Reply With QuoteMmmmm. Maybe not the extremists, but you're only making yourself look worse. There are religious people who don't, hate gays.
Yeah religious assholes will totally change their views on things.
Mmmmm. Maybe not the extremists, but you're only making yourself look worse. There are religious people who don't, hate gays.
Not that I condone violence, but in fairness the odds of a person so divorced from reality that they believe no only that homosexual people are sick and need healing but also that you can send psychic messages to an invisible sky overlord from bronze age mythology as a way to cure disease are pretty slim.
And I'd argue psychology is a bit more like a protoscience at this point. There's a lot of it that is very sound and works - even if it's poorly applied by most practitioners - and there's a lot of it that's complete bunk. But my point stands, for the most part. And there are other non-psychological diseases you can substitute for autism which work just as well. Point is that as science marches on and we are better able to recognize and provide care for sick people, we are going to notice more and more cases of these sicknesses - not because these sicknesses are genuinely becoming more endemic (although some may be) but simply because we as a civilization have gotten better at recognizing them.
As for increasing trans openness, I imagine it may have to do with the fact the Western world is kind of going apeshit and basically the sane liberal elements are going all out while the insane conservative elements do the same.
And Lucy - you *are* a lady already. Gender is about your identity, not other people's assessment thereof. If you say you are a lady, then okay, you're a lady as far as I'm concerned.
Well, a murder robot lady from the future, but still a lady.
OTOH I'm pretty sure to be a man you must be as swift as a coursing river, with all the force of a great typhoon, have all the strength of a raging fire and be as mysterious as the dark side of the moon.
Um, I'm not experienced in this field/area of life, but isn't the issue more about society pushing gender roles than self-definition of gender? I mean, I think you should be able to act in any way you want, but scientifically if you have male-defining organs shouldn't you be defined a male? It seems like the problem is more that society has pushed men and women into specific roles despite the fact that some men wish to act like "women" (in quotes because it refers to how we describe women socially rather than physically) and some women wish to act like "men."And Lucy - you *are* a lady already. Gender is about your identity, not other people's assessment thereof. If you say you are a lady, then okay, you're a lady as far as I'm concerned.
This is why I say gender doesn't exist! You have an assigned sex, yes, but no gender.
Gender clearly exists. It may be a social construct, sure, but it clearly exists in the hearts and minds of people. The fact that pretty much every single person on Earth has some form of gender identity, the fact that every single culture to my knowledge has had a concept of gender, and the fact that people are sometimes born with feelings of gender-sex dissonance all suggest very strongly that there is something innate in humans that makes us adopt gender identities.
Gender roles are more fluid and socially based, obviously but the idea of "this is a man, this is a woman." seems to be much more primal. And it makes sense, on some level. We are a sexually reproducing species. It is obviously vital that we be able to identify potential mates and potential rivals.
That is sex, not gender. I can't speak for others, but for myself I generally use male/female when I am talking about sex and other gendered terms when talking about gender - unless the context makes it clear that I am talking about sex and not gender.Originally Posted by Fenn
Also sex itself is also somewhat fluid. The overwhelming majority of humans can be lumped in with one end or the other of the spectrum, but you always have abnormalities (I use the term in the scientific and statistical sense - not the moral sense, obviously) like intersex people and the odd-off XXY chromosomed person and crap like that.
Basically when you consider all the things that can go wrong (again I use the term wrong here from the standpoint of biology and not morality) during fetal development and childbirth, it's kind of shocking that most humans are still born with a binary gender and more or less sound mind and healthy body.
Last edited by Kodos; 09-12-2011 at 08:07 PM.
In psychology, they refer to your expressed sex as "gender" and your biological sex as "sex".
Maybe, I've been under the influence of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance lately ... I don't really see anything wrong with the lable of man and woman, as long as they are both allowed to do the same things/must do the same things (as biologically possible).
Why do we need an expressed sex? Hmmmm?
Yes, as long as we have women born in mens' bodies and vice versa.
But if we didn't have expressed sex, we wouldn't have that problem.
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