Sotiris wrote:Rare or not, it was you who proposed an absolute binary. And you still haven't addressed the issue of how you would "classify" an intersex person. Wouldn't you refer to them by the way they identify and present themselves? That was the point I was trying to make. Sex is biological signification. Gender is a social construct. Although these terms are used interchangeably in every day usage, they are not the same.
I don't have to adress the issue of how to 'classify' those persons, because I'm not interested in making any classification. But I guess when dealing with an 'intersex' person, I'd leave it up to that person to pick either 'male' or 'female'. That's all the flavors there are. I don't know that I agree that gender is a 'social construct'. I know it has been hip in sociological circles for the last 30 years to say so, but I'm not enterily sold on it.
Alphapanchito wrote:No.. I was talking about people born as a female (physically) and later transition to present as a man.. Which I believe is the opposite of what you just said.
My bad. Also, my apologies for being fairly harsh in my last reply. I just came from another discussion forum which has pretty much been ruined since a couple of months because of some self-appointed language purists on the PC-patrol. I see a lot of that 'attitude' in your posts, but I shouldn't have lashed out the way I did anyway. So once again, my apologies.
Alphapanchito wrote:Wow.. but.. they aren't women. They just aren't. Being a women does not mean having any physical trait. If someone was born with a penis, is there exactly no way that they can ever be a women in your book?
If they do away with their penis (removed through surgery) and get on hormones which let their breasts grow and gets their voices up etc., then they ultimately become a woman. But if you have a penis and you put on a dress and lipstick, no, you're not a woman. That's a fact. Period.
Alphapanchito wrote:No offense, but you seem not to know much about it and are just saying what you think might be true. Gender is, in fact, a social construct, and the fact is undeniable. Ask anyone slightly involved in gender issues. And our gender is whatever we feel we are, not what happens to be in our pants.
That's not a fact, that's opinion, like I said to Sotiris; an opinion that is very popular in some academic circles. I think you get different points of view when you ask a sociologist and a biologist about gender. That's hardly 'consensus'.
Alphapanchito wrote:Sex is the thing that is determined by nature. What makes us feel more "masculine" or "feminine" based on society's standards is in our brains. Which one can physically see the difference between a standard "male" brain and one who identifies as a women, but was born male.
I don't deny the fact that there are 'masculine' women and 'feminine' men. I also don't deny this is based in our brains. (Though Disney Duster undoubtedly will say it comes from our 'spirit' or 'soul', because if we believe our brain is accountable for anything, we become robots or puppets.
) I don't even deny that there are people who think they are 'in the wrong body', e.g. a man thinking that he needs to be a woman. But that doesn't *make* him a woman.
Alphapanchito wrote:Want me to include statistics? Sadly, the statistics on this stuff aren't the best, because non-cis people aren't exactly safe to put all this on their census. The best estimates range from 1 in every thousand to 1 in every 100,000 being transgender. Thats a little more helpful than pulling numbers out of the air. [...]
Yes, but you are talking about men who went through some form of surgery to become a woman... or the other way around: a woman turning into a man. That's not how you presented it at first. You presented it as if there were many men (men from birth) who had a uterus and thus could get pregnant. And that's simply not the case; they all need surgical help. So I don't really count them.
Alphapanchito wrote:I understand what you mean by me being over PC just for the sake of being overly PC. But.. how is being inclusive of tens of thousands of people being overly PC? [...]
Like I said, I wrote that before you made the clarification that this was about transgender people. Before, you suggested it was about natural-born men who got pregnant, which, of course, is hogwash. So it's good that has been cleared up and we both know what we're talking about. Yet, to return to the topic of this thread: somebody was trying to talk some sense and humanity in judgemental Disney Duster who just glanced over pregnancy through rape (said women should just "get over it") and then you added we should include men in that discussion as well --which we now know is not about men from birth. Should we include men? No, since it's about women turning into men through surgery, and if they've become men, they must not have a vagina anymore, so exactly how are they going to get pregnant through rape? The answer is: not.
Alphapanchito wrote:Okay, I am going to assume you are cis (meaning you identify as the same gender as the sex you were born in), and I'm sorry, but you just don't have the right to misgender people like that. [...]
'Misgender'? Did you just make up that word? It's really not hard: penis = man; vagina = woman. Like I said above, you may think you're a man who wants to be a woman, but that doesn't *make* you a woman (and vice versa).
Alphapanchito wrote:I bring my argument to Ms. Kim Petras. Look her up if you care. Would you honestly tell someone like this that she is a boy? Just because she was born with a penis? She got the full Sexual Reassignment Surgery at 16, so was she a boy up until that fateful moment, despite years of prior hormone therapy and a life of living as a girl? [...]
You said it yourself: this person got through surgery and became a woman. Thus at age 16, she stopped being a boy and became a woman.
Alphapanchito wrote:[...] Beating a dead horse, but this is why gender is a social construct. If you present as a girl, you are considered a girl by society. [...]
Nope. If you're a boy and you put on make-up and a dress and present yourself as a girl, 'society' is not considering you a girl. I bet... no, I know for sure... most people would not call a boy who behaved that way anything other than a boy. In a dress, yes, with make-up on, yes, but a boy nonetheless. That whole gender-as-a-social-construct is the way you *wish* society worked, but it doesn't.
Alphapanchito wrote:And no, they aren't "tricking" anybody. Because they really do feel they are a certain gender, just as much as you feel you are male.
Who said anything about tricking? If they think they are the opposite sex and want to change that, more power to them! But don't pretent a man isn't a man until he becomes a woman.
Alphapanchito wrote:You are confusing sex with gender, and while doing this, you are totally stripping people of their identity [...]
Oh, quit the drama, please.
Alphapanchito wrote:[...] I will say again, if one says they are a certain gender, they are, and thats that.
No. A man can tell me he's a woman a thousand times, that doesn't make him one. He's still a man. You have a very strange logic. Following your logic: I go stand on the corner of the street saying I'm a tree. Do people have to acknowledge I'm a tree or otherwise they're "stripping me of my identity"?
Alphapanchito wrote:A cisgender (again, assuming) man does not have the authority do deny anyone this identity, because you aren't trans.
Again, quit the drama. I'm not denying anyone anything, I'm just stating some plain simple facts and you can talk 'till you're blue in the face, I'm still not gonna call a person something he/she is not.
Alphapanchito wrote:[...] I just don't understand your reasoning, or how you came up with it.
I bet most people in the real world (you know, outisde of the textbook theories you keep repeating) have no trouble at all understanding me. Not to say that the majority is always right, of course, but still... I bet you nobody in the real world has any problems following me.
Thanks for having this discussion. Of course I respect your opinions, too, but I'm not agreeing with them at all.