What's your opinion? Vote now: 0–Completely aligned with opposite gender, 1, 2, 3–Equally unaligned with both binary genders, 4, 5, 6–Completely aligned with assigned gender...
I don't think the traits have to be "exclusive" to just any gender or sex. Similarly to how most passenger planes have wheels, but so do cars. But they still have their own features that make them what they are
I don’t remember the proper name, but there’s a philosophical idea called something like cluster properties. Like think of a piece of cloth. There is no one thread that touches all the other threads. And no thread has exclusive contact with another thread. If you remove a thread, it will begin to unravel, but taken as a group, they pull each other tighter into a single entity.
Well, traits demonstrably aren't exclusive. Being assertive, dominant and guarded against aggression are traits that are classically gendered masculine, yet women can have all of these qualities and in fact every woman has some degrees of these. It's just that this kind of confidence and defendedness is more pronounced in most men. And while being empathetic, open and nurturing are classically gendered feminine, men are absolutely capable of empathy, of opening up to people, of raising kids or taking care of their elderly parents. Some men even moreso than some women. It's just that women in general find themselves more at ease in these roles than men. These are sliding scales, not absolutes, and the prevalence of certain slider positions is not a clear dichotomy, it's more like two overlapping bell curves.
BTW, i've picked these traits specifically because they are massively affected both by hormone levels and gender roles. You always have outliers in regards to which people possess these traits, but thanks to me being trans, i could do a direct A/B test on myself and see how changing my gender role and changing my biological sex altered where i fall on this axis. When my egg cracked, when i realized my gender identity wasn't man and that i did never want to be seen as a man again by others, there was a very sudden, very complete shift from the need to guard myself against the outside world and hide vulnerabilities towards opening up to others and allowing myself to be non-threatening. That became even more pronounced when i got on estrogen and testosterone blockers and accquired a female hormone profile that way. Psychologically, that shift from a lone wolf mindset to a caretaker mindset, backed up by me fully feeling that shift on an endocrinological level, was the biggest change in both my medical and social transition.
And yes, sliding scale means there's a degree of mutual exclusivity here. When you want to become more open, you need to become less walled off from a potentially hostile environment. When you want to be seen as less of a potential danger to others and be welcomed and trusted the way women are welcomed and trusted, that means you need to give up a massive chunk of the security and respect that comes with being read as a man. When you want to become more empathetic, you suffer more when others around you suffer and are less able to remain level-headed and calming when friends experience distress, because their pain tangibly becomes your own pain. You literally need to let your guard down for this. And when you want to toughen up, you need to develop the ability to close yourself off from people. You can alter these stances to some degree, i'm obviously more open with close friends than out in public, but there's limits to that flexibility.
I think is a common approach, to list out exclusive characteristics of the category and then look for the presence of absence of those characteristics. It is, of course, fruitless for anyone who lives under patriarchy and isn’t interested in upholding oppressive gender norms. It’s so much more about recognition and identity, which is both easier and harder.
Another pitfall is to fail to differentiate between presentation and identity. There was a long time where I preferred to present as traditionally masculine, but my identity was always less binary than the presentation would lead people to assume. Gender’s just hard.
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I don't think the traits have to be "exclusive" to just any gender or sex. Similarly to how most passenger planes have wheels, but so do cars. But they still have their own features that make them what they are
if genders aren't different why do we have more than zero or one and how could anyone tell?
I don’t remember the proper name, but there’s a philosophical idea called something like cluster properties. Like think of a piece of cloth. There is no one thread that touches all the other threads. And no thread has exclusive contact with another thread. If you remove a thread, it will begin to unravel, but taken as a group, they pull each other tighter into a single entity.
Family resemblance. Wittgenstein’s belief
:cat-confused:
Well, traits demonstrably aren't exclusive. Being assertive, dominant and guarded against aggression are traits that are classically gendered masculine, yet women can have all of these qualities and in fact every woman has some degrees of these. It's just that this kind of confidence and defendedness is more pronounced in most men. And while being empathetic, open and nurturing are classically gendered feminine, men are absolutely capable of empathy, of opening up to people, of raising kids or taking care of their elderly parents. Some men even moreso than some women. It's just that women in general find themselves more at ease in these roles than men. These are sliding scales, not absolutes, and the prevalence of certain slider positions is not a clear dichotomy, it's more like two overlapping bell curves.
BTW, i've picked these traits specifically because they are massively affected both by hormone levels and gender roles. You always have outliers in regards to which people possess these traits, but thanks to me being trans, i could do a direct A/B test on myself and see how changing my gender role and changing my biological sex altered where i fall on this axis. When my egg cracked, when i realized my gender identity wasn't man and that i did never want to be seen as a man again by others, there was a very sudden, very complete shift from the need to guard myself against the outside world and hide vulnerabilities towards opening up to others and allowing myself to be non-threatening. That became even more pronounced when i got on estrogen and testosterone blockers and accquired a female hormone profile that way. Psychologically, that shift from a lone wolf mindset to a caretaker mindset, backed up by me fully feeling that shift on an endocrinological level, was the biggest change in both my medical and social transition.
And yes, sliding scale means there's a degree of mutual exclusivity here. When you want to become more open, you need to become less walled off from a potentially hostile environment. When you want to be seen as less of a potential danger to others and be welcomed and trusted the way women are welcomed and trusted, that means you need to give up a massive chunk of the security and respect that comes with being read as a man. When you want to become more empathetic, you suffer more when others around you suffer and are less able to remain level-headed and calming when friends experience distress, because their pain tangibly becomes your own pain. You literally need to let your guard down for this. And when you want to toughen up, you need to develop the ability to close yourself off from people. You can alter these stances to some degree, i'm obviously more open with close friends than out in public, but there's limits to that flexibility.
I think is a common approach, to list out exclusive characteristics of the category and then look for the presence of absence of those characteristics. It is, of course, fruitless for anyone who lives under patriarchy and isn’t interested in upholding oppressive gender norms. It’s so much more about recognition and identity, which is both easier and harder.
Another pitfall is to fail to differentiate between presentation and identity. There was a long time where I preferred to present as traditionally masculine, but my identity was always less binary than the presentation would lead people to assume. Gender’s just hard.
:marx-goth: a big bushy beard.