Like I always say, gender isn’t a spectrum, it’s a graph. And in the top right corner of that graph are JoJo villains, who somehow manage to be the muscliest, most masculine of manly men and the flounciest, most feminine of twinks at the same time, which, let’s face it, is pretty based. 💪👄
On the other hand, it’s also dawned on me that gender can’t be (entirely) a social construct, because - just hear me out on this - that would make having a given gender identity a choice instead of the way you were born, which reads to me as concerningly transphobic and not a belief that I, even (especially?) as a cis person, would want to harbor. Gender-stereotyped assumptions about what people “must” enjoy or be good at, THOSE are social constructs.
Anyway, just a lot to think about. Science marches on, I suppose.
The categories that encompass "man" or "woman" or whatever are socially constructed. The outlines of those categories especially are so far from being absolutes of nature or physical constants.
But people still have an innate sense of themselves and their own identity. So even though the rules are made up and the points don't matter, people can still know which box they go in based on that sense.
For some people, they're just comfortable in the box everyone right they'd go in and never think about it. Stone people don't care which box they're in and so never bother to think about it. There's all our cis folks. Stone people don't really care which box they're in, but they do still think about it and decide they go outside any of them. Some people think they go in one box sometimes and either box at other times. There's the nonbinary folks. And then there's people who can tell they fit in a box, but everyone seemed to think they're actually in the other one until they mistake was pointed out.
The boxes themselves are totally made up, but they still exist. And since they exist, people can still tell which ones they go to. The fact that the boxes are fake doesn't make them not "real", it just makes enforcing them and telling people you know what big they should be on better than they do stupid.
You are correct in some instances. The construct of gender is for a lot of us just used as a tool. Some of the time it's to alert people to how we wish to be treated... Which is the passable but non-ideal win. It's not the fault of people's brains encoding us to a binary standard that is keyed to read our characteristics as vital information. At some level we are animals and our brains treat info about sex as important. I have friends I know are trying their damnedest to respect my mental health by using language and means of cultural inclusion which don't hurt but a lot of them slip because their brain isn't naturally processing me into the correct category. They are looking out for me and trying ... but the switch obviously hasn't flipped.
When the switch does flip and you are properly read people legitimately treat you differently. It feels so bloody natural and fast like you are used to dealing with lag and all of a sudden you are on a fast newly formatted machine not bogged down by bloatware. Moreover a lot of things stop feeling artificial and like someone trying to calculate how they are supposed treat you. Getting that switch to flip is aided by social constructs - gender expression which the brain learns to read as just more markers of sex. It's the extra power to get us over that hurdle.
It's imperfect though. To use gender constraints as a tool can get you what you need but sometimes at the cost of what you want. The number of transfemmes out there envying the cis girl wearing the low effort androgynous shlumpy t-shirt and jeans and still effortlessly getting correctly gendered when they go out to do stupid bullshit errands... Is like the trans Cinderella wish.... Most of the trans femmes I know are one " Oh fairy godsmother I wish I could go to the 7-11 without eyeliner and not have the cashier call me "sir"." away from selling their souls to the fae.
On the flip side Try being a pre-T flamboyantly gay transmasc with not uber straight masculine vibes... You can perform like a puppet on a string to a rather stupid and arbitrary social convention of rigid gender performance or you can have people hammer on your feel like lukewarm invisible crap button all day making every social interaction you have feel like an exercise of utter pain as your dopamine rapidly flees your body and leaves you an empty husk.
Most of the time you kind of have to pick one. We are slaves to the construct cage of gender more than most. What is underneath it all is something we do not wholly control. What I experience daily makes no logical sense from the idea of gender always being a choice. I can learn how I work but not change it... Furthermore if it were something I could change I don't think I would. It would be far greater violation of selfhood to change something that has colored every relationship with myself and every human being I have ever known just so I could be comfortable in a body I don't like.
While I still identify as a man, with the same generals genetalia, I think I more identify as a Vulkan. Limiting my experience based on whether I have a penis or I don't have a penis is illogical. All persons regardless of their physical or mental gender identity should be treated as equal. While there's some biological/physical differences between the sexes, through training, hard work and preparation, either can perform any role except in regards to procreation. So if the matter has no bearing on creating progeny, I don't see what difference it makes.
Furthermore, if you choose to engage in activities where procreation is not the intent, I further see no point in the differentiation. It only serves two main purposes: biological reproduction and providing a sense of comfort to oneself. While there is no fault in wanting to be comforted by identifying as a man/woman/or other gender you wish to identify as, it is purely for that purpose. Others, whether they agree with your decisions or not, should respect your decision; if for no other reason than to allow you to be comfortable. That is logical.
For me, it would be illogical to be angered or otherwise discontented by being misgendered, as such things are of no importance to me. On the same note, I should have enough respect for my fellow persons to adhere to whatever they wish to use as their pronouns, and how they have chosen to identify themselves. I am always trying to ensure I respect the people I interact with, and use whatever language they prefer when referring to them. You are a person deserving of respect, to do less would be unacceptable.
Further, I can not comprehend why anyone would care whether another individual prefers a specific gender identity relative to their genetalia. It seems like an irrational issue that only exists in the mind of those that would complain about it. Those people should take some time in mediation, perhaps with the assistance of a professional therapist, to get to the root of their prejudice. They will have a more satisfying and fulfilling existence if they stop spending so much time concerned about matters which do not involve them, and have no bearing on their life.
not for nothing but if this is too much text for you to read then you ought to practice skimming and reading faster. not everything needs to be 60 seconds 140 characters.
ive never heard of humanity being defined as using tools. there was homo habilis sure but i thought modern humans, sapiens, were defined by our ability to know. before i get too involved in this discussion, i would wanna check the premise a bit more closely
1 & 3: yes.
2: I'm wondering if when they talked about a panic in science, they meant a panic in not-science, like maybe pop science news or religion?
Right now there are a number of pop science news articles and channels saying physicists are panicking over Webb's confirmation of Hubble's observations of Cepheid variable stars and the expansion of the universe. But I haven't heard any actual physicists panicking, unless panicking means finding it really interesting and wanting to know more and do more observations and research.
Or maybe they meant there was a panic reaction to science news among religious politicians and public figures who were given a huge platform? They are always looking for ways to think of humans as distinctly more special than other animals. And they're always looking for ways to deny rights to anyone who isn't cis or straight.
It would be much better if it wasn't broken up into a bunch of tweets, like this is the exact opposite of twitter's use case. Just post it as one cohesive block of text with proper formatting and not in a ridiculously long screenshot.
There's been numerous attempts to separate humans from other animals, various skills or behaviours said to demonstrate how we're different and better and one by one each of those have been found in other species. Therefore I propose that the thing that actually separates humans from animals is that need to differentiate ourselves. No other species does that!
Have they found an "animal" capable of complex maths and philosophy yet? I submit the difference isn't a whole category like tool usage, but the complexity of it.
The very first part about Goodall and tool use in animals is incorrect. Darwin wrote about primates making and using tools, and presumably many other naturalists have for other creatures. He also wrote about musicality and other "human" features in animals as examples of how small evolutionary changes build up over time. Goodall did a lot of interesting research and observation and made it accessible to an easily distracted public, there's no need to fudge her accomplishments to make a point.
I wonder if skimming large amounts of text in college contributes to these long nerd essays. We're so used to skimming that it doesn't seem as weird to us. Or maybe we just have a lot to say 🤷♀️
This instance isn't saying all science is bad, only that a particular scientific belief was incorrect, harmful, and based heavily on cultural bias. It's always science that ultimately destroys that type of "science." Science is fundamentally a process of tearing down old beliefs and replacing them with better ones.
Good scientists won't hesitate to confirm that science can cause great harm. That doesn't mean science isn't the best method for finding truth about material reality, but like everything good, it is powerful and dangerous.
I actually had to go and reread the post because I didn't get a scare quote vibe from it and had to double check what part you were referencing. My interpretation of that was more critiquing/mocking views that treat science as a monolith, especially Established Science(TM). Of course, there are areas of science that are considered to be "settled matters" (or at least, more settled than most), but it's more productive to think of science as an ongoing process rather than an established body of knowledge. Like, I think the useful part is the way we consider what we consider to be established knowledge and learn from that. This is especially true in fields where new technology can place established knowledge in a new light.
I think that Twitter OP was more poking at people who use science in their appeal to authority arguments. Often what these people call science, I would call Scientism. Now that I reread it though, I can see the possible scare quote vibes
I read it, and it was a good read, pretty wholesome.
But.
For the love of god, next time, please give a less intimidating title, maybe format too. Because I do feel for the tl;dr comments.
Out of any part of the whole story, you chose for the title the most intractable. A name mostly noone apparently I, and at least some more people, know nothing about.
If you had titled it anything about tools, gender, power structures affecting perceived reality, what makes us human, or anything such, I would have had to fight my instincts way less to begin reading, and I think the same would have gone for many others.
It was really blurry on my end too, but after waiting a couple of minutes and opening it again it was clear. I've had that happen occasionally with large images. I'm using Sync for what it's worth
On Sync I find opening images from the comments is helpful for cases where it becomes over compressed due to size. For some reason that makes it open crystal clear when it appears blurry in the feed.
