I think of my gender as a performance I do for other people. I’m just Me. She/Her validates my public performance and tells me I’m doing a “good job” or whatever, which is probably a toxic way to think about it? idk idk
I the issue with applying that analogy to me is that I was very good at performing masculinity. But the compliments never felt good because they weren’t really for me.
If we all agree that gender is socially constructed, then no? Unless you extend your sociality to non-human and non-living entities, too, and there we would be exploring some interesting new stuff.
You can take a person who experiences what we currently call hormonal gender dysphoria and put them into some contrived philosophical “raised by wolves” situation where they are the last human on earth and received no human socialization, and they would still experience that hormonal gender dysphoria, just without that name. They wouldn’t conceive of it the same way, but I do believe that our categories of “sex” and “gender” as strictly biological and social categories, respectively, are not currently sophisticated enough to answer the question in a satisfactory way.
That said, discussions like that tend to be used by TERFs and other bigots to muddy the waters and insist that or sex and gender are the same or that they are both binary like the patriarchy needs them to be. Our terminology is shit and every misstep leaves the possibility to cede ground to people who want to exterminate us.
I think of my gender as a performance I do for other people. I’m just Me. She/Her validates my public performance and tells me I’m doing a “good job” or whatever, which is probably a toxic way to think about it? idk idk
I the issue with applying that analogy to me is that I was very good at performing masculinity. But the compliments never felt good because they weren’t really for me.
Imagine being the only human on Earth. Would gender even exist? I wonder.
idk but i can tell you for a fact i’m still gonna be wearing a dress regardless
If we all agree that gender is socially constructed, then no? Unless you extend your sociality to non-human and non-living entities, too, and there we would be exploring some interesting new stuff.
You can take a person who experiences what we currently call hormonal gender dysphoria and put them into some contrived philosophical “raised by wolves” situation where they are the last human on earth and received no human socialization, and they would still experience that hormonal gender dysphoria, just without that name. They wouldn’t conceive of it the same way, but I do believe that our categories of “sex” and “gender” as strictly biological and social categories, respectively, are not currently sophisticated enough to answer the question in a satisfactory way.
That said, discussions like that tend to be used by TERFs and other bigots to muddy the waters and insist that or sex and gender are the same or that they are both binary like the patriarchy needs them to be. Our terminology is shit and every misstep leaves the possibility to cede ground to people who want to exterminate us.