Like I said, humans have five fingers. We have two eyes and two ears. Sometimes, something goes wrong. Some people are born with no eyes. Some have seven fingers on one hand and five on the other. I just had a baby, recently, so believe me when I tell you I know about all the things that can go wrong. Any part of the body can turn out imperfectly. There are also genetic disorders and chromosomal disorders. A disabled friend of mine died last month in his forties because of an unfortunate birth defect.
I don't see what any of that has to do with people who aren't intersex and don't have any genetic / chromosomal disorders, which is the vast majority of trans people in the United States.
When people talk about Hijra and other cultural examples, I don't know why they don't refer to our own culture as evidence of a so-called third gender. The terms hermaphrodite and intersex have existed in our culture for a long time. This isn't a third gender. It is a group term for sexual mutations / anomalies. If you look at the Prader scale (if you've never looked into intersex genitalia, it's quite fascinating) intersex is obviously a spectrum between one gender and another. It isn't a man trapped in the body of a woman. It's a man with a vaginal opening along the shaft of his penis or a man with a displaced urethra or a woman with a large penis-like clitoris... or a woman with a testicle, etc...
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OK first off, congrats about your little one, and sorry about your friend.
Personally, I can't say I'm the most enlightened person going around regarding transgender issues. I absolutely think that transgender people have a right to respect, I think they should be treated as their identified gender, and I will do my best to accommodate people who have reasonable requests, which I consider using preferred pronouns to be.
That said though, I can't help how I ultimately feel in my head. And in my head, fundamentally, my mind only mentally acknowledges 2 genders. I appreciate that some people don't feel like either or feel like both or feel like something else all together, and I think they deserve respect. But my mind doesn't really "think" outside of 2 genders. Ultimately, I don't really think of there being a significant difference between the words sex and gender either. I know what people say the difference is, I understand that, and in their company I try to use them that way both out of respect and to make communication clear and unambiguous.
But, to other people, who like me don't really have a stake or interest in the LGBT, or specifically transgender culture, I generally use sex and gender interchangeably provided that's what they do. And that's what I do thinking to myself.
Respect for others that don't is the reason I made the thread title "how should sex OR gender be defined". That's not how is use those words normally, but I didn't want to provoke an argument about it, and I sense that bluelight overall is fairly left wing and would generally prefer that I respect their ways of using the words, so I did. But since I gather that like me you use the words sex and gender interchangeably (let me know if I'm wrong), for the duration of this post, I'll use them fairly interchangeably amongst the two of us.
OK so all that said and out of the way. You said you didn't see how any of this has to do with people who don't have chromosomal disorders. Earlier in the thread, you suggested that peoples sex/gender should be defined by their chromosomes. My point about that, is that human gender, like so much of human biology, is very complicated. And it's far more hormonal than it is genetic.
Genetic disorders can result in female with XY chromosomes. Using chromosomes to identify sex is simply too murky and unclear. A humans sex organs are defined by the levels of hormones while developing in the womb more so than anything else.
So, how should we define peoples gender? Well I can tell you how I do. Putting aside how ill address people as a matter of respect and civility, talking purely in terms of how my mind mentally classifies people. I use what I call the "walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it's a duck" standard.
If someone looks like a woman, sounds like a woman, says they're a woman. They're a woman. I don't care about their genitals. Way I see it, my mind can classify people's gender all on its own with virtually no thought. And if they look and sound like a woman, or man, that's how my brain will mentally classify them. And I think that's fine for the most part. It's certainly more reliable than chromosomes.
Do I consider a transgender woman a woman? So long as they look and sound like one, of course. How can I not? Odds are I'm never even gonna see their genitals. And if they don't look like one? Well, I'm really sorry, but I can't help how my mind fundamentally perceives people. I'll respect your decision, honor your preferred pronouns, fight for your right to be legally recognized as your preferred gender. But I can't help how my mind mentally classifies you instinctively.
But ultimately my point was that chromosomes are a bad way to categorize people. Because they aren't the primary influence in human development regarding how people's brains will mentally categorize them. People mentally categorize people by appearance. And appearance is largely hormonally influenced. Yes, genetics are what trigger the hormonal influences, but as we've both acknowledged, genes can be broken. Provided they exposed to male hormones, or not exposed, during development. That's what will define if the baby is male or not. Not chromosomes. Not directly.
That's my original point.
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
:D
