Wandering the information superhighway, he came upon the last refuge of civilization, PoFo, the only forum on the internet ...
Rancid wrote:There are two genders. Me and everyone else.
Dimensions of Gender
While our gender may begin with the assignment of our sex, it doesn’t end there. A person’s gender is the complex interrelationship between three dimensions:
– Body: our body, our experience of our own body, how society genders bodies, and how others interact with us based on our body.
– Identity: our deeply held, internal sense of self as male, female, a blend of both, or neither; who we internally know ourselves to be.
– Expression: how we present our gender in the world and how society, culture, community, and family perceive, interact with, and try to shape our gender. Gender expression is also related to gender roles and how society uses those roles to try to enforce conformity to current gender norms.
Each of these dimensions can vary greatly across a range of possibilities. A person’s comfort in their gender is related to the degree to which these three dimensions feel in harmony. Let’s explore each of these dimensions in a little more detail.
Body
Most societies view sex as a binary concept, with two rigidly fixed options: male or female, both based on a person’s reproductive functions (genitals, sex chromosomes, gonads, hormones, reproductive structures). But a sex binary fails to capture even the biological aspect of gender. While most bodies have one of two forms of genitalia, which are classified as “female” or “male,” there are naturally occurring intersex conditions that demonstrate that sex exists across a continuum of possibilities. This biological spectrum by itself should be enough to dispel the simplistic notion of the “Gender binary”- there are not just two sexes.
The relationship between a person’s gender and their body goes beyond one’s reproductive functions. Research in neurology, endocrinology, and cellular biology points to a broader biological basis for an individual’s experience of gender. In fact, research increasingly points to our brains as playing a key role in how we each experience our gender.
Bodies themselves are also gendered in the context of cultural expectations. Masculinity and femininity are equated with certain physical attributes, labeling us as more or less a man/woman based on the degree to which those attributes are present. This gendering of our bodies affects how we feel about ourselves and how others perceive and interact with us.
Identity
Gender identity is our internal experience and naming of our gender. A Cisgender person has a gender identity consistent with the sex they were assigned at birth. For example, a child whose sex was assigned male on their birth certificate and who identifies as a boy is cisgender (you may hear this term shortened to “cis”). A Transgender person has a gender identity that does not match the sex they were assigned at birth. So, a child who was assigned male on their birth certificate and who identifies as a girl is transgender (sometimes this term is shortened to “trans”).
The two most common gender identities are boy and girl (or man and woman), and often people think that these are the only two gender identities. This idea that there are only two genders is called the “gender binary.” If a child has a binary gender identity, that means they identify as either a boy or a girl, regardless of the sex they were assigned at birth.
But gender is a spectrum, and not limited to just two possibilities. A child may have a Non-binary gender identity, meaning they do not identify strictly as a boy or a girl – they could identify as both, or neither, or as another gender entirely. Agender people do not identify with any gender.
Understanding of our gender comes to most of us fairly early in life. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, “By age four, most children have a stable sense of their gender identity.” This core aspect of one’s identity comes from within each of us; it is an inherent aspect of a person’s make-up. Individuals do not choose their gender, nor can they be made to change it, though the words someone uses to communicate their gender identity may change over time (e.g., from one non-binary identity to a different non-binary identity). Naming our gender can be a complex and evolving matter. Because we are provided with limited language for gender, it may take a person quite some time to discover, or create, the language that best communicates their gender.
Descriptors for gender identities are rapidly expanding; youth and young adults today no longer feel bound to identify strictly with one of two genders, but are instead establishing a growing vocabulary for gender. More than just a series of new words, however, this shift in language represents a far more nuanced understanding of the experience of gender itself. The 2015 Fusion “Millennial Poll” (“millennial” defined as individuals aged 18-34) revealed that more see gender as a spectrum than as a binary. Other research indicates that today’s teens are even likelier to see identity as a spectrum. There is a generational divide in our fundamental understandings of gender and how we think about this aspect of who we are.
Expression
The third dimension of gender is Gender expression, which is the way we show our gender to the world around us (through such things as clothing, hairstyles, and mannerisms, to name a few). Practically everything is assigned a gender—toys, colors, clothes, and activities are some of the more obvious examples. Given the prevalence of the gender binary, children face great pressure to express their gender within narrow, stereotypical definitions of “boy” or “girl.” Expectations around expression are taught to us from the moment we are born, and communicated through every aspect of our lives, including family, culture, peers, schools, community, media, and religion. Accepted gender roles and expectations are so entrenched in our culture that most people cannot imagine any other way.
Through a combination of social conditioning and personal preference, by age three most children prefer activities and exhibit behaviors typically associated with their sex. For individuals who fit fairly neatly into expected gender roles and expression, there may be little cause to think about, or question, their gender, or how gender is created, communicated, and reinforced in our lives. However, children who express gender in ways that are perceived to be outside of these social norms often have a very different experience. Girls thought to be too masculine (especially as they move into their teens) and boys seen as feminine (at any age) face a variety of challenges. Pressures to conform at home, mistreatment by peers in school, and condemnation by the broader society are just some of the difficulties facing a child whose expression does not fall into line with the binary gender system. For many young people, whether typical in their presentation or not, expression is the most tangible aspect of their gender experience, impacting them in many, if not all, of their interactions with others.
Norms around gender expression change across societies and over time. One need only consider men wearing earrings or women having tattoos to see the flexibility of social expectations about gender. Even the seemingly intractable notion that “pink is for girls, blue is for boys” is relatively new. Prior to the mid-twentieth century, pink was associated with boys’ clothing and blue with girls’ clothing (still due to the gendering of colors, but with a different rationale associating each color with particular gendered characteristics).
Because expectations around gender expression are so rigid, we frequently assume that what someone wears, or how they move, talk, or express themselves, tells us something about their gender identity. But expression is distinct from identity -we can’t assume a person’s gender identity based on their gender expression. For example, a cisgender boy may like to wear skirts or dresses. His choice in clothing doesn’t change his gender identity; it simply means that he prefers (at least some of the time) to wear clothing that society typically associates with girls.
Godstud wrote:I identify as an attack helicopter! Remember that!
Agent Steel wrote:There are between eleven and twenty genders.
How Many Genders Are There?
Deutschmania wrote:Hopefully this clears things up ; if not I don't know what else I can post .
Victoribus Spolia wrote:Well congrats SolarCross your poll showed that PoFo is not entirely lost to gender dysphoria and insanity.
Time to wave the pink/blue flag.
Pants-of-dog wrote:Why should we care about the poll results?
Pants-of-dog wrote:Those of us you call "libtards", obviously.
Now, why should we care?
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