I see it as baby steps, hopefully we'll get there someday.
To me it seems like you're just left with 'subculture' at that point, but I think that's missing something very core to gender, namely sexuality.
Sex is mostly based on a mix of genome and primary sexual characteristics. Gender is based on how one presents themselves in society and in turn gets treated by it, as our societies are very gendered.
They're concepts in two very different domains, why would you assume them to be interdependent? They only tend to be statistically correlated in the same way that gender and sexuality tend to be: most people are heterosexual but the two are independent as being a man doesn't mean one is attracted to women. Same goes for gender, being born with female sex doesn't mean one's gender is female.
Honestly I've some trouble understanding how some people find this to be such a hard concept, it's exactly the same thing as gender/sexuality and this is even without getting into that neither sex nor gender are binary, as shown biologically by intersex people and socially by the very article we're discussing.
> The type of gametes produced by an organism defines its sex. Commonly in plants and animals, male organisms produce smaller gametes (spermatozoa, sperm) while female organisms produce larger gametes (ova, often called egg cells).
Convention is; if you produce small gametes, you're male, if you produce big gametes, you're female. Sexual reproduction happens pretty much exclusively in two sexes. Biologically speaking, individuals that don't produce gametes, don't have a sex.
To quote from [1]:
> There are almost invariably only two gamete types, all analyses showing that intermediate gamete sizes are eliminated due to selection.
Gender can be considered a cultural construct based upon the interpretation of sexually defined roles and strategies. But sex itself is binary. So "Intersex people" - your words, not mine - do exist but as an defective expression of the reproductive function, see above. I'm not aware of any medical condition in humans that results in functional hermaphrodity as seen in some plant species, that is; individuals that produce functional small and large gametes. Although there is a condition called 'True Hermaphrodity' whereas an individual develops both ovarian and testicular tissue, this does not result in functional gametes.
> Sex is mostly based on a mix of genome
There are many sex-determination mechanisms, not all of them involve different genomes. Some are based on temperature, for example. Again; see [0].
> Honestly I've some trouble understanding how some people find this to be such a hard concept,
I do wonder that myself and I guess it's because for some people this is a placeholder for some kind of ideological discussion, separate from the actual discussion about sex. The impreciseness of colloquial language probably also plays a part. But to summarize;
Gender: cultural construct based on interpretation of reproductive roles and strategies, pretty much unbounded in its expression and shape and form
Sex: "binary" reproductive trait that comes in two expressions; male (small gametes) and female (large gametes), although there are some species where both male and female is expressed in single individuals. Sex doesn't necessarily depend on the chromosomes but in many species can also be decided by external factors.
Hope that helps!
So you agree that it's not a binary trait: masculine, feminine and none is ternary. If people can come in those three flavours then we're beyond a binary.
That said I'm fine with that definition but it does imply that we're excluding people who can't have children due to reproductive system defects as not having a sex despite having a gender, which further puts the two concepts apart from each other.
Thank you for the thorough answer!
Ha, here's the question: Is the lack of a trait one of its expressions? Is 'none' a reproductive strategy or is it the absence of one? I guess ones view on the "binary" nature of sex very much depends on that.
> [..] we're excluding people who can't have children due to reproductive system defects as not having a sex despite having a gender, which further puts the two concepts apart from each other.
I think that is a very interesting question and debate. I broadly agree that this would be the implication, although I can see why many people would be uncomfortable with that. I think it would be good for the discussion of topics like the one in the original post if people had a clearer understanding that sex and gender - albeit related - are distinct concepts.
I found learning about fa’afafine was helpful to show where gender identities from my (Anglo) background did not adequately describe a material situation that is uncontroversial in its own cuktire.
> If you are cis, then you know what gender identity feels like.
I think that, near universally, we do not. I don't feel my gender; there is no frame of reference against which I could possibly correlate my subjective and entirely internal mental experience against some normative model of what it "feels" like to either be male or female, much less your tautological definition of "man" or "woman".
If you live in a society, you are surrounded by archetypes and roles and norms of gender - or of the performance of gender - which might be a helpful way to think about this post. Things like what clothing and grooming is appropriate are easy examples - and depending on where you are in the world, those standards may be radically different - in some cultures men are expected to adorn themselves to be attractive to partners, in some it’s women. But it’s also what emotions it’s appropriate to display, what kind of authority is afforded to a person, what physical strength and which ailments are reasonable, what kinds of body hair is attractive. We have words that describe a favourable performance of those gender roles (womanly, manly) and unfavourable words (effeminate, mannish). They are enforced, or at least patrolled, in all kinds of ways. Easy example is the kind of differential permissiveness around alcoholism. Why is that? If we have a social or a moral standard, why is it gendered?
You have without a doubt experienced this in your life - and if you’re lucky it’s been internal and not at the hands of the local bully. If you’ve ever checked or modified your demeanour or your outfit or your tone because you are aware that it is too girly or too butch or too macho or too slutty, then that is the sensation of being trained back towards the model.
Of course we do. It’s how we establish shared meaning about what it means to feel any of those things.
The rest of your post describes gender roles; as in, social standards and stereotypes of behaviors attached to sex.
We don’t use the words “woman” and “man” to denote roles or a social subculture, and we’ve never segregated bathrooms, or established segregated sports programs, on the basis of gender roles.
How I feel internally, even if you could correlate it to some objective definition of “feeling female” — which you cannot — does not change that I am a man; an adult human male.
It's not that complicated a concept. Even kids can understand it quite well and there's plenty of information available when you decide that you want to actually learn instead of trying to debate your way into confirming your own opinions.
But seeing as you had to trot out the generic, condescending 'go educate yourself', I'll just assume you simply don't know.
> It's not that complicated a concept. Even kids can understand it quite well
Children will also readily believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny if their parents tell them that they exist. That's not an argument.
Your assertions are prima facie undecidable, and it's not merely that you're unwilling to defend them — you cannot defend them.