GC: Is there such a thing as "transgender"?

submitted by Tea_Or_Coffee from self.GCdebatesQT

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[–]SnowAssMan 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

Online dictionaries are often influenced by activists. That third sentence is clearly a new addition. You seem to believe that the second sentence supports trans identities – it doesn't, only the third one does. Why do you think gender is even called GENder? Like GENisis, GENorate, GENeration, enGENder. It's a synonym for sex. Not just colloquially "what's the dog's/baby's gender?" but academically too: 'gender bias', 'gender imbalance', 'gender inequality', 'gender ratios' etc.

Trans activists use 'gender' as a shorthand for 'gender identity', which is reflected in the amended definition, while you interpreted 'gender roles' from it, despite there being no mention of 'gender roles' within it. Gender, gender identity & gender roles are three different terms with three different meanings.

Gender either refers to the sexes: male & female, or of the constructs: masculinity & femininity. Transgender people aren't referring to either of the two definitions of gender. They are referring to 'felt-gender' or 'preferred sex' – that's what they actually mean when they use gender as a shorthand for gender identity, since gender identity is determined by socialisation, while felt-gender is determined by self-identification.

A man who identifies as a woman has a gender & gender identity in common with every other man, since they are by nature (biology) & nurture (socialisation) a man. Transgender people believe that their self-identification replaces their sex & socialisation, that their felt-gender overrides their gender & gender identity, despite the opposite being true. They still follow gendered behavioural patterns according to the way they were socialised: the male ones outnumber the female ones in crime, politics & media representation. That familiar androcentric pattern proves that they are misgendering themselves. Actions speak louder than words.

It's rather remiss of the dictionary to not clearly state that the second definition refers to masculinity & femininity. All the other terms depend of the definition of gender making sense:

Gender (2nd meaning): masculinity & femininity

Gender roles: masculine & feminine roles

Gender identity: masculine & feminine identities

See how much more elucidating it is that way, instead of 'gender' acting as a catchall term to refer to everything & nothing?

However, if you look up gender in the Oxford dictionary (which is the official one for the English language I believe) under the social/cultural part of gender it gives the following examples:

  1. In the grade-school years, too, gender (which is the socialized obverse of sex) is a fixed line of demarkation, the qualifying terms being ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’.

  2. It [sc. Margaret Mead's Male and Female] informs the reader upon ‘gender’ as well as upon ‘sex’, upon masculine and feminine rôles as well as upon male and female and their reproductive functions.

Even dictionary.com uses the example: "the feminine gender".

So now we know that the "cultural/social" part of the dictionary definition of gender doesn't actually support transgender identity, only the bit tacked on at the end about non-binary identities. And even then it only seems to cover the non-binary ones. I wish all these "binary" trans people would identify as non-binary instead. They are AT BEST non-binary, since they can't erase their sex or socialisation. They often know this, that's why Elliot Page identified as non-binary & Contrapoints identified as genderqueer.

[–]MarkTwainiac 13 insightful - 1 fun13 insightful - 0 fun14 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

It's a synonym for sex. Not just colloquially "what's the dog's/baby's gender?" but academically too: 'gender bias', 'gender imbalance', 'gender inequality', 'gender ratios' etc.

Just want to point out that in the USA, the use of "gender" as a synonym for sex is a recent development - one that started in some corners of academia in the 1980s, and only started coming into wider use over the course of the 1990s. No one in the 1940s, 50s, 60s and 70s - and hardly anyone in the 80s - used gender as a euphemism for sex.

We used to say sex bias, sex imbalance, sex inequality, sex ratios, etc. Many of us older people still use those terms and wince at neologisms like "gender pay gap," "gender impacts of COVID-19" and "gender-based violence."Second-wave feminism was all about sexism, sex discrimination, sex-based violence, sex stereotypes, sex roles, sex quotas and so on, as the books and titles of landmark feminists books from the 20th century show: The Second Sex, The Dialetics of Sex, Sexual Politics.

[–]adungitit 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

If gender wasn't a synonym for sex, then what is its meaning?

[–]MarkTwainiac 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Sex=male/female, a fact of biology determined at conception inside your mother's body.

Gender, previously known as sex stereotypes =masculine/feminine, cultural concepts learned and enforced through socialization after birth.

There's also a distinction between sex roles related to reproduction and sex roles that are based on sex stereotypes rather than biology, aka gender roles.

Sex roles mean women, not men, are ones who carry pregnancies, go through labor, give birth and breastfeed. Women take on these roles coz of biology. Many women wouldn't mind sharing these roles with men - or letting men do them altogether. But that's not possible coz of how nature has arranged things. So these roles go to women alone.

Sex roles based on sex stereotypes, aka gender roles, come from ideas rather than biology, though many of the ideas can be traced back to biology. Gender roles are based on reasoning such as: because women breastfeed babies, women are the ones who "naturally" should do all the cooking & grocery shopping in families/couples; because women breastfeed babies, women should be held responsible for dealing with the mess when what has been fed to babies comes out the other end; because women carry, give birth to and breastfeed babies, women should do all the childcare as children grow up, even long long after they've stopped breastfeeding ... This kind of thinking leads in turn to further iterations like: because it's women's "natural role" to change babies' diapers & wipe their asses, it's women's job to clean house, do the laundry, including ironing, wash the dishes and scrub the toilet; because women are "naturally suited" to cleaning house, then they're the ones who are best equipped to work as housekeepers in hotels; because women are "naturally suited" to wiping baby's shitty asses, women are naturally suited to changing bedpans in hospitals and to changing the diapers and wiping the asses of elderly incontinent people; because women do the bulk of childcare in most families, women are best suited to being teachers and administrators in early-childhood education, but not to being college professors and university administrators and presidents ... and so on.

[–]SnowAssMan 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I started to suspect as much when reading the different dictionary definitions of gender. The non-American ones often specify that in the USA there is distinction between sex & gender, that gender is mostly referring to masculinity & femininity.

as the books and titles of landmark feminists books from the 20th century show: The Second Sex, The Dialetics of Sex, Sexual Politics.

There is also The Feminine Mystique though, because the focus of most of these books, even the ones with 'sex' in the title, is femininity, hence quotes like "one is not born a woman but rather becomes a woman". Obviously it's femininity that refers to gendered socialisation & gender role expectations, none of which really affect men who identify as women, who are essentially only limited to the glittery parts of femininity. Caitlyn Jenner should have added the word "trans" in that notorious quote, so that it read thusly:

"The hardest part of being a trans-woman is figuring out what to wear"

[–]MarkTwainiac 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

When I said that in the US gender wasn't used as a synonym for sex prior to the 90s, I didn't mean the word gender was never used. In the US and the rest of the Anglophone world, gender was used in the classic linguistic sense when studying or referring to certain languages like French that designate nouns and related words as masculine, feminine or neuter.

When I said people in the US used sex to mean sex back then, I also didn't mean to suggest no used the words feminine, masculine, femininity and masculinity back in the eras I was speaking of. Those words were in wide use in the US and the rest of the Anglophone world going way back. It's just that no one confused them with sex as often happens today. The way it used to be,

Sex=male/female, a fact of biology determined at conception inside your mother's body.

Sex stereotypes=masculine/feminine, cultural concepts learned and enforced through socialization after birth.

The Feminine Mystique was precisely about how feminine sex stereotypes and oppressive, limiting concepts of femininity had come to be imposed on women, and how unhappy women had become as a result. Friedan was not using feminine as a proxy for sex. The feminine mystique stood in sharp contrast to the female reality.

In the 1960s, sexologists Robert Stoller and John Money began using gender as a shorthand term for the stereotypes of masculinity and femininity that the transsexuals they worked with and studied were preoccupied with.

BTW, I just looked up mystique, and think it's a word that's quite relevant to convos about "gender" today.

Noun: 1) a fascinating aura of mystery, awe, and power surrounding someone or something; 2) an air of secrecy surrounding a particular activity or subject that makes it impressive or baffling to those without specialized knowledge

Today, a very narrow, rigid and (to some) sexy definition of femininity has emerged that could be called the new feminine mystique, and it's this new feminine mystique that trans-identified males seem so entranced and intoxicated by**. Whereas trans-identified females today seem enthralled with a narrow, rigid, cartoonish definition of masculinity that could be called the new masculine mystique. And all gender ideologues seem preoccupied with and utterly under the spell of what could be called the new gender mystique.

** The new feminine mystique of the current era is very different in a number of important ways to the feminine mystique of the post WW2 era that was Friedan's concern.