I cringe every time I hear another guy refer to women like this
this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2024
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How I use and it will still catch issues:
Male/Female - Sex
Man/Woman (He/She) - Gender.
Cultural anthropology has recognized gender as being different from sex in textbooks since the 70s from what I remember (so half a century). My minor was in Cultural Anthropology so I remember always seeing it in college (2008-2013)
Science will continue to change as we learn more about the universe, so things are dynamic and ever growing to fuller understanding.
Also language is fluid, and changes over time/ location / culture , really.
One could argue It is inherently sexist to call people using the term female as sexist because you are using the assumption that they believe female is somehow different or lesser... And then agreeing by saying they shouldn't call you that. Instead of empowing the term female to mean something equal to male, we would be changing the term over time to mean less than male, which it should not.
That would be something I would enjoy hearing experts in linguistics and cultural anthropology discuss.
That said I try not to use woman/man or any other identifier outside of they if I can. Terry went to the park. If I have to I will revert back to saying Terry again being redundant rather than saying she/he went to watch the ducks play in the pond, as we have to assume gender to assign that Terry is a she or he unless we know them personally, and the name could be used for either. (In reality all names are void of sex or gender, they are simply a name). If I call a tree an Walnut tree it has done nothing to tell me that it is male/female, man/woman, it has told me it is an entity that we call Walnut.
A bitonist will tell you a Walnut tree is monoecious, meaning that it can produce everything on its own to complete the reproductive process. Hermaphroditic plants do not, they contain part of what is need for reproduction, like humans... Which we also classify as hermopheodites. So if we see a rose, a cherry tree, a chicken, or a human, we split them into a category we label as sex. Male and female are the term we usually see. (Most vegetables fall into this category, but that's unrelated)
In a world where we fight for feminism (equality among sexes) we would say all pieces are equal and should have equal rights. Those pieces are male/female in humans.
Our role in society varies and the way others treat, react, interact, whatever you wish to view it as, is what we label as Gender, and gender roles. Humans for the most part have tried to practice monogamy for various reasons. That isn't something that vegatables have to worry about as much.
So feminism within gender would refer to equality of rights within the construct of those interactions having to do with gender. So we label one part of that group women, and one part men in humans, and there is overlap (in both sex and gender).
Overlap is fine and naturally will exist in both sex and gender. Neither sex nor gender should inherently make one person less than another. That is the full scope of how I view feminism. I feel you cannot choose sex, not even medically at this stage but the future may be different, you CAN choose gender as it is your role in this world and a person should be able to choose how they wish their life to be interacted with. If a male/man wants to be be a mechanic by day and florist by night that is his choice, and nothing should look at them as being any more or less for any of their choices so long as they are not blocking the choice of another person's ability to choose their path. My view on life is about the freedom of choice.
So to say that men, women... Any other identifier someone chooses and aspires towards should have any lesser rights in society I would say is wrong. It is against their freedom to live their life with their choices.
All that said... I feel someone using a name/identifier incorrectly is just ignorant or willfully trying to be against others life choices. Many are ignorant and that is what education is for. I will learn more every day and learn how wrong I have been all my life. Those who are willfully trying to be against others though.. they are the issues we run into. So if Fred says his coworker is a female to his monogamous partner, it doesn't mean Fred is a problem as much as that Fred may not have understood the terminology he was using was different than the expectations of the listeners. Ignorance. You can overcome ignorance through understanding, and education. Calling them an issue, often creates more of a rift.
Even if you want to separate sex and gender and define sex using sexual characteristics (not actually a good idea, see works by Judith Butler and Julia Serano among others, although I wont fight that point here), almost no sexual characteristics are immutable. The only ones that I can think of are chromosomes and gametes, but chromosomes aren't even binary (or observable without a microscope) and gametes arent a good basis either -- should being infertile affect your sex?
Let me ask a genuine question then, if you don't separate sex and gender, how does one recognize things like differences in people's eyes. Our gender roles have no effect on those physical characteristics that are created by varying factors such as chromosomes. We characterize those differences into the area of sex normally, but like I said previously, there is overlap in the sexes, chromosomes aren't always in category A and B.
Or are you saying sex shouldn't exist at all as a classification? Fertility has no effect on what physically was attempted to be formed. Mutations and errors will always occur. That doesn't mean someone should be alloted lesser rights, that just means they formed differently.
The short and somewhat cheeky answer is that we recognise differences in people's eyes by recognising differences in people's eyes. You don't need to refer to what we have historically designated "sex" to do that.
But here's the longer answer: I'm sure it's true that in the aggregate you can observe some differences in the eye that correlate with sex. But so what? That, along with any other aggregate difference, doesn't actually validate sex as a useful category. The simple fact is that any way you split a population in two, you will see aggregate differences. These differences are then simply used to reify that categorisation as more important and concrete than it really is.
Let me illustrate this with a hypothetical. About half the population requires glasses (or other vision correction), and half doesn't. If we constructed social categories and social roles around these, people would start caring enough to research what the physiological reality correlates with. Is there a difference in athletic ability between glasses-wearers and non-glasses-wearers? Is there a difference in height? and so on and so on. These real physiological differences are then used to reify the social construct, and when someone invents contact lenses, suddenly people go "but these categories are real! look at all this evidence showing how these categories are different!" and so on and so on
but so what? You can split a population in two however you like. Short and tall, glasses or no glasses, male or female. All come along with lots and lots of associated physical and mental differences in aggregate. Why do we think sex matters more than the others? Certainly not because of any physiological differences that actually matter in the modern world. It's socially motivated.
"Why do we think sex matters more than the others?"
In general, because our species dies out of you don't pair properly. You can pair a colorblind person with a nearsighted person and if the organs don't match up, no reproduction.
Throw in that our society is set up in a fucked up way that we need to increase the population at all times otherwise we won't be able to care for the elderly before us (social security, medical care... Whatever it may be) reproduction matters a lot to our society.
That may have been true once, but no longer -- there are no shortage of ways for queer couples (or, for that matter, infertile cishet couples) to have children.
Even if we assume that reproductive categories are so supremely important that we should socially categorise based on them (which I reject), that just brings us back to my original point. Why are infertile people still categorised into a binary sex that has nothing to do with their reproductive capability?
Because sex as we culturully underatand it is socially constructed. We use markers that don't reflect reproductive reality. Perhaps once they were the best proxies we had for a guess at reproductive capacity, but not any more.
All of those ways include a male and a female as far as I know? More steps are added, like moving the sperm or egg, but in the end it is sperm and egg. Gender is what you are describing as socially constructed as per textbook definition. Infertility occurs, if you want to say they aren't male or female, or say they don't have a sex until they are sexually mature and that ends when they are no longer able to reproduce there are other names, but I think that is just overcomplicating something that was painted with broad strokes. Is it "moral/ethical/correct/right" that's for the beholder, but if your battle is just about the terminology of how to classify someone's anatomy, I'm for hoping it goes well. The more people learn, and the less ignorance about how reproduction works should make the world a better place long term I hope. Out of curiosity do you mind me asking what part of the world you live in? It's been nice discussing this, always good to hear what others are thinking/learning.
Nope! Sperm has been synthesised effectively from egg and used to fertilise another egg. Successful birth with this method has been achieved in animals, in humans birth has not yet been tried, it's slowed down due to regulations
Your textbooks are clearly outdated. That's fine, sociology and gender theory evolve. Read some queer theory, in particular Judith Butler.
It's not just about terminology, it's about the social constructs that are inexorably linked with that terminology. It's not overcomplication to point out that only a tiny fraction of observable sex (fertility) is actually immutable, and even that won't be for long. All others are both mutable and socially chosen to represent sex.
I do mind, sorry, my points aren't linked to any particular country or culture and so I wouldn't want you categorising them as such, intentionally or not.