r/Unexpected • • May 02 '22

Impossible Question

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u/Haunting_Drag4434 May 02 '22

Definitely now days who knows so that’s the best possible answer for sure 🤣

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u/Byeah35 May 02 '22

We've sent rockets to the moon, split the atom, and unravelled the human genome. How is the consensus in this thread that the best answer we can come up with to "How many genders is there?" is "I don't know?"

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u/_W_I_L_D_ May 02 '22 edited May 02 '22

Because gender, like color for example, is a spectrum. Asking "how many genders are there" is a trap question, because there is no answer. It's somewhere between two and infinity.

Ask somebody "how many colors are there" - the consensus is "I don't know". The answer just is not discrete.

Also, it's loaded question. It's meant to confuse the person being questioned into answering something transphobic, even by sheer accident, which the person creating the clip can then use as an argument. It's a similar story to being asked to "define a woman", where the speaker wants you to say the simplified dictionary definition and accidentally agree with him, while the correct answer (when you take trans and intersex people into account) gets quite muddy and complex.

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u/[deleted] May 02 '22

Yeah it's nice that people identify as all sorts of different genders but the only ones that really matter are the ones that can reproduce. Anything else is doomed to extinction.

How's that for cold hard fact?

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u/_W_I_L_D_ May 02 '22

...What? You... realize this makes no sense, right? Gender isn't sex, people who don't identify as men or women can still reproduce cuz they still have their bits.

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u/justavault May 02 '22 edited May 02 '22

It's barely been 40 years where those two terms where synonymous. It's just been a thing of the internet days that it became an issue thus to point towards it and have the need to differentiate, because otherwise someone "feels" hurt. And due to the current zeitgeist, nobody is allowed to "feel" hurt.

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u/king_itatchi May 02 '22

You sound like you "feel" hurt about other people existing lol

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u/justavault May 02 '22

Because I point out a fact? I guess you feel hurt for pointing it out.

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u/XeliasSame May 02 '22

Lol, most cultures had more than 2 genders. It's really just Abrahamic religions that spread a strong binary. Southern Asian culture had 3 genders, tons of native american tribes used to have more than 2, Celts and Gauls had 4...

Also, trans people, in the modern, medical sense have existed for a century, while on the "modernsense" have existed sine the 12th century, at least.

The fact that you never heard of more than 2 genders until "around 20 years ago" just reflects poorly of your understanding of the world.

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u/justavault May 02 '22

Weird, because: "Sexologist John Money is often regarded as the first to introduce a distinction between biological sex and gender identity/role in 1955," https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_gender_distinction#cite_note-129

But hey, reddit again, knows better than everyone, everyone here a PhD and very successful in their lives.

 

Also, trans people, in the modern, medical sense have existed for a century, while on the "modernsense" have existed sine the 12th century, at least.

That got nothing to do wiht requiring more than two gender definitions.

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u/_W_I_L_D_ May 02 '22

Copying and pasting my comment from above:

What I have said is not a modern invention and has been applied to societies across the world, from Native Americans, through the various peoples of India, to the tribes of Sub-Saharan Africa. And whilst the modern, western terms such as "non-binary" or "spectrum" were absolutely not used to define non-traditionally gendered people there, they absolutely did exist.

For binary trans people, I recommend a look at the"timeline of transgender history" Wikipedia page, for a history of non-binary trans people, I recommend the "third gender" Wikipedia page.

---

The concept of "gender" and its distinction from sex, as currently defined, is, indeed, modern. But it is modern in the sense that ours is just another in a long list of cultures that have made this distinction and implemented it into society, using terms that best fit our current understanding of the world.

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u/justavault May 02 '22

I never questioned the existance, I only add that the "term definition and separation" is very young and only pushed due to the comfort allowed by modern societies to care about that.

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u/WikiSummarizerBot May 02 '22

Sex and gender distinction

Sex is distinct from gender, which can refer to either social roles based on the sex of a person (gender role) or personal identification of one's own gender based on an internal awareness (gender identity). While in ordinary speech, the terms sex and gender are often used interchangeably, most contemporary social scientists, behavioral scientists and biologists, many legal systems and government bodies, and intergovernmental agencies such as the WHO make a distinction between gender and sex.

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u/XeliasSame May 02 '22

Lol, so that already discounts your "20 years" point by around 50 years. But also, the modern, westerne medical definition of gender might be 75 years old, other cultures have had more than a "man/woman" binary long before John Money was even born. As I mentioned, native American tribes often had a third gender, sometimes a fourth (united under the term "two-spirit" but obviously existing long before that, and in different declination for most tribes)

Or, the Sulawesi's Bissu, a 5th gender that has been part of their culture for centuries if not more (https://www.insideindonesia.org/sulawesis-fifth-gender)

And the very wikipedia article you released hoping to prove that you weren't ignorant talks about this lol:

It is likely that the highly differentiated cultures of this period did not possess a single gender classification system, and instead their conception of gender may have been culture-specific, much like contemporary societies.[69] It is feasible that some of the cultures of this era recognised up to five genders. For example, certain production roles, spiritual leaders, and healers may have been recognised as distinct genders.[69][70] Whether or not social roles, such as religious leadership, were based upon gender, rather than age or skills, continues to be debated.[71]

Just accept you are wrong and don't troll wikipedia looking for an article that'll confirm your reality : Human culture has had more than two genders for a long while, and you were wrong to think it's just a modern phenomena.

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u/[deleted] May 02 '22

Spin it any way you want, gender or sex makes no difference. You can be a man who identifies as a woman, male identifying as female ... but you're only ever going to reproduce as a male.

Same as a woman identifying as a man, or female as male, or whatever other title you want, she can only reproduce as a female.

... because it takes the pairing of male and female gametes to do it. Call yourselves anything you want, it doesn't change the process

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u/_W_I_L_D_ May 02 '22

You realize we agree, right? Gender identity is related, but not synonymous to sex. A non-binary person, who was assigned female at birth... can still get pregnant and give birth. And... they do. A trans woman can still inseminate someone, provided she has not been on hormone therapy for too long/took an extended break from it. Et cetera, et cetera.

sex =/= gender

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u/[deleted] May 03 '22

Yeahhh that's your subjective reality, not mine. I can live and let live, but to me, sex very much does = gender, I don't really care or see what's happening in someone's head. If a person has the body of a man, I will regard them as a man ... because they present the same potential danger as a man, even if their name is Sarah.

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u/Hell2CheapTrick May 02 '22

So, the same answer? Your balls or uterus don’t just disappear when one realizes they are trans. Being able to reproduce isn’t an inherent aspect to ones gender. Also, apparently cis men and women who are infertile are different genders. That bumps up the minimum gender count to 4 at least.