The Off Topic Topic

[Martinus]

Dan Savage

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/SavageLove?oid=21189612

You may not be the right person to answer this, but your commenters might be able to help. I love and support my friends who are transgender, but I don't understand all the 18- to 21-year-olds among my friends who are declaring themselves "gender-neutral." I am a bit older and have always been interested in queer culture and history. But it feels like they have forgotten, or never knew, that butch lesbians who wear strap-ons are still women, or that it is very common for straight men to wear lacy underwear. They don't seem to know that they can be gender nonconforming without having to discard gender. Because they're so young and all of them have decided this at the same time, it seems to be some kind of trend. Some may be on their way to coming out as trans, which is fair enough, but I strongly suspect some of them will be completely conventional in a couple of years. It would be rude and dismissive of me to tell them that it's just a phase, so I would never do that, but I don't really understand the point of being gender-neutral. What has changed in the last few years that this is suddenly a thing?

Longtime Reader

Ah, gender identities—you need an Excel spreadsheet to keep track these days.

Some folks are gender-neutral, some are bigender, some are agender. Then there's pangender, genderless, genderfluid, and genderqueer. There's also gender-nonconforming, gender-questioning, gender-variant, as well as genderfuck, trigender, and intergender. (Who gets a hyphen and who doesn't? Who the fuck-knows?) Add in every genderblueplatespecial's very own set of random and unpredictable and ever-shifting pronoun preferences, and you've got a blizzard of special snowflakes, each one primed to take offense at some real or imagined microaggression so they can dash to Tumblr for some macro-venting.

What has changed in the last few years? There's more discussion about gender now, LR, and that's a good thing. Culturally enforced gender norms are ridiculous, and the policing of gender expression/identity is oppressive and often violent. This critical and necessary discussion about gender has sparked a great deal of interest in—and, in some quarters, generated a lot of sympathy for—people who aren't just talking about gender but struggling with it, doing something about it, and redefining it. But "interest in" and "sympathy for" have a way of attracting poseurs and attention-seekers. That's nothing new. Pay sympathetic attention to a plate of tater tots long enough, and it'll attract poseurs and attention-seekers, too.

But since it's (almost always) impossible to tell the attention-seeking poseurs from the actual items, LR, your best course of action when someone declares themselves to be gender-neutral—or bigender or pangender or etceteragender—is to smile, nod, inquire about pronoun preferences, make a mental note not to use pronouns around that person (easier than committing multiple sets to memory), and then change the genderfucking subject.

I just hate how they keep adding more letters to LGBT. Soon it will be a fucking alphabet soup.

Also, not to sound transphobic, but how is T on the same par as LGB? It is a completely different type of issue to me. It's like having a support group for African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians and women - sure all suffer discrimination but not on the same grounds and their problems are completely different.

[garbon]

Ah Marti analogies.

[Capetan Mihali]

IME, Ls, Gs, and Bs can make some of the worst trans-"phobes"/haters around.  Some of the best "allies"/supporters, too.

[garbon]

Well to be fair to Marti, being transgendered doesn't seem to wholly drive with the first three. With those, gender is primarily a construct and you can love whomever fits with you / feel free to adopt traits from the "opposite gender". On the flipside, T seems to reaffirm gender as more than a construct because it is possible for an individual to know that they are not the gender that they have been coded as by others (/ their own sexual organs.)

[garbon]

Of course there is also some queerest theory that views homosexuality as re-affirming womanhood and manhood which then meshes well with transgendered.

[Ideologue]

Well to be fair to Marti, being transgendered doesn't seem to wholly drive with the first three. With those, gender is primarily a construct and you can love whomever fits with you / feel free to adopt traits from the "opposite gender". On the flipside, T seems to reaffirm gender as more than a construct because it is possible for an individual to know that they are not the gender that they have been coded as by others (/ their own sexual organs.)

They don't always / them.

[garbon]

Well to be fair to Marti, being transgendered doesn't seem to wholly drive with the first three. With those, gender is primarily a construct and you can love whomever fits with you / feel free to adopt traits from the "opposite gender". On the flipside, T seems to reaffirm gender as more than a construct because it is possible for an individual to know that they are not the gender that they have been coded as by others (/ their own sexual organs.)

They don't always / them.

Well I don't think always holds for any of this stuff, but I'm afraid I'm unclear on the point you are making.

[Sheilbh]

Well to be fair to Marti, being transgendered doesn't seem to wholly drive with the first three. With those, gender is primarily a construct and you can love whomever fits with you / feel free to adopt traits from the "opposite gender". On the flipside, T seems to reaffirm gender as more than a construct because it is possible for an individual to know that they are not the gender that they have been coded as by others (/ their own sexual organs.)

Yeah, I agree. I still find the idea of coded gender quite tough to get my head round. Clearly it's the case because it's what people experience, but for my mind it's a challenge because, as you say, my view was always that it was social construct.

[Malthus]

Well to be fair to Marti, being transgendered doesn't seem to wholly drive with the first three. With those, gender is primarily a construct and you can love whomever fits with you / feel free to adopt traits from the "opposite gender". On the flipside, T seems to reaffirm gender as more than a construct because it is possible for an individual to know that they are not the gender that they have been coded as by others (/ their own sexual organs.)

Yeah, I agree. I still find the idea of coded gender quite tough to get my head round. Clearly it's the case because it's what people experience, but for my mind it's a challenge because, as you say, my view was always that it was social construct.

I never thought either gender or sexuality was primarlily a social construct - too much of it seems hardwired into individuals (who, in some cases, go through a lot of trouble where their "wiring" fails to match social expectations).

My experience with very young children seems to support this - they display "gendered" traits very young and sometimes in spite of what their parents want, long beore it could be all down to peer socialization.

As an anecdote, my brother and his wife were all about not making their daughters do girly stuff, but even as toddlers, they were notably girly - in contrast to my boy, who is exactly the same age as their eldest (they were born only two weeks apart). My boy had little interest in dolls, but always wanted to play with stuff with wheels on it; his kid was the reverse - somewhat to her mother's dismay (which would only get worse as she grew older and insisted on all-girly stuff - Disney princesses and pink with glitter everywhere).

Now of course to society at large these are "approved" or at least "expected" gender preferences - but I can imagine that a boy who was into the girly stuff would be in for a difficult time. The fact that some are, despite that difficult time, strikes me as evidence that these preferences are largely hard-wired into kids when they are born - else social pressure would push them into the approved grooves.

[Ideologue]

See, the problem is that society imposes a gender on objectively neutral acyovities, like loving Disney animation, or drawing pictures of Tupolevs laying waste to Washington, D.C.

[garbon]

Now of course to society at large these are "approved" or at least "expected" gender preferences - but I can imagine that a boy who was into the girly stuff would be in for a difficult time. The fact that some are, despite that difficult time, strikes me as evidence that these preferences are largely hard-wired into kids when they are born - else social pressure would push them into the approved grooves.

I think it is covered by what Ide suggested. By themselves, those activities/interests are not gendered - but society applies gendering to them. Liking certain activities doesn't really say much about the child other than a preference for those things.

[Jacob]

I presumed it was like John Stewart of something.  The joke is based on real quotes and so forth.  But when it comes to the Guardian I generally expect that kind of thing.

Do you think the story about the royal family having been bought by Disney was based on real quotes too?

It does kinda seem like you're allowing yourself to be nauseated by your own confirmation bias, independent of actual facts.

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

The CIO was buying shots. Welcome to the gubmint.

E:  They did have Left Hand Nitro on the free drinks menu, which was good.

Fuck, both gubmint contractors I have worked for have meant the alcohol flows like frozen dog shit at work functions.

[Malthus]

Now of course to society at large these are "approved" or at least "expected" gender preferences - but I can imagine that a boy who was into the girly stuff would be in for a difficult time. The fact that some are, despite that difficult time, strikes me as evidence that these preferences are largely hard-wired into kids when they are born - else social pressure would push them into the approved grooves.

I think it is covered by what Ide suggested. By themselves, those activities/interests are not gendered - but society applies gendering to them. Liking certain activities doesn't really say much about the child other than a preference for those things.

I don't think this is true - or at least, not totally true.

Certainly, liking certain colours and whatnot are social choices (and notably, very young infants don't really show such preferences). Others - like liking certain categories of toys - seem to me to be hard-wired, essentially true from birth and so not due to socialization.

Apparently, there is now science to support that (see link below). However, I believed it was true before reading the science, based on observing very young children myself.

http://www.livescience.com/22677-girls-dolls-boys-toy-trucks.html

[Ideologue]

Propensity for girls to play with dolls is a fact.

Determining that girls should play with dolls is an ideological choice.

And that's the difference between biological and social genders.

(Obviously, what girls should be playing with is math.)