Non-binary genders

[Algonquin Ascendancy]

Buried under the gay rights and abortion threads, it's a gender related thread. A non-binary gender thread, oooh.

Anyways, do you acknowledge non-binary genders?

For those of you who don't know, non-binary genders are all the genders besides male and female. This includes, but is not limited to, agender, pangender, androgynous, bigender, and trigender (My apologies if I forgot anything).

I acknowledge non-binary genders. Even if they're a small percentage, there are more genders than male and female. After all, it isn't hurting anyone to have more than male and female.

Agender (non-gender): “not identifying with any gender, the feeling of having no gender.”

Androgyne: “1. A person whose biological sex is not readily apparent. 2. A person who is intermediate between the two traditional genders. 3. A person who rejects gender roles entirely.”

Bigender: “To identify as both genders and/or to have a tendency to move between masculine and feminine gender-typed behavior depending on context, expressing a distinctly male persona and a distinctly female persona, two separate genders in one body.”

Gender fluid: “Referring to a gender identity that changes with time and/or situation as opposed to a fix sex-role or gender queer expression"

Pangender: “A person whose gender identity is comprised of many gender expressions."

Trigender: “People who feel they are neither male nor female, but not androgynous either and construct their own gender.” Trigender may also be used to refer to one who moves between three genders, as bigender is used to refer to those who move between two genders."

Of course I do.

[Meryuma]

Nah, you can just say that she's a trans woman. It can be difficult for you to reconcile that, lord knows it's a huge change! I'm just saying you need to work to challenge those preconceptions.

I dont think she really cares to tell you the truth.

Trans people are generally forgiving if you misgender them accidentally, realize you slipped up and apologize. if you're cavalier about it I doubt they'd be so gracious.

This is a friendly reminder that this thread is about gender, not sex. I mean, in case the title and OP didn't hint you. So using biology and genitalia to say that there are only two genders doesn't work too well.

So whats your impute on this. My friend was a man and wanted to be called a man, now wishes to be called a woman so now i call her a woman, but in my mind i still think is a man.

If she presents as a woman and identifies as a woman, she's a woman.

PSA to the thread:

This dude is also posting random crap about how Obama should be arrested for holding Muslim prayer sessions in the White House and junk, so I'm gonna go way out on a limb and say that I do not envision a bright future for this particular newbie. Probably best to not take it seriously.

Many thanks for the heads up. I was actually about to respond to them.

I was going to and then I saw the name and I was like "nope".

By forcing others to think their sickness is natural, they are.

*puts gun to head*

"Think my sickness is natural, or else!"

Holy shit, I was about to say the exact same joke.

What little fact? She's still a woman regardless of genitalia.
The assumption that you made was that penis automatically equals male.
Which I pointed out was an erroneous assumption.

Calling blue red dose not make it red. Her chromosomes will always say male. How ever as i said before i respect her decision by calling her a girl. I do not see the problem here...

Chromosomes are totally arbitrary as a means of determining gender. Do you go up to random women on the street and ask them for DNA samples to check their gender?

[The Steel Magnolia]

What little fact? She's still a woman regardless of genitalia.
The assumption that you made was that penis automatically equals male.
Which I pointed out was an erroneous assumption.

Calling blue red dose not make it red. Her chromosomes will always say male. How ever as i said before i respect her decision by calling her a girl. I do not see the problem here...

Actually that's not true.

There are, more or less, three definitions of sex used in biology: genetic sex, gonadal sex, and phenotypic sex.

Genetic sex is the ~chromosomes~ one. In mammals, the Y chromosome normally contains a gene named SRY, which is the main trigger that causes a fetus to begin developing along a male pathway. Occasionally, due to random errors in the process of copying DNA, an SRY gene can fall off a Y chromosome or even jump over to an X chromosome: this is one of the ways you get people with XX chromosomes who develop physically as male, or people with XY chromosomes who develop physically as female. (There are other ways too, related to other genetic or environmental factors.) Now, the thing about genetic sex is that it's not actually used all that often by working biologists outside of the field of molecular genetics -- there's usually no point looking at chromosomes if what you're interested in is anatomy or biochemistry. So chromosomal sex is by no means the final word on whether we call an organism "male" or "female".

Gonadal sex is probably the one that gets used most often by biologists when they're identifying whether the unfortunate little critter they've just dissected is male or female: it's whether an animal has testes, ovaries, or something in between. While we don't yet have the technology to give trans women ovaries or trans men testes, long-term hormone therapy does render the birth gonads mostly non-functional, and of course they can also be surgically removed.

Phenotypic sex is the one that's of most interest to you and me in our daily lives. It refers to the development of sexually dimorphic characteristics, such as genital organs, and facial and body hair. It's mostly influenced by sex hormones, and there's a great deal that modern medicine can do to bring a trans person's sexual characteristics closer to their target sex than their birth sex. Phenotypic sex is just as biologically valid a definition of sex as the other two, and unless you're planning to either perform medical procedures on someone or have kids with them, it's the only one that's likely to have much relevance to you when you interact with other people.

Finally, we humans add an extra layer on top of all this, which we call gender. Gender includes all of the standards that are used in a society to differentiate men from women (and other genders, in cultures or subcultures that recognise more than two genders). Some of the characteristics by which people are categorised into one gender or another are related to phenotypic sex, but others are purely behavioural -- dress, grooming and so on. There are differences between gender expression and gender, but we won't get into that now.

So when it comes to how we decide whether to call someone a man or a woman, chromosomes are really a very small part of the story. After all, societies were categorising people into genders long before chromosomes were even discovered, and we easily discern whether people are men or women every day without it even occurring to us to look at their chromosomes first.

[The Blaatschapen]

Personally, I am of the opinion that there will be at least four genders in the future, based on combinations of sex and demeanor. So yes, not only do I recognise non-binary genders, I am already coming up with a way to classify them. It might be doomed to failure though, since masculinity/femininity is probably more of a continuum than a sharp divide.

On a related note, I get the sense that mainstream society has become hostile to anything remotely "feminine", and everyone is now expected to act ultra-masculine, male and female alike. Thoughts?

I disagree. Society has not become hostile towards anything remotely feminine.

It has always been that way.

[Bottle]

Personally, I am of the opinion that there will be at least four genders in the future, based on combinations of sex and demeanor. So yes, not only do I recognise non-binary genders, I am already coming up with a way to classify them. It might be doomed to failure though, since masculinity/femininity is probably more of a continuum than a sharp divide.

On a related note, I get the sense that mainstream society has become hostile to anything remotely "feminine", and everyone is now expected to act ultra-masculine, male and female alike. Thoughts?

I disagree. Society has not become hostile towards anything remotely feminine.

It has always been that way.

Depressingly true.

However, I think there is definitely a particular spike in this lately, at least compared to when I was a child. There seems to be an almost frantic effort to enforce rigid gender roles.

When I was young, children's clothing was frequently sold in one department; now, good luck finding a single store that doesn't separate the BLUE CLOTHES WITH TRUCKS FOR BOYS and PINKITY PINK SPARKLE CLOTHES FOR GIRLS. There was always the pink aisle in the toy section, full of Barbies and all the toy versions of housekeeping equipment, but it was just the one aisle and the rest were considered relatively unisex, but now even Lego has decided that they have to come out with Legos: Little Housewife Edition to make sure that girls aren't getting their cooties all over the good Legos for boys.

It used to be that there were at least some products which all humans used in common. Like, say, soap. People have skin, skin sometimes needs washing, seemed simple right? But now, you need to buy Vanilla Passionfruit Glitter Youthful Essence for the vagina-owners of the household, and a separate gunmetal-gray bottle of New Truck Smell With Extra Bear Urine For Men so that none of the penis-owners risk turning themselves queer by exposing their masculine dermis to ladysoaps.

My grocery store has even started stocking gendered cheese. I shit you not, cheese. There's Monterey Jack...and now there's Monterey Jill, the lite version for ladies! Complete with lavender packaging! There's also a brand of string cheese that is For Girls; the regular version has a boy-cartoon on the front of the package, but the lite version for ladies features a girl cartoon character and pink calorie reminder.

[Tsuntion]

There's also a brand of string cheese that is For Girls; the regular version has a boy-cartoon on the front of the package, but the lite version for ladies features a girl cartoon character and pink calorie reminder.

Does the boy's one have that? If not, that's... worse than the rest of the stuff you said. Teaching girls from a young age that they -- specifically them, not guys -- have to be model-thin and always be thinking about their weight and so on.

[Bottle]

There's also a brand of string cheese that is For Girls; the regular version has a boy-cartoon on the front of the package, but the lite version for ladies features a girl cartoon character and pink calorie reminder.

Does the boy's one have that? If not, that's... worse than the rest of the stuff you said. Teaching girls from a young age that they -- specifically them, not guys -- have to be model-thin and always be thinking about their weight and so on.

Oh, that's how it is pretty much anywhere in the USA. Look at any "low calorie" product and you'll find pastel packaging, looping feminine script, flowers/ribbons or other feminine graphics, and deliberately-gendered mascots to emphasize that this product is marketed to women.

It's actually kind of funny lately, because the cosmetics and diet industries have started to realize that they boxed themselves in. They put so much effort into pushing the idea that women MUST need their products because ALL WOMEN MUST BE THIN AND MADE-UP so that they could get more women buying their stuff, but in doing so they helped stigmatize their products as being for women (and we all know men will never ever be interested in woman-things because that would make them womanish! Yuck!). Now, these industries want to expand their market and start selling to dudes, but they have so thoroughly associated diets and cosmetics with being feminine that they're having to come up with some really goofy and over-blown hyper-masculine versions of their products to remove the girly stigma. Just look at Dove's "For Men" line or how Weight Watchers is tying itself in knots to find steak-based diet programs that are sufficiently cavemanish.

[Esternial]

I acknowledge their existence, but at first contact I will probably get it wrong unless you tell me.

If you consequently get mad at me for totally not knowing you are agender, I'll ignore you until the end of time, because nothing excuses you for being a dick at me because I can't read your thoughts, regardless of whether your have one or not.

[The Steel Magnolia]

I acknowledge their existence, but at first contact I will probably get it wrong unless you tell me.

If you consequently get mad at me for totally not knowing you are agender, I'll ignore you until the end of time, because nothing excuses you for being a dick at me because I can't read your thoughts, regardless of whether your have one or not.

Oh, I don't know, having society constantly tell you you're a liar, you're mentally ill, you're a disgusting freak who deserves to be put into concentration camps tends to leave one a bit on edge. If you can't forgive someone for being a tiny bit pissed at yet another person fucking up, then I imagine you must not have many trans friends.

[Agritum]

Does the boy's one have that? If not, that's... worse than the rest of the stuff you said. Teaching girls from a young age that they -- specifically them, not guys -- have to be model-thin and always be thinking about their weight and so on.

Oh, that's how it is pretty much anywhere in the USA. Look at any "low calorie" product and you'll find pastel packaging, looping feminine script, flowers/ribbons or other feminine graphics, and deliberately-gendered mascots to emphasize that this product is marketed to women.

It's actually kind of funny lately, because the cosmetics and diet industries have started to realize that they boxed themselves in. They put so much effort into pushing the idea that women MUST need their products because ALL WOMEN MUST BE THIN AND MADE-UP so that they could get more women buying their stuff, but in doing so they helped stigmatize their products as being for women (and we all know men will never ever be interested in woman-things because that would make them womanish! Yuck!). Now, these industries want to expand their market and start selling to dudes, but they have so thoroughly associated diets and cosmetics with being feminine that they're having to come up with some really goofy and over-blown hyper-masculine versions of their products to remove the girly stigma. Just look at Dove's "For Men" line or how Weight Watchers is tying itself in knots to find steak-based diet programs that are sufficiently cavemanish.

...and I happen to use L'Oreal Men Expert products, actually.

[Tsuntion]

I acknowledge their existence, but at first contact I will probably get it wrong unless you tell me.

If you consequently get mad at me for totally not knowing you are agender, I'll ignore you until the end of time, because nothing excuses you for being a dick at me because I can't read your thoughts, regardless of whether your have one or not.

Oh, I don't know, having society constantly tell you you're a liar, you're mentally ill, you're a disgusting freak who deserves to be put into concentration camps tends to leave one a bit on edge. If you can't forgive someone for being a tiny bit pissed at yet another person fucking up, then I imagine you must not have many trans friends.

If however someone's gender expression does not match their gender, as is likely the case for most non-binary people if only because looking androgynous can be quite fashionable for cis people, then they can hardly expect people to be psychic and getting mad at others is not appropriate, unpleasant/dysphoria-triggering/annoying as being misgendered may be. Save the rage for if you correct them nicely and they tell you you're a mentally ill lying freak.

[Bottle]

Oh, I don't know, having society constantly tell you you're a liar, you're mentally ill, you're a disgusting freak who deserves to be put into concentration camps tends to leave one a bit on edge. If you can't forgive someone for being a tiny bit pissed at yet another person fucking up, then I imagine you must not have many trans friends.

If however someone's gender expression does not match their gender, as is likely the case for most non-binary people if only because looking androgynous can be quite fashionable for cis people, then they can hardly expect people to be psychic and getting mad at others is not appropriate, unpleasant/dysphoria-triggering/annoying as being misgendered may be. Save the rage for if you correct them nicely and they tell you you're a mentally ill lying freak.

It's a question of picking your battles.

Yes, people of non-binary gender may be snappish when it comes to people who mis-label them. Do you want to pick a fight with them over it, knowing all the bullshit they already probably put up with? I don't.

I've been snapped at when I mis-gendered a trans person before, and even though I was hurt and thinking, "BUT I AM AN ALLY!" in my own head, I shut the fuck up and just apologized and let them be pissed at me about it. I figure, they have to live in a world that treats them shitty in countless ways that I don't have to deal with, and that's not fair, so maybe just this once I can handle being on the receiving end of Not Fair instead.

[Nazi Flower Power]

You know those arguments people like to make about how race is a meaningless social construct? Those could just as well be applied to gender.

[Bottle]

You know those arguments people like to make about how race is a meaningless social construct? Those could just as well be applied to gender.

Have I not made that argument in this thread yet?

I'm getting slow in my old age...

[Nazi Flower Power]

You know those arguments people like to make about how race is a meaningless social construct? Those could just as well be applied to gender.

Have I not made that argument in this thread yet?

I'm getting slow in my old age...

I dunno. It's kind of a long thread, and I just got here, so I did not read every post.

[The Blaatschapen]

If however someone's gender expression does not match their gender, as is likely the case for most non-binary people if only because looking androgynous can be quite fashionable for cis people, then they can hardly expect people to be psychic and getting mad at others is not appropriate, unpleasant/dysphoria-triggering/annoying as being misgendered may be. Save the rage for if you correct them nicely and they tell you you're a mentally ill lying freak.

It's a question of picking your battles.

Yes, people of non-binary gender may be snappish when it comes to people who mis-label them. Do you want to pick a fight with them over it, knowing all the bullshit they already probably put up with? I don't.

I've been snapped at when I mis-gendered a trans person before, and even though I was hurt and thinking, "BUT I AM AN ALLY!" in my own head, I shut the fuck up and just apologized and let them be pissed at me about it. I figure, they have to live in a world that treats them shitty in countless ways that I don't have to deal with, and that's not fair, so maybe just this once I can handle being on the receiving end of Not Fair instead.

And I cannot. I mean, I'll apologize to them for making the mistake and if after that they're continuing to be angry and a jerk towards me, I'll just happily ignore them (just like I ignore many other jerks). Life is too short to deal with people that just want to be mad at you.

[Tsuntion]

It's a question of picking your battles.

Yes, people of non-binary gender may be snappish when it comes to people who mis-label them. Do you want to pick a fight with them over it, knowing all the bullshit they already probably put up with? I don't.

I've been snapped at when I mis-gendered a trans person before, and even though I was hurt and thinking, "BUT I AM AN ALLY!" in my own head, I shut the fuck up and just apologized and let them be pissed at me about it. I figure, they have to live in a world that treats them shitty in countless ways that I don't have to deal with, and that's not fair, so maybe just this once I can handle being on the receiving end of Not Fair instead.

True.

[Bottle]

It's a question of picking your battles.

Yes, people of non-binary gender may be snappish when it comes to people who mis-label them. Do you want to pick a fight with them over it, knowing all the bullshit they already probably put up with? I don't.

I've been snapped at when I mis-gendered a trans person before, and even though I was hurt and thinking, "BUT I AM AN ALLY!" in my own head, I shut the fuck up and just apologized and let them be pissed at me about it. I figure, they have to live in a world that treats them shitty in countless ways that I don't have to deal with, and that's not fair, so maybe just this once I can handle being on the receiving end of Not Fair instead.

And I cannot. I mean, I'll apologize to them for making the mistake and if after that they're continuing to be angry and a jerk towards me, I'll just happily ignore them (just like I ignore many other jerks). Life is too short to deal with people that just want to be mad at you.

*shrug* Your call, obviously. I know that I let things slide that some other people wouldn't, and I also pick fights over things that other people don't.

Long as you recognize that it's about your individual preference and isn't some kind of moral imperative, I don't see a problem.

[The Blaatschapen]

And I cannot. I mean, I'll apologize to them for making the mistake and if after that they're continuing to be angry and a jerk towards me, I'll just happily ignore them (just like I ignore many other jerks). Life is too short to deal with people that just want to be mad at you.

*shrug* Your call, obviously. I know that I let things slide that some other people wouldn't, and I also pick fights over things that other people don't.

Long as you recognize that it's about your individual preference and isn't some kind of moral imperative, I don't see a problem.

It is indeed my personal preference to just ignore people that I hardly know, who continue to be pissed off after I make a genuine mistake for which I apologised

[Phocidaea]

I acknowledge their existence, but at first contact I will probably get it wrong unless you tell me.

If you consequently get mad at me for totally not knowing you are agender, I'll ignore you until the end of time, because nothing excuses you for being a dick at me because I can't read your thoughts, regardless of whether your have one or not.

^^^
Friend 1: "*on phone* He's (Friend 2) going to -"
Friend 2: "WHAT?"
"Huh?"
"You called me "he"! I... I... HATE YOU!"
"Great, I'll just leave if that's how you're gonna act."
"No! You have to accept me being a douche!"
"Why?"
"Because... TEH DISCRIMINATION!"

[Nailed to the Perch]

I acknowledge their existence, but at first contact I will probably get it wrong unless you tell me.

If you consequently get mad at me for totally not knowing you are agender, I'll ignore you until the end of time, because nothing excuses you for being a dick at me because I can't read your thoughts, regardless of whether your have one or not.

I suppose that depends on what you mean by "nothing excuses you." If your point is that someone who gets frustrated at you over something that is not your fault is a less than flawless human being, I suppose that's true. An absolutely perfect person would never be in a bad mood, or snap at someone, or do anything that could be even the slightest bit hurtful.

The thing is, though, I don't hold people to that standard, because literally all of them would disappoint me. I figure that if someone deals with the same frustrating, dehumanizing experience of being misidentified over and over and over and over and over and they eventually snap at a well-meaning person who just happened to be the 27th person to make that mistake this week, they are not so much a jerk who should be ignored until the end of time as a human being with normal human flaws.

That's not to say trans* people can't also be jerks, but if the only example of jerkiness I've seen is "they snapped at me for misgendering them once," I'm a lot more likely to think, "They're dealing with something that's exhausting and frustrating and I unintentionally made it worse. They shouldn't have snapped at me, but heaven knows I've grumbled at people when they happen to say entirely the wrong thing without meaning to before, because I'm human" than "I SHALL IGNORE YOU UNTIL THE END OF TIME, YOU DICK."

[Bottle]

I acknowledge their existence, but at first contact I will probably get it wrong unless you tell me.

If you consequently get mad at me for totally not knowing you are agender, I'll ignore you until the end of time, because nothing excuses you for being a dick at me because I can't read your thoughts, regardless of whether your have one or not.

I suppose that depends on what you mean by "nothing excuses you." If your point is that someone who gets frustrated at you over something that is not your fault is a less than flawless human being, I suppose that's true. An absolutely perfect person would never be in a bad mood, or snap at someone, or do anything that could be even the slightest bit hurtful.

The thing is, though, I don't hold people to that standard, because literally all of them would disappoint me. I figure that if someone deals with the same frustrating, dehumanizing experience of being misidentified over and over and over and over and over and they eventually snap at a well-meaning person who just happened to be the 27th person to make that mistake this week, they are not so much a jerk who should be ignored until the end of time as a human being with normal human flaws.

That's not to say trans* people can't also be jerks, but if the only example of jerkiness I've seen is "they snapped at me for misgendering them once," I'm a lot more likely to think, "They're dealing with something that's exhausting and frustrating and I unintentionally made it worse. They shouldn't have snapped at me, but heaven knows I've grumbled at people when they happen to say entirely the wrong thing without meaning to before, because I'm human" than "I SHALL IGNORE YOU UNTIL THE END OF TIME, YOU DICK."

Exactly.

I exist in an almost perpetual state of harumph, due to the constant annoyances that are part of my daily life. While this means that I am slightly (read: a lot) more likely than average to snap at people who are being obnoxious, it also paradoxically makes me a lot more understanding of grumpy people.

[Linux and the X]

I gotta agree with you there, the stuff people nowadays spurt out is ridiculous to me, you are either a man or a woman, the very idea of more genders is laughable, any of you who are going to rage, show me your different biological parts eh? Men have penises and women have vaginas, simple, if you have something different, prove it and I will believe you.

You don't have to have a vagina to be of female gender. Ships are generally gender female, for instance.

Wait, you mean I didn't have to craft a vagina onto the front of my ship? No wonder the Coast Guard was annoyed.

[Grenartia]

You don't have to have a vagina to be of female gender. Ships are generally gender female, for instance.

Wait, you mean I didn't have to craft a vagina onto the front of my ship? No wonder the Coast Guard was annoyed.

Also explains the looks you were getting from those lonely fishermen...

[Arkinesia]

I guess I'm technically non-binary, because I don't acknowledge gender as a construct for adults.