[msla]

OK, define "male".

Is it chromosomal, such that XY makes you male? Wrong. People with total androgen insensitivity are XY but look and act and feel female, because the androgens they produce never took effect. Their bodies and minds feminized, so they're female in every respect except their karyotype.

There's a ton of other conditions which make the definition of sex complex. Read this essay, which lists a lot more of them: http://linuxmafia.com/kb/Essays/marriage.html

Your simple definition is only simple because you punted the complex part, and no amount of screaming about how words don't have meanings anymore is going to change the level of complexity surrounding this subject.

You are too ignorant to know what you don't know, so you think you're a goddamned expert.

[doubleshame]

Thanks for your reply. I rarely get a chance to learn from someone who feels so passionately about these issues.

These range of conditions are interesting, we are truly a varied species.

Let us do a thought experiment.

We have 10 humans and 10 monkeys. Now, let’s say 5 humans want to be called monkeys. Now, if I say the word “monkey”, what comes to mind? If the 10 monkey-monkeys AND the 5 human-monkeys does, then that means I no longer have a word to describe what I originally thought was a monkey! The word itself has been destroyed by making it stretch beyond the category which it originally described. Words by their very nature are to form categories, to differentiate is their power, and why we find them useful.

Now, we can both agree that the range of conditions you listed are rather rare, and this is the crux of the matter. If we use the word man to stretch beyond the more stereotypical definition, what does it even mean to be a man anymore? What does it mean to be masculine? That is, what do the WORDS mean?

The word man is, as words work, defined by the average man. The fact that it allows us to speak of a large category of people is what gives it its utility. That is why you can say things like “their bodies and minds [are] feminized”, you must have the words to express such a thought! If you proceeded down the self-identification path, how would you make that sentence? That is why we have words like “Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome”, which describes another idea.

First of all, let me say that I am in no way opposed to men dressing in women’s clothes, or men being effeminate, or women having sex with women, or any other non-conservative human expressions; they are what lend colour to humanity, and we would be much poorer without it, and without letting humans be fully expressed.

Now, what about the rarer cases, what do we do here?

But how should such a person describe oneself?

Just because a man cannot have the confidence to be effeminate and own that identity, does not mean that he needs to redefine the word woman to accommodate himself. I think the problem here is that people want to fit into categories that are traditionally recognised by society. Instead people should just appreciate that everybody is unique, and that they should be comfortable owning their own unique identities. They should not have to derive their own identities from the words that other people call them, worse off by forcing other people to use specific words, in a meaning that they want other people to use them in, because then everything is reduced to just noise.

What do you think?

[msla]

> We have 10 humans and 10 monkeys. Now, let’s say 5 humans want to be called monkeys.

Bad analogy. Really bad analogy. The boundaries between species can be fluid, but they're nowhere near as fluid as the definitions of 'male' versus 'female' in either sex or gender.

My whole point is that even if you restrict everything to verifiable biological observation, with no reference to psychology, there are still myriad corner cases which cannot be classified in a simple dichotomy. Therefore, insisting the division is simple is obtuse.

The division is not simple, there's no way to make it simple, and bringing in this analogy with monkeys versus humans as your proxies for the sexes is misunderstanding the subject. There is no overlap between humanity and any species of "monkey" as the term is commonly understood, although I have known a biologist who would insist that "monkey" was synonymous with "ape" and therefore all humans are monkeys. That's not the common understanding of the term "monkey", certainly.

There is overlap between "male" and "female" regardless of what you define them to be, assuming you define them in any useful fashion. There is no boundary anywhere in this subject which is impermeable. That's why gender studies is an entire field of study, like astrophysics or English literature.

In short, you could write entire textbooks on one aspect of being "male" or "female" and still be incomplete even in terms of that aspect. So you'll forgive me if I'm not prepared to define either term in this forum, or bothered by how people describe themselves.

Linguistic precision is nice where you can get it, and we can't get it here. Not if we're being entirely honest.

[doubleshame]

Here's some relevant reading

On the topic of monkeys: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mvxgwa/from-dragons-to-fo...

A transexual speaking of genders as a rainbow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drSXRW-4j5o

[doubleshame]

Hmm.... I understand that you reference the overlap, and distinction between biology and psycology.

Let's say you have a new born child. Since there is so much overlap between men and women, how can we EVER attribute gender to the child?

Whatever gender the child chooses, won't it still have a huge overlap with all the other genders?

If that's so, on what basis can the child choose?