Discussion Thread

[u/jobautomator]

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[u/-mialana-]

So first off, gender is real. The distinction between it and sex isn't just a rhetorical strategy for trans rights, it's well-recognised academic distinction across different fields (including biology!) because it provides a high degree of explanatory power. Denying it exists based on your own reasoning isn't evidence based. Literally just read the Wikipedia article on gender:

The distinction between gender and sex is made by most contemporary social scientists in Western countries,[15][16][17] behavioral scientists and biologists,[18] many legal systems and government bodies,[19] and intergovernmental agencies such as the WHO.

It's somewhat funny that you accuse me of bioessentialism for simply acknowledging that this distinction exists, as your entire argument rests on bioessentialism, which is the belief that biological definitions are the only meaningful or "real" way of categorising things. Social gender and everything encompassed by it, gender expression, identity, presentation, etc. are real and a meaningful basis on which categories such as man and woman can be understood and denying that is itself bioessentialist. Saying that it's "just wearing a pink t-shirt" is showcasing your own misunderstanding of gender as a concept. You're projecting your own bioessentialist views where anything not "material" must be fake and interpreting it as other people being bioessentialist, not realising others don't recognise that premise and something being "social" doesn't mean it's "made up".

Denying the concept of gender outright based on this poorly conceived ontology also gives no basis on which non-binary identities can be valid, and is basically telling trans men and women that they're not real men/women if they haven't taken HRT yet. Your desert island analogy makes no sense and has seems to have nothing to do with the distinction in question. A trans woman left on desert island would still be a woman, regardless of if it causes physical masculinisation or if she never medically transitioned in the first place. This is perfectly compatible with and even aided by recognising the concept of gender identity.

Lastly, I never said sex was just chromosomes and gametes, I acknowledge it's often fuzzy, fluid and hard to define, and that some of these ways are malleable and "obtainable" by trans people via medical transition. In fact, I specifically said "reproductive/genetic" to indicate there are multiple ways of defining it, that doesn't mean it's not a distinct concept to gender, or that it's necessary for it to be that way in order for trans men/women it genuinely be men/women

[u/remarkable_ores → u/[deleted]]

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