Quote from: "Bella-chan"Well, it is tough trying to recognize "third genders" when most people around you are stuck in the gender binary... it's like living in the US and trying to use the Metric system. You have your way of measuring things (and yes, it probably makes more sense), but the people around you have a different way-- who's right and who's wrong? (Bad metaphor much?) The only thing I can say to that is it's all a matter of perspective, like a lot of human experience (that's a rant for another time, though).
Thanks for bringing up the biological angle too... humans are a lot more biologically-driven than we care to admit (and probably carrying more evolutionary baggage, psychologically-speaking, than we realize), but yes, I should stop there before I launch into THAT topic. ^^;
But yes, sex, gender, emotions and sexuality are all very complex topics-- and all very distinct, but inextricably linked at the same time. It's fascinating stuff...
Fascinating indeed...
So I thought this kind of discussion warranted its own thread, I don't know if interest in it will last, but I think there should be a safe place to discuss gender issues instead of just a place where you discuss specifically your gender.
I think your metaphor works in a bit of a shallow way, Bella-chan. I don't mean that in a pejorative way, either. That is to say, I believe it works in breaking things down so people foreign to the concept understand. Anyway, I can't remember all I was going to say because I've been distracted, but please continue on if you wish ^^b.
i know a few drag queens, plenty of bisexuals, and a transgender or two. i also know straight people, a few gay/lesbian people, and even a few asexuals. all of whom (or at least most of whom) are lovely, nice people. i myself am bisexual, have the mindset of a guy for the most part, but am physically female.
i like being this way. i'm a tough bitch and i love it. xD
I have read waaaaaaaaaay too much TG literature to keep genders that distinct, really.
I've personally tried going into life with a view on things that genders don't matter - the constant reaffirmation of the stereotypes that apply to them doesn't make that part easy, though. As for now I generally don't classify people for their selves unless they make an impression, or I have to spend time with them. It seems to work - after all, stereotypes ARE the generally correct human subtypes.
i hate stereotypes. people who stereotype the "freaks" end up missing out on some of the richest experiences of life.
What about the normal people, then? I mean, they're the ones who usually DO fit into their stereotype pretty well.
stereotypes are useful tho D:
now the problem comes when it prevents you from keeping your mind open ;D
Quote from: "Sora"I have read waaaaaaaaaay too much TG literature to keep genders that distinct, really.
It's not that easy when you're raised in a "binary gender" culture, as Bella put it. To adapt Bella's metaphor a little more, think about it like learning a foreign language. To learn this language, you get all the best books in all the different learning capacities - beginner, intermediate, advanced, etc. You even hire someone to teach you the language. You think you've learned all you can about the language, but there's only one problem, you live somewhere where all the people speak your native tongue. You see, you can't truly be fluent in a language until you are in a situation where you have to use it to understand things. True language can only be acquired through this understanding. I happen to think this applies to foreign concepts of thinking as well.
If you live in a country that is bilingual, please consider that I'm referring to a language that is not spoken in your country, the metaphor should still function.
To refer broadly to the discussion at hand, I do not think labels (I guess the term stereotype is synonymous in this sense) are necessarily in themselves bad. It is the meaning we attach to these labels that is the problem. You see, we are human, we work in labels... everything has a label. We even try to do this with ideas, feelings, and concepts - despite their innate abstractness. So we label an idea we have, and then we make that label our identity. It comes to define not only who we are, but what we do and who we identify with.
Except that you can use your imagination to attempt to bridge the gap. We're all human, when all is said and done.
Quote from: "Sora"Except that you can use your imagination to attempt to bridge the gap. We're all human, when all is said and done.
The problem is, imagination doesn't facilitate understanding, it might give you a sense of understanding, but that's a very shallow understanding. I know we're all human, what's that supposed to mean?
it also hinders the concept that most humans seem to lack an imagination, except in terms of things like racism and discrimination.
"oh, they're dark-skinned! they're going to hurt us!!"
goddamn white america. >:[ (i'm racist against my own race. the only time i feel comfortable saying "white power" is when i'm talking about rice.)
Quote from: "IanDanKilmaster"I know we're all human, what's that supposed to mean?
All humans share emotions, desires, needs and wants. All it takes to understand each other is patience, common sense, and acceptance.
All of which have been in short supply for the entirety of human history.
Quote from: "IanDanKilmaster"To refer broadly to the discussion at hand, I do not think labels (I guess the term stereotype is synonymous in this sense) are necessarily in themselves bad. It is the meaning we attach to these labels that is the problem. You see, we are human, we work in labels... everything has a label. We even try to do this with ideas, feelings, and concepts - despite their innate abstractness. So we label an idea we have, and then we make that label our identity. It comes to define not only who we are, but what we do and who we identify with.
yessss XD
labeling people by what you see is pretty effective you know D:
i mean if you're gonna be talking to a girl, you probably won't start with "yo dude, seen the game last night?"
i mean you do have to have to kinda give the person some sort of temporary labels when you first meet them. and probably just go "Oh! my bad" when they didn't fit your expectation.
Quote from: "Sora"All of which have been in short supply for the entirety of human history.
Indeed. Here is where I point out that I'm only saying those of us like Bella and myself are just going to have a hard time thinking outside the "gender binary" despite our open-mindedness. We read about these places that are different, that work in different terms and we believe it to be true, but we can't escape that the world (not the literal world, but "society") we work in is limited to a binary and we're trained to think in that binary. None of this keeps us from trying to understand people who are outside of our "system", it just presents "communication errors".
Quote from: "IanDanKilmaster"So we label an idea we have, and then we make that label our identity. It comes to define not only who we are, but what we do and who we identify with.
Why do I feel the need to make philosophic posts when I'm so sleepy? -_-;
Anyhow, I didn't properly elaborate the above statement (the one quoted). What I meant to say was, we should not make a label our identity. If we attach too much of ourselves to a label, we over-validate it and cause it to have too much authority. It just gets in the way of personal relationships and fulfillment.
Quote from: zjhentohlauedyQuote from: "IanDanKilmaster"Quote from: "Sora"To refer broadly to the discussion at hand, I do not think labels (I guess the term stereotype is synonymous in this sense) are necessarily in themselves bad. It is the meaning we attach to these labels that is the problem. You see, we are human, we work in labels... everything has a label. We even try to do this with ideas, feelings, and concepts - despite their innate abstractness. So we label an idea we have, and then we make that label our identity. It comes to define not only who we are, but what we do and who we identify with.
I wrote no such thing.
Quote from: "Sora"
I wrote no such thing.
sorry >_< quotation tags fail >_<
Quote from: "Sora"Except that you can use your imagination to attempt to bridge the gap. We're all human, when all is said and done.
I sense wishmaking...besides, 90% of all humans I would disqualify from this for having utterly useless imagination.
Quote from: "Sora"
All humans share emotions, desires, needs and wants. All it takes to understand each other is patience, common sense, and acceptance.
All of which have been in short supply for the entirety of human history.
Understanding takes a lot less than that, as a matter of fact. If it's one thing that humans are capable of, it's understanding - the problem here is that the species in general has lost its pack mentality, and edged into lone predation mindset. Deep down most people don't think of how to further the species just for the sake of it - they do it for their own profit, whether the currency is self-satisfaction, remembrance or currency. No matter how often the terms "mankind" or "the human race" is spouted in the media, the amount of people who actually think of it on that level is mournfully small.
Quote from: "zjhentohlauedy"stereotypes are useful tho D:
now the problem comes when it prevents you from keeping your mind open ;D
I think I would have to agree with you (and IDK) here... when you first meet somebody, you have no way of knowing exactly
who they are. It could take years to, and it might not ever happen. Stereotypes and labels are ways of making things orderly and graspable in our minds.
Like you said, it's only a problem when you CAN'T see past the initial label that you give a person-- or when you begin assuming that they must act xyz way because of the stereotype you associate with them. Still, this happens all the time in our daily life, with humans, things and more abstract concepts as well.
Quote from: "Chocofreak13"it also hinders the concept that most humans seem to lack an imagination, except in terms of things like racism and discrimination.
"oh, they're dark-skinned! they're going to hurt us!!"
goddamn white america. >:[ (i'm racist against my own race. the only time i feel comfortable saying "white power" is when i'm talking about rice.)
Lol, me too. Then again, I think "white" is too broad a term to reflect the different heritages of "white" people-- legally I'd be considered "white", but ethnically I consider myself Slovak-Mediterranean and having little in common, culturally, with the Anglo-Saxon identity that goes with the term "white". (Better save this topic for somewhere else, though).
Quote from: "Sora"All humans share emotions, desires, needs and wants. All it takes to understand each other is patience, common sense, and acceptance.
All of which have been in short supply for the entirety of human history.
As a misanthrope, my complaints about humankind are in no short supply... but I think you've hit on an important fact about humanity here.
That we* are inherently impatient, often illogical and wary of accepting people who are different from us.
I've always suspected that there was an evolutionary advantage to being violent, mistrustful and rash... let's say your an early human, and your tribe ran across another one. Yeah, you could work together and pool your strength but wouldn't it be more effective, in the short run at least, to wipe them out and take their resources? And wouldn't this make you sufficiently wary of others, especially those outside your own tribe? You're already living day-to-day as it is... it's not exactly like your planning for your future... the aggressive ones probably did the best in way of getting food, resources and mates.
I don't think that humans have changed all that much since then-- only now, our* wariness is blindly directed toward entire ethic/national/religious groups, and the paranoia is usually unwarranted (even in wars when a country poses a threat, it's usually just a small portion of people who are the actual THREAT-- the rest are just innocent civilians or people who get swept into the fighting). And now, we aren't fighting with spears and arrows-- we* have guns and bombs and nuclear weapons. Yes. I believe that basically, cavemen are in change of our national arsenals.
The point of this whole rant? I think that most humans are, in essence, rather close-minded and that this has probably served an evolutionary role in survival, but that we* must learn to think differently if we want to survive as a species.
*Maybe not you or I, but humankind in general.Quote from: "NejinOniwa"Understanding takes a lot less than that, as a matter of fact. If it's one thing that humans are capable of, it's understanding - the problem here is that the species in general has lost its pack mentality, and edged into lone predation mindset. Deep down most people don't think of how to further the species just for the sake of it - they do it for their own profit, whether the currency is self-satisfaction, remembrance or currency. No matter how often the terms "mankind" or "the human race" is spouted in the media, the amount of people who actually think of it on that level is mournfully small.
That's exactly the point I was getting at with above rant. Even political/social/religious groups who espouse doing good for humanity rarely do so in practice. Because humans are in charge, and wherever humans are greed closely follows. It's probably partially a flaw of upbringing, but I think that it's largely a hard-wired reaction.
Quote from: "Various people"white
Actually, I believe the proper term is Caucasian.
Quote from: "Bella"
That's exactly the point I was getting at with above rant. Even political/social/religious groups who espouse doing good for humanity rarely do so in practice. Because humans are in charge, and wherever humans are greed closely follows. It's probably partially a flaw of upbringing, but I think that it's largely a hard-wired reaction.
Hard-wired, yes - to some point. The basis for any kind of survival is egoism, to make sure that the individual survives, thrives, and ensures the same for its offspring. What needs to be done is simply to apply this on a larger scale - this is pretty hard, however, as long as mankind lacks competition...
And if the aliens keep on delaying, I'll just have to
be the competition myself. If we can't have ETs, the demon overlord and his horde will make do.
caucasian is to white as african american is to black.
i myself consider myself european, more specifically swiss/swedish, with some canadian and french (mainly the former).
physically and mentally the line for gender gets blurred, and socially it is getting more and more blurred, which may be a double-edged sword. it is good to have typical gender "roles" fading away, however with my dystopic view on life i fear a world in which someday all form of gender s obliterated and we are nothing more than drones.
SOME gender is good, but it doesn't nessasarily have to apply to just one sex.
and zen, me and my friends call each other "dude" all the time regardless of sex. :3
Quote from: "Chocofreak13"
and zen, me and my friends call each other "dude" all the time regardless of sex. :3
no dudettes? XD
sides i don't really use those kinds of terms. it's either a nickname or "hey you!" XD
yeah i'm badass like that XD
FUnny thing too, most people online think i'm a girl whenever i ask em about my gender, some say it's the emoticons tho
well
you're just FABULOUS.
Quote from: "Chocofreak13"well
you're just FABULOUS.
awww shucks >////<
people in real life will probably never even imagine i'm mistaken for a girl online XD
xD tell em. watch their reaction. then laugh. (???? profit)
Quote from: "NejinOniwa"Actually, I believe the proper term is Caucasian.
No, Caucasian is the term for a white American. The rest of the world is normally just white, with a few things like white European thrown in for police and military identification purposes.
I won't really get into just how absurd racial/ethnic labels are, as this is not the place for it (although I suppose it would make for an excellent analog in this discussion), so we should really be steering this away from labels and focus more specifically on the thread title - gender.
So, despite my open-mindedness and awareness on the matter, I still think in a gender binary. I think what makes my thinking slightly different, however, is that sex is not taken into account when I classify with the binary. I still recognize things as masculine and feminine, but none of it is clouded by sexual appearance. I'm really groggy right now, so I can't truly expound upon what I'm saying, but I should be able to better explain myself after some rest.
can someone explain "gender binary"?
Quote from: "Chocofreak13"can someone explain "gender binary"?
It means you're ether boy or girl. Nothing else.
Quote from: "Sora"Quote from: "Chocofreak13"can someone explain "gender binary"?
It means you're ether boy or girl. Nothing else.
i kinda lean towards this in a way..
Well, as statistics go, everything IS made out of binary on the basic levels, but scaling it up is a little bit meh...
binary on a large scale...
now i'm just expecting a bunch of big "1's" and "0's" made into furniture....
Pardon the confusion over terminology, Bella just used the term and I thought it sounded better than "two-gender system" or any other variant, so I stole it.
For future reference, binary (as a general term) refers to anything consisting of two parts. As everyone knows, binary code consists of 10 parts: 1s and 0s, a binary system is a system composed of two celestial bodies orbiting one another, etcetera, etcetera.
Anyway, I guess I can reap some satisfaction from the fact that at least gender has started moving away from assigning roles, but of course, equity is still kind of a fantasy at this point.
i get it.
but now i'm thinking of space and computers and gender all thrown into one item...... ^^;
oh time-space, you konfusin MF. ^^;
If you think timespace is confusing, come back after trying to visualize a RSTME-axial coordinate system...IT'S AT LEAST 5 DIMENSIONS TOO MANY TO SEE IN THE FIRST PLACE >_>
oh you; you're gonna be a success. ^^
xD nerd. like me.
Quote from: "Chocofreak13"oh you; you're gonna be a success. ^^
xD nerd. like me.
Quote from: "IanDanKilmaster"... I still recognize things as masculine and feminine, but none of it is clouded by sexual appearance...
Even though I believe that there are genders outside the typically recognized male and female, I'm rather bound by "masculine" and "feminine" when it comes to classifying the traits of these "other" genders. IOW-- I would classify somebody who displayed feminine and masculine mental traits equally as being part male and part female instead of some other gender. Then again, there are some people who seem gender neutral... neither male nor female...
Maybe that's just a hard-wired human way of looking at things? :?
I don't think it's hard-wired... it's just something that's become ingrained growing up in our society.
Essentially, it's something I do not because I necessarily believe this is the way the world works, but because this is the concept of my world which has been reinforced since my childhood.
i've always tried to keep most aspects of life gender neutral. there are certain things which are required to have gender (conception, for example) however most other aspects (hobbies, style of dress, ect) which do not require a gender but are usually assigned one.
Giving birth is a matter of sex (physical) not gender (mental), or is that not what you meant by conception?
good point. i'm confusing myself. ^^;
the creation of new humans is also where he whole gender/sex thing gets a little moar confusing; you don't HAVE to be a man and woman to have children, but physically, you do.
At least without, you need to if you want to make do without TECHNOLOGY...
yeah, technology has solved the biological problem...
...further blurring the line between the genders.
tech tends to blur the line between lots of things....
Until you use it to firmly make an entirely new line, that is.
a gender neutral line.
Wouldn't be quite sure that's a necessity...
well unless we build a virtual penis it has no gender, unless you count "male" and "female" connectors.
i'm getting nsfw. quick, someone change the topic back!! *____*
Wouldn't be quite sure THAT'S a necessity... >:3
yet you smile about it.... xD
...steering the conversation away from sex, back towards gender...
sex change surgery has certianly become more acceptable. i approve of this.