Is gender a spectrum? Even if we are just considering contemporary western society where there is no established 'third gender'?
I feel like that paradigm makes sense if we assume there is an axis for this spectrum, say 'masculinity' <--> 'femininity' and that one can be placed at a certain point between/at the two.
I'm admitted naïve on the topic of gender but I don't think it makes sense to limit it to an axis, or axes. It feels like a coping mechanism for working within a society which is questioning their historical gender binary, just like the political compass is a coping mechanism for the left-right binary which *kind of * made sense back when it was invented. It makes more sense, it's a slightly better model, but it's still built on an obsolete system and ultimately hinders understanding when dealing with anything beyond most common examples.
Consider that masculine and feminine aren't set points. They're constantly changing and aren't consistent from one culture to another. They're not even totally consistent from one person to the next. For instance blue was/is the feminine color, and pink the masculine one. Gender is a spectrum partially by virtue of its lack of fixed positions.
There's more or less a masculine and feminine dichotomy, but that's by no means permanent, nor has every society on Earth had those two.
Spectrum might be a oversimplified way to put it, basically, the understanding is that it isn't set into rigid binary at the very least. @axont decribed it better then I can.
Is gender a spectrum? Even if we are just considering contemporary western society where there is no established 'third gender'?
I feel like that paradigm makes sense if we assume there is an axis for this spectrum, say 'masculinity' <--> 'femininity' and that one can be placed at a certain point between/at the two.
I'm admitted naïve on the topic of gender but I don't think it makes sense to limit it to an axis, or axes. It feels like a coping mechanism for working within a society which is questioning their historical gender binary, just like the political compass is a coping mechanism for the left-right binary which *kind of * made sense back when it was invented. It makes more sense, it's a slightly better model, but it's still built on an obsolete system and ultimately hinders understanding when dealing with anything beyond most common examples.
Consider that masculine and feminine aren't set points. They're constantly changing and aren't consistent from one culture to another. They're not even totally consistent from one person to the next. For instance blue was/is the feminine color, and pink the masculine one. Gender is a spectrum partially by virtue of its lack of fixed positions.
There's more or less a masculine and feminine dichotomy, but that's by no means permanent, nor has every society on Earth had those two.
it's a social phenomenon that we can choose to understand as a spectrum, which is often useful but necessarily limited
Spectrum might be a oversimplified way to put it, basically, the understanding is that it isn't set into rigid binary at the very least. @axont decribed it better then I can.
Yes.
And sex is too.