being discriminating towards non-binary people because you negated their existence.
Well done on completely missing the point of what I said.
Lemmy, just as censoring as Reddit if not even worse. Yay.
If you want an uncensored instance/community, then don’t just whinge about it, set one up.
I am really very attached to being biologically female. Loved being pregnant, nursing, enjoy sex in this body. I would be utterly distressed to wake up in a male body.
Personally, I think of male/female as biological, manly/womanly as things defined by the entire set of people who consider themselves men, or women (like if you are a woman you are by definition womanly) and masculine/feminine as performance - if you were a genderless alien and trying to fit in here, or a man portraying a woman in a comedy, the things you would do to perform gender - clothing and behaviors that are more superficial.
I think probably the last two are gender. And yes you can be manly as fuck without being masculine. Perhaps more manly, because you don’t feel you need to perform masculinity to be a man.
i’m not going to bother to make a separation between sex and gender because i find that to be just a little bit of hair splitting nonsense.
with that in mind, i think the male and female aspects of human life are integral to what it means to be a human. i study a lot of mythology and i dabble a bit in paleontology and neuroscience. i believe that there are significant differences between the sexes that act like a yin and yang. i do think we are out of balance and that most societies are heavily weighted towards male aspects. furthermore, i think we would really benefit from leaning into the female side of our humanity.
i believe in a lot of things that most of you would consider old-fashioned but are actually rooted in thousands of years of well-documented human behavior. furthermore, i believe in science. i’ll punch a guy that hits a girl and i have no shame in saying that.
I am not in any way related to the medical field or have any sort of academic knowledge on this topic, with this said, I want to start by saying that I don’t give a shit about if you identify as a man or a woman, let me know and I’ll do the best I can to follow your wishes, I don’t concider it being fantastic or terrible either way, as long as you are happy and no one else gets hurt, I am fine with it.
Now, I see gender as two variables, the physical and the mental. To me the physical gender variable is binary, but the mental gender is an analog variable that is basically an infinite spectrum.
I am a man, I was born a man, and I will die a man, this applies to both the physical and mental parts of me, however I make no secret that I sometimes do have thoughts about how life would be if I was a woman, I imagine feelings, think about facts of life for both men and women, both have a lot of advantages, and a lot of disadvantages, there have been times when I have wanted to be a woman, but reality allways comes back to that I am a man, mentally and physically, and in real life, I can’t realisticly imagine me as a woman.
I do find pronoun checks really annoying, I listen to a podcast that does thise every episode, but I realize that that is my own problem and I don’t have any right to make this someone else’s problem, so I just accept it and move on.
I think the way we talk about gender and sex are very ambiguous because the term gender is overloaded to the tits.
I think it’s more accurate to think of gender identity and gender roles as completely separate concepts that shouldn’t even share terminology.
Gender identity is like the sex of your brain, which can either be male or female or ambiguous / neither. Sexual dimorphism of the human brain has been observed and it’s been observed that trans people’s brains match their understanding of their own gender identity more closely than what they were assigned at birth. So with that knowledge we can assume that someone can be “male brained” or “female brained” in as far as gender identity (or gender “map”)
Then you have “sex” which when used in the traditional sense is your external sex (male, female, ambiguous / neither).
Then you have gender expression / roles, which to me is where the weasel words start to slip in. Gender expression is how one virtue signals to the rest of their tribe they are their brain (and maybe body) sex. This is somewhat personal and somewhat social, because we ultimately decide how we want to behave in the world so the world sees us for who we believe ourselves to be.
Gender roles are the rules society creates that you’re supposed to follow so everyone is playing with the same deck when it comes to understanding what you are supposed to virtue signal and what you are supposed to presume when receiving that signal.
Gender roles are 100% fake in that they’re arbitrary and if they provide no net gain we can eliminate them. But gender is 100% real in that many people do experience strongly being their gender identity. If gender was totally fake trans people wouldn’t exist. So you have to be precise about in what ways you mean something like “gender is fake just abolish gender roles and everyone’s happy” because it’s definitely used to invalidate trans people and that’s not very cash money.
Exactly my point, I just find it very difficult or even impossible to put my experience of gender identity like you describe it into words
Do you think we could use ethnicity as an analogy? For example, one “ethnicity role” might be that Asians are supposed to own little convenience stores like Kim’s Convenience, or something. That “ethnicity role” is completely ridiculous and shouldn’t exist, but ethnic identity itself should/does exist, and some people will more readily practice their ethnic identities than others.
Interesting comparison!
Males start as females before they differentiate and yet, both have a phallus (clitoris/penis), guys’ ones are usually just bigger. We are all both, and either. It shouldn’t be this big societal discussion, its just another way the rich arbitrarily divide us from realizing what’s really going on
Well, what does “being a man” mean outside of gender roles? There are physical attributes we have that women don’t. We grow facial hair, we grow muscle more easily, we are on average taller, tend to have better spatial intelligence, higher rates of aggression, higher rates of risk taking, more men lay on the extremes of distribution curves
All of those are due to mostly physical attributes outside of any perceived gender roles.
What does being a man mean to me? Well, it means you protect and provide for the people in your life. It means you are kind but stern. Just but merciful.
I’m a very old-school traditional kind of guy relative to the new generation. I was raised by immigrants from a more conservative country - and while I am certainly not politically conservative, I do prefer conservative gender roles to an extent.
I like women that are feminine, I like women who cook for me, in my relationships I’m the more “stoic” one and the woman is usually more flamboyant/emotional.
Ultimately we all know gender roles are all societally based rules. But I figure a lot of our notions of life in society are also societally based rules… doesn’t mean they are useless. Men are soldiers because they tend to make better soldiers. Women are nurses because they tend to be more empathetic and less threatening.
These are partly due to biology, partly due to gender roles. It’s an interesting question you bring up.
In my experience (and therefore my opinion as it relates to my own thoughts and feelings), *it’s ineffable *and that is one of the reasons that it is so hard to communicate even mild dysphoria to people who don’t experience it.
