QT, if gender is innate to identity

submitted by HouseplantWomen who disagree with QT are a different sex from (self.GCdebatesQT)

How does it vary so much in presentation over cultures and time?

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[–]FlanJam 11 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 0 fun12 insightful - 1 fun -  (73 children)

If I could steel-man QT, they'd probably made a distinction between gender-identity and gender-expression. The gender-expression can change over culture and time. The gender-identity is the innate part.

[–]HouseplantWomen who disagree with QT are a different sex[S] 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (27 children)

I’ll welcome steel-manning for an answer! I think this would be the most likely answer, gotta wonder how it makes sense to select preferences based on how they are gendered rather than simply having a preference.

[–]FlanJam 11 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 0 fun12 insightful - 1 fun -  (26 children)

Not all of them will admit this, but some will admit they're just using gender stereotypes to imitate their desired sex as much as they can. That's the most honest, charitable explanation imo.

[–]HouseplantWomen who disagree with QT are a different sex[S] 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (25 children)

Totally agreed. How else could so many men present themselves as a cartoonish display of “femininity” and expect to be taken seriously? They see women as the trappings of femininity, not as people.

[–]BiologyIsReal 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (44 children)

But in what do they based their "gender identity" if not "gender expression"? So, how can then "gender identity" be innate?

[–]FlanJam 11 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 0 fun12 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

The most charitable explanation for gender-identity I can give is some internal feeling trans people have that makes them desire to be the opposite sex. But many QT wouldn't accept that because it'd be transmed or something. Also, they would claim everyone has gender-identity, but conveniently only trans people are aware of it.

The other common explanation for gender-identity is some nebulous internal soul thing that I can't steel man to save my life lol

[–]strictly 7 insightful - 6 fun7 insightful - 5 fun8 insightful - 6 fun -  (35 children)

But in what do they based their "gender identity" if not "gender expression"? So, how can then "gender identity" be innate?

I think some trans people who are gender non-conforming relative biological sex base their gender identity partly on gender expression but I think many base it on the body they want to have, and then they invent a narrative where they more or less imagine all people as needing to inhabit a certain body type, that way they can say they are just like the opposite sex for wanting to inhabit that body (by assigning the opposite sex the same desire they themselves have).

[–]HeimdeklediROAR 2 insightful - 5 fun2 insightful - 4 fun3 insightful - 5 fun -  (0 children)

Instinctual identification with perceived sex trait groups and unconscious replication of norma and behaviors

[–]circlingmyownvoid2 5 insightful - 5 fun5 insightful - 4 fun6 insightful - 5 fun -  (49 children)

First, it’s largely about the body. That’s why a transvestite is a distinct thing from a trans person. It’s not just about expression of societal norms of gender.

Also Socialization isn’t something we as trans people are totally immune to. I think at least some of us having gravitation to feminine coded expression is because we want to be thought of as women so consciously or subconsciously we gravitate toward things that society would more likely take as more likely to let us be seen as women. That is to say the identity is innate ( or at least predisposed and not changeable once set, I’m not convinced there isn’t something like a predisposition triggered through formative events but that’s another discussion) and expression may flow from socialization combined with the identity.

[–]HouseplantWomen who disagree with QT are a different sex[S] 12 insightful - 1 fun12 insightful - 0 fun13 insightful - 1 fun -  (27 children)

Thanks for answering!

think at least some of us having gravitation to feminine coded expression is because we want to be thought of as women so consciously or subconsciously we gravitate toward things that society would more likely take as more likely to let us be seen as women.

Makes no sense. Even if Little boys who grow up to be transwomen make an effort to gain female socialisation, they could never receive it. You seem to be framing socialisation as something children choose which is a pretty big misunderstanding of the process.

Boys don’t learn female socialisation from watching and wanting to be like girls. By the time they’re aware of the differences between the sexes, they’re already well into being socialised as boys.

It seems like you’re saying a little boy will identify as a girl and have the ability/capacity to recognise and reject male socialisation and instead adopt female socialisation from a distance via observation.

I suspect you have pretty limited experience with children, and that’s why this narrative makes sense to you despite it not aligning with how children develop.

Follow up questions, how does such a small child have the capacity to know they are a girl in a boys body when they are cognitively still in a stage where they are capable of believing they are a wolf, a cat, or a mermaid?

Furthermore, how does this child supposedly learn the gendered socialisation they do not receive? Mimicry from observation certainly makes sense for the case of agp men who believe that women are giggly gossipy shopping addicts who think only of dresses, cocktails, flirting with boys, and dancing. I can see how the oversexualised dress and exaggeratedly “feminine” interests of agps matches up with that.

It doesn’t seem to make sense for transsexuals however. I can’t imagine you or peaking claiming to be women because of enjoying mimosas and handbags. How do transsexuals supposedly learn female socialisation? Or do you believe they learn through the same process and apply the observations differently?

[–]circlingmyownvoid2 3 insightful - 5 fun3 insightful - 4 fun4 insightful - 5 fun -  (26 children)

I don’t think it’s conscious. More from a place of feeling or wanting to be like girls or women then shaping your tastes based on how you see them act or be treated. Think of it as a sort of second hand female socialization. Not the same but a sort of filtered or indirect version.

[–]HouseplantWomen who disagree with QT are a different sex[S] 12 insightful - 2 fun12 insightful - 1 fun13 insightful - 2 fun -  (25 children)

See, the thing with that version is that it’s not anything like what females experience, and it feels very condescending to be told that a filtered and selected version of what we endure is in any way the same thing.

This shaping oneself to be what one perceives to be femininity, based on how males think women are treated, or how males see women, cannot be described as femininity or femaleness or womanly without frankly insulting those of use who make up the population being caricatured. Women become objects to observe and mimic, and are not seen as complex individuals. Womanhood becomes a mocking performance by males, not the shared experiences of women.

The motivations aren’t necessarily sinister but the end result is still something that feels as insulting as you feel being called a man is.

[–]circlingmyownvoid2 3 insightful - 6 fun3 insightful - 5 fun4 insightful - 6 fun -  (24 children)

See, the thing with that version is that it’s not anything like what females experience, and it feels very condescending to be told that a filtered and selected version of what we endure is in any way the same thing.

I don’t think I’ve ever said they were. What we experience is different from male socialization but I don’t think I’ve ever said it’s exactly the same as natal women.

I think you are not characterizing it correctly. It’s not objectifying. Like I happen to enjoy soap opera style melodramas because it has as positive association with watching One life to live with my mom. That’s considered feminine but hardly objectifying. The same can be said for women more generally. It’s not aping women. It’s someone hearing from society that women wear makeup to look pretty, and then learning that social desire to look pretty and developing an interest in makeup. It’s not mimicking or aping women, but rather absorbing the messaging society has to and about them formatively. You are mischaracterizing our evolved personalities and interests as an act of mimicry when in fact it’s just us expressing our own desires, shaped as they are by social experience.

[–]HouseplantWomen who disagree with QT are a different sex[S] 12 insightful - 1 fun12 insightful - 0 fun13 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

It is objectifying though. Like..I’m a woman telling you that a male observing and then mimicking a woman is objectifying. She has become an object to study, a collection of mannerisms to be assimilated. At no point in this is she an active or willing participant, she’s not even aware she is being used as a case study.

You can say it’s not objectifying but idk how telling women we are wrong about things done to us makes that correct.

Assigning entertainment and objects female or male isn’t the objectifying part. That’s just plain old sexism.

Here’s the thing, you claim it’s a desire to be pretty because you are told women are pretty. Girls are afraid not to be pretty because we are told our worth is our beauty. Femininity has nothing to do with women’s desires. It is forced on women and created by male desire, and then other males adopt it because they desired what women were indoctrinated with. Then we are told that this desire makes them women.

Even you have to see how that’s a bit fucked up. It is the adoption of something forced on us and then treated as a defining feature of womanhood.

[–]circlingmyownvoid2 4 insightful - 7 fun4 insightful - 6 fun5 insightful - 7 fun -  (1 child)

It is objectifying though. Like..I’m a woman telling you that a male observing and then mimicking a woman is objectifying.

And I’m saying “mimicking” is mischaracterization. It’s no more mimicking than a child learning to talk from hearing their parents. It’s just learning.

Here’s the thing, you claim it’s a desire to be pretty because you are told women are pretty. Girls are afraid not to be pretty because we are told our worth is our beauty. Femininity has nothing to do with women’s desires. It is forced on women and created by male desire, and then other males adopt it because they desired what women were indoctrinated with. Then we are told that this desire makes them women.

We’re both shaped by socialization, sure and one I’ve already said isn’t the same one. And it’s as much about disassociating with male expected traits. I.e we are told men aren’t pretty women are so someone who wants to be seen as or feel more like a woman will naturally develop an urge to be seen as pretty. Because it is a trait associated with the desired outcome and therefore becomes desireable. Society shapes us all, we all react differently

[–]HouseplantWomen who disagree with QT are a different sex[S] 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

WHat do you think mimicking means? Children do learn to talk via mimicking, just so you know. It’s male socialised perspective on what female socialisation appears to be from afar. It understands nothing about what females endure from our socialisation and only affects surface level observations.

How does that dissociate from male socialisation when the child is still seeped in it, regardless of the kids preferences? How much of socialisation do you think is conscious and knowable to a child?

Imo you give the child adult like perceptive abilities in a retrospective narrative because children are simply not developed enough to recognise that nice sweet mommy buying him shorts and not skirts is also socialising him as male.

You do not get to tell women that have been objectified by males that observing women like a herd of goats and adopting mannerisms seen is anything but objectification. You do not experience it, you do not tell women when we experience it and don’t. You have no right to tell women that we are wrong about how we are treated by men.

[–]MarkTwainiac 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (20 children)

Like I happen to enjoy soap opera style melodramas because it has as positive association with watching One life to live with my mom. That’s considered feminine but hardly objectifying. The same can be said for women more generally. It’s not aping women. It’s someone hearing from society that women wear makeup to look pretty, and then learning that social desire to look pretty and developing an interest in makeup.

Defining women as those who watch "soap opera style melodramas" and "wear makeup to look pretty" might not be objectifying in every aspect of the dictionary definition, but it's still an insulting characterization that reduces us to superficial, sexist, wholly inaccurate stereotypes that are deeply misogynistic and dehumanizing.

Your claim that watching & enjoying soap opera style melodramas "is considered feminine" by society in general is laughable. The reality is that you personally consider it feminine. Maybe this isn't the case with you, but IME individuals who blithely assume their own personal views must be universal views held by everyone else are displaying arrogant, self-centered tendencies that often come from distinctly male socialization. And/or from a parochialism stemming from personality problems like narcissism & solipsism, which also are traits fostered by male socialization.

Also, the rest of the world isn't fixated on coding everything human do as either "feminine" or "masculine" the way genderists are. The ridiculously sexist "logic" of gender ideology often leads to odd conclusions. For example, according to your view that watching soap opera style melodramas "is considered feminine" means that the acerbic Greg House of the TV series House, an unsociable character meant to be the bad boy big man of diagnostic medicine as well as a Lothario and dickhead, was "feminine" because watching soap operas on TV was one of his favorite pastimes.

[–]circlingmyownvoid2 3 insightful - 5 fun3 insightful - 4 fun4 insightful - 5 fun -  (19 children)

Defining women as those who watch "soap opera style melodramas" and "wear makeup to look pretty" might not be objectifying in every aspect of the dictionary definition, but it's still an insulting characterization that reduces us to superficial, sexist, wholly inaccurate stereotypes that are deeply misogynistic and dehumanizing.

I don’t think it’s conscious, it’s absorbing societal messaging.

Your claim that watching & enjoying soap opera style melodramas "is considered feminine" by society in general is laughable. The reality is that you personally consider it feminine. Maybe this isn't the case with you, but IME individuals who blithely assume their own personal views must be universal views held by everyone else are displaying arrogant, self-centered tendencies that often come from distinctly male socialization. And/or from a parochialism stemming from personality problems like narcissism & solipsism, which also are traits fostered by male socialization.

This is a stretch. The genre literally was made for women because it was targeted to housewives. I’m not saying all women like soaps, but they are absolutely made to target women.

Also, the rest of the world isn't fixated on coding everything human do as either "feminine" or "masculine" the way genderists are.

Have you ever been around a male child in school of any sort? You can get bullied as a girl or a faggot for months for wearing a pink shirt. You vastly underestimate how hard gendered norms are attached and enforced if you think most people don’t code things as masculine or feminine.

Also, the rest of the world isn't fixated on coding everything human do as either "feminine" or "masculine" the way genderists are. The ridiculously sexist "logic" of gender ideology often leads to odd conclusions. For example, according to your view that watching soap opera style melodramas "is considered feminine" means that the acerbic Greg House of the TV series House, an unsociable character meant to be the bad boy big man of diagnostic medicine as well as a Lothario and dickhead, was "feminine" because watching soap operas on TV was one of his favorite pastimes.

It’s a feminine coded activity. The inclusion of that trait for house was as a joke. Same as when John Spartan knitting in demolition man was. It is a joke for contrast based on the very fact they are activities society takes as feminine

[–]MarkTwainiac 10 insightful - 2 fun10 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 2 fun -  (15 children)

The genre literally was made for women because it was targeted to housewives.

I agree with you that the genre - or at least the daytime TV soap genre - was indeed targeted to housewives & made for women. Moreover, the daytime soap genre was made for American women pushed out of the workplace & relegated to being housewives after WW2 by men running TV production companies & networks. These men were part of a larger campaign sponsored by the US government & establishment to get women reconciled to being pushed out of the paid workforce & stuck at home. In the case of daytime soaps specifically, the men who made them & targeted them at women were also working at the behest of male-run corporations who sponsored such shows or otherwise paid for them by buying advertising time. Many of the corporations that funded this genre of TV entertainment manufactured soap, laundry & dish detergents & household cleaning products; hence, the nickname "soap operas."

I’m not saying all women like soaps, but they are absolutely made to target women.

But in your previous you said that watching & liking soap opera style melodramas "is considered feminine" & you implied this is because of something you deem is innate in female people. Now you are saying something totally different. Also, at the end of this most recent post, you revert to you original claim that watching soap operas "is considered feminine" when you assert that

It’s a feminine coded activity. [One of many] activities society takes as feminine

So which is it?

Interestingly, in the passage of mine you chose to quote, you only address one of the two main points I made & ignore the other. My other point was about your tendency to take your own personal beliefs about what is "feminine" and project them onto all of human society in the effort to make it seem that your own idiosyncratic views are universal views held by pretty much everyone on earth. I suggested that this tendency smacks of male socialization, & of narcissism & solipsism, though I did say that "maybe this isn't the case with you." But how about you address this other point?

You seem to have given a great deal of thought to how your own views of what's "feminine" & "masculine" developed & why you idealize the former & abhor the latter. But you don't seem to have given much thought to the possibility that your own views & feelings are just that - your own. Rather, you seem insistent on believing your own views & experience apply to everyone else too, as if there is one "human experience" overall & your own experience represents it. Seriously, what is that all about?

Have you ever been around a male child in school of any sort? You can get bullied as a girl or a faggot for months for wearing a pink shirt. You vastly underestimate how hard gendered norms are attached and enforced if you think most people don’t code things as masculine or feminine.

You are attributing the bullying you got to "gendered norms," not to the homophobia, misogyny, male supremacy & authoritarian impulse toward social convention that underlie "gendered norms" & gave rise to them in the first place. I am sorry you were bullied & called homophobic slurs. My hunch is that most of the people who did this bullying were males, so this was mainly male-on-male homophobic bullying. But you weren't bullied "as a girl" like you say. You were bullied as a boy by other boys who were as misogynistic as they were homophobic. If they called you a girl, it was because in their eyes, that was the ultimate put-down, the worst insult they could come up with. They did not actually see you "as a girl."

As for your query, "Have you ever been around a male child of any sort?" & then your description of the bullying you got in school: In this remark & many others on these threads over many months, you give the impression that you think you & other males like you are the only ones who ever got bullied in school. Which illustrates my earlier point that IMO you appear to have a self-centered POV that is clear evidence of male socialization, solipsism & narcissism.

For the record, girls get constantly bullied by boys in school. And girls get routinely sexually molested by boys in school too. This happens whether we are "gender conforming" or non-conforming. Boys & men do this to us because we are female, not because we are - or are not - "feminine."

I was a girl child who was frequently sexually harassed & groped by boys in throughout my schooling. This started in first grade when boys nicknamed me "skinhead" after a hairdresser went overboard in giving me the pixie cut lots of little girls my age customarily wore, & when two boys shoved me into a coat closet, pushed me onto the floor & punched me as they pulled up the skirt of my school uniform & pulled down my underpants.

In lower & middle school, I & other girls I went to school with were verbally abused & physically abused by boys pretty much every day. Boys would routinely insult us for running & throwing "like a girl," for being "stupid/dumb like a girl," for being "gross like girls" & "spastic/slow/klutzy like girls." Boys would push us, pull our hair, trip us, aim spitballs at us, grab our books & lunches & toss them to one another, & as we got older they would routinely gang up to corner & grope us to see if we were developing breasts yet or wearing bras. Starting in 6th grade (US school), girls who had long hair & had the bad luck to sit in front of certain especially malevolent boys in the school I attended often had the ends of their hair singed or burnt off by the boys' Bic lighters too. Once we got to age 10-11 and started sprouting breasts & menstruating, boys' sexual harassment & body shaming of us girls ramped up even worse.

Later in my schooling, I was one of a small number of women in the first class of female students admitted as undergraduates to a prestigious US university that had been all-male for hundreds of years until then. Whilst the majority of male students, professors & administrators were decent to us, a significant number were not. As a result, I & the other women in my class were bullied on a regular basis by male students & some professors & administrators just for being there. We were called all sorts of awful names too disgusting to repeat. A number of male students threatened us with rape & other forms of physical assault as well. I got death threats, & once during first year some male students doused my dorm room door with lighter fluid & set it on fire.

I've taught classes for young children in school & in summer programs. I am the mother of grown sons. As a mum, I have hosted many birthday parties, groups sleepovers, camping trips & house parties for large groups of young males. I know full well how sexist, misogynistic & homophobic males can be, particularly school-age ones. Based on this, I disagree with you that the root cause of male bullying of girls & women, & of boys perceived to be homosexual, or to have homosexual leanings, is "gendered norms." I think the root cause is sex.

BTW, when I was at uni in the 70s, the only students who watched daytime soap operas were men who belonged to fraternities. Maybe this was because frat houses were the only places on campus that had TVs. Or maybe frat guys enjoyed soaps especially in the company of other guys.

When prime time TV soap operas came on the scene in the late 1970s with shows like Dallas, Dynasty, Knots Landing & Falcon Crest, they were avidly watched by both sexes. In the US alone, 83 million people tuned in to the "who shot JR?" episode of Dallas the night it first aired. Do you really think that all or the majority of the audience was women? And that all the males who watched were of the opinion that they were engaging in "a feminine coded activity" & thus should be dubbed "feminine" as a result?

As for your claim that Greg House's soap-opera watching "was a joke" like John Spartan knitting, maybe so. But the joke was on genderists like you who believe every human being lives our lives, and insist we must live our lives, by hewing to the strict, rigid and regressive sexist stereotypes you are so fixated on. When in point of fact, there have always been lots of men who do things genderists today personally think are "feminine coded" such as yarn arts, textile crafts & all the rest of the activities that you say "society takes as feminine" & which genderists nowadays erroneously claim have always been regarded as such in all time periods and across all cultures.

In Western culture specifically, membership in knitting guilds from circa 1200-1700 were for males only. Yes, during this time, the Virgin Mary was frequently depicted as knitting in paintings & drawings. But that didn't change the fact that only males could be trained as master knitters, & only males were allowed to learn/know the secrets of knitting as a high art. Over time, simple knitting of items like socks & caps was done outside the guild system by males & females alike. Only much later, after industrialization, did hobby knitting become a parlor craft partaken of largely by women like Britain's Queen Victoria.

Just do an image search of "men knitting" & "men knitting military" & you'll find many paintings & photos showing men from past eras knitting. In the 20th century, US soldiers recovering from war injuries commonly knit, as did soldiers during downtime. My father, a US Navy bomber & recon pilot in the Pacific during WW2, & the rest of his squadron & many other flight crews on the same air base used to knit to pass the time & help quell the anxiety between missions. My ex-father-in-law did much the same during his service, only his outfit got more into needlepoint than knitting (& after the war my ex FIL took up hooking rugs).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_knitting#/media/File:Shepherd_Sitting_Up.jpg

https://www.dharmatrading.com/home/did-you-know-about-men-and-knitting.html

[–]circlingmyownvoid2 5 insightful - 5 fun5 insightful - 4 fun6 insightful - 5 fun -  (6 children)

As for your claim that Greg House's soap-opera watching "was a joke" like John Spartan knitting, maybe so. But the joke was on genderists like you who believe every human being lives our lives, and insist we must live our lives, by hewing to the strict, rigid and regressive sexist stereotypes you are so fixated on.

I’ve literally never said that. In fact I’ve openly championed gender nonconformity and said being trans is primarilly about the body. You have absolutely no conception of my beliefs and are constantly making wildly erroneous assumptions about them.

[–]MarkTwainiac 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

I’ve openly championed gender nonconformity and said being trans is primarilly about the body. You have absolutely no conception of my beliefs and are constantly making wildly erroneous assumptions about them.

Sorry, then. But if you are not a genderist, why do you make such sweeping statements as soap operas are "considered & coded feminine" and "women wear makeup to look pretty" & insist that all of society holds the same view? What are these views other than sexist, regressive sex stereotypes about the sex which is opposite to yours?

Why such sexist, muddled tosh as your claim that

we are told men aren’t pretty women are so someone who wants to be seen as or feel more like a woman will naturally develop an urge to be seen as pretty.

????

Also, please explain here or on another thread of what you mean

being trans is primarilly about the body.

Coz I genuinely am interested & you are correct in saying I "have absolutely no conception" what you mean.

[–]circlingmyownvoid2 3 insightful - 6 fun3 insightful - 5 fun4 insightful - 6 fun -  (7 children)

But in your previous you said that watching & liking soap opera style melodramas "is considered feminine"

Because it is

you implied this is because of something you deem is innate in female people.

I absolutely did not. I expressly said bot all women like soaps and never came close to implying it was innate. The whole conversation is about how interests are shaped by social influence. Nothing innate about it.

Interestingly, in the passage of mine you chose to quote, you only address one of the two main points I made & ignore the other. My other point was about your tendency to take your own personal beliefs about what is "feminine" and project them onto all of human society in the effort to make it seem that your own idiosyncratic views are universal views held by pretty much everyone on earth. I suggested that this tendency smacks of male socialization, & of narcissism & solipsism, though I did say that "maybe this isn't the case with you." But how about you address this other point?

There’s not a point there. Society genders stuff. Me pointing that out isn’t narcissism or “male entitlement” no Matter how much you imply it then wink at the camera.

You are attributing the bullying you got to "gendered norms," not with to the homophobia, misogyny, male supremacy & authoritarian impulse toward social convention that underlie "gendered norms" & gave rise to them in the first place.

They aren’t exclusive

I am sorry you were bullied & called homophobic slurs. My hunch is that most of the people who did this bullying were males, so this was mainly male-on-male homophobic bullying.

But you weren't bullied "as a girl" like you say. You were bullied as a boy by other boys who were as misogynistic as they were homophobic. If they called you a girl, it was because in their eyes, that was the ultimate put-down, the worst insult they could come up with. They did not actually see you "as a girl."

I mean they literally called me a girl. They feminized my name and called me that for years. But yes that was mysogynistic use of the feminine as an insult.

As for your query, "Have you ever been around a male child of any sort?" & then your description of the bullying you got in school: In this remark & many others on these threads over many months, you give the impression that you think you & other males like you are the only ones who ever got bullied in school.

I don’t imply that at all. We were bullied for specific traits which reinforce gender roles. That’s my point. Poor kids and poc kids, and smart kids all got bullied too but that’s not relevant because it wasn’t reinforcing the relevant behaviors to this discussion.

IMO you appear to have a self-centered POV that is clear evidence of male socialization, solipsism & narcissism.

Use male socialization as a card all you want but please stop accusing me of fictional mental illnesses to attempt to tear me down. It’s deeply ableist. I have several mental illnesses narcissism and solipsism aren’t among them. Stop.

For the record, girls get constantly bullied by boys in school. And girls get routinely sexually molested by boys in school too. This happens whether we are "gender conforming" or non-conforming. Boys & men do this to us because we are female, not because we are - or are not - "feminine."

I agree that happens though bullying girls to be more feminine is certainly a thing that happens. Why deny that?

I was a girl child who was frequently sexually harassed & groped by boys in throughout my schooling. This started in first grade when boys nicknamed me "skinhead" after a hairdresser went overboard in giving me the pixie cut lots of little girls my age customarily wore, & when two boys shoved me into a coat closet, pushed me onto the floor & punched me as they pulled up the skirt of my school uniform & pulled down my underpants. In lower & middle school, I & other girls I went to school with were verbally abused & physically abused by boys pretty much every day. Boys would routinely insult us for running & throwing "like a girl," for being "stupid/dumb like a girl," for being "gross like girls" & "spastic/slow/klutzy like girls." Boys would push us, pull our hair, trip us, aim spitballs at us, grab our books & lunches & toss them to one another, & as we got older they would routinely gang up to corner & grope us to see if we were developing breasts yet or wearing bras. Starting in 6th grade (US school), girls who had long hair & had the bad luck to sit in front of certain especially malevolent boys in the school I attended often had the ends of their hair singed or burnt off by the boys' Bic lighters too. Once we got to age 10-11 and started sprouting breasts & menstruating, boys' sexual harassment & body shaming of us girls ramped up even worse. Later in my schooling, I was one of a small number of women in the first class of female students admitted as undergraduates to a prestigious US university that had been all-male for hundreds of years until then. Whilst the majority of male students, professors & administrators were decent to us, a significant number were not. As a result, I & the other women in my class were bullied on a regular basis by male students & some professors & administrators just for being there. We were called all sorts of awful names too disgusting to repeat. A number of male students threatened us with rape & other forms of physical assault as well. I got death threats, & once during first year some male students doused my dorm room door with lighter fluid & set it on fire.

I’m sorry all that happened but I never said or implied it didn’t. Bully to reinforce gendered norms is just one facet. People get bullied for many reasons and it’s shameful it wasn’t more properly dealt with.

I've taught classes for young children in school & in summer programs. I am the mother of grown sons. As a mum, I have hosted many birthday parties, groups sleepovers, camping trips & house parties for large groups of young males. I know full well how sexist, misogynistic & homophobic males can be, particularly school-age ones. Based on this, I disagree with you that the root cause of male bullying of girls & women, & of boys perceived to be homosexual, or to have homosexual leanings, is "gendered norms." I think the root cause is sex.

It’s a cause of one kind of bullying not the root cause of all bullying. That being said it’s pretty wild to assert that bullying by boys of girls and other boys is somehow the result of sex.

I’m out of time to respond to the rest, I will try to pick up later.

[–]MarkTwainiac 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

I absolutely did not. I expressly said bot all women like soaps and never came close to implying it was innate. The whole conversation is about how interests are shaped by social influence. Nothing innate about it.

I apologize for misreading. The mistake is all mine. Sorry.

I mean they literally called me a girl. They feminized my name and called me that for years. But yes that was mysogynistic use of the feminine as an insult.

Again, I am sorry this happened to you. I was not contesting that it happened to you or that it was awful for you. I was contesting the idea that because they called you a girl they actually saw you "as a girl" & you were being bullied "as a girl."

Please try to consider for a moment how different it was for you to be called a girl when being bullied by boys than it is for girls to be bullied by boys for actually being girls. You could take solace in the fact that you were not, in fact, a girl. But such solace was & is not available to any girls. Even though you were picked on by other boys, you as a much-maligned male still ranked, & today rank, higher in the social hierarchy & in the eyes of the males who bullied you than any girl.

Use male socialization as a card all you want but please stop accusing me of fictional mental illnesses to attempt to tear me down. It’s deeply ableist. I have several mental illnesses narcissism and solipsism aren’t among them. Stop.

I am not "accusing (you) of fictional mental illnesses to attempt to tear (you) down." Narcissism is a personality trait, not necessarily a mental illness. Solipsism is a POV which says that the self is the only frame of reference. Sorry, maybe I've missed some of your posts, but on this thread & others, I've never seen you cite any sources for your views other than your own narrow personal experience.

For example, on another thread not long ago, I responded to your repeated assertion that all trans-identified males have "shitty lives" & are doomed to never being loved & to being constantly mistreated & marginalized by society by naming a bunch of happy, successful, highly acclaimed trans-identified males whose own apparently fulfilled & privileged lives stand in sharp contrast to what you insist must be true for all trans-identified males because that's how you say it is for you. You wrote off all the examples I cited by tersely retorting "You have no concept of life for the average trans women", then continued in the thread simply repeating your self-pitying claims & accusing other posters of insulting you. Further down the thread you said, again citing no evidence, that anyone trans who appears to be happy & loved is just pretending because "no one can be happy or normal being an out trans person. It’s a shit life."

https://saidit.net/s/GCdebatesQT/comments/837q/both_in_light_of_recent_events_in_what_context_is/u2va

As to your claim that it's "deeply ableist" of me to point out how exceedingly self-referential your posts make you appear: I have a hunch that nearly everyone on this sub has direct experience with mental illness of one kind or another, as I certainly do. And some of us have physical disabilities as well. So trying to shut me or other posters up by throwing out accusations of "deeply ableist" won't work.

The fact that you seem to think you alone have the right to call others "ableist" only underscores my point that you come across as unable to see beyond your own self. I have known a lot of people with a variety of mental illnesses, & most of them/us even when most ill are still capable of grasping the fact that other people have constructed their self-images in different ways & that their/our individual experience does not necessarily represent all human experience. Narcissism & solipsism might accompany some mental illnesses, but they are not synonyms for nor necessarily hallmarks of mental illness. I apologize if I gave a different impression.

In your previous post instead of directly engaging with & attempting to refute my points, you insinuated that I can't possibly have any idea what I am speaking of because I must not have any experience of ever being around a male child in school of any sort. Specifically, you condescendingly said

Have you ever been around a male child in school of any sort?

Which was clearly an attempt to make it appear that my points can't be "valid" coz I have no "lived experience" of male children in school contexts. I find it telling that you consider it perfectly OK for you to say such a condescending & "invalidating" thing to me - & to say all the other insulting things you've said here about women generally that are meant to reduce us to sexist stereotypes & "deny our existence" as separate to you & the cartoonish ideas you have about all the billions of us in your head - but when I say something to you that you find galling, you take it as your right to go straight to the bigoteering & to command me: "Stop."

It’s a cause of one kind of bullying not the root cause of all bullying. That being said it’s pretty wild to assert that bullying by boys of girls and other boys is somehow the result of sex.

I never said that sex is "the root cause of all bullying." We haven't been talking about all kinds of bullying here. The only kinds of school bullying we've been discussing in this convo about "gender norms" vs. sex as a motive for bullying are a) male bullying of males whom the bullies suspect might be homosexual or bi, and b) male bullying of females. Let's not bring other kinds of school bullying into it.

I did indeed say that boys' bullying of girls is the result of sex. Not "somehow the result of sex," but the result of sex directly. If you can show that this is not the case, please provide some evidence.

But I did not say that boys' bullying of other boys is "the result of sex." I said specifically that boys' bullying "of boys perceived to be homosexual, or to have homosexual leanings," is the result of sex.

My view is that the animus that some people have towards those they perceive as or suspect to be homosexual is based on their revulsion towards the idea of persons of the same sex engaging in explicit sex acts with one another, & squeamishness about certain sex acts in particular especially when done male-on-male. One reason I believe this is because many boys & men who are bi or gay, & many girls & women who are lesbian or bi, still have been subjected to extreme homophobia even when the males are in no way "effeminate" & the females are in no way "masculine." After all, the majority of gay men & MSM are not "effeminate" - they're ordinary men in presentation like Glenn Greenwald or Anderson Cooper, or they're ultra masculine. Yet such guys still often get shamed, derided, treated like pariahs & are discriminated against once homophobes find out they are gay or MSM.

Also, the fact is that growing up, pretty much all boys get slurred as "gay," "fxggot" & the like no matter what their "gender expression" or sexual orientation is or will turn out to be. Males who bully employ homophobic slurs against everyone they bully, & will do so for any reason under the sun. I know many guys who were bog standard guys in "presentation," mannerisms & behaviors growing up, yet in school they were frequently called "gay" & "fxggot" & worse by mean boys of their age & older for such arbitrary reasons as liking a particular kind of pop drink, wearing socks that exposed their ankles, playing musical instruments other than the drums, being into chess, wearing sweatpants or other drawstring trousers, rollerblading rather than skateboarding, & because their families drove energy efficient small cars, hybrids or electric vehicles rather than gas-guzzling behemoths like Ford Expeditions, Hummers or trucks.

Unfortunately, for some school boys & certain grown men who bully others, "fxggot" is an all-purpose slur that they use indiscriminately against everyone for no apparent reason other than their own internal animus & lack of originality. Some bullies even use the "fxggot" slur against girls.

[–]MarkTwainiac 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Have you ever been around a male child in school of any sort? You can get bullied as a girl or a faggot for months for wearing a pink shirt.

Again, I am sorry this happened to you. But I am also curious about where & when it happened. (Sorry, maybe you have revealed it elsewhere, but I have no idea how old you are, though I understand you are from the USA.) When I was growing up in USA in the 1960s, my father & his friends used to wear bright pink corduroy golf pants, pink button-down shirts, pink polo shirts, pale pink & bright pink blazers, bright pink linen shorts, pink neckties & bowties in solids, checks, plaids & flowered patterns. My brother & ex-husband have always worn a lot of pink shirts, ties, shorts & so on. No one AFAIK has ever ridiculed them for it.

Going back to the 1950s & 60s, celebrities considered very masculine like Elvis Presley, Pat Boone, Bing Crosby, Andy Williams & Mick Jagger wore pink. No one thought anything of it. When I was a girl, I don't recall my sisters, me or any other girls being decked out in pink like little girls often are today. My most memorable dresses from childhood were a blue flowered one, various plaids or white ones worn for events like first communion, confirmation & various religious processionals. We wore blue & gray or green & gray plaid uniforms to school with navy blue or green wool blazers, & brown or green scouts uniforms. All the girls' PE uniforms were blue. All my & my sisters' & friends coats growing up were navy blue, light blue, brown or various watch plaids.

In my experience, hardly anyone took the stereotypes about pink being only for girls, & girls having an affinity for pink, seriously until the present century. When my own kids were born in the early 90s, the pink-blue toy stuff was just starting to be pushed by places like Toys'R'Us, but basically most of the parents I know ignored it. The toy strollers my sons had for their dolls & stuffed animals were pink; no one minded. They sometimes wore pink T shirts; no one cared.

BTW, the 1986 movie with Molly Ringwald, Pretty In Pink got its title from the 1981 song of the same name by the Psychedelic Furs from 1981. At the time, the pink in the Furs song was widely believed to a reference not to the color of clothing but to the color of naked (white people's) flesh, & particularly a woman's clitoris, inner labia and vaginal opening. Back then, mainstream "girly magazines" like Penthouse & Hustler were just starting to run color photo spreads of naked women that would "show pink," to use the expression used at the time. This was a big deal because historically mainstream porn magazines didn't show women's genital area at all; such mags were all about "T & A." When they started to show the pubic region it was a big deal, but the genitals were hidden coz women back then customarily kept their pubic hair. The only periodicals that showed female genitals previously were "hard core" porn rags, or Al Goldstein's "Screw," a publication on newsprint that only showed photos in black & white, hence "no pink."

[–]circlingmyownvoid2 2 insightful - 6 fun2 insightful - 5 fun3 insightful - 6 fun -  (1 child)

I started school in the late 80’s and lived in a small rural town in a very red state.

[–]MarkTwainiac 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Thanks for the info. It helps to know how old a person is & what milieu he or she grew up in to get a sense of "where they are coming from" so to speak. And I think that when each of us takes the time to locate ourselves in history & geographically, it helps to stop us from making sweeping generalizations about all of "society" & "everyone" coz it reminds us that each one of us is a product of a particular era in history & a particular cultural milieu.

[–]Mercurygirl5 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I can’t speak for men but for women I think the main driving force is less of a desire to be a man and more so wanting to escape being a woman. There’s a huge difference. I’d probably love to have a flat chest and that would cure most dysphoria I felt (I’m not trans and feel dysphoria shocker lol) and I’d continue presenting as a tomboyish woman. I think cuz of all the ideology pushing people feel like there’s no inbetween.. like they have to make the complete jump into “being” the opposite sex.

Do you feel any bit the same way? I know you identify as trans from previous comments I’ve read by you. Like is there a body part you’d replace or an aspect of being male you’d replace that would lessen your dysphoria and allow you to feel comfortable (enough... I don’t think u could feel 100% comfortable obvi) to present as a man?

I would probably argue against a predisposition tbh.

[–]circlingmyownvoid2 2 insightful - 5 fun2 insightful - 4 fun3 insightful - 5 fun -  (1 child)

Like is there a body part you’d replace or an aspect of being male you’d replace that would lessen your dysphoria and allow you to feel comfortable (enough... I don’t think u could feel 100% comfortable obvi) to present as a man?

No. Like there are changes that would remove all body dysphoria but I would never under any circumstances present myself as a man again.

[–]Mercurygirl5 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Alright then. Fair enough.

[–]circlingmyownvoid2 3 insightful - 5 fun3 insightful - 4 fun4 insightful - 5 fun -  (17 children)

To elaborate with a hypothetical. Supposing I had an innate sense of wanting to have a woman’s body, I might learn to gravitate to things that are associated with women as I was socialized.

If on the other hand I had a structural predisposition to dysphoria which was triggered or worsened by early life experiences, as in my life could have happened from the combination of an abusive father and an apparently loving mother creating or strengthening a negative association with men and masculinity, I would learn to like the things associated with the mother that I had positive associations with.

The net result of either is learning to like things which come in line who who you feel you are as you are socialized, even as society attempts to socialize you into your “proper” role the other direction.

In essence who you are (innately or as shaped formatively) helps shape what you like through what society says that person should like at least partly.

I hope I’m being clear but I worry this may be muddled.

[–]HouseplantWomen who disagree with QT are a different sex[S] 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (16 children)

That was actually really helpful, thanks!

What I’m seeing is someone could be traumatised by a male and fear becoming like that due to being male, and that fear being offset by a mother figure who is loving and associating those positives with women. This however does seem like a view that has never processed or progressed past that trauma and that still does not see individuals as individuals, rather sees only groups of archetypes.

So transgendered people maybe don’t wear, listen to, watch, or engage in activities they naturally like but instead force themselves into what’s prescribed to their desired gender? No wonder they are so depressed. Doesn’t this thinking, ‘I must wear this because my culture says women wear this’ just reinforce the idea that those gendered things are inherently sexed?

Does that mean that transgender people cannot abide the abolishment of gender norms?

[–]circlingmyownvoid2 2 insightful - 5 fun2 insightful - 4 fun3 insightful - 5 fun -  (15 children)

I don’t think it is forced. I think what they like is shaped rather than them pretending to like it. It’s not a force to act like that, but rather they enjoy those things perhaps in part because they are psychologically associated. It’s not work, just tastes being shaped. You see the distinction?

[–]HouseplantWomen who disagree with QT are a different sex[S] 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (14 children)

They like them because they are coded as male or female? Like a transwoman likes pink naturally because pink is coded as feminine?

Seems like a distinct lack of personality outside of gender and gender performance. People’s tastes are usually shaped by far more than whether it’s coded to the sex they want to be.

Either way, it seems like you’re saying gender identity is inherent and the expression varies according to what’s the cultural norm at the time.

[–]circlingmyownvoid2 2 insightful - 5 fun2 insightful - 4 fun3 insightful - 5 fun -  (13 children)

Not necessarily just because they are coded male or female. But because they have associations that are reinforced otherwise. To use the parental example. The abusive father is a sports fanatic constantly pressuring the child into competitive sports. This builds an association that makes the child dislike competitive sports. Maybe the mother likes say romantic comedies and shares experiences watching them with the child that the child enjoys as spending time with the parent that loves them. That creates a positive association. It’s not that they are coded male or female but rather that they are associated with that parent.

And to the more social example, one might wish to be seen as less masculine or more feminine generally. You don’t like your male body or don’t like man. You want to be associated with feminine traits. So you explore interests and the fact that they are seen as feminine makes you like them more as people react to your participation in those interests. The reverse for masculine. Like you try a hobby, say working on engines, but people perceive it and therefore you as masculine which reduces any enjoyment you make have experienced from this expiremental involvement. So even unconsciously you come to dislike things society tells you are masculine because it feels bad to be seen as masculine so you enjoy the thing less. So you naturally develop interests that align with the cultural perception.

Either way, it seems like you’re saying gender identity is inherent and the expression varies according to what’s the cultural norm at the time.

I believe that’s an accurate discription of my feelings on it.

[–]HouseplantWomen who disagree with QT are a different sex[S] 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (12 children)

Those things being coded to the parent don’t make sense in relation to a kid thinking they should be the opposite sex.

Again, it sounds like unprocessed trauma. Assigning the traits of one person to anyone resembling them, and assigning the traits of another to a pedestal that is at once unobtainable and the only way to get value. That’s a situation that requires extensive therapy and a patient willing to accept that they have built their entire life and identity around an unprocessed trauma, and the childish coping mechanism that split the world into black and white perceptions.

No wonder depression is sky high when wondering if observers will associate the activity being performed as not of the desired sex. It’s very abnormal to be so emotionally invested in observers, let alone with imagined thoughts an observer might or might not have. Subconscious or not, it must be exhausting to be constantly running such an unhealthy system of thought and value.

Glad I do understand what you mean about title question. I think that’s the most productive we’ve been together, haha.

[–]circlingmyownvoid2 4 insightful - 5 fun4 insightful - 4 fun5 insightful - 5 fun -  (11 children)

Those things being coded to the parent don’t make sense in relation to a kid thinking they should be the opposite sex.

I’m working from personal experience so it may be atypical but once I was about 3 we lived in pretty remote rural setting. 99 percent of the time my mom was the only woman I saw outside of school and my dad was the only man I saw period until like middle school at least. Doesn’t it make sense that would be generalized?

Trauma is formative sure, but why seek to undo a perfectly valid personality simply because it was shaped in part by trauma?

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

I’m working from personal experience so it may be atypical but once I was about 3 we lived in pretty remote rural setting. 99 percent of the time my mom was the only woman I saw outside of school and my dad was the only man I saw period until like middle school at least. Doesn’t it make sense that would be generalized?

Yes, it makes sense that you & some other individuals might that take what you personally perceived to be true of your own mother & your own father & attributed their qualities to all women & men generally. But not doing this also makes just as much sense. In fact, to many of us, not doing as you have done makes much more sense.

Many people who have grown up with a narrow frame of reference would arrive, & have arrived, at very different conclusions to yours, especially as they matured out of phases of childhood & adolescence in which everyone is naturally self-referential, self-centered & mistakenly believes everyone else is looking at us & judging us. Other people who've grown up in your sort of situation might just as easily reason that because it's a very big world out there & they have seen only a teeny-tiny slice of it, then chances are good that other people will turn out to be as different to their mum & dad as they are to be exactly like them.

The position you are taking is similar to saying that because a lot of kids have pet goldfish in childhood, and they don't have close contact with any other kind of pet fish, & the only fish they customarily eat or see being eaten is tuna or the mystery fish in "fish fingers," then it's reasonable for children to grow up generalizing that all the fish in the world's seas & freshwater bodies must be just like goldfish, tuna or mushed-up nondescript white flaky fish in fish fingers. Which is ridiculous because most kids read books, see movies, TV shows & media. Even kids who are raised in strict religious settings will have heard of Jonah & the whale.

Your claim that "99 of the time my mom only woman I saw outside of school" means in school you saw other women & you have chosen to filter them out. Why is that? Were the other women you saw in school different to your mother in any respect?

Moreover, your references to watching soap operas with your mom means you had a television & you watched it as a kid. Were all the women you saw on TV really exactly like your mom? Did they have all the sex stereotypical "feminine" traits you now associate with women? As a child, did you never see movies with scary, evil women in them like "The Wizard of Oz" or "Snow White" or "Hansel & Gretel"? Didn't you hear or read any fairytales & books?

When you say "my dad was the only man I saw period until like middle school at least" can it really be true you went your whole early childhood without ever seeing or hearing of a male doctor, dentist, letter carrier, mechanic, police officer, home repairman, taxi or truck driver, neighbor, shop keeper, priest or other clergy, politician, soldier, train conductor, road crew member, construction worker, farmer, tractor driver, cowboy, Indian "brave," world explorer, pirate, gunslinger, sheriff, captain of industry, businessman, president, prime minister, pope, astronaut, inventor, firefighter? Didn't you read any story books? You never heard of the knights of the roundtable, Robin Hood, Columbus, Captain Hook, Old MacDonald, Bob the builder, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed or God the father, etc? No shows like Mr Rogers, Gunsmoke, Thomas the Tank Engine, The Simpsons, Family Guy or Malcolm in The Middle on your TV? You never saw cartoons or movies with characters like Elmer Fudd, the cast from Toy Story or Sponge Bob Square Pants?

When you watched soap operas what happened to all the male characters you saw - did you just tune them out?

Trauma is formative sure, but why seek to undo a perfectly valid personality simply because it was shaped in part by trauma?

No one is seeking "to undo" your personality or anyone else's "perfectly valid personality." We are pointing out that your particular POV is not universal as you seem to think it is. The way you see the two sexes, that you see your own self, that you see your own self in relation to others, & the way you are preoccupied with how others perceive you, or you imagine they are perceiving you, are not the way everyone else sees these things.

[–]circlingmyownvoid2 3 insightful - 5 fun3 insightful - 4 fun4 insightful - 5 fun -  (0 children)

I’m not asserting that generalizing is universal or the cause of all gender variance. Just a cause for some tastes in some people.

Your claim that "99 of the time my mom only woman I saw outside of school" means in school you saw other women & you have chosen to filter them out. Why is that? Were the other women you saw in school different to your mother in any respect?

By an large not really. It’s selective because they were teachers of children and administrators in schools. That attracts a certain personality not that different from my mom. There was variance but in the broad strokes really not that difference. Other that our very butch PE teacher but even she was quite warm and caring.

Moreover, your references to watching soap operas with your mom means you had a television & you watched it as a kid. Were all the women you saw on TV really exactly like your mom? Did they have all the sex stereotypical "feminine" traits you now associate with women? As a child, did you never see movies with scary, evil women in them like "The Wizard of Oz" or "Snow White"? Didn't you hear or read any fairytales & books?

Sure there were some female villains but also they tended to be quite feminine. It was the 80’s. Even he-man and she-ra’s villains were extremely feminine coded.

When you say "my dad was the only man I saw period until like middle school at least" can it really be true you went your whole early childhood without ever seeing or hearing of a male doctor, dentist, letter carrier, mechanic, police officer, home repairman, taxi or truck driver, neighbor, shop keeper, priest or other clergy, politician, soldier, train conductor, road crew member, construction worker, farmer, tractor driver, cowboy, Indian "brave," world explorer, pirate, gunslinger, sheriff, captain of industry, businessman, president, prime minister, pope, astronaut, inventor, firefighter? Didn't you read any story books? You never heard of the knights of the roundtable, Robin Hood, Columbus, Captain Hook, Old MacDonald, Bob the builder, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed or God the father, etc?

And exaggeration. Man I saw regularly then. And the ones I did see were often my fathers friends who were just like him. Thanks did have a woman as my pediatrician I remember. Beyond that I don’t have a robust childhood memory set but I’m told that’s common with trauma in childhood. And god is pretty counter to your ideal. I was raised southern baptist. That god really embodied the violent, wrathful and temperamental image that my father built in me for men.

As to other media, there’s a difference between fictional exposure and actual exposure. Particularly when you are talking about development.

[–]HouseplantWomen who disagree with QT are a different sex[S] 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (8 children)

I’m not your therapist and cannot explain to you why a personality formed around a childhood trauma is not a valid or healthy personality, but damn that’s not healthy.

For general purposes, Unprocessed trauma being a formative factor is not healthy and ignore the fact that personality disorders and other mental health issues take root in that unprocessed trauma.

A personality is barely a personality when it is unable to exist without the trauma ever being addressed or processed. A healthy adult personality cannot come from a childs emotionally and cognitively immature reaction to a trauma.

What you describe sounds closer to bpd than anything regarding having a traumatic event shape your entire personality.

[–]HeimdeklediROAR 2 insightful - 5 fun2 insightful - 4 fun3 insightful - 5 fun -  (6 children)

Because Gender Identity is just something that causes you to absorb the behaviors and norms of a specific perceived sex trait group in an unconscious manner, usually starting from a very early age. It does not include preprogrammed behaviors (aside from absorbing what is happening around you).

[–]HouseplantWomen who disagree with QT are a different sex[S] 8 insightful - 2 fun8 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

How? Then what is gender identity? What is this entity that causes a person to develop instincts that serve no survival purpose? Why is this instinct to absorb behaviours not recognised by any child development experts? Did they all miss that class? How does an instinct direct someone to people they can instinctually tell are not like them? Are you saying a little boy who wants to be a girl is not aware that he is different to the girls? Why don’t all the other kids have an instinct to absorb gendered messages and behaviours and instead learn regular old sexed socialisation?

[–]HeimdeklediROAR 2 insightful - 5 fun2 insightful - 4 fun3 insightful - 5 fun -  (1 child)

You don’t know that it doesn’t serve an evolutionary purpose. A sex trait group identity instinct could certainly be said to have a purpose in groups of bonobos or chimps what with those species forming sex trait groups to control the interactions of the larger groups that they’re a part of (matriarchal and patriarchal structures respectively).

I mean children are considered to rapidly absorb the information in their surrounding environment so that part isn’t controversial, as to why they haven’t proposed such an instinct before, perhaps they never thought about it.

People can’t instinctually tell, as this would be an instinct that begins to take affect (I think) as soon as infants and toddlers can tell their parents apart, which occurs before the ability of people to begin to analyze themselves by such standards.

Initially no, but even afterwards the group identity instinct may cause them to feel sameness with their identified group even after transphobic explanations to the contrary.

They do.

[–]HouseplantWomen who disagree with QT are a different sex[S] 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

So how do we know this instinct is what’s really causing the trans phenomenon?

How does an instinct work if it tells someone with a penis and testicles that he is the same as the “sex trait group” (what a term🙄) when he clearly isn’t?

Are you saying trans identity is caused by an instinct that has malfunctioned?

How come you’re the only person I’ve ever seen with this theory?

[–]loveSloaneDebate King 7 insightful - 3 fun7 insightful - 2 fun8 insightful - 3 fun -  (2 children)

Huh?

[–]HeimdeklediROAR 2 insightful - 5 fun2 insightful - 4 fun3 insightful - 5 fun -  (1 child)

What are you “huh?”-ing about?

[–]loveSloaneDebate King 7 insightful - 3 fun7 insightful - 2 fun8 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

What does the word salad in your comment mean?

[–]theory_of_thisan actual straight crossdresser 1 insightful - 6 fun1 insightful - 5 fun2 insightful - 6 fun -  (106 children)

The language trait is innate but varies over cultures and time.

The desire to do gender, masculinity and femininity, can be natural even if it is completed by culture.

Humans being adaptable flexible creatures, need to have a flexible gender system to deal with different environments. How flexible is debateable. But the system appears emergent.

In turn if "gender" was not innate why do all cultures across time have it?

[–]HouseplantWomen who disagree with QT are a different sex[S] 14 insightful - 1 fun14 insightful - 0 fun15 insightful - 1 fun -  (76 children)

Do most people who perform gender after being indoctrinated in the system since birth really desire performing it? I don’t think so.

I don’t agree with the idea that people generally desire to perform gender, let alone desire to do whatever gender roles indicate they are supposed to do or like.

How does this gel with the narrative many trans people have that follows along the track of ‘I liked pink when told to like blue, therefore I’m a woman inside’ or vice versa?

Do you think the average ‘gender conforming’ (ridiculous notion since nobody is properly conforming to all norms assigned) person truly wants to do it, or simply feels they must due to societal expectations?

Why do we need a flexible gender system? Why do we need gender at all?

It’s not innate imo, and all cultures have it because all cultures recognise the sexed differences and have found it useful to apply restrictions to behaviour.

[–]theory_of_thisan actual straight crossdresser 3 insightful - 7 fun3 insightful - 6 fun4 insightful - 7 fun -  (75 children)

Do most people who perform gender after being indoctrinated in the system since birth really desire performing it? I don’t think so.

You're saying most people actively want to be gender non conforming?

I don’t agree with the idea that people generally desire to perform gender, let alone desire to do whatever gender roles indicate they are supposed to do or like.

What do you think they want?

How does this gel with the narrative many trans people have that follows along the track of ‘I liked pink when told to like blue, therefore I’m a woman inside’ or vice versa?

I think masculinity and femininity are sexuality.

EDIT I think masculinity and femininity are deeply naturally connected to sexuality.

Attraction to men is a natural desire that commonly appears in women. Attraction to women is a desire that commonly appears in men. Masculinity and femininity follow the same pattern.

So expressing either of these desires commonly feels like confirmation to those trans people. Even though they are both only indirectly related.

Do you think the average ‘gender conforming’ (ridiculous notion since nobody is properly conforming to all norms assigned) person truly wants to do it, or simply feels they must due to societal expectations?

I think saying gender conformity is a ridiculous notion is evasive. Most people are gender conforming and don't feel anxiety over it. They are often oblivious because it feels so natural. I would think because it is natural.

They may not like some aspects of "it" but they only want that aspect changed. They are not gender non conforming.

A background issue here is masculine non conformity and feminine non conformity do not express themselves the same way. The "genders" are not perfect mirrors.

Why do we need a flexible gender system? Why do we need gender at all?

It's emergent from human nature so you can't abolish it.

Gender non conforming people have not escaped gender.

We can have higher tolerance of minorities who are non conforming but a general population will never be indifferent to it.

[–]Juniperius 17 insightful - 1 fun17 insightful - 0 fun18 insightful - 1 fun -  (18 children)

Oh! After all these years I think I get what you're saying. You think that masculinity and femininity are exhibitionism. And you think that all humans are exhibitionists. You think that practically all things that humans do, all the time, we do for sexual reasons. And not even in a way that I would sort of recognize, like "I do this to attract a partner so I can have sex," but more like, "showing myself to people in this outfit is sex." I knew you were preoccupied with your particular kink, but it just clicked for me that you think everyone is, all the time. How Freudian! I think it must be kind of exhausting to live that way.

Do you recognize the existence of non-sexual drives? Do we do anything, want anything, enjoy anything, that doesn't have a sexual thrill at the bottom of it? A drive to learn new things, to accomplish something difficult? Non-sexual relationships with family members and friends? A desire to be in nature, to commune with something larger than the self?

Are all displays sexual, in your eyes? In the context where I live it's very politically divided, and the culture wars are kind of everything. I'd say people are more interested in displays of tribalism than gender. If you only go by someone's clothes, cars with bumper stickers, wander through the house and see what they show on the walls and bookshelves, everything but the physical body in other words, you might have an easier time knowing whether they were "blue team" or "red team" so to speak than which sex they were. It could be different where you are, but your theory is no good if it has to pretend that your little corner of the world represents the whole of human nature.

[–]theory_of_thisan actual straight crossdresser 3 insightful - 6 fun3 insightful - 5 fun4 insightful - 6 fun -  (17 children)

Oh! After all these years I think I get what you're saying. You think that masculinity and femininity are exhibitionism.

I do think sexual display are strong parts of masculinity and femininity.

It appears all societies link masculinity and femininity

Why wouldn't humans have sexual display? Humans especially of all animals would have a sexuality deeply meshed with culture which is seemingly a major human feature.

And you think that all humans are exhibitionists.

Sexual exhibitionism seems like a description of an excessive form.

But certainly human sexuality does work without sexual display. It's part of courtship.

In humans men and women both perform sexual selection. So it would be natural for them to perform sexual display. A super common thing in the animal world.

You think that practically all things that humans do, all the time, we do for sexual reasons.

Nope not at all. I do think we are natural animals and cannot escape natural desires.

We are not completely conscious of our desires. Even if we can learn them or consciously manage them we cannot choose our desires.

A sexual display is not always a conscious display.

And not even in a way that I would sort of recognize, like "I do this to attract a partner so I can have sex," but more like, "showing myself to people in this outfit is sex." I knew you were preoccupied with your particular kink, but it just clicked for me that you think everyone is, all the time. How Freudian! I think it must be kind of exhausting to live that way.

I'm not a Freudian, I don't think it's good science. Even if some ideas progressed into good ideas.

I don't think "everyone is like me" but I don't think I'm absolutely different from all other humans.

Do you recognize the existence of non-sexual drives?

Of course.

Do we do anything, want anything, enjoy anything, that doesn't have a sexual thrill at the bottom of it?

Of course.

A drive to learn new things, to accomplish something difficult? Non-sexual relationships with family members and friends? A desire to be in nature, to commune with something larger than the self?

Why are you thinking I think everything is about sex?

I do think humans are natural animals driven by unconscious uncontrollable desires.

Free will acts on those desires.

Are all displays sexual, in your eyes?

No but that depends on where in the chain you are stopping.

A display of loyalty can be natural but not strictly sexual.

In the context where I live it's very politically divided, and the culture wars are kind of everything. I'd say people are more interested in displays of tribalism than gender. If you only go by someone's clothes, cars with bumper stickers, wander through the house and see what they show on the walls and bookshelves, everything but the physical body in other words, you might have an easier time knowing whether they were "blue team" or "red team" so to speak than which sex they were. It could be different where you are, but your theory is no good if it has to pretend that your little corner of the world represents the whole of human nature.

I would think "tribalism" is another natural behaviour humans are prone to.

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

Why wouldn't humans have sexual display?

You're missing the point again. She is not saying that humans don't have sexual display, but that humans are driven for other things besides sex. You were the one who claimed that feminity and masculinity were sexuality, so why are you surprised that others think you view everything through sexual lens? And I think Juniperious is right: you seem to be extrapolating your own particular experiences to everyone else. You may not claim to be a woman, but you surely like to act as if you were an expert on women and you try to shield your views under the excuse of "evolution".

And before you ask, no, I don't believe in the blank slate theory. I think differences between women and men are due to both nature and nurture.

[–]theory_of_thisan actual straight crossdresser 2 insightful - 6 fun2 insightful - 5 fun3 insightful - 6 fun -  (12 children)

You're missing the point again. She is not saying that humans don't have sexual display, but that humans are driven for other things besides sex.

Of course.

You were the one who claimed that feminity and masculinity were sexuality,

I meant to write "Masculinity and femininity are deeply naturally connected to sexuality."

It is not all of it but they are connected.

so why are you surprised that others think you view everything through sexual lens? And I think Juniperious is right: you seem to be extrapolating your own particular experiences to everyone else. You may not claim to be a woman, but you surely like to act as if you were an expert on women and you try to shield your views under the excuse of "evolution".

I don't think it is my experience alone that see masculinity and femininity as being deeply connected to the sex lives of humans.

That does not mean all of it is sexual.

And before you ask, no, I don't believe in the blank slate theory. I think differences between women and men are due to both nature and nurture.

Well I agree then. That would be my starting point and those differences are often connected to sexual behaviour.

[–]BiologyIsReal 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (11 children)

No, I don't think we agree at all. You strongly lean on atributing (nearly) all sex differences to nature and assigning a sexual motive to (almost) everything. You often miss what we told you here because you refuse to analyse the power dynamics present in what society expect from each sex unless you're getting off of it, that is. Sex roles and stereotypes vary through time and culture, but always men are at the top of the hierarchy. Men who are perceived as not "manly" enough for whatever reason are looked down by other men, but women lose not matter wheter they conform to social norms or not. But you refuse to recognise this because you get off on viewing yourself as a sumissive woman and women being naturally sumissive. And when you're challenged here for your sexist views, you twist what we say to suit your own ideas of women and men.

[–]Juniperius 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I do think sexual display are strong parts of masculinity and femininity.

I think it says something that I've been listening to you talk about this for like, four years and It only just hit me that you mean that you think most people get sexual pleasure from conforming to masculinity or femininity. You might consider that bare fact to be a counter argument on its own - the fact that it was such an unfamiliar and unimaginably weird idea to me, with no reflection in my own experience or anyone else I've ever talked to in my life.

Look, here's a metaphor for you. People generally like to eat, right? We have a biological drive to eat, and it is pleasurable.

Some people like to cook as well. It can be a sort of hobby. You can enjoy the anticipation, or the thought of sharing food with someone you care about, impressing someone, whatever. It's pretty common to enjoy cooking, but not as common as enjoying the actual eating, which after all has direct sensory pleasure rewarding fulfilment of a biological drive.

Not many people really enjoy grocery shopping. I do. I love wandering around the store, checking out the half price shelves, reading ingredient labels, smelling the melons. I'm aware that this makes me a bit of a weirdo. For most people grocery shopping is at best utilitarian, despite the association with food and the and the anticipation of a meal later on. At worst it's an awful chore. A lot of people I know absolutely hate it.

Sex is great. Biological drive, physical pleasure. The lead-up to sex, going on a date, or flirting with someone and getting a number or going home together, okay, there can be anticipation and so forth, but not everyone likes that part so much. Getting dressed up, that part I think is like grocery shopping. Like, you might have to do it if you want to cook and then eat a meal, but most people aren't finding it pleasurable in itself, it's just something instrumental that you've got to do if you want to get to the good part.

The entire idea of putting on a "sexual display," as you call it is actually incredibly repellent and stressful to me. I think many people are more casual about it than I am. Like most people can go into the store and say, well look, there are some good avocados today, while a few people are just getting stressed out by the whole experience. But I think it's rare to really enjoy that part, and it connects only tenuously through multiple steps of abstract connection to anything intrinsically enjoyable. I think this holds whether people are going along with the expression template that they've been handed, or the one associated with the other sex, or one that they're trying to make up as they go along.

[–]theory_of_thisan actual straight crossdresser 2 insightful - 6 fun2 insightful - 5 fun3 insightful - 6 fun -  (1 child)

I think it says something that I've been listening to you talk about this for like, four years and It only just hit me that you mean that you think most people get sexual pleasure from conforming to masculinity or femininity.

I wouldn't necessarily say most. I think it's mostly a pleasure in others expression.

The thing is I do thing food is often used as a great metaphor for sex. People are forever find erotic play in food. I think that's because there are indirect comparisons.

The sensual display of food is huge part of the pleasure of food. People fuss over the source, the story, the presentation, the ripeness, the colours, the textures. It is a given that the visual pleasure, a story of where they came from, aromas, presentation of food adds to the enjoyment of the flavour. It's a literal display that adds to the pleasure.

The entire idea of putting on a "sexual display," as you call it is actually incredibly repellent and stressful to me.

But that's what men and women do all the time.

What's the food equivalent of finding display repellent? ​Wanting it all ​mixed together in a paste? Completely utilitarian? Nice cutlery, a candle, beautiful plates would be too stressful. I mean I'm joking here but you seem my point.

[–]Juniperius 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Seeing, smelling, food is certainly part of the pleasure. Hard to do that while it's still in the package, though.

I think the food equivalent of what I'm talking about, finding display repellent, is not wanting to be on the plate.

[–]HouseplantWomen who disagree with QT are a different sex[S] 15 insightful - 1 fun15 insightful - 0 fun16 insightful - 1 fun -  (30 children)

No. I’m saying they are taught it as normalcy and propriety from birth.

I don’t know what they want, but I doubt the average woman wakes up and says I will wear a skirt because it is womanly.

It’s not ridiculous, what’s ridiculous is the idea of anybody being truly gender conforming. Nobody meets every norm assigned to their sex.

I just don’t think gender is innate or particularly meaningful when one doesn’t obsess over it like qt does.

I disagree with gender relating to sexuality. How does sexuality translate to ideas like women are emotional, men are aggressive, girls are highly, boys are grubby etc? How does sexuality relate to gender at all?

I agree anyone who presents as gnc and actively makes an effort to do so due to gendered thinking has not escaped gender.
What about those of us who simply don’t assign a gender or sex to our preferences? Is that a lie we tell ourselves? Does that somehow affect our sexuality if the two are linked?

This seems like a whole lot of odd and some sexist assumptions being presented as something like factual or given knowledge.

How does the oppression of women fit into innate gender? Is that oppression the natural order?

[–]theory_of_thisan actual straight crossdresser 3 insightful - 7 fun3 insightful - 6 fun4 insightful - 7 fun -  (29 children)

No. I’m saying they are taught it as normalcy and propriety from birth.

Is this the argument that says conforming people are naturally blank but the non conforming naturally have a personality that matches opposite gender cultural norms?

I don’t know what they want, but I doubt the average woman wakes up and says I will wear a skirt because it is womanly.

I think women do generally want to express some form of femininity and men do want to express some form of masculinity.

The small percentage of non conforming people are not evidence the majority want to be non conforming.

It’s not ridiculous, what’s ridiculous is the idea of anybody being truly gender conforming. Nobody meets every norm assigned to their sex.

Well if everyone is non conforming what is the problem? How could we tell if gender was abolished if everyone is non conforming?

The non conforming can't face discrimination because there is no minority of non conforming people to discriminate against.

I just don’t think gender is innate or particularly meaningful when one doesn’t obsess over it like qt does.

I don't think popular qt ideas on gender are entirely accurate.

I often think it's a mess.

I disagree with gender relating to sexuality. How does sexuality translate to ideas like women are emotional, men are aggressive, girls are highly, boys are grubby etc? How does sexuality relate to gender at all?

Women are emotional is a bad idea. Both sexes are emotional. They may not overall on average express the same emotions over time.

I don't think that gender is entirely sexual it can also be about other utilitarian biological drives. On average men are going to be more useful in tasks that require strength, for example violence. Where as women on average are going to be better at breast feeding. I don't think natural behaviour would be indifferent to that.

Evolution isn't planned, schematic or strictly rational.

I do think men are on average more aggressive in all societies. That does not mean all men are aggressive and women never employ aggression.

Does aggression play a role sexuality, well it often does, even if society objects to it.

I agree anyone who presents as gnc and actively makes an effort to do so due to gendered thinking has not escaped gender.

Agreed then.

What about those of us who simply don’t assign a gender or sex to our preferences? Is that a lie we tell ourselves?

Well if a person is strongly gnc, expressing a lot of opposite gender norms, and they say it has nothing to do with gender I think they are wrong.

That does not mean they should or ought to take on a trans identity.

Does that somehow affect our sexuality if the two are linked?

What do you mean by affect?

I think strong gender non conformity will affect how others see the person sexually.

Most people act on the sexual expression of others.

This seems like a whole lot of odd and some sexist assumptions being presented as something like factual or given knowledge.

Sure. I'm arguing a position of how I see things and why they are the way the are.

Can I see the political problems of some of the positions? Very much so. I can often empathise with a political rejection of them.

But I can't unsee the patterns.

How does the oppression of women fit into innate gender? Is that oppression the natural order?

Politically I oppose the oppression of women. I can't honestly say "women are oppressed" in my country Scotland. That does not mean I think society or government is perfect for women but gender oppression seems like an inaccurate description and unfair on the good work done by previous politica1l activists and unfair compared to women in cultures that are explicitly oppressive. But that's besides the point of the natural order question.

Men being on average more aggressive does not make it an ought. There is more than one drive in humans and they can be conflicting. Society can be over all better for men and women if we work to mitigate that aggression.

For example if men or humans in general have a natural latent urge for violence, cultural or state policies that seek to suppress that will be more successful than an assumption that violence is not natural and policies should built around reaching society without violence.

[–]HouseplantWomen who disagree with QT are a different sex[S] 11 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 0 fun12 insightful - 1 fun -  (21 children)

this the argument that says conforming people are naturally blank but the non conforming naturally have a personality that matches opposite gender cultural norms?

No. Nobody is arguing for the blank slate. Idk why you keep forcing points that aren’t made. I am saying humans experience sexed socialisation and we call it gender roles and nobody is raised without them.

Both sexes are emotional. They may not overall on average express the same emotions over time.

All humans do that lmao. How are they sexed?

I’m not even bothering with the rest lmao. Women can breastfeed so they’re naturally gentler 🙄

[–]theory_of_thisan actual straight crossdresser 2 insightful - 6 fun2 insightful - 5 fun3 insightful - 6 fun -  (20 children)

No. Nobody is arguing for the blank slate. Idk why you keep forcing points that aren’t made. I am saying humans experience sexed socialisation and we call it gender roles and nobody is raised without them.

So where does the cross conformity come from?

[–]HouseplantWomen who disagree with QT are a different sex[S] 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (19 children)

Preference. When you’re smart enough and mature enough to realise that men’s pants don’t make you less of a woman, you can make less restricted choices without fear of rejection from peers. Society is not as restrictive as it was historically in the modern west regarding clothes.

When less value is placed on conformity it’s easier to break free. Society always has those who reject certain constraints.

[–]theory_of_thisan actual straight crossdresser 2 insightful - 6 fun2 insightful - 5 fun3 insightful - 6 fun -  (18 children)

Preference

But you agreed strong gnc people are not escaping gender.

When you say

I agree anyone who presents as gnc and actively makes an effort to do so due to gendered thinking has not escaped gender.

If they do not agree with gender theory but act on a strongly gendered pattern can they be said not be acting on gender?

They are acting on gender. They did not create that gender pattern.

When less value is placed on conformity it’s easier to break free. Society always has those who reject certain constraints.

This is part of the problem I have. The GC side ends up seeing femininity as a prison and masculinity as freedom.

Women doing masculinity isn't the end of gender unless all women do it.

Everyone being masculine is internally coherent. It makes sense. In that case gender would be abolished.

But people don't want that and gc has a problem justify why anyone would want to be feminine. GC correctly points out that femininity is a social construction associated with women. But it often sees masculinity as neutrality.

[–]MarkTwainiac 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (16 children)

The GC side ends up seeing femininity as a prison and masculinity as freedom.

it often sees masculinity as neutrality.

This is a total fantasy you have invented out of whole cloth. It's tosh that reflects your own genderist mindset & sexist prejudices.

Please stop telling other people with views different to yours - the vast majority of whom are women - what we think.

[–]HouseplantWomen who disagree with QT are a different sex[S] 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

You act like there’s no possible way a person could stop associating gender to objects.

People who say silly things like they’d rather die than wear a dress because it’s women’s clothes are trapped by gender. People who wear skirts because they like skirts is not engaging in any sort of obsession over gender, whether conforming or not. They are normal people with preferences.

It’s possible to live in a way that could be considered gnc without making any active effort to be so. I don’t chop wood because I think it’s masculine, I chop wood because the fireplace is my main heat source.

I don’t wear dresses because I think they are feminine, I wear them because I don’t like how pants feel.

That’s preference. Most people go about their day without ever thinking about whether they are conforming to gender norms or not.

You seem to wildly misunderstand us if you think we view femininity as prison and masculinity as freedom. Both are stupid little boxes that have their own restrictions. The feminine box was created to control women, that’s undeniable. The masculine box exists to discourage men from shaming themselves with femininity.

Gender abolishment isn’t about everyone being masculine, it’s about recognising the obvious fact that the concepts of masculinity and femininity are restrictive bullshit and all people have a mixture of the traits assigned to one or the other.

Man you need to really badly do some reading on what gc actually says and what you insert between the lines and assert as common sense.

[–]MarkTwainiac 11 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 0 fun12 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

I don't think that gender is entirely sexual it can also be about other utilitarian biological drives. On average men are going to be more useful in tasks that require strength, for example violence. Where as women on average are going to be better at breast feeding. I don't think natural behaviour would be indifferent to that.

Male brute strength is only required for some kinds of violence that together constitute a minority of all violence, which Oxford defines as behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something. Ever since weapons were first invented & men created hierarchies in which rulers & generals commanded other men in armies & gangs, a great deal of violence in the world has been done by & at the behest of men past the prime of life whose own physical strength wasn't impressive & didn't play a role in carrying out the violence they caused.

For example: Hitler & Goebbels. The designers of the atom bomb. Harry Truman. The chemists who invented Napalm & Agent Orange, the executives who manufactured & marketed it, & the military brass who purchased it & issued orders that it be used. Robert McNamara. Henry Kissinger. The people who developed drone warfare, the high-up officials like Barack Obama who have ordered its use, & all the lower-level military personnel tasked with carrying out the orders.

Today, a great deal interpersonal violence is carried out not by brute strength but by using weapons such as guns, knives, fire, acid and explosives. Most of the guys who've committed mass shootings in North America have not been big strapping particularly strong guys who used brawn, fists and kicks to be violent. Similarly, most modern terrorists have committed their acts of mass violence by using explosives, guns & knives, or by weaponizing modes of transport by driving trucks or cars into crowds of people, & by hijacking airplanes & flying them into buildings.

A breastfeeding woman is fulfilling a biological role, not a gender role. All kinds of women who don't buy into gender have breastfed children. Women don't think of BFing as "feminine," but as female.

Gender ideology says that because women are the ones capable of breastfeeding children, then a woman's "natural role" in a heterosexual family is also to do all the tasks required to feed her entire family forevermore. In some settings, this can mean spending hours each day gathering firewood & fetching water; hunting, trapping, fishing & gathering; tending to crops & livestock; milling grain; & serving her male partner & adult male relatives & making sure they are satiated before she & the kids get fed. In other settings, it means making grocery lists; doing the food shopping or arranging for food to be delivered; cooking breakfast & dinner every day; making & packing the kids' school lunches; throwing dinner parties; making sure the cupboards, fridge & liquor cabinet are always full of the food & drinks her male partner likes & always making sure that whenever she & her kids go out, she's got snacks, beverages & a sandwich tucked in her bag in case anyone gets hungry or thirsty.

Also, when you claim that "women on average are going to be better at breast feeding" than men, you are suggesting that men can breastfeed - just not as well as women. This is not true. Men can't breastfeed children at all.

[–]theory_of_thisan actual straight crossdresser 2 insightful - 6 fun2 insightful - 5 fun3 insightful - 6 fun -  (5 children)

Male brute strength is only required for some kinds of violence that together constitute a minority of all violence, which Oxford defines as behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something. Ever since weapons were first invented & men created hierarchies in which rulers & generals commanded other men in armies & gangs, a great deal of violence in the world has been done by & at the behest of men past the prime of life whose own physical strength wasn't impressive & didn't play a role in carrying out the violence they caused.

The disconnect between physical strength and weaponry only arrived with gunpowder. Even so soldiering still requires physical strength that gives males an advantage. I don't see any way round that. Otherwise we could have truly integrated sports. But that wouldn't make sense.

I don't think that aggression is entirely down to socialised advantages of physical strength. I think men are more aggressive on average that's why men on average carry on being more focused on weapons beyond the personal level. They are in an arms race. That does not mean the arms race is a good thing.

A breastfeeding woman is fulfilling a biological role, not a gender role.

Why would nature leave leave it to chance without even a tendancy?

Women don't think of BFing as "feminine," but as female.

I don't think even a majority of women in the West disconnect breastfeeding from femininity. OK it depends how you define it. But the relationship is hard to disconnect. I terms of gender norms it is going to be associated with women.

Gender ideology says that because women are the ones capable of breastfeeding children, then a woman's "natural role" in a heterosexual family is also to do all the tasks required to feed her entire family forevermore.

Well I can't see man's natural role as breast feeding. Even with some trans positions.

The natural position is not the ought but it can't break the tendency. The choice does not end the biology.

In some settings, this can mean spending hours each day gathering firewood & fetching water; hunting, trapping, fishing & gathering; tending to crops & livestock; milling grain; & serving her male partner & adult male relatives & making sure they are satiated before she & the kids get fed. In other settings, it means making grocery lists; doing the food shopping or arranging for food to be delivered; cooking breakfast & dinner every day; making & packing the kids' school lunches; throwing dinner parties; making sure the cupboards, fridge & liquor cabinet are always full of the food & drinks her male partner likes & always making sure that whenever she & her kids go out, she's got snacks, beverages & a sandwich tucked in her bag in case anyone gets hungry or thirsty.

Even in industrial societies women will on average continue to actively care more for children than men.

I think there are some natural behaviour biases, not absolutes, that create that trend. It is not an absolute, it is not a moral demand.

Also, when you claim that "women on average are going to be better at breast feeding" than men, you are suggesting that men can breastfeed - just not as well as women. This is not true. Men can't breastfeed children at all.

Well I agree. That's why I think men, naturally, are going to be on average less child focused, they literally cannot breastfeed and therefore probably naturally have desire in that particular associated role.

Something associated with women is going to be considered feminine. Even if not all women do it, or some men desire to.

[–]MarkTwainiac 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

You said men are better at violence because of their physical strength. Now you are switching terms, speaking of aggression rather than violence. Maybe you're not aware of this, but pretending you were talking about B before when you actually spoke of A is a tactic I've noticed you use a lot. It's an underhanded tactic. I'm not gonna play along.

The disconnect between physical strength and weaponry only arrived with gunpowder.

This is not true. For millennia before the invention of gunpowder, all sorts of violence in war & everyday life was committed using weapons and weaponized objects. Rocks, logs, tree branches, stone flints, arrows, poison, swords, knives, maces, catapults, torture devices like the rack and methods such as inducing mass starvation by salting the earth of one's enemies in order to make it impossible for them to grow crops or for grazing animals to survive. Fire and fire bombs also have been used as weapon to commit human violence for many thousands of years, as in the age-old practice of torching homes, towns, cities & fields and burning people to death.

Long before gun powder was invented, mostly male humans also employed various animals to help them enact violence against other humans. Attack dogs have been around forever. In Asia & Africa, elephants were used to trample. Snakes with lethal venom have been kept by humans in many cultures for the purpose of using them to bite & kill other humans. Humans often used horses to commit common acts of heinous violence, such as when a person would be tied to a horse & dragged as the horse galloped, or in the case of drawing & quartering.

I don't think even a majority of women in the West disconnect breastfeeding from femininity. OK it depends how you define it. But the relationship is hard to disconnect. I terms of gender norms it is going to be associated with women.

Thanks for the mansplaining. You keep equating femaleness with "femininity" & confusing "gender norms" with biological processes. I do not believe that your claim that most women in the West (or anywhere else) connect breastfeeding to "femininity" is true. Women connect BFing to femaleness and to women, but not to "femininity."

I also don't believe you are the voice of authority on this. I'm also not the voice of authority on what all women in the West or the rest of the world believe either. But as a woman who has breastfed, been in breastfeeding support groups, knows a lot of other women from the West as well as other parts of the world who have breastfed & has discussed BFing with them, has read quite a lot about breastfeeding, I think I can speak with more authority about this than you.

You and other men like you who are hung up on "gender" are the principal ones who connect BFing to "femininity." Not women who have actually engaged in BFing.

Something associated with women is going to be considered feminine.

The passive voice is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Why don't you state what you mean more honestly? Which would be to say something along the lines of, "I and others who share a genderist mindset consider things associated with women to be feminine."

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

Otherwise we could have truly integrated sports. But that wouldn't make sense.

This isn't parallel. The point of sports is to push bodies themselves towards their limits of ability, to compete on the basis of inherent strength and ability. The point of most other activities is to accomplish some external goal, which is why we use tools, weapons, etc to extend the body in ways that make strength and so forth less relevant. This is why it's possible to cheat in sports, whereas if you come up with some clever way of making it easier to, say, move large amounts of dirt around a construction site, or conquer your enemies without brute force, people won't say, hey, no fair, that's cheating.

[–]MarkTwainiac 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

That remark of Theory's comment about sports was/is a total non sequitur that has nothing to do with what was being discussed.

Theory likes to keep switching the topic from one topic to another: he makes points about violence, then later pretends he was talking about aggression, or about soldiering. Then he pretends soldiering means sports. I used to think he was just a sloppy thinker & writer, but I have come to the conclusion that it's a deliberate tactic he reverts to whenever he is challenged. Rather than respond to the challenge directly, he starts talking about another tangentially related topic. It's tiresome.

I don't think anyone GC would dispute that males & females are physically different in myriad ways that causes males to have enormous advantages over females in the vast majority of sports. Nor would anyone GC dispute that males are better suited to certain kinds of soldiering, such as the infantry or in battles that involve hand to hand combat against males. But even before the invention of gunpowder that sort of soldiering was responsible for only some of the violence men have committed in the world.

Moreover, since the dawn of time, foot soldiers have always been commanded by rulers & officers who are not putting their own bodies on the front lines, or on the line at all, & thus their level or lack of physical strength is immaterial. Many rulers & military commanders have been older or elderly men, some of them with disabilities.

In WW 2, for example, the leaders of the Allied powers were men well past their physical prime whose health problems meant they personally would not have survived long on a battlefield: FDR's legs were paralyzed due to polio; Stalin had limited or no use of his left arm due to an injury sustained when he was 12 & was a very heavy smoker who suffered a stroke at the end of the war; and Churchill, though strong of spirit, was an overweight heavy drinker & cigar smoker with chronic depression & heart disease who suffered a heart attack in 1941 & a bad bout of pneumonia in 1943.

Harry Truman, who became POTUS toward the end of the war after FDR's death, was a slightly-built man who had very poor eyesight since childhood that required him to wear very thick glasses & fit the criteria for "legal blindness;" as a result, he was rejected for West Point & also for military service when he initially applied - he ended up joining the Missouri National Guard, but he only got in because he'd memorized the eye charts. Yet whilst Truman's eyesight & age meant he wouldn't have made it a day as a soldier on the battlefield, nor could he have been a pilot or gunner, neither his age nor this stopped Truman from being able to take the decisive executive actions he did to bring WW2 in the Pacific to a close by dropping atom bombs on Hiroshima & Nagasaki, events that caused at least 200,000 deaths.

[–]strictly 9 insightful - 6 fun9 insightful - 5 fun10 insightful - 6 fun -  (24 children)

I think masculinity and femininity are sexuality.

I am also curious about what you mean with this. Are you saying it sexually arouses a masculine/feminine person to display masculinity/femininity? Or are you saying masculine and feminine people use their masculinity/femininity to attract sexual partners? Or do you mean we are sexually attracted to people displaying masculinity/femininity? Or perhaps a combination of all three?

Masculinity and femininity follow the same pattern.

I don’t think gender roles are necessary for the development of androphilai/gynephilia. I think androphilia/gynpehilia can end up developing in different ways depending on what it hooked into during development. In a society without gender roles there would only be biological sex for androphilia/gynephilia to hook into as that would be the only thing associated with the each sex. We don’t live in a world without gender roles though so for some people androphilia/gynephila might have hooked into everything associated with each sex, including cultural things. Or in some cases it might have only hooked into the cultural things but not the biological sex itself, making the person attracted to masculinity/femininity regardless of the sex of the person.

Is your theory that most people would end up asexual in a hypothetical genderless society?

It's emergent from human nature so you can't abolish it.

I think there might be a biological mechanism making people on average more likely to imitate members of their own sex as there has been a few of studies pointing in that direction. But that wouldn't make gender roles inevitable per se.

[–][deleted] 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (12 children)

Could you share the studies you mentioned at the end of your comment?

[–]strictly 6 insightful - 6 fun6 insightful - 5 fun7 insightful - 6 fun -  (11 children)

Could you share the studies you mentioned at the end of your comment?

Here girls with CAH (who were exposed to more prenatal androgens) seem less likely than other girls to follow fake female gender norms (https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2015.0125) so prenatal hormones might influence who we imitate. It was a long time ago since I read about the self-socialization theory so can't find the other studies right now but there was a finding on monkeys where male monkeys didn't learn to be take care of monkey children by female monkeys, but if there were older nurturing male monkeys, then they would follow the example of these nurturing male monkeys and learn to take care of monkey children from them.

[–]ZveroboyAlinaIs clownfish a clown or a fish? 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

When girl is said that she is "other" or she is laughed out for having facial hair from the very childhood - no wonder she will not want to comply with gender stereotypes.

2016

Poor women with CAH pulled into this gender nonsense.

For example, boys tend to prefer playing with toy vehicles and weapons, whereas girls tend to prefer playing with dolls and tea sets.

That's a lie, which was already debunked in studies in 90s and 00s, as all this is imposed on kids. There was study, that younger boys will always play dolls with their older sister and will not find it girlish or anything, until tell it in school or elsewhere and be laughed out for doing this, only then those boys would start doing "what other boys do" - to "fit the group they belong".

This study says this later themselves:

In regard to gender-typed toys, parents, teachers and peers all encourage gender-consistent toy choices more than they encourage gender-atypical choices.

But they are still making assumption, that it is what boys and girls like and that it is natural. Which is not.

I'd ask /u/ColoredTwice experience on this, as she has CAH herself.

All the girls with CAH had been assigned and reared as girls, and treated with hormones postnatally to normalize their cortisol and androgen concentrations. Similarly, all the boys with CAH had been assigned and reared as boys, and they were treated with the same hormones as girls were to normalize postnatal hormone concentrations.

This is very weird statement. As far as I know, if they receive treatment for "wrong sex" - they will simply die. So there no "assigment" involved - it is just what medical personel was required to do to save lives of those kids.

[–]strictly 3 insightful - 6 fun3 insightful - 5 fun4 insightful - 6 fun -  (3 children)

When girl is said that she is "other" or she is laughed out for having facial hair from the very childhood - no wonder she will not want to comply with gender stereotypes.

Girls with CAH who get treatment don't all grow facial hair in early childhood, I think it would have been mentioned in the study if following fake gender norms depended on the child being bearded or not.

That's a lie, which was already debunked in studies in 90s and 00s, as all this is imposed on kids.

The study will mention other studies, that's almost inevitable, even studies you agree with would more often than not also mentions studies you don't agree with, but this is not the study itself. And the conclusion of the study is that the difference is not about the toys themselves.

But they are still making assumption, that it is what boys and girls like and that it is natural.

The point of the study is making fake norms and see the tendency to follow them. There is an article mentioning this study where Cordelia Fine who wrote the book delusions of gender is one of the co-authors https://theconversation.com/how-we-inherit-masculine-and-feminine-behaviours-a-new-idea-about-environment-and-genes-82524.

This is very weird statement. As far as I know, if they receive treatment for "wrong sex" - they will simply die. So there no "assigment" involved - it is just what medical personel was required to do to save lives of those kids.

They will use woke terms as they have to. Almost all studies nowadays use woke terms in some way or the other, one has to ignore that and read the meaning behind the word if one likes reading studies.

Anyway, it's worth mentioning I don't believe in the blank slate. I have read many studies and I have also read Cordelia Fine's books where she criticize the studies, and I mostly agree with the criticisms. One of the things that are hard to explain through pure socialization is the heterosexual/homosexual differences. In studies homosexuals are on average more gender non-conforming than heterosexual people, and that seems to be the case for pre-homosexuals too (i.e children who are more gender non-conforming seem to be more likely to be same-sex attracted later in life). There are many ways to try to explain away this but none of those explanations ever seemed that convincing to me. The self-socialization theory would explain it though, and the self-socialization theory doesn't support the inevitability of gender norms.

[–]ZveroboyAlinaIs clownfish a clown or a fish? 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

One of the things that are hard to explain through pure socialization is the heterosexual/homosexual differences. In studies homosexuals are on average more gender non-conforming than heterosexual people

That is the easiest part to explain, actually.

I saw that I am different to others in my sexuality, so I just went different in other ways as well, just because I already was not like others in some aspects. It was very strange not to see any other woman loving women, everyone was with men, so I thought I am just weird, and when I rebelled against "you need to date boys" - I went full GNC for few years during my teen years. I am bisexual, but with very strong preference for women, and because of social pressure, I decided I will only ever be with women. I know many similar stories about going GNC from lesbians and gay men. Especially gay men who were bullied - went even more GNC. Most transsexuals I know are gay men, who were victims of homophobia, who went full GNC and later full "feminine" to a "I will be a woman" degree.

Anyway, it's worth mentioning I don't believe in the blank slate.

It is hard to say. Boys and girls have different experience and different capabilities based on our biological differences. Same situation will be perceived differently by boys and girls, even if both will receive same treatment, same socialization and will have everything else the same. Our bodies are different, we can't escape this. Same goes with hormones - progesterone is working like sedative, while testosterone is working as anti-depressant and energetic. I don't think it will ever be possible to clearly know are we born with blank state or not, but just because our biological bodies, needs and experiences are different - we will be different as groups (men and women) always. We are - our experience and our biological needs.

[–]strictly 4 insightful - 6 fun4 insightful - 5 fun5 insightful - 6 fun -  (0 children)

I saw that I am different to others in my sexuality, so I just went different in other ways as well, just because I already was not like others in some aspects.

I was a tomboy as a kid and got bullied for it. I was a tomboy before I knew I was a lesbian. Among GNC homosexuals many seem to have been GNC before puberty, long before they were aware of being different from other kids in sexuality. There are certainly those who become GNC later too, and many who were never GNC at all, but on average homosexuals seem to have been more likely to have been GNC from a very early age than straight people on average. That is why some homosexuals are concerned about early child transition for GNC children and see that as gay conversion therapy as a significant percentage of them would probably grow up as homosexual.

[–]theory_of_thisan actual straight crossdresser 3 insightful - 6 fun3 insightful - 5 fun4 insightful - 6 fun -  (0 children)

Anyway, it's worth mentioning I don't believe in the blank slate. I have read many studies and I have also read Cordelia Fine's books where she criticize the studies, and I mostly agree with the criticisms. One of the things that are hard to explain through pure socialization is the heterosexual/homosexual differences. In studies homosexuals are on average more gender non-conforming than heterosexual people, and that seems to be the case for pre-homosexuals too (i.e children who are more gender non-conforming seem to be more likely to be same-sex attracted later in life). There are many ways to try to explain away this but none of those explanations ever seemed that convincing to me. The self-socialization theory would explain it though, and the self-socialization theory doesn't support the inevitability of gender norms.

Agree with this.

There is bad gender science. But bad gender science does not mean there is no science to gender.

[–]MarkTwainiac 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Here girls with CAH (who were exposed to more prenatal androgens) seem less likely than other girls to follow fake female gender norms (https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2015.0125) so prenatal hormones might influence who we imitate.

Please explain where the "prenatal androgens" and "prenatal hormones" that these persons "were exposed to" in utero came from. How are they different to the androgens and hormones that babies are "exposed to" during the puberty of infancy?

Why is that you (& many others) are so willing to give credence to the idea that "prenatal hormones might influence" human behavior, but totally overlook the possible role of the sex hormones human babies make in vast quantities in the first 6 months of life starting at circa 4 weeks after birth?

Your generalizations about "monkeys" undermines your arguments. There are many, many different monkey species & a great variety of behaviors has been found amongst them. Which specific kind of monkey are you referring to here?

[–]strictly 7 insightful - 3 fun7 insightful - 2 fun8 insightful - 3 fun -  (3 children)

Please explain where the "prenatal androgens" and "prenatal hormones" that these persons "were exposed to" in utero came from. How are they different to the androgens and hormones that babies are "exposed to" during the puberty of infancy?

I think androgens in general are relevant, and the timing, as androgens don't always have the same effect depending on the timing.

Why is that you (& many others) are so willing to give credence to the idea that "prenatal hormones might influence" human behavior, but totally overlook the possible role of the sex hormones human babies make in vast quantities in the first 6 months of life starting at circa 4 weeks after birth?

I didn't mention the existence of the sun either. Just because I don't mention something doesn't mean I don't believe in it. I can't mention everything as that would make posting something a full time job.

Your generalizations about "monkeys" undermines your arguments.

I said monkeys as I didn't remember the species and couldn't find the study, I mentioned not finding the study and it being several years ago since reading it so everyone would be free to ignore if they wanted to.

[–]MarkTwainiac 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Oh c'mon. You said that prenatal hormones that fetuses "are exposed to" at some unspecified time during the 40 weeks it takes for a human fetus to grow to full term have a major influence on sex-linked traits & behavior much later on in life. Specifically you claimed that girls exposed to "more prenatal androgens" due to CAH are "less likely than other girls to follow fake gender norms" when they grow up, suggesting a cause & effect relationship.

This could well be the case. But it still raises the obvious question: where do these prenatal hormones supposedly come from? Moreover, it raises the issue of why the exclusive focus on the androgens & hormones in a fetus's system in utero - which as I'm sure you know can't be tested for or measured - whilst completely ignoring infants' sex hormones during the puberty of infancy that occurs in the first 6 months after birth, which we know are as high as they will be later on in the puberty of adolescence - & which can be tested for & measured very safely & easily?

One of the reasons I asked these questions is that when "prenatal androgens" & "prenatal hormones" that fetuses "are exposed to" are brought up to explain the development of behaviors later in a child or adult's life long after birth, it is often done with the intent of implying that these hormones come not from the fetus itself, but from the mother. According to a theory advanced by many misogynists and genderists, for some unknown reason women's bodies during pregnancy sometimes give rise to unpredictable surges of sex hormones that cause some fetuses to be flooded with tsunami-like "washes" of the sex hormones that usually predominate in the sex opposite to the fetuses' own sex . This in turn supposedly causes affected fetuses to end up many years later as children, adolescents or adults who are in some way atypical in terms of "gender" expression, identity &/or sexual orientation - or to have other issues like autism, anxiety and learning disabilities.

I'm not saying this is what you are saying or you believe. Just that this is usually the view of those who advance these sorts of theories about fetal "exposure to" prenatal sex hormones at unspecified times prior to birth.

A good way to get an idea if there's merit to the impact of early hormone exposure would be to test & measure the androgens & other sex hormones of babies in the puberty of infancy, then track the tested children as they grow up to see how they turn out. This could easily be done without risking any harm to the tested infants. Whilst it wouldn't solve the mystery of what happens hormonally inside human fetuses in utero, it certainly would go a long way to showing whether there really is a link, & how strong a link it is, between early-in-life sex hormone levels & such matters as later physical development, psychosexual development, sexual orientation, "gender conformity" or lack thereof, athletic ability & interests, trans identification and so on.

But no one seems to want to do this or even to discuss it. Rather, most people today who believe that sex hormone exposure early in life is important to, & predictive of, behaviors & inclinations later on in life would rather ignore investigating the measurable hormones of the puberty of infancy so they can continue to speculate solely about "androgen exposure" & "hormone washes" in utero.

Again, not saying this is what you believe or would rather do. I have no idea what you think. It's just that for the sake of all who might be reading, whenever someone brings up the issue of the impact of "prenatal hormones" on the trajectory of people's lives much later on, I feel a duty to raise questions to point up the unsubstantiated nature of these claims, as well as the mother-blaming that often underlies them.

[–]strictly 5 insightful - 4 fun5 insightful - 3 fun6 insightful - 4 fun -  (1 child)

You said that prenatal hormones that fetuses "are exposed to" at some unspecified time during the 40 weeks it takes for a human fetus to grow to full term have a major influence on sex-linked traits & behavior much later on in life.

I said seem, not definitely, and nothing about major, it’s theory about child imitation. I didn’t state anything about other androgens not mattering. But androgens at one stage doesn't necessarily lead to the same effects as androgen at another stage, and I don't know how long the researchers think this particular timing window expands, and the study itself primarily talks about prenatal androgens, and it’s also hard to know if these girls continued to have an overproduction of androgens even after birth as many of them probably were diagnosed with CAH at birth and got treatment for it, so there wouldn't be much for me to expand on regarding the potential role of post natal hormones in this particular case. I also don’t have limitless time so I will never be able to speak about everything that can be factor.

But it still raises the obvious question: where do these prenatal hormones supposedly come from?

Untreated CAH leads to an overproduction of androgens, this starts before they are born which is why girls with CAH might be born with virilized genitalia.

it is often done with the intent of implying that these hormones come not from the fetus itself, but from the mother

Never implied it came from the mother here, the girls in study have CAH so I thought was obvious that source the was the condition the girls had.

According to a theory advanced by many misogynists and genderists, for some unknown reason women's bodies during pregnancy sometimes give rise to unpredictable surges of sex hormones that cause some fetuses to be flooded with tsunami-like "washes" of the sex hormones that usually predominate in the sex opposite to the fetuses' own sex . This in turn supposedly causes affected fetuses to end up many years later as children, adolescents or adults who are in some way atypical in terms of "gender" expression, identity &/or sexual orientation - or to have other issues like autism, anxiety and learning disabilities.

Prenatal/neonatal androgens being a factor is the leading theory behind female homosexuality. Regarding conditions where scientists think prenatal/neonatal androgens might have a role they are generally uncertain regarding the source of the influencing hormones. It’s known that mothers with certain hormonal conditions (like PCOS) are more likely to give birth to children with certain conditions, making early hormone exposure a possible factor in that condition but this doesn't mean the source of the hormones must come from the mother as it’s equally likely that the child simply inherited the genes related to the mother’s hormonal condition and that in turn causes the child to have a higher androgen production.

at unspecified times prior to birth

It sounded like you thought I too specific for not talking about the potential role of post-natal hormones, but here you seem to think not mentioning a month is too unspecific. They do have theories about the when for some of these things as there some indications about the timings but that would be on a more speculative level.

But no one seems to want to do this or even to discuss it

I think researchers are interested in doing a study like the way you say but studies in this area are not well-funded so often they can only get funding for studies that are very cheap to make. Plus I imagine there is a lot of paper work with consent even for studies that seem simple. As for me, I’m interested in the research but I’m not a researcher, and although I have read a wide range of studies I can’t read studies that don’t yet exist, it’s not to due to lack of wanting. Anyway, it's worth noting the prenatal/neonatal hormones being a factor is only the leading theory for female homosexuality, not male homosexuality (as there are other factor they think matters more there).

as well as the mother-blaming that often underlies them.

What is there to blame if we are talking about homosexuality/GNC? It’s a neutral thing, neither good nor bad. I don’t understand why we should be morally invested in from whom the potentially influencing androgens originally came from, it’s not like we should need a scapegoat to blame in this context as being atypical is not being defective. And in the contexts where the child does indeed have negative condition with strong inheritable factors (like haemophilia) I still don’t think we should see any parent as blameworthy for contributing the gene. Seeing the idea of being the carrier as close to slander would contribute to the idea that the carrier would morally guilty in some way.

[–][deleted] 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Thank you.

[–]theory_of_thisan actual straight crossdresser 2 insightful - 5 fun2 insightful - 4 fun3 insightful - 5 fun -  (10 children)

I meant to say "I think masculinity and femininity are deeply naturally connected to sexuality"

Only a mistake.

I am also curious about what you mean with this. Are you saying it sexually arouses a masculine/feminine person to display masculinity/femininity? Or are you saying masculine and feminine people use their masculinity/femininity to attract sexual partners? Or do you mean we are sexually attracted to people displaying masculinity/femininity? Or perhaps a combination of all three?

A bit of all three. Mostly the last.

A person can express masculinity or femininity without being aware of how attractive it is.

I don’t think gender roles are necessary for the development of androphilai/gynephilia. I think androphilia/gynpehilia can end up developing in different ways depending on what it hooked into during development.

Well I do think there is an environmental contribution.

But I don't think masculinity or femininity would ever become completely disconnected from the erotic.

In a society without gender roles there would only be biological sex for androphilia/gynephilia to hook into as that would be the only thing associated with the each sex.

By gender roles we can say gender norms. I don't think it's technically possible to create a society without gender norms.

Theoretically if you really forced it they would always emerge and the process of elimination would render too much social trauma and sublimation.

We don’t live in a world without gender roles though so for some people androphilia/gynephila might have hooked into everything associated with each sex, including cultural things. Or in some cases it might have only hooked into the cultural things but not the biological sex itself, making the person attracted to masculinity/femininity regardless of the sex of the person.

Well I do think there can be a disconnect between the cultural aspects and the physical aspects. But then I think humans sexuality is very cultural and gendered.

Is your theory that most people would end up asexual in a hypothetical genderless society?

Generally I think gendered sexuality would assert itself in other ways. It would always appear perhaps in unexpected ways. Constant suppression of all gendered sexuality might cause sexual dysfunction though or an excessive physical obsession.

A minority might be perfectly happy within that though.

I think there might be a biological mechanism making people on average more likely to imitate members of their own sex as there has been a few of studies pointing in that direction. But that wouldn't make gender roles inevitable per se.

Gender roles can cover a lot here, that might not cover all gender norms.

Humans both consciously sexualise and unconsciously sexualise.

[–]Juniperius 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

an excessive physical obsession

What does this mean?

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    [–]VioletRemihomosexual female (aka - lesbian) 14 insightful - 1 fun14 insightful - 0 fun15 insightful - 1 fun -  (10 children)

    How can it be "by nature", if kid does not even know what is "feminine" and "masculine", or when "feminine" and "masculine" can change drastically during their lifetime?

    When I was young - leggings were for men only, and women were banned from wearing them as "only for prostitutes", now men in leggings are seen as gay or weird, and it is common for women to wear them. For example.

    [–]theory_of_thisan actual straight crossdresser 3 insightful - 6 fun3 insightful - 5 fun4 insightful - 6 fun -  (9 children)

    How can it be "by nature", if kid does not even know what is "feminine" and "masculine", or when "feminine" and "masculine" can change drastically during their lifetime?

    Drastically? I'm not sure about that. It does change though.

    Language can change in your lifetime. That's not evidence that the language trait isn't natural.

    When I was young - leggings were for men only, and women were banned from wearing them as "only for prostitutes", now men in leggings are seen as gay or weird, and it is common for women to wear them. For example.

    Weirdly I thought the were always coded female but have become more unisex these days. That's just my perception of them.

    [–]VioletRemihomosexual female (aka - lesbian) 12 insightful - 1 fun12 insightful - 0 fun13 insightful - 1 fun -  (8 children)

    So how exactly something subjective can be objective and "since birth", when during birth you are lacking cognition capabilities to understand that subjective in the first place? Especially considering that subjective about same objective fact is different for different people.

    That's not evidence that the language trait isn't natural.

    But language trait is not natural. That is why every language is so different, that is why we created languages like Mathemathics or Esperanto. Language exist to communicaate better and it changes depending on what people in that place decided to use as communication - and why alphabets are so different in different language families (asian, arabic, slavic, latin, etc). Humans are not born with understanding or knowledge of languages, we are slowly learning it with our surroundings, kids who were neglected and not heard language from parents and missed classes - can't communicate and it is hard to them to learn language later in life - like those examples of kids who grew up among animals.

    Weirdly I thought the were always coded female but have become more unisex these days. That's just my perception of them.

    Just 200 years ago in Europe leggings were "male aristocracy" only. And even more years ago shoes with high heels were for rich men only as well. If poor man or any woman wore them - they could be punished by death.

    In ancient Roman Empire - all men were wearing dresses, and pants/troucers were only for women and slaves.

    Even nowadays in some ethnicities it is like that - one African tribe have tradition that men are wearing make up and dresses and dancing in front of women, so women chose who is the prettiest from them. On some Oceanic islands it is similar.

    So no, it is not "always coded" and not "genetic".

    [–]theory_of_thisan actual straight crossdresser 3 insightful - 6 fun3 insightful - 5 fun4 insightful - 6 fun -  (7 children)

    So how exactly something subjective can be objective and "since birth", when during birth you are lacking cognition capabilities to understand that subjective in the first place? Especially considering that subjective about same objective fact is different for different people.

    We can have innate tendencies, desires and thought patterns.

    But language trait is not natural.

    I think it is natural and I think most scientists on the subject believe language acquisition is innate. The absolute blank position is a minority. The debate it mostly over the degree.

    That is why every language is so different, that is why we created languages like Mathemathics or Esperanto.

    I would hold to the position that mathematics is discovered not created.

    Language exist to communicaate better and it changes depending on what people in that place decided to use as communication - and why alphabets are so different in different language families (asian, arabic, slavic, latin, etc). Humans are not born with understanding or knowledge of languages, we are slowly learning it with our surroundings, kids who were neglected and not heard language from parents and missed classes - can't communicate and it is hard to them to learn language later in life - like those examples of kids who grew up among animals.

    Humans are born with a natural ability to acquire language. Culture is a natural artefact of humans. Like a hive is to a bee. It is dysfunctional without it.

    Just 200 years ago in Europe leggings were "male aristocracy" only. And even more years ago shoes with high heels were for rich men only as well. If poor man or any woman wore them - they could be punished by death.

    I accept variations in cultural forms of gender. But all those cultures had gender forms.

    In ancient Roman Empire - all men were wearing dresses, and pants/troucers were only for women and slaves.

    Roman society very much had masculinity and femininity. They also had a minority of gender variant people also associated with same sex attraction.

    Even nowadays in some ethnicities it is like that - one African tribe have tradition that men are wearing make up and dresses and dancing in front of women, so women chose who is the prettiest from them. On some Oceanic islands it is similar.

    The Wodaabe still have gender norms. The Gerewol festival is a local expression of masculinity.

    The women still express femininity.

    Humans do express sexual selection. Men and women do choose.

    [–]Penultimate_Penance 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (17 children)

    Is gender necessary? By gender I mean sex stereotypes.

    [–]theory_of_thisan actual straight crossdresser 2 insightful - 7 fun2 insightful - 6 fun3 insightful - 7 fun -  (16 children)

    (gender in this context)

    I think that's a category error to ask if gender norms are necessary. It's like asking if sexual orientation or language is necessary. I think gender is a product of both emergent traits and social construction.

    If conforming people are stereotypical then non conforming people are stereotypical towards the opposite sex.

    Gender norms is perhaps a better term than stereotypes.

    [–]Penultimate_Penance 12 insightful - 1 fun12 insightful - 0 fun13 insightful - 1 fun -  (15 children)

    Gender nonconforming people are proof the gender is bullshit. Gender/sexist stereotypes is what makes makes their life harder. I sure as hell would be a lot better off without bullshit sexist gender roles for women.

    [–]theory_of_thisan actual straight crossdresser 2 insightful - 6 fun2 insightful - 5 fun3 insightful - 6 fun -  (14 children)

    People who conform to opposite sex gender norms despite their environment is proof gender is bullshit?

    [–]MarkTwainiac 11 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 0 fun12 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

    Being "gender nonconforming" does not mean conforming "to opposite sex gender norms." The fact that you can only see black & white blinds you to the fact that when it comes to "gender norms" most people are shades of gray.

    This willful blindness to the reality of other people's lives is on you. As a man who finds the "gender norms" you consider "feminine" to be sexually arousing, who puts a lot of time & energy into "femininity," & who benefits a great deal from your status as a man in a male supremacist society, you have a vested interest & myriad incentives for wanting to uphold strict "gender norms" & trying to pigeonhole everyone & everything into one of two boxes labelled "masculine" and "feminine." But most people aren't like you in this regard.

    [–]theory_of_thisan actual straight crossdresser 3 insightful - 6 fun3 insightful - 5 fun4 insightful - 6 fun -  (2 children)

    Being "gender nonconforming" does not mean conforming "to opposite sex gender norms."

    Can you give me an example of someone being gender non conforming without conforming to opposite sex gender norms?

    I can see things can shift from one sex to another or become unisex or disappear but that does not mean everything will do that.

    Gender norms will remain and gender non conformity will remain.

    [–]Penultimate_Penance 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

    I don't shave my legs. In the United States it is not normal for women to not shave their legs. In some cultures it is normal for women to not shave their legs. E.G. Gender is arbitrary bullshit. Name any stupid expectation of men or women you can think of and there is probably a culture out there who has the opposite belief about which 'gender' should be doing what. Gender is the problem not the solution.

    [–]Penultimate_Penance 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (9 children)

    Also you aren't understanding the argument. Gender roles consist of a collection of cultural beliefs about men and women. For example there are many people who believe that women are inherently bad at logic and anything that requires it like math, the sciences and philosophy. Women who get into the sciences, math and philosophy and succeed prove that the regressive sexist belief that women don't logic well is bullshit. When women are no longer denied access to education they do great, go figure, but sexist gender roles are a big fucking deal, because women all over the world throughout history up to the present day have been denied an education, because of these sexist beliefs about women's gender roles. Deifying and identifying with gender harms women full stop. Trans Identity and Feminism are incompatible full stop. Gender identity is rotten to it's core, because when drill you down to what gender actually is it is sexism plain and simple.

    Many male trans individuals spout off horrifically sexist regressive beliefs about women and play act their sexist idea of womanhood and claim that that makes them a woman then turn around and expect women to be a ok with it. That's to put it bluntly batshit.

    [–]theory_of_thisan actual straight crossdresser 3 insightful - 4 fun3 insightful - 3 fun4 insightful - 4 fun -  (8 children)

    I don't think men and women are behaviourally the same but I think the differences have to be limited. It has to be down to one or two things. I think the differences would be more like bi modal preferential desires.

    For example, women were often employed as "human computers." Doing the maths for larger projects.

    Why did computing and those roles become more male dominated? Because the pay went up and men sought that pay. The male power aggression aspect edged women out. Nothing to do with cognitive ability. Men in competition with other men feel they need the money.

    Even a slight average difference might have effects on a larger scale. So not a big difference between the sexes, nothing to do with ability, only that average slight aggression power dynamic.

    The singular power aggression dynamic might explain a lot of common differences we see across cultures, the crime difference, male propensity for organised violence and sex crime.

    Not an absolute difference but an average which is more clear in larger populations.

    This does not mean "patriarchies" are stable or the only system. Societies can find that bias in male behaviour has to be better managed. It has to be controlled for greater good of society.

    I'm speculating here as are we all because the science is not clear.

    There are people who identify as "trans women" saying outrageous sexist things. I'm not justifying them. They are frankly absurd.

    I still can't see men and women on average behaving innately identically. Sex is one of those things they have different behaviour on.

    [–]MarkTwainiac 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

    For example, women were often employed as "human computers." Doing the maths for larger projects.

    Why did computing and those roles become more male dominated? Because the pay went up and men sought that pay. The male power aggression aspect edged women out. Nothing to do with cognitive ability. Men in competition with other men feel they need the money.

    It was a little more complicated than that. Actually, a lot more complicated.

    Women were pushed out of many positions in computing & many other fields because traditionally women were routinely fired from their jobs when they got pregnant. This was lawful to do in most jurisdictions. Moreover, in many jurisdictions and/or lines of work, women had to cease paid employment outside the home once they got married. Sometimes this was by law; sometimes it was by company policy, union rules and professional or industry standards; & sometimes it was by social convention. In many cases, it was all of those factors combined at once.

    Also, after World War II was over, women in countries like the US and UK were fired en masse from the jobs in computing, defense & nearly all other industries that they had held during wartime because their governments decided the jobs the women had be doing rightfully belonged to the men who had served in the military and now were returning to the civilian workforce.

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