The Gender Unicorn

It is true that biologically from the development of the fetus that various hormone levels and chemicals do result in naturally occuring non-specific gender conforming people of all types, as a rare as it naturally is (1 in 300), I think what is happening with the policization of this topic is basically creating a certain 'coolness' for others to attach to, imitate and become overly active about this.

If you're born with a penis and testicles, until you fully transition you're a man and the degree to which you are feminine psychologically just makes you a feminine man and there's nothing wrong with that. Same for the opposite of a masculine female, who is scientifically born female. The various degrees of gender and transitions seem very overly complex and silly, why it is being taken so far is beyond me unless I take into account other politicized issues I know of that really just cause division and distraction from issues that affect everyone equally as a whole.

While I understand the few biological studies on this topic, there's definitely some mental aspect to it as well, whether it's simple confusion, influence, or a disorder I don't know, but at some level people don't except who they naturally are (or how other people naturally are) and then make the choice to transition which they are entirely responsible for and for me a burden placed on the public whether it's tax money used for transition, or 'gender neutral' bathrooms I think gets out of hand and shows the ignorance on both sides (the choice of the trans person to not accept themself as they are born, and the person who does not accept the trans person for not playing the expected role of a gender).

People get heated over personal issues like this, like sexual orientation and religion. Demanding and getting your recognization and respect is one thing, but becoming a 'protected class' and eventually having more entitlements at the expense of the average person gets ridiculous. I think that it's certainly the time to shine for the LGBTQ-etc crowd, there is a time for all minorities and historically repressed/violated people to get their respect no doubt.

In the western world at least, our common bond truly is freedom. Without freedom you can't be a buddhist, bisexual, vegetarian, or transwoman. We are all people and should focus on our common issues, that affect us all together as humankind. Unfortunately some people don't get to exercise that freedom of choice to express themselves without others who enjoy their freedom of choice to express themselves get to and also use it to suppress someone else's, this goes both ways for this issue when people using their politicized status as trans, or as their traditional position as a fundamentalist whatever.

Part of me also realizes that despite the reality to this topic, there has been an agenda for awhile to in a sense 'demoralize, de-tradionalize, de-culturalize', destabilize the family structure' with the aim to single out as many people as possible, who won't have close family or friendly ties to support them when they need, in order to render them dependent on the state. I think that, just like the politicized BlackLivesMatter stuff, the LGTBQ movement is now a tool for, at least in the US/Europe, our socio-fascist pseudo republics/democracies ran by old-school and new-school mafioso governments.

Then again, I'm a married, white, heterosexual, conservative male who, in the eyes of many today, is the literal incarnation of satan with all my repression of women, racist enslavement of blacks and all the other 100+ year old straw arguments that skirt the issues of the present to favor an agenda that pushes all of us apart.

Is gender and sex a simple subject? There are men and there are women and some are Gay/Lesbian or bisexual. Nice and simple. Except wait, because there are transgender individuals, transvestites, intersex individuals, asexual individuals and pansexual individuals. And some of these identities can shift over time. Not quite so simple then.

Mindas Arran wrote: It's like they are inventing new ways to confuse kids and over-complicate a pretty simple subject.

Where does the confusion arise from?

Lightstrider wrote: The various degrees of gender and transitions seem very overly complex and silly

Humanity is diverse.

Lightstrider wrote: scientifically born female

Being born female or male etc is a cultural consideration.

Lightstrider wrote: the choice of the trans person to not accept themself as they are born

If accepting yourself was as simple as a choice, wouldn't it be chosen?

Being born female or male etc is a cultural consideration.

This statement is a little off. The only considerations which are truly cultural about "male" or "female" are those which delimit the roles what diverse cultures will attribute to beings with male or female biology. Biology is one of those things that is determined by the parental lineage (which gets just enormous the more generations back one goes), but for as many variables as go into the formulae of the millions-year-old mix that becomes "me," I don't have a choice about what 'sex' I happen to be, no more so than having blue eyes or a lighter complexion. My 'sex' is a matter of facticity - of die Geworfenheit - about which my only choice is to make the best of it.

Where the cultural considerations come in - and this is the area where we actually can improve things - is how we help people to make the best of it. With state of the arts technologies, we may be getting better at doing that in the case of the transgendered who really feel fundamentally to having been born with the wrong bodies. But that in itself is a cultural consideration : to alter what could not be altered in the state of nature. And please don't take that as saying that "it's unnatural," -- No, even our so-called reverence for what we consider "nature", is a cultural consideration.

"A human house is just as 'natural' as a bird's nest." ~ Alan Watts

Everything else gender related is socio-cultural. As such we need to leave as wide a berth for all the diversity there is to emerge and flourish. That might seem paradoxical to those who feel that would be detrimental to cultural integrity ; it would indeed aid immensely our cultural integrity. Gender considerations as to who can love whom, what constitues a "family", how one may dress/style nemself, whether or not certain (or no) sexual practices are "abnormal" -- these are the conventions that need enlarged. Changing cultural convictions is not political ; it is a very slow process of weeding out antagonistic associations that are buried under generations of cultural conditioning - so much so that they are not even actually "thoughts". One may 'think' in an accepting way, but behave by prejudices that one may not even know one holds.

Akkarin wrote: Is gender and sex a simple subject? There are men and there are women and some are Gay/Lesbian or bisexual. Nice and simple. Except wait, because there are transgender individuals, transvestites, intersex individuals, asexual individuals and pansexual individuals. And some of these identities can shift over time. Not quite so simple then.

Mindas Arran wrote: It's like they are inventing new ways to confuse kids and over-complicate a pretty simple subject.

Where does the confusion arise from?

Lightstrider wrote: The various degrees of gender and transitions seem very overly complex and silly

Humanity is diverse.

Lightstrider wrote: scientifically born female

Being born female or male etc is a cultural consideration.

Lightstrider wrote: the choice of the trans person to not accept themself as they are born

If accepting yourself was as simple as a choice, wouldn't it be chosen?

The gender aspect to this is definitely not simple and I find it the most interesting. Transgender individual makes the choice to change their gender, transvestites wear the opposite gender's clothing, intersex individuals are what I think of as having the most legitimate claim to special recognition or status due to actually having both sex organs and asexual individuals just don't have sex.

What someone wants to do with their body, what clothes they want to wear, whether or not they want to have sex and whoever they want to have sex with is all their personal business and I'd never tell someone what they can or cannot do in that regard. Except when it comes to children or animals but I'm sure there will be movements for pedophiles and animal lovers. Obviously a lot of people out there think that wanting to transform their body in such a way is wrong, a man wearing women's clothing is perverted, not having sex is just weird, or being gay is a sin. There's no question in my mind why gender identity and sexual orientation movements exist, I just like to think about where everyone on both sides draw a line in the sand and move on to bigger things that affect all of us much more intensely. I understand though it is important for minorities to not be repressed/suppressed/whatever.

As for confusing and the cultural consideration of male and female, well besides intersex individuals are people not born with a specific biological sex? I think gender roles and expectations are definitely cultural considerations that come into conflict with one's own gender identity or one's own personal experience of their gender. I read that intersex individuals have been 'reassigned' a gender and then grow up not identifying to the gender they were 'reasseigned to'. That prenatal changes in hormones and such can alter the presdisposition of the brain toward one sex that doesn't match up with the genetic makeup and sexual organs of the fetus.

A lot of this is very complex and I admit now that I've read that little bit my ignorance is reduced, but it's definitely going to confuse children and I think the worry some people might have is, for example, drug and sex education puts ideas into a child's mind that will get the child to go out and do drugs and have sex, so you put it into a child's mind they're not male or female what's going to happen? Besides awareness, maybe we'll have more transvestites and more avant-gard sexual promiscuity in children? I guess it depends on what side the fence you're sitting on to determine whether or not that is acceptable to you or not, then depending on the numbers whether society accepts it or not.

In the true cases of intersex individuals and those scientifically born with a brain chemistry that makes them actually a gender psychologically different from their biology, I understand it a lot better and of course it would be hard for someone to accept themself. The other side is that, when it comes to transvestites or people of varying sexual orientation that it is the unacceptance by most in society which also plays a huge role and of course that's why there are movements and of course it will get political.

But where do we draw the line with gender? Are we actually going to have x number of options to legally choose, our IDs and passport will say this or that? Should there be male, female, and gender neutral bathrooms everywhere because it's just as bad a black/white segregation? Since it's such a hot issue, I'm sure there will be a lot more 'gender neutral' bathrooms being made, and it will cause controversy. I'm just curious because okay if one is psychologically a woman, but biologicaly a man, why can't this person just transition to a female and be female? I could see intersex being it's official sex category, and I realize transitioning takes time so during that process I guess some type of classification could be necessary.

It's really not so simple, but is the solution really simple enough to just expand official options for recognizing gender or are we going to try to erase religious/ethical/moral/cultural beliefs from the majority of the people on the planet? The LGBTQ people can be just as radical as the fundamentalist religious types.

Literally none of what I just said matters outside of a semantic standpoint, but I thought it bore mentioning because it is similar to some of the teachings here at the Temple about the dualities in the world, and the nature of defining opposing forces as the relationship between them, instead of on their own.

steamboat28 wrote:

Unpopular opinion time

"Transgender" is not its own gender. A lot of people want to discuss it like it's a separate, tertiary gender, and it isn't. It is a very real thing that needs our patience and our understanding, but they're not a separate gender classification. Neither are any other multiple combinations of "boy" and "girl." Nothing derivative of the assumed gender binary can be considered it's own separate gender, despite being very obviously culturally existent, relevant, and important

To understand my reasoning behind this, let's look at the perception of gender binary as a lightswitch. Replace "on" and "off" with "male" and "female" (it doesn't matter in which order in this illustration). See where the switch catches? It catches at one or the other of those states. That space in between, while you're turning the light on or off, while it's moving from one state to the other? That's similar to the concept of being transgender. It's a space between the states, moving from one to the other, existing between them in the same way that a person might be caught between their personal gender and their biological sex.

To look at a more full gender spectrum, we can look at a dimmer switch. There's still an "on"/"off" binary there (at each far end of this switch), and a myriad of positions in between. This seems, at first glance, to imply a lot better that each of these intermediary steps are separate genders because the dimmer switch will actually "catch" or stop at these different points. Which is kind of true, or would be if every point on the switch changed some fundamental quality of the lightbulb. But, in reality, they're just varying percentages of the on/off dichotomy found in the original lightswitch. There are more variants and spaces between, but it's still all hinged completely on the binary for its definition.

Now, if someone identifies their gender as an AH-64 attack helicopter or the color purple, they make a very strong case for an additional gender. But if your definition of your gender requires the traditional gender binary to fully be able to explain it ("I was born into a male body, but I am a female" or "some days I feel like a girl and some days I feel like a boy" or the like), then it's most properly not a gender on its own, but a gender expression rooted in the binary.

Literally none of what I just said matters outside of a semantic standpoint, but I thought it bore mentioning because it is similar to some of the teachings here at the Temple about the dualities in the world, and the nature of defining opposing forces as the relationship between them, instead of on their own.

May i compact that by saying , there is Man and Woman , and a hundred things that we would call ourselves and would like to be Steam ? Or do i misunderstand the message ? Because if that is the message then i incline to agree with you from a chromosome kind of view

MartaLina wrote: May i compact that by saying , there is Man and Woman , and a hundred things that we would call ourselves and would like to be Steam ? Or do i misunderstand the message ? Because if that is the message then i incline to agree with you from a chromosome kind of view

Um. Okay, so, here's how I break it down:

Sex is based on your physiological make-up. It's about your chromosomes, your chemistry, and your physical structure. Even if you get reassignment surgery, this doesn't exactly change, because it's deeper than just appearances. For example, men and women suffer different kinds and types of heart disease , there are certain conditions that are more likely to appear in males than in females, etc. This is the thing you put on your medical forms because, even if you don't identify as that, it shapes your health on a chemical level.

• Male
• Female
• Intersex (based on the binary of male/female, but does not fit within it)

Gender is an expression of identity, almost always culturally-defined, and usually discussed in the context of physical sex.

• Cisgender (identifying consistently with the gender that your culture believes matches your physical sex)
• Transgender (Identifying semi-consistently with a gender that your culture does not believe matches your physical sex)

There are various other gender expressions that are not openly mentioned in that simple list, but most of them that aren't in the typical "gender binary" of "boy/girl" fit in that second section. Almost the entirety of genuinely held gender expression that isn't cis is defined by its relationship to that binary. Such expressions are usually described as varying, but are described by when and how those expressions do or do not fit the assumption of being cisgender, which is nearly globally "normative." (That is to say, the statistical likelihood of any given individual identifying as cisgender is greater than the alternative, based solely upon the ratio of cis and other gender expressions extant in the population--'normal' doesn't mean 'right' or 'natural', it just means 'most common'.)

Did that help any?

steamboat28 wrote:

MartaLina wrote: May i compact that by saying , there is Man and Woman , and a hundred things that we would call ourselves and would like to be Steam ? Or do i misunderstand the message ? Because if that is the message then i incline to agree with you from a chromosome kind of view

Um. Okay, so, here's how I break it down:

Sex is based on your physiological make-up. It's about your chromosomes, your chemistry, and your physical structure. Even if you get reassignment surgery, this doesn't exactly change, because it's deeper than just appearances. For example, men and women suffer different kinds and types of heart disease , there are certain conditions that are more likely to appear in males than in females, etc. This is the thing you put on your medical forms because, even if you don't identify as that, it shapes your health on a chemical level.

• Male
• Female
• Intersex (based on the binary of male/female, but does not fit within it)

Gender is an expression of identity, almost always culturally-defined, and usually discussed in the context of physical sex.

• Cisgender (identifying consistently with the gender that your culture believes matches your physical sex)
• Transgender (Identifying semi-consistently with a gender that your culture does not believe matches your physical sex)

There are various other gender expressions that are not openly mentioned in that simple list, but most of them that aren't in the typical "gender binary" of "boy/girl" fit in that second section. Almost the entirety of genuinely held gender expression that isn't cis is defined by its relationship to that binary. Such expressions are usually described as varying, but are described by when and how those expressions do or do not fit the assumption of being cisgender, which is nearly globally "normative." (That is to say, the statistical likelihood of any given individual identifying as cisgender is greater than the alternative, based solely upon the ratio of cis and other gender expressions extant in the population--'normal' doesn't mean 'right' or 'natural', it just means 'most common'.)

Did that help any?

Thank you that cleared it up , i was mixing sex with gender as you probably expected :laugh:

Ah, Unicorns.

They're neat.

Anyway, to fill out the scale - Male, Masculine, Male, Women, Women.

Although outside of filling out forms, I identify as "a 180cm tall, 80kg meatsack in blue jeans and sunnies" - that's not an option on most official documents however.

That doesn't interest me at all though,

What does interest me is that I was born with ankyloglossia, and while it was relatively easy to solve (physically) at a young age, the effects of it are noticable thoughout my adulthood.

I've considered wearing a badge that says "Excuse me if I sound like I'm gibbering, but I had a medical condition that made speech difficult", but then I'll get undesired questions or looks of pity, and unfortunately, despite the distress and occasional difficulty communicating, I don't qualify for any government assistance or benefits.


What I am trying to say is "I really don't care what you are, or think you are, if you can do the job, you're hired - and if one or several people are being inhumane towards you I'll stand with you (or between you and them if need be) but I still won't care what you are at the end of it"


Anyway, Everyone is free to say "You straightwhitemale devil, you have no right to compare a speech impediment to the opressions trans and nonbinary people feel every day"

(Except for the speech impediment crowd, who are free to say the same thing, but with a different emphasis)