I know that it has significant meaning to me but I struggle putting it into words to explain it to other people (especially other dya cis people). So like a few years ago I was thinking about if I may be trans femme. I have since realised that no, actually I was just struggling with it for a while because I don’t relate to the gender roles and expectations society puts on men. I now identify more strongly with being a man than ever before, and I love being a man in a gender-way. I just absolutely hate being a man in a “what role men have in society”-way.
Similar to another poster, I break it down like this:
Sex is your physical binary biological gender. If you have a penis and testicles that produce sperm, you are a dude; if you have a vagina, ovaries, and a womb to carry a baby, you are a female. No ifs, ands, or buts about this imo.
Gender identity is what you identify as. This is where we go he/she/they, and can be completely removed from the biological sex of the person because gender is psychological and belongs to the sense of self. We use “he” and “she” as binary identifiers of male and female species respectively, but with humans it becomes more complex as perhaps a male may identify as a female-gendered person, or a female may identify as a male-gendered person - or both of them identify as a non-gendered person.
Gender roles could (and I personally think should) be separated from both biological sex and psychological gender. This is what we, as human society as a whole, determine the division of labor and what activities, habits, and behaviors are acceptable for men and women. In the past when we were still growing as a species, this was actually important since men were needed to hunt down animals due to biologically being more suited to it and women were needed to do other things while the men were out; nowadays, however, this is a dated concept as anybody can earn money and we don’t live in a world where we need to hunt to survive. Women can just as easily put food on the table and enjoy riding motorcycles or chopping down wood just as easily as men could stay at home, clean the house, take care of the kids, and cook meals for the family for when their partner gets home. If anything, I would say that we could consider the “Masculine/Feminine” dichotomy as a sliding scale at best, but what society considers “masculine” or “feminine” changes all the time, so it’s arguably ultimately worthless trying to categorize this.
TL;DR Biological sex, gender identity, and gender role aren’t all mutually inclusive. If I am a man, I am not beholden to the expectations of being a macho man who slams IPAs and lifts weights while talking about cars; on the flip side, if I am a man who identifies as a female, I am also not beholden to obtaining a Blåhaj shark plushie, wearing kneesocks all the time, losing 60 pounds, and becoming a software engineer who only runs Arch or some other Linux distro.
It’s worth noting that humans do not come in a sex binary. Intersex is a lot more common than people think it is, just often in ways that are invisible. I know 3 intersex people personally that are all intersex in different ways. None of them would fall into either “binary” category.
Edit: To add to this, what about people with testicles that CANT produce sperm? Or people with a vagina but have had to have their womb removed due to a medical complication? These also don’t fall under either definition given. Oftentimes rigid systems are only good for excluding people even if that isn’t the intention.
Even if it’s twice as common as most scientific studies believe it is, it’s still less than a tenth of a percent of the population.
The fact that you know 3 intersex people says more about the company you choose to keep than it does about the prevalence in the average population.
Intersex people are important to keep in mind but we also need context here. Statistically, they’re not a 3rd gender, they’re a rounding error. They exist, but it’s disingenuous to say something like “AHA, but you have failed to consider the tiny percentage of people who do not fit into your description!”
I think it’s fair to say something like “sex is binary” in the same way it’s fair to say something like “dogs have four legs”. Yes there are dogs with 3 legs, but if we had to include every statistical rounding error every time we talked about something we’d never be able to say anything. Given the topic, I think Poggervania should have at least included a mention of intersex people, but let’s not pretend that the world is split equally into male, female, and intersex.
If this bothers you, I challenge you to pick any noun and describe it. Literally any physical thing. Describe it to the best of your ability. I’ll find something that you didn’t include in your description.
I simply don’t care about the rest of the argument. It is disgusting to call millions of people a rounding error.
Reality is often disappointing. But it is real.
Reality is, these people exist. Despite your protests they are real. Your argument is based on them either not existing or being a mistake.
There is simply no way we can ever align on this issue if we can’t fundamentally agree that all people are people. Enjoy the rest of your day. I’m not continuing this.
Well if you keep pretending I said things I didn’t say, you can get offended at whatever you want. Please leave me out of it though. I didn’t ask to be party to the made up argument in your head.
Just because I’m interested in archeology I thought I would share that evidence supporting a strong division of labour based on sex in ancient societies is pretty thin. There have been several articles lately arguing against that hypothesis due to finding skeletons of women buried with weapons and weapons that appear to be designed for lighter frames.
Oh sick - I did not know that! That’s really cool actually. Would this be from something like the Smithsonian Museum if I wanted to read up on this kind of stuff?
Here are a couple recent ones:
doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0287101
doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-40451-8
doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abd0310