I'm way overthinking this, but I'm going with finite. It could be an unfathomably large number, but gender is a human construct and there are a finite number of humans. Let's say each human that ever lives has a unique gender identity - there could be billions or trillions, but it would still be finite.
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this poll is homophobic, gays are not good enough at math to know the difference between countably and uncountably infinite /s
Does the set of all genders contain itself?
Countable infinite. Infinite because there are infinite possibilities. (Spectrum) Countable because the number of human beings is countable.
A finite number of genders will be experienced by people, but there are an uncountably infinite number of genders.
The set of genders is like the real number line. You can throw a dart at it and pick out a new gender for every person, but you will never be able to throw enough darts to exhaust the set, even given infinite time.
Some people may even have a gender experience variable over time, maybe repeating cyclically, or maybe more or less randomly jumping across a set, or maybe sliding across a real section, or maybe sliding in multiple dimensions.
If we were to define gender as each person's "gender experience", the number would be g∈ℕ, since the number of people is going to be finite.
However, if we try to define a "gender experience" as a function of common genders, then g:[f(n∈ℝ),...], making it an uncountable infinite.
Interesting paradox: finite as long as one doesn't count them, but uncountable infinite as soon as one tries to.
With enough funding, I will finish my research on the Hilbert space of genders where every particle in every possible reality has a one-to-one correspondence to a gender. I call it the "Everettian gender hypercontinuum".
I just respect everyone and never assume their identity is what I initially (subconsciously?) think. It took a long time to get there, but I just take every person as a person worthy of respect and dignity as my default.
I guess it depends on whether we’re willing to say a gender exists if theoretically possible though not ever embodied. Will artificial sapients have gender identities?
I'd say finite, up to 8.1 billion options. My throught process is that what isn't alive doesn't count.
Understandable, but I would say the entire set would include genders and gender variations that haven't been seen in the wild yet.
Similar to how you don't need to write down all the possible numbers between 0 and 1 to know that they do exist.
That begs the question: is "gender" exclusively a human experience, or is it a construct or quality that describes something? What about animals, plants, other living begins, viruses, AIs, etc.? If it isn't exclusively human, then where do we put the line? Does Earth as a whole have a gender?
"decides"
How arrogant are you? You don't get to decide shit.
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