What a clusterfuck. Much of it due to an inability or unwillingness on the part of many people to define exactly what they mean by the terms in question, primarily "sex" and "gender". See:
" 'If you wish to converse with me,' said Voltaire, 'define your terms.' How many a debate would have been deflated into a paragraph if the disputants had dared to define their terms! This is the alpha and omega of logic, the heart and soul of it, that every important term in serious discourse shall be subjected to strictest scrutiny and definition. It is difficult, and ruthlessly tests the mind; but once done it is half of any task. Wil Durant"
By which the most sensible definition for "gender" -- more or less that of Merriam-Webster, the British Medical Journal, the late Justice Scalia, and many other equally credible sources -- is personalities and personality types: billions and billions of them as Carl Sagan might have put it. Along with various body and/or atire modifications. Sort of a Mr. Potato Head.
The problem, or one of the main ones, is the bait-and-switch program by transactivists -- aided and abetted by various useful/useless idiots -- to conflate sex and gender, primarily by using "male"and "female" as genders. "Amusing" case of that -- particularly if one's predilection is for gallows humour -- is in a recent CNN "story" (AKA propaganda from the Ministry of Truth):
"... sought to implement restrictions related to gender-affirming care -- medically necessary, evidence-based care that uses a multidisciplinary approach to help a person transition from the gender they were designated at birth to their affirmed gender, or the one by which they want to be known."
NO one is "assigned" a personality at birth -- maybe midwives put on Rowling's Sorting Hat and divine that someone is to be an introvert or an extrovert? 🙄
What IS assigned at birth is -- by standard biological definitions -- a label denoting the sex that a child will probably acquire at the onset of puberty. Those definitions STIPULATE that to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types, those with neither being, ipso facto, sexLESS; see the Glossary here:
Francis Bacon, probably predating Voltaire, quipped that "shoddy and inept uses of words lays siege to the intellect in wondrous ways". Seems to describe the transgender clusterfuck to a T.
One gender... The human race is our one gender... I'm trying to wrap my head around what that would mean but it doesn't go all the way around... Still, it's a great thought and linguistic experiment... In any case, that one gender is characterized by total variability, AND by two sexes, male and female...
Great piece, food for thought with cackle material. IF you permit to add an alternative (or additional) answer to your Four Genders section, I'd offer:
You're no fan of excess and probably got inspired by all the talk about exotic "third genders around the world before colonization" and how "trans people have always been there", so to you the options are: masculine/gender stereotypical male, feminine/gender stereotypical female, masculine/gender atypical female and feminine/gender atypical male. Anything more than that is unnecessary noise and will make you groan but you agree all of them would benefit from more single stall unisex bathrooms and UBI (universal basic income).
Andrea Long Chu is arguably a one-gender partisan, to wit: "Everyone is female, and everyone hates it."
What a clusterfuck. Much of it due to an inability or unwillingness on the part of many people to define exactly what they mean by the terms in question, primarily "sex" and "gender". See:
" 'If you wish to converse with me,' said Voltaire, 'define your terms.' How many a debate would have been deflated into a paragraph if the disputants had dared to define their terms! This is the alpha and omega of logic, the heart and soul of it, that every important term in serious discourse shall be subjected to strictest scrutiny and definition. It is difficult, and ruthlessly tests the mind; but once done it is half of any task. Wil Durant"
https://quotefancy.com/quote/3001527/Will-Durant-If-you-wish-to-converse-with-me-said-Voltaire-define-your-terms-How-many-a
By which the most sensible definition for "gender" -- more or less that of Merriam-Webster, the British Medical Journal, the late Justice Scalia, and many other equally credible sources -- is personalities and personality types: billions and billions of them as Carl Sagan might have put it. Along with various body and/or atire modifications. Sort of a Mr. Potato Head.
The problem, or one of the main ones, is the bait-and-switch program by transactivists -- aided and abetted by various useful/useless idiots -- to conflate sex and gender, primarily by using "male"and "female" as genders. "Amusing" case of that -- particularly if one's predilection is for gallows humour -- is in a recent CNN "story" (AKA propaganda from the Ministry of Truth):
"... sought to implement restrictions related to gender-affirming care -- medically necessary, evidence-based care that uses a multidisciplinary approach to help a person transition from the gender they were designated at birth to their affirmed gender, or the one by which they want to be known."
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/27/us/gender-affirming-care-restrictions-transgender-patients/index.html
NO one is "assigned" a personality at birth -- maybe midwives put on Rowling's Sorting Hat and divine that someone is to be an introvert or an extrovert? 🙄
What IS assigned at birth is -- by standard biological definitions -- a label denoting the sex that a child will probably acquire at the onset of puberty. Those definitions STIPULATE that to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types, those with neither being, ipso facto, sexLESS; see the Glossary here:
https://academic.oup.com/molehr/article/20/12/1161/1062990
Francis Bacon, probably predating Voltaire, quipped that "shoddy and inept uses of words lays siege to the intellect in wondrous ways". Seems to describe the transgender clusterfuck to a T.
One gender... The human race is our one gender... I'm trying to wrap my head around what that would mean but it doesn't go all the way around... Still, it's a great thought and linguistic experiment... In any case, that one gender is characterized by total variability, AND by two sexes, male and female...
Great piece, food for thought with cackle material. IF you permit to add an alternative (or additional) answer to your Four Genders section, I'd offer:
You're no fan of excess and probably got inspired by all the talk about exotic "third genders around the world before colonization" and how "trans people have always been there", so to you the options are: masculine/gender stereotypical male, feminine/gender stereotypical female, masculine/gender atypical female and feminine/gender atypical male. Anything more than that is unnecessary noise and will make you groan but you agree all of them would benefit from more single stall unisex bathrooms and UBI (universal basic income).