I am quite happy to entertain the idea that male and female (for a very fuzzy definition of male and female) brains might have statistically noticeable differences in how they are formed or behave.
I m extremely sceptical that these tendencies would be strong or uniform enough to be able to say anything about anyone based on gender.
Speaking of feminists that give the movement a bad name, i was just told that "females are the superior gender because male testosterone fluctuates daily leading to swings in aggression and 'oneupmanship' " and that the female reproductive organs have evolved in a way that makes them superior to males.
I'm baffled by this set of arguments.
In my experience, people who say things like this do not interact with many women, or if they do, they don't pay any attention to them. It's literally a reframing of old style paternalistic sexist gender essentialism.
Fact: women are quite as good as men when it comes to being moody assholes.
Can someone give me an idea on how we can dismiss gender essentialism, and accept the innateness of transgenderism?
If transgenderism stems from genetic/epigenetic/in utero hormone effects or some other predeterminate thing-which seems likely given for example preschool children who identify as the opposite gender- dismissing one and accepting the other seem to be making explicitly opposed claims.
1) That there is no such thing as a 'male brain' or a 'female brain'
2) That some people are born with brains opposed to their biological sex.
e: It also seems to run directly contrary to the David Reimer story and the other examples of SRS on infants.
These two things seem to be opposed.
So there is no such thing as a male or female brain, yet your brain can be the opposite brain as your sex? Its making no sense to me please clarify. If the brain has no gender how can it be an opposite?
This thread helps reinforce the idea that I don't really know shit about personal gender identification beyond my own brain and body. I can't relate to the many troubles caused by gender discrimination in any meaningful way. If I can relate to any, it's only as an abstract idea that I try to cram in a similar set of circumstances that I can relate to. That all goes double when it comes time to talk about a gender fluidity scale and all the places people can fit in, or not feel like they fit in at all.
The cool part is, I don't have to understand any of it to hope people get to enjoy their lives however they want as long as it doesn't impact me. I'll admit some aspects of LGBTQ (and other acronyms) make me feel uncomfortable and possibly "icky". I can't really help that. Feeling icky isn't enough of a reason to deny folks a right to try to be happy and the discomfort will only go away with exposure and attempts at understanding.
I also can't really understand the appeal of a society run by people who have dominant traits that are seen as manly and masculine. Machismo isn't a virtue or a problem solving technique, it's a way to cover up insecurities with bravado and douchebaggery. Unlike the many personal and individual ways gender identification exist... there really is only one form of hyper maleness and it directly impacts just about everyone in a negative way.
"Masculine" traits include things like enduring hardship to protect others or using strength to help others. Toxic gender expression isn't the only form of expression.
"Masculine" traits include things like enduring hardship to protect others or using strength to help others. Toxic gender expression isn't the only form of expression.
S'why I included dominant before manly and masculine. Lot's of qualities in people come bundled together, they can't all be good all of the time. Being stoic is great if you're in a crisis and need to get through it. Being stoic is idiotic if you're having a heart attack and refuse to acknowledge it. I guess there are other words I could have used besides dominant, but I think it fits. Machismo is always really really idiotic though.
Extremes tend to be harmful, yes. One of the major issues with toxic gender expression is when you focus so much on expression that you lose sight of why those behaviors are even valuable to begin with.
Stoicism is valuable because it helps you focus and find ideal solutions.
Being willing to engage in conflict can be of benefit to your own survival or to your family/clan/tribe/faction/whatever.
Actively seeking to help others can be of great benefit when people are unable to express their need for help.
When you're doing these behaviors not because they're good and appropriate behaviors, but just because they're what you're supposed to do, you get people who wall off their emotions, get into useless fights, and run around yanking doors open for people who are already opening them just fine.
Moreover, when you fail to identify which behaviors are good for you to express as an individual, you end up with frustration and embarrassment, which can lead to a spiral of destructive or self-destructive behavior as you try to prove that you're something that you just are not.
I am quite happy to entertain the idea that male and female (for a very fuzzy definition of male and female) brains might have statistically noticeable differences in how they are formed or behave.
I m extremely sceptical that these tendencies would be strong or uniform enough to be able to say anything about anyone based on gender.
Here's how I think of it:
We know that sex affects brain structure. "Brain sex" is an abstraction which describes an archetype. A series of statistically common ranges for various parameters. Being male or female does not mean that you are on a certain point on those scales but rather that you are extremely likely to fall within a certain range on any given scale. The ranges somewhat differ between men and women. Due to the nature of statistics you are extremely unlikely to find any individual that isn't in some ways neurologically sex non-conforming because you roll the dice many, many times.
You're left with this murky profile of sex-based behavioral tendencies. Any given individual is likely to conform to some of them but not to others. Then culture comes along. Every society takes those baseline tendencies, filters them through millennia of culture and creates its own strange, warped interpretation of how a given sex behaves and what an ideal member of a certain sex "should" be. Again and again we've found that said ideals do not stand the test of time and have little to do with reality. It is in my opinion naive to think that we've finally figured this shit out and our current thoughts are factual. Separating the essential attributes from the socialized bullshit is close to impossible so we are left guessing about most things. What we do know (e.g. "testosterone is linked with aggression so men tend to be more aggressive than women") is really basic.
That vile, inaccurate thing cultures produce, though? That's gender. It arises from sex but is distinct from it. By and large people feel the need to identify not just as a given sex but as a given gender, even though every culture's conception of gender is distinct; the tales of blind men groping an elephant. Where things get really complicated is with intersexed folks. I've recently read a paper which claimed that pre-cross-sex hormonal treatment transsexuals who experience gender dysphoria and are exclusively attracted to members of their birth sex have brains which, while more similar to those of their birth sex, have some regions which are highly similar to those found in the opposite sex. This puts each of them in their own category as far as brain phenotypes go.
Untreated MtFs and FtMs who have an early onset of their gender dysphoria and are sexually oriented to persons of their natal sex show a distinctive brain morphology, reflecting a brain phenotype. These phenotypes are different from those of heterosexual males or females; the differences affect the right hemisphere and cortical structures underlying body perception. The genesis of these phenotypes might be caused by atypical effects of sex hormones or their metabolites in specific cortical regions of MtFs and FtMs. These effects of hormones on the cortex suggest the hypothesis that brain differences between homosexual MtFs and FtMs and male and female controls are due to differences in the development of the cortex; this hypothesis would imply that the thinning process undergone by some regions of the cortex is timed differently in each phenotype.
The review of the available data seems to support two existing hypotheses: (1) a brain-restricted intersexuality in homosexual MtFs and FtMs and (2) Blanchard’s insight on the existence of two brain phenotypes that differentiate “homosexual” and “nonhomosexual” MtFs.
So you have folks who, due to a neurological quirk, need to have the body of the sex opposite to their body's birth sex to feel comfortable with themselves. That's obviously an innate trait. On the other hand, since gender is a social construct, they obviously can't innately want to be of the opposite gender. Yet they almost universally do. Even though gender is man-made it is so core to the identity of most people that they simply must bear the one which is closest to theirs in order to feel whole. I think that's a strong argument for gender arising from biology even though whatever specific vision of gender we hold at any given time is probably inaccurate.
Grey Paladin on
"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes to make it possible." - T.E. Lawrence
So you have folks who, due to a neurological quirk, need to have the body of the sex opposite to their body's birth sex to feel comfortable with themselves. That's obviously an innate trait.
Not obviously.
There are a few areas around the world with more than two obvious genders. And in general, the degree of dysphoria and/or dysmorphia experienced correlates to how well or poorly society views them.
The Fa'afafine have relatively low dysphoria, and are fairly well accepted.
The Hijra are somewhat less accepted, and have higher rates of dysphoria.
I was mulling this thread over as I walked home from work yesterday, and something that just kept popping up was the emphasis placed on one of the two words by some people in the thread, and it being the wrong one in my opinion.
Focusing on 'masculine', as though it were bad, is folly. There is a modifier present. Stereotypically 'masculine'/'manly' things (I dunno, lifting weights and being all tough and eating steak and grunting or something) are not generally innately bad things. If that's what makes you happy, grunt and lift weights and eat all the steak you want!
The negatives generally come from the Toxic modifier present. Belittling people who don't lift weights, or thinking people who don't enjoy steak are 'pussies', or who aren't as outwardly stoic in the face of physical/emotional harm to their own detriment. Or when taken to the extreme; ending up with body dysmorphia because no matter how much they lift they never get massive biceps they've always wanted, or feeling like a lesser man for needing to ask for help, etc.
We see this play out in all manner of scenarios. Protecting one's self and family and loved ones is admirable, having a hot temper and picking fights over machismo or misdirected displays of dominance or whatever is not. Standing up to an asshole picking on someone is great, picking a fight because someone looked at 'your girl' is not.
I know people have said this before, I have read through the entire thread (and the entire thread that lead to this GST), but it seems like every few pages we have someone else join in and say something to the effect of how 'I'm a traditionally masculine man, why are you saying that's bad', and it's missing the point (hence my desire to reiterate these points); there's nothing wrong with a healthy expression of 'masculine/manly' identity. The TOXIC part is the modifier of note. If someone is a rough and ready marine who eats nails and lifts every day or whatever, great! As long as they're happy with who they are and aren't giving other people shit for not being like them, go nuts! Being resilient can be noble, being so stoic that eventually thoughts of suicide or anger issues (or others) manifest is where we have problems (eg; fear of looking weak for seeking help, and the appalling suicide rates among police officers).
It's, again, when negative connotations are present, or people are lashing out or unhappy with themselves or others over perceived differences that should not matter one bit, is where the TOXIC aspects come into play. Pride in one's self and one's own qualities is fine, belittling those who don't meet those same internal standards, or assigning negative qualities/associations to others (Feminine or Not Sufficiently Masculine) are where we have trouble.
At least, that's how I'm seeing it.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
So you have folks who, due to a neurological quirk, need to have the body of the sex opposite to their body's birth sex to feel comfortable with themselves. That's obviously an innate trait.
Not obviously.
There are a few areas around the world with more than two obvious genders. And in general, the degree of dysphoria and/or dysmorphia experienced correlates to how well or poorly society views them.
The Fa'afafine have relatively low dysphoria, and are fairly well accepted.
The Hijra are somewhat less accepted, and have higher rates of dysphoria.
I might be full of shit so correct me if I'm wrong but I was under the impression that third genders are usually the only acceptable way to be homosexual in such cultures so comparing such individuals directly to transsexuals as we understand them is erroneous. If the paper I linked is to be trusted then there seems to be a highly significant correlation between the abnormal brain structures described therein and gender dysphoria. I can't say whether there's also a social component but to me brain structure seems as innate as these things can get.
"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes to make it possible." - T.E. Lawrence
I know people have said this before, I have read through the entire thread (and the entire thread that lead to this GST), but it seems like every few pages we have someone else join in and say something to the effect of how 'I'm a traditionally masculine man, why are you saying that's bad', and it's missing the point (hence my desire to reiterate these points); there's nothing wrong with a healthy expression of 'masculine/manly' identity. The TOXIC part is the modifier of note. If someone is a rough and ready marine who eats nails and lifts every day or whatever, great! As long as they're happy with who they are and aren't giving other people shit for not being like them, go nuts! Being resilient can be noble, being so stoic that eventually thoughts of suicide or anger issues (or others) manifest is where we have problems (eg; fear of looking weak for seeking help, and the appalling suicide rates among police officers).
I think something a little bit different is going on here.
Let's say a person is concerned about "toxic feminism." At every opportunity, they bring up examples of what they saw as toxic feminism. They bring up lots of examples and anecdotes about feminism being toxic. They also never mention any sort of non-toxic feminism, or give a suggestion that 'toxic' and 'feminism' shouldn't regularly go together. They start a blog to discuss their fears about toxic feminism and the damage its doing to the modern world.
My strong suspicion is that many people supportive of feminism would start to feel attacked by this person, even if they were careful to use the 'toxic' descriptor every single time they mentioned feminism. Their issue most likely won't be that its impossible for feminism to be toxic or even that the specific examples are wrong. Instead, they would feel like the poster was trying to load up feminism with negative affect, such that more and more people would start to naturally associate feminism with the 'toxic' descriptor even when feminism is doing something reasonable. If you hear enough negative anecdotes about toxic feminism, and no positive ones, then eventually every new belief about feminism starts to suffer guilt-by-association. Lots and lots of talking about toxic feminism pushes the needle towards people rejecting feminists and feminism out of hand, because their brain has so many negative associations with the term. This is an explicit goal of a lot of anti-feminism movements, and there are many communities in which this negative association has already happened.
I think that people concerned about the toxic masculinity and patriarchy terms are coming from a similar place. That is, they don't necessarily believe that there is no toxic way to express masculinity, or that toxic masculinity is good. Rather, they're worried about feminists and social justice people loading their gender up with negative affect, so that everyone in the community has lots of negative associations with males and masculinity. A lot of men are understandably upset about this, especially those who have bad enough experiences with SJ to be skeptical of reassurances that it won't happen. In many SJ-heavy communities, it has happened: do a search for "straight white male" on tumblr and see how long it takes you to find something that would be considered hateful in reference to any other race/gender group. A lot of people unsurprisingly find that treatment unpleasant, and don't want their community to be pushed in a similar direction.
Strong repeated associations with toxicity can push a concept over the edge and turn it into a bad word. I think a lot of people want to push back against this for concepts they identify with, or concepts that are close to them. I also think that names have power. If you call your organization to promote international cooperation "Fuck The Swedes", you're going to end up with a very different movement than if you call it "The United Nations." And so you end up with people getting very uncomfortable whenever someone associates their movement/identity with toxicity on the object level, not because they disagree with the specific example, but because they don't want their movement to become negatively associated on the meta-level.
So you have folks who, due to a neurological quirk, need to have the body of the sex opposite to their body's birth sex to feel comfortable with themselves. That's obviously an innate trait.
Not obviously.
There are a few areas around the world with more than two obvious genders. And in general, the degree of dysphoria and/or dysmorphia experienced correlates to how well or poorly society views them.
The Fa'afafine have relatively low dysphoria, and are fairly well accepted.
The Hijra are somewhat less accepted, and have higher rates of dysphoria.
I might be full of shit so correct me if I'm wrong but I was under the impression that third genders are usually the only acceptable way to be homosexual in such cultures so comparing such individuals directly to transsexuals as we understand them is erroneous. If the paper I linked is to be trusted then there seems to be a highly significant correlation between the abnormal brain structures described therein and gender dysphoria. I can't say whether there's also a social component but to me brain structure seems as innate as these things can get.
I recall learning about that in grade school and not really understanding. The descriptions of the third gender on the wiki seem to imply it's less about sexuality and more about deeds and roles.
I disagree, Atomika argued that there is a spectrum of brains from extreme male to extreme female. I think it is best explained in that way. Not that there is no male or female brain but you can be anywhere on a spectrum from male to female. If you claim that there is no male or female brain then how can you even have a spectrum that might possibly disagree with your sex? What is your spectrum between? I can recognize that not every male has what would be considered a 100% male brain.
To me it seems like you are trying to argue that the opposite of hot water is cold water but there is no such thing as cold or hot.
If your brain isn't one of those that fits neatly into the shapes we've defined as male or female, it's not all that weird for it to self-assess the self as more accurately encapsulated by a different set of arbitrary criteria (gender) than the one that an external observer thinks fits at first glance.
It's not like what your brain starts with and what it picks up along the way are firmly separated from one another. It's not unusual that it can take absurd data from the outside world and decide it's miserable adhering to one set of criteria and will be much happier adhering to a different set.
edit: It's important to remember it's all arbitrary. In the scheme of the universe, what I personally assess as 'hot' and 'cold' as so similar as to make the terms damn near meaningless. I still don't like to be too hot or too cold.
double edit: How about we trade the vagary of social constructs for literal constructs to help make this make more sense? Think about something like a paraphilia. Balloons certainly aren't included in the basic programming of your brain, but you can become someone who only gets off when you see one pop nonetheless. The right environment meets the right brain structure and things happen.
A person from a society without balloons certainly won't develop that particular issue even if they have the same brain structure. They might end up with a different paraphilia. Like how statue fetishes gave way to blow up doll fetishes over time. A person with a particular 'maleish' or 'femaleish' or 'bothish' or 'neitherish' brain structure may or may not experience psychological problems depending on how the genders as defined in their society mesh with their internal state.
triple edit: Just to be safe, I don't mean anything negative with the comparisons to paraphilias or saying 'problems' or any of that.
Kamar on
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
Hot and cold is hardly arbitrary.
There are constraints on the metabolic processes and general biological architecture of the human body.
However, this has all failed to address the challenge that was originally provided.
If gender is separate to sex
Gender is separate to gender roles
Then what is it?
We've already abandoning the link to sex and physical characteristics - not all women have female genitals, not all women have XX chromosomes, etc.
So, gender roles encompass - the traits we assign to the genders, the way society treats and views the genders, the expectation placed of the genders in all parts of life, the clothes they wear, the standards of beauty and attractiveness.
So, gender is neither the physical characteristics, nor the way genders are expressed or the traits we assign to them. So what is it? What properties does it have? It doesn't seem like it has many, and given that there's nowhere for it to fit it seems like it is nothing more than a label. Which makes it impossible to tell via introspection or otherwise whether anyone's experience matches with any gender, whether cis trans or otherwise and makes claims that anyone is really any gender suspect.
Which would be an eliminativist argument (I.e. That there is no such thing as gender) which is a fairly well established one - though some of the feminist arguments in its favour are frankly insane.
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I m extremely sceptical that these tendencies would be strong or uniform enough to be able to say anything about anyone based on gender.
These two things seem to be opposed.
So there is no such thing as a male or female brain, yet your brain can be the opposite brain as your sex? Its making no sense to me please clarify. If the brain has no gender how can it be an opposite?
Atomika did a good job of it.
The cool part is, I don't have to understand any of it to hope people get to enjoy their lives however they want as long as it doesn't impact me. I'll admit some aspects of LGBTQ (and other acronyms) make me feel uncomfortable and possibly "icky". I can't really help that. Feeling icky isn't enough of a reason to deny folks a right to try to be happy and the discomfort will only go away with exposure and attempts at understanding.
I also can't really understand the appeal of a society run by people who have dominant traits that are seen as manly and masculine. Machismo isn't a virtue or a problem solving technique, it's a way to cover up insecurities with bravado and douchebaggery. Unlike the many personal and individual ways gender identification exist... there really is only one form of hyper maleness and it directly impacts just about everyone in a negative way.
Thread is fascinating. Continue good peoples.
S'why I included dominant before manly and masculine. Lot's of qualities in people come bundled together, they can't all be good all of the time. Being stoic is great if you're in a crisis and need to get through it. Being stoic is idiotic if you're having a heart attack and refuse to acknowledge it. I guess there are other words I could have used besides dominant, but I think it fits. Machismo is always really really idiotic though.
Stoicism is valuable because it helps you focus and find ideal solutions.
Being willing to engage in conflict can be of benefit to your own survival or to your family/clan/tribe/faction/whatever.
Actively seeking to help others can be of great benefit when people are unable to express their need for help.
When you're doing these behaviors not because they're good and appropriate behaviors, but just because they're what you're supposed to do, you get people who wall off their emotions, get into useless fights, and run around yanking doors open for people who are already opening them just fine.
Moreover, when you fail to identify which behaviors are good for you to express as an individual, you end up with frustration and embarrassment, which can lead to a spiral of destructive or self-destructive behavior as you try to prove that you're something that you just are not.
We know that sex affects brain structure. "Brain sex" is an abstraction which describes an archetype. A series of statistically common ranges for various parameters. Being male or female does not mean that you are on a certain point on those scales but rather that you are extremely likely to fall within a certain range on any given scale. The ranges somewhat differ between men and women. Due to the nature of statistics you are extremely unlikely to find any individual that isn't in some ways neurologically sex non-conforming because you roll the dice many, many times.
You're left with this murky profile of sex-based behavioral tendencies. Any given individual is likely to conform to some of them but not to others. Then culture comes along. Every society takes those baseline tendencies, filters them through millennia of culture and creates its own strange, warped interpretation of how a given sex behaves and what an ideal member of a certain sex "should" be. Again and again we've found that said ideals do not stand the test of time and have little to do with reality. It is in my opinion naive to think that we've finally figured this shit out and our current thoughts are factual. Separating the essential attributes from the socialized bullshit is close to impossible so we are left guessing about most things. What we do know (e.g. "testosterone is linked with aggression so men tend to be more aggressive than women") is really basic.
That vile, inaccurate thing cultures produce, though? That's gender. It arises from sex but is distinct from it. By and large people feel the need to identify not just as a given sex but as a given gender, even though every culture's conception of gender is distinct; the tales of blind men groping an elephant. Where things get really complicated is with intersexed folks. I've recently read a paper which claimed that pre-cross-sex hormonal treatment transsexuals who experience gender dysphoria and are exclusively attracted to members of their birth sex have brains which, while more similar to those of their birth sex, have some regions which are highly similar to those found in the opposite sex. This puts each of them in their own category as far as brain phenotypes go.
So you have folks who, due to a neurological quirk, need to have the body of the sex opposite to their body's birth sex to feel comfortable with themselves. That's obviously an innate trait. On the other hand, since gender is a social construct, they obviously can't innately want to be of the opposite gender. Yet they almost universally do. Even though gender is man-made it is so core to the identity of most people that they simply must bear the one which is closest to theirs in order to feel whole. I think that's a strong argument for gender arising from biology even though whatever specific vision of gender we hold at any given time is probably inaccurate.
There are a few areas around the world with more than two obvious genders. And in general, the degree of dysphoria and/or dysmorphia experienced correlates to how well or poorly society views them.
The Fa'afafine have relatively low dysphoria, and are fairly well accepted.
The Hijra are somewhat less accepted, and have higher rates of dysphoria.
Focusing on 'masculine', as though it were bad, is folly. There is a modifier present. Stereotypically 'masculine'/'manly' things (I dunno, lifting weights and being all tough and eating steak and grunting or something) are not generally innately bad things. If that's what makes you happy, grunt and lift weights and eat all the steak you want!
The negatives generally come from the Toxic modifier present. Belittling people who don't lift weights, or thinking people who don't enjoy steak are 'pussies', or who aren't as outwardly stoic in the face of physical/emotional harm to their own detriment. Or when taken to the extreme; ending up with body dysmorphia because no matter how much they lift they never get massive biceps they've always wanted, or feeling like a lesser man for needing to ask for help, etc.
We see this play out in all manner of scenarios. Protecting one's self and family and loved ones is admirable, having a hot temper and picking fights over machismo or misdirected displays of dominance or whatever is not. Standing up to an asshole picking on someone is great, picking a fight because someone looked at 'your girl' is not.
I know people have said this before, I have read through the entire thread (and the entire thread that lead to this GST), but it seems like every few pages we have someone else join in and say something to the effect of how 'I'm a traditionally masculine man, why are you saying that's bad', and it's missing the point (hence my desire to reiterate these points); there's nothing wrong with a healthy expression of 'masculine/manly' identity. The TOXIC part is the modifier of note. If someone is a rough and ready marine who eats nails and lifts every day or whatever, great! As long as they're happy with who they are and aren't giving other people shit for not being like them, go nuts! Being resilient can be noble, being so stoic that eventually thoughts of suicide or anger issues (or others) manifest is where we have problems (eg; fear of looking weak for seeking help, and the appalling suicide rates among police officers).
It's, again, when negative connotations are present, or people are lashing out or unhappy with themselves or others over perceived differences that should not matter one bit, is where the TOXIC aspects come into play. Pride in one's self and one's own qualities is fine, belittling those who don't meet those same internal standards, or assigning negative qualities/associations to others (Feminine or Not Sufficiently Masculine) are where we have trouble.
At least, that's how I'm seeing it.
I think something a little bit different is going on here.
Let's say a person is concerned about "toxic feminism." At every opportunity, they bring up examples of what they saw as toxic feminism. They bring up lots of examples and anecdotes about feminism being toxic. They also never mention any sort of non-toxic feminism, or give a suggestion that 'toxic' and 'feminism' shouldn't regularly go together. They start a blog to discuss their fears about toxic feminism and the damage its doing to the modern world.
My strong suspicion is that many people supportive of feminism would start to feel attacked by this person, even if they were careful to use the 'toxic' descriptor every single time they mentioned feminism. Their issue most likely won't be that its impossible for feminism to be toxic or even that the specific examples are wrong. Instead, they would feel like the poster was trying to load up feminism with negative affect, such that more and more people would start to naturally associate feminism with the 'toxic' descriptor even when feminism is doing something reasonable. If you hear enough negative anecdotes about toxic feminism, and no positive ones, then eventually every new belief about feminism starts to suffer guilt-by-association. Lots and lots of talking about toxic feminism pushes the needle towards people rejecting feminists and feminism out of hand, because their brain has so many negative associations with the term. This is an explicit goal of a lot of anti-feminism movements, and there are many communities in which this negative association has already happened.
I think that people concerned about the toxic masculinity and patriarchy terms are coming from a similar place. That is, they don't necessarily believe that there is no toxic way to express masculinity, or that toxic masculinity is good. Rather, they're worried about feminists and social justice people loading their gender up with negative affect, so that everyone in the community has lots of negative associations with males and masculinity. A lot of men are understandably upset about this, especially those who have bad enough experiences with SJ to be skeptical of reassurances that it won't happen. In many SJ-heavy communities, it has happened: do a search for "straight white male" on tumblr and see how long it takes you to find something that would be considered hateful in reference to any other race/gender group. A lot of people unsurprisingly find that treatment unpleasant, and don't want their community to be pushed in a similar direction.
Strong repeated associations with toxicity can push a concept over the edge and turn it into a bad word. I think a lot of people want to push back against this for concepts they identify with, or concepts that are close to them. I also think that names have power. If you call your organization to promote international cooperation "Fuck The Swedes", you're going to end up with a very different movement than if you call it "The United Nations." And so you end up with people getting very uncomfortable whenever someone associates their movement/identity with toxicity on the object level, not because they disagree with the specific example, but because they don't want their movement to become negatively associated on the meta-level.
Lots of Native American tribes had more than two genders. The Ojibwe had two-spirit women. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ojibwe
I recall learning about that in grade school and not really understanding. The descriptions of the third gender on the wiki seem to imply it's less about sexuality and more about deeds and roles.
I disagree, Atomika argued that there is a spectrum of brains from extreme male to extreme female. I think it is best explained in that way. Not that there is no male or female brain but you can be anywhere on a spectrum from male to female. If you claim that there is no male or female brain then how can you even have a spectrum that might possibly disagree with your sex? What is your spectrum between? I can recognize that not every male has what would be considered a 100% male brain.
To me it seems like you are trying to argue that the opposite of hot water is cold water but there is no such thing as cold or hot.
If your brain isn't one of those that fits neatly into the shapes we've defined as male or female, it's not all that weird for it to self-assess the self as more accurately encapsulated by a different set of arbitrary criteria (gender) than the one that an external observer thinks fits at first glance.
It's not like what your brain starts with and what it picks up along the way are firmly separated from one another. It's not unusual that it can take absurd data from the outside world and decide it's miserable adhering to one set of criteria and will be much happier adhering to a different set.
edit: It's important to remember it's all arbitrary. In the scheme of the universe, what I personally assess as 'hot' and 'cold' as so similar as to make the terms damn near meaningless. I still don't like to be too hot or too cold.
double edit: How about we trade the vagary of social constructs for literal constructs to help make this make more sense? Think about something like a paraphilia. Balloons certainly aren't included in the basic programming of your brain, but you can become someone who only gets off when you see one pop nonetheless. The right environment meets the right brain structure and things happen.
A person from a society without balloons certainly won't develop that particular issue even if they have the same brain structure. They might end up with a different paraphilia. Like how statue fetishes gave way to blow up doll fetishes over time. A person with a particular 'maleish' or 'femaleish' or 'bothish' or 'neitherish' brain structure may or may not experience psychological problems depending on how the genders as defined in their society mesh with their internal state.
triple edit: Just to be safe, I don't mean anything negative with the comparisons to paraphilias or saying 'problems' or any of that.
There are constraints on the metabolic processes and general biological architecture of the human body.
However, this has all failed to address the challenge that was originally provided.
If gender is separate to sex
Gender is separate to gender roles
Then what is it?
We've already abandoning the link to sex and physical characteristics - not all women have female genitals, not all women have XX chromosomes, etc.
So, gender roles encompass - the traits we assign to the genders, the way society treats and views the genders, the expectation placed of the genders in all parts of life, the clothes they wear, the standards of beauty and attractiveness.
So, gender is neither the physical characteristics, nor the way genders are expressed or the traits we assign to them. So what is it? What properties does it have? It doesn't seem like it has many, and given that there's nowhere for it to fit it seems like it is nothing more than a label. Which makes it impossible to tell via introspection or otherwise whether anyone's experience matches with any gender, whether cis trans or otherwise and makes claims that anyone is really any gender suspect.
Which would be an eliminativist argument (I.e. That there is no such thing as gender) which is a fairly well established one - though some of the feminist arguments in its favour are frankly insane.