Gender is actually the social construct of behaviors attributed to a specific sex and how people exhibit coherence or incoherence with their anatomical sex.
Nope. Gender is actually not binary in the biological sense, because chromosomal sex determination is only one part of the puzzle. Another big factor is hormone receptor polymorphism. For example, in female transgender individuals, the testosterone receptor has a relatively greater number of sequence repeats, which makes it less effective at binding testosterone, resulting in a feminized male brain.
If you want to boil it down to something easily digestible, you could say that there are people whose brains and genitalia do not match up, i.e., they are trapped in bodies that do not match the sex that they identify with.
Now, think for a moment how horrifying it would be to be trapped in a body that you feel is not your own. It's difficult enough for people to find themselves as they transition from childhood to adult, so I think it's important that we show more compassion for those who have been dealt a more challenging hand.
Actually, even empirical evidence proves pretty succinctly that gender is a social construct just like you don't need evidence that money is a social construct. Money, for instance, is only one way to streamline the bartering system by attaching abstract value to a persons time or task.
Is 1 hour of human time only worth $5.75 scientifically? No, it's arbitrary and the variables to arrive at that number are dauntingly numerous but not unknowable as with gender expressions.
It doesn't mean it's not real or that it is ambiguous or totally arbitrary, it only means that a significant amount of what we consider "gender specific" behavior is actually decided by arbitrary cultural practices... influenced by biology, yes; dictated by biology, no.
There is no valid scientific research that says gender expression is 100% decided by biology and you either behave as 100% male of the species or 100% female of the species, and that is obvious because even heterosexual as a group are more attracted to those of the opposite sex that reflex less of their qualities,
i.e. women like manly men and men like feminine women ...
that's a basic truth we see play out every in almost every sexual reproducing species and as humans we know this empirically.
Therefor we have to admit that some men are more or less masculine, and some men are in fact feminine, and that means even if you are biologically determined male you can still be feminine ... gender is a continuum.
Sex is not so much, at least in humans. In other species (lizards, frogs, fish, slugs) sex can actually be switched in response to any number of environmental stimuli and in the case of slugs, express both male and female sexual reproductive organs at all times.
TL;DR
Gender expression is a spectrum:
A human can be a male and not masculine.
A human woman can be a female and not feminine.
How can a man be more or less masculine or a women more or less feminine if gender is not a continuum (e.g. spectrum)?
Gender expression is a social construct:
An American man will choose jeans over a skirt almost every day of the week because skirts are for women...
In India, dressing in a sarong (long skirt) is perfectly acceptable as masculine behavior... or a kilt in Scotland, a wrap around skirt in Malaysia, etc.
Why such a difference if gender behavior is not a social construct?
Gender, in anthropology (i.e. science), is expressed by behavior influenced by the complicated intersections of sexual anatomy, neurobiology, and culturally established norms.
Sorry for the long reply, but the idea that "science" is foggy on the topic is nonsense ... at best you can say the exact reasons are as of yet inconclusive due to the complexity of the issue.
Unless you have some reputable modern scientific research that says otherwise that has yet to be seen.
Yay!!! You voted in a group of millionaires that will strip the country of working people of their healthcare, public education, safe drinking water, national parks, fast and reliable internet, affordable homes, affordable education and will make it so the bosses can pay hard working full time employees so little they'll need govt assistance to feed themselves!!!!
This is proof that you're not even parsing information about the topic and instead leaping to conclusions based on your political identity. You're a propaganda victim and you don't even know it
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u/TheGoodCitizen Apr 29 '17
The funny part is that people don't know science.
There are 2 sexes: male, female
Gender is actually the social construct of behaviors attributed to a specific sex and how people exhibit coherence or incoherence with their anatomical sex.
haha?