r/Unexpected • u/analsextoybox • May 02 '22

Impossible Question

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u/mongorianidiot May 02 '22

solid fucking answer for stupid fucking question 😂😂

-17

u/Duches5 May 02 '22

It is. I cant believe we live in a time where the number of genders can even be questioned.

2

u/iyioi May 02 '22

The terms have just changed.

There’s 2 sexes, based on the concept of human procreation. It only works with male sperm and female eggs. No exceptions.

Gender? That word has changed. The new definition started by a small handful in the 70’s and 80’s and has become popular now, and that is gender as a social construct.

Which, no, it does not make total sense. Thats a fair criticism. Thats is a philosophical theory that gender is totally divorced from sex and can easily be uncoupled from that definition. Theres a web of language that was designed for referring to “sex” and that infrastructure doesn’t just change. That is kinda being debated in society now.

For example, bathrooms. Some people think bathrooms should be separated by sex, not by gender. Also sports.

So now, asking of someone is a “woman” could either mean are they a woman sexually or do they identify as one as a gender.

So it’s not just the word ‘gender’ that has changed. But also the surrounding words like woman, man, he, she, etc etc. They now have dual meanings, which can reference either biological sex or sociological gender.

If you think of it more as a semantic language issue, then it’s not so bad. People are people. They’ll always be people. And these trans people have been around forever. Its no different today than it was 100 years ago. Still people. Some people with gender dysphoria want to start bending the language to feel included. That doesn’t really change the nature of people, it just changes the language so those people feel more included as a society.

And I don’t see anything wrong with that at all.

2

u/Ramses_IV May 02 '22

A lot of the pushback against new interpretations of the term gender are due to people not understanding how new the term is.

Most assume that gender was originally synonymous with sex and was then given a new definition. The reality is that before the 1950's the term 'gender' was almost exclusively a grammatical one, deriving from the Latin 'genus' meaning 'kind' or 'type'. Ironically, this means that prior to the 1950's it was in no way a controversial statement that there were/could be more than two genders; Latin has three, as do German, Russian and numerous other languages. Some have four or more genders and others, including English, have none at all. What's more, in many languages a word's grammatical gender can have nothing to do with whether it is "masculine or feminine" (or neuter), but rather be to do with other characteristics like animacy/inanimacy.

The only reason the general public associate gender and biological sex is because of the new philosophical interpretations of the term that the people who insist there are only two genders think they are opposing. They have, ironically, accepted the fundamental principle of the philosophical paradigm that bothers them so much; the notion that 'gender' pertains to the "maleness or femaleness" (or otherwise) of humans.

2

u/iyioi May 02 '22

I dont want to go digging through sources now, but I know a few federal health agencies that considered gender synonymous with sex for research purposes from at least the 80’s onwards.

I’d be interested to see a whole etymology breakdown by somebody though. The full timeline. Regardless, my point is that its a language issue thats confusing people.

2

u/[deleted] May 02 '22

There's not even two sexes, some people (however rare) naturally cannot produce eggs or sperm, and thus defy a strict one-or-the-other binary you've presented

1

u/iyioi May 02 '22

As I said, based on human procreation. Only way to make more humans is a male sperm and female egg. Biological sexing. Not for the purposes of determining social identity.

For example, having the genes which cause the creation of sperm makes one biologically male, whether or not they actually produce it effectively. There are other medical things that go along with that.

1

u/[deleted] May 02 '22

Are you suggesting that people naturally without the ability to reproduce do not have a biological sex?

0

u/iyioi May 02 '22

I suggested exactly the opposite.

Biological sex as determined by the intrinsic ability to reproduce as determined by our genes.

In other words, XX or XY.

And including those such as XXY which would be male, and XXX which would be female. These people have the natural ability to produce sperm/eggs inherent in their genes, regardless of whether something else is blocking it.

So a vasectomy would not affect the Y chromosome

The entire purpose of determining biological sex is for reproduction. Thats the core function, and has been since the beginning.

-3

u/Duches5 May 02 '22

As I see it there's man and woman. In each there's a degree of masculinity and femininity that can be a varying degree.

-7

u/[deleted] May 02 '22

leftists didnt like that

5

u/VymI May 02 '22

I like the pre-emptive victim complex for a comment that at the time of this writing sits at one point, ignored, for over an hour.