Hey all,
So I'm looking to take an active step here to understand better some things that my straight/white/cis/middle-aged male brain has had a tough time wrapping itself around, particularly in the gender identity front.
I'm working from the understanding of physical sex as the bio-bits and the expressed identity as being separate things, so that part is easy enough.
What's confusing to me though is like this. If we take gender as being an expression of your persona, a set of traits that define one as male, female, or some combination of both then what function does a title/pronoun serve? To assume that some things are masculine or feminine traits seems to put unneeded rigidity to things.
We've had men or women who enjoy things traditionally associated with the other gender for as long as there have been people I expect. If that's the case then what purpose does the need for a gender title serve?
I'll admit personally questioning some things like fairness in cis/trans integrated sports, but that's outside what I'm asking here. Some things like bathroom laws are just society needing to get over itself in thinking our personal parts are all that special.
Certainly not trying to stir up any fights, just trying to get some input from people that have a different life experience than myself. Is it really as simple as a preferred title?
Edit: Just wanted to take a second to thank all the people here who took the time to write some truly extensive thoughts and explanations, even getting into some full on citation-laden studies into neurology that'll give me plenty to digest. You all have shown a great deal of patience with me updating some thinking from the bio/social teachings of 20+ years back. 🙂
Yes, not terribly common, but frequent these topics, especially outside community-moderated spaces, and you’ll meet them. They’re sometimes used as examples of rabid attack-dog liberalism. I’m not sure of their motivation, but it might be similar to those who impersonate police, just the terminally-online version of hammers looking for nails.
Where they miss the plot is that the ultimate goal should always be kindness and respect, not appeasement or rule-enforcement. Education is part of it of course — understanding our implicit biases, where they come from, what the symptoms look like, etc — but the reason we learn to be better to each other is because that’s how we ourselves would like to be treated, not to avoid getting flamed, brigaded, “cancelled,” or what-have-you.
Anyway, thanks for putting in the effort to learn. I think you’ll make a good ally.