Is Gender a "real" thing?

My thoughts and final answer: Yes.

 

I definitely think that gender is a real thing. Transgender people are proof that gender transcends stereotypes invented by people. Gender is more than what society deems male or female. There are hormones and brain differences, besides physical aspects involved in someone's gender identity. Trans people aren't merely trying to escape gender roles. It's deeper than that. Transgender people have dysphoria, whether it is wanting the other sex's body or wanting to be seen that way.

This is also why there are masculine women and feminine men. Despite having aspects of what can be considered the opposite sex's by society, they still identify as their own gender.

 

Yes

 

Gender is routed in the structure of the brain. Our experience of gender is a combination of this brain function, our physical bodies, our social interactions with the world, our acceptance or rejection of socially constructed masculinity and femininity, and our personality. Clarity of concept is muddled by the complexity of each of these players.

 

Yes

 

Yes

 

First of all, to answer your question about gender stereptypes; gender stereotypes are undoubtedly socially constructed. They might originate in innate differences between men and women but they are still socially constructed schemata. However, there is a reason why every five seconds someone says that being trans has nothing to do with gender expression, role or stereotypes. Gender is innate and is a huge part of every person's life. It is most likely the reason why you agonized in the past about what gender fit you best and why you identified as a tomboy or tried to understand if you are more male than female. I assume that most of your life, gender was a huge part of your life, you don't start exploring the idea of gender if you aren't aware that gender exists. It is perfectly ok to reject gender stereotypes and roles, I would say that at your age it is expected and really really common. You are becoming a unique adult individual and part of that process revolves around breaking apart everything you learned about gender in school and figuring out for yourself who you really are.

One thing to keep in mind is that validating your identity by attempting to invalidate the identity of others is a terrible idea. Just because you feel at the moment that gender is meaningless to you, it doesn't mean that gender doesn't really exist. You are just adding to your confusion and increasing your insecurity by effectively invalidating your own identity, as being agender depends on the existence of gender. It's akin to giving up on trying to figure who you are in context of gender which is a terrible idea as socially constructed gender identity serves as a way to stabilize your identity through adoption of specific schemata that you associate with whatever gender you identify with, this is true, even if you identify as agender...

Here's how I understand it: gender expression and roles are socially constructed and mainly there to reinforce your gender identity. They help you feel secure and confident in who you are as a person by giving you clear patterns of behavior that you can act upon to show that you are female or male to others and to yourself. They serve a purpose but are mainly relevant during school age, especially after puberty when you are constructing your framework identity and later on in life when you are ready to settle down as it helps you stabilize your life and create a synergistic relationship with your partner using these basic ideas as frameworks.

All of this is gender on a more superficial level, but gender is undoubtedly also innate and is a central part of human existence. It guides are actions and behaviors, helps us navigate the world and construct a social conscious. Every single word ever said to you has taken your gender into consideration and as such your life is constantly being influenced by it. That's why gender dysphoria is such a horrible thing to deal with. Gender is everywhere and at the core of a person's sense of self and identity. When your body doesn't align with your innate gender it can make everything seem fake and empty as every word said to you misgenders you. You feel a sense of profound discomfort that truly hurts. As a result, I do know that I felt genderless for most of my life as a result of not being able to cope with the pain of gender dysphoria and escaping into the emptiness and becoming disconnected from reality.

I do hope that identifying as agender has given you some peace of mind. Ask yourself what it really means to you and how labeling yourself as agender serves to help you understand your life better and break down social barriers that might have stopped you from being yourself and who you want to become in the future. I hope you find the answers that you are searching for...

(*hug*)

Eveline

 

You could get rid of stereotypes and gender roles and there would still be transgender people. So I believe gender is a real thing, roles and stereotypes are the fake things.

As well no one experiences gender the exact same way so it makes sense that there is more than two types of gender.

 

yes it is a thing. Otherwise I would be a happy, even if a bit on the soft side, male - I have enough "male" hobbies to fit in. And yet I feel completely detached from my masculinity, why? Because gender is a thing. It sits in my brain and governs how I perceive the world (emotions, relationships, friendships, everything).

Basically what Eveline wrote.

 

Yes. Men and women have different brain structures, they've been proven to think differently multiple times. Think about David Reimer--his circumcision was botched, so the doctor told his parents to raise him as a girl. He requested to be treated like a guy when he was a teenager despite not knowing he was born male, and eventually killed himself because of it. Gender is intrinsic and psychologically proven.

 

I believe that sex hormones affect people in predictable and different ways. All our evidence and experimentation points to that. That's a bit like my saying I believe that if I run current through a resistor I'll see a detectable voltage across it. I don't think this part is controversial.

I also believe that being exposed to sex hormones, alone, for a long time, especially after puberty, causes some differences on average. Again, no controversy.

So here's controversy. I think that something else that affects people even more, is exposure to other people for long periods of time. The "even more" part is the controversial part. I don't think there is any easy way to get rid of that controversy, because I think the two factors here affect each other. Both nature affecting nurture and nurture affecting nature are guesses I can provide a lot of evidence for, but they are guesses. They aren't well understood enough for there to be zero controversy.

But I think, if I'm right, that we can't just discount stuff being "made up" - pink is for girls - as being not real.

Here, a picture's worth a thousand words

Barefoot Running and Walking | Natural Foot Shape



Let's imagine now that the shod and unshod shoe belong to the same person. What can we glean from this?

Well first of all some differences are definitely "made up". The shape of the shoe that has been in a foot for instance, conforms perfectly to the shape of a shoe.

But there are some differences that I would argue are not "made up". The way weight is distributed, for instance. If this person tried to put a shoe on their foot that adapted to not wearing shoes, they might not be able to walk, because their foot would be restricted in a weird way. The foot's ability to adapt in this way to begin with wasn't given to it by the shoe, it was already there.

So gender's tough. Because in some ways, society does to us what we do to our feet when we wear shoes, or don't wear shoes. But we also have some differences in biology, that would be there if we were all barefoot. And to make things even more complicated, just like shoes, we attempt to build off or enhance nature when we form gender roles. I'm not saying we get it right. We clearly don't a lot of the time, it's why I spend a good deal of time promoting women in STEAM jobs. But, it does make it difficult to separate nature from nurture, since our nuture is trying to adapt to our nature, and our nature is trying to adapt to our nurture just the same way our feet adapt to wearing shoes, and both are forcing shoes on us. Our hormones, and our culture, are trying to shape us. And it's very often the case that either shoe can't fit.

I know for a fact, the shoe nature was trying to put on me, did not fit. My sex hormones caused a lot of problems, changing those fixed a lot of problems, and that is only possible if there is definitely a physical component to all this. Society said, if I wanted to change the left shoe nature put on me, I had to wear its matching right shoe on my right foot. I have a "full time requirement" that I am fulfilling, and in exchange, I got rid of the hormones that were as much a problem for me as shoes would be for someone that had never worn them.

So how much of me is my right shoe and how much is my left? Again, even though I'm right here, I can't really answer that. I remember the other night in a car, I was passing the grocery store I shopped at as a kid, and let out a gasp, since it had closed down. This annoyed my friend who was driving me, and he thought there was something seriously wrong. It was a funny moment, because I remember being on the opposite side of it, and how annoyed I was. Now I got to see firsthand how embarrassing it was on the passenger's side. It was a very natural reaction; it happened before I had really thought about it. And it was different from before both estrogen and my new social role. But, because I changed drugs and social role in lockstep with each other, I can't really isolate either in a very scientific way. Either could be a factor.

What I can say, is that my reaction, like the difference in foot shape, was to answer your question very real. Whether or not it was shaped by my environment more, or my changed biology more, it was there, and it wasn't before.

 

Just try looking up "Transgender people in history." it's not just a new thing; it's been around since practically the beginning of time.
But, I agree, society does play a role in gender. And so does DNA. But if there were no society... Well this is deep.

"Men" and "women" would still be different, and science apparently proves it. They would think differently, I guess. But without society, I'd like to believe that they would act more or less the same, without the stereotypes and gender roles.

Idk, don't quote me. Just a random guess.

 

It is so because biological gender is as non binary as the social gender perception. There is a multitude of factors that contribute to being on the binary ends of the spectrum; you can have such a mix of traits that places you somewhere closer to the middle. Roughly speaking, and making it really crudely simplified, you could create a Kinsey scale equivalent for gender and it would work relatively well to describe it. Gender is as real as sexual orientation, and is as much non binary. And it is a thing.

People who say it isn't think in too broad terms. They see artificiality of gender roles and claim it as proof of gender being a construct. What they don't see is that this innate gender is a quite subtle thing (and yet it changes so much in our lives, like, forces some of us to transition to be happy).

 

Yes, gender is real, but it's a social construct. As consequence gender is all in our minds; many real things are all in the mind, so that doesn't mean much. It is as real as sexual orientation is.


Just don't confuse sex and gender with each other. I see that a lot, even on this site. They have always been very closely related, but remember that they are not the same thing. Look below and notice the differences.

What is the difference between sex and gender?:

'The sex of a person is determined by biology. It is biological differences; chromosomes, hormonal profiles, internal and external sex organs.'

'Gender is mental. The characteristics that a society or culture delineates as masculine or feminine.'


There is a lot of changing evidence, so it is hard for anyone to come to a conclusion on gender.

Science finally supports that we are all born as blank slates and gender is merely a construct:

"...a study on the human brain showed that we were wrong: turns out brain structure is not gender-specific. The study focused on the hippocampus. Everyone has two of them, one in the left hemisphere of the brain and the other in the right. The hippocampus is the region in the brain associated with short and long term memory, emotion and spatial navigation.

The group got together healthy individuals of all ages and conducted MRI studies on each of them only to find that there were no differences between male or female hippocampal size.

...we were wrong in our assumptions about the “male” and “female” brain. You know what this means? We could have been wrong when we constructed gender too."

This has yet to make much of an impact in society in general. That being said, at least the information is out there. Humans are a sexually monomorphic species! "Girls are more emotional than boys" is wrong. Gender truly is all in the mind.


Years ago, I was researching gender psychology and came across the book As Nature Made Him by John Colapinto, a true story. Synopsis:

"In 1967, after a twin baby boy suffered a botched circumcision, his family agreed to a radical treatment that would alter his gender. The case would become one of the most famous in modern medicine — and a total failure. As Nature Made Him tells the extraordinary story of David Reimer, who, when finally informed of his medical history, made the decision to live as a male..."

...Yeah, basic summary: the highly revered doctor convinced the parents to raise that kid that lost his penis from medical stupidity as a girl. So, they lied to their twins and told them that "Brenda" was born female and yet she became a rebellious tomboy. She found out about her medical history as a teen, and decided to live as a male, "David". In the yearly appointments, the doctor emotionally and sexually abused the twins. Also, he lied about his results to prove is own theories. Sadly, David Reimer committed suicide years after discovering his true sex. All in all, once discovered this experiment did not help society's concepts of gender.


Having a gender forced on you is difficult, as many know. It is a difficult, stressful situation. Being forced to fit a role and display characteristics that don't exist is not good for the mind. The ones who seem to take the brunt of these difficulties are the transgendered (those with identities that cross over, move between, or otherwise challenge the socially constructed border between the genders. While this can include medical or social transition, it may not) and transsexuals (people who does not identify with the sex they were assigned at birth and wishes, whether successful or not, to realign their gender and their sex through use of medical intervention). (Transgender vs Transsexual - Differences Explained (with video) | Diffen)

I was born the female sex, grew up a tomboy who did not like being a "girly girl", and displayed many conflicting masculine and feminine characteristics. I gave up on figuring out my gender, because it was simply too complicated.

With all of the world being conditioned to care about gender, it became real to the world. I can't control what you think, but I have come to the conclusion that gender is real to you if it matters to you.

 

One thing that I would like to add, and as the skeptic I shall be the victor, since I am the only one not making any specific claim, is that whether or not gender is something biological or something mental or both, really is only at a very speculative level at this moment. There is no overwhelming consensus on "this is it" out there. So it's all just guesswork, no matter how well-developed it is.

 

Keep in mind that people who are transgender have a much easier time seeing that innate part of themselves because of the fact that their gender doesn't align with their body. When I talked to my psychologist about it she was also confused about the concept of having an innate gender. It is nearly impossoble to recognize it in yourself if you are cisgender and most non binaries have a similar problem. That's one of the reasons why so many people don't believe that it is possible go be innately a person of a different gender and ask for proof in the form of gender expression behavior or talk about how you can't be a women if you don't have a womb, etc..

As I said, most of my life I felt as if I had no connection or understanding of gender, effectively making me agender. I needed to go through a very intense period of introspection to realize what was wrong and after that everything seemed so obvious to me and the pieces fell into place to unveil the pattern behind innate gender and how it relates to me.

I don't know how it feels to be agender and what is going on inside of you and you might very well be agender. However, using the experiences of people who are trans to discern who you are is probably a mistake. Gender dysphoria makes gender such a huge part of our lives and we are forced to come to terms with who we wre or suffer tor the rest if our lives. We can't just choose to remain in the closet without suffering for it dearly. It's an awful position to be in and I've seen and felt so much pain in my friends here who are trans and I so wish that I could do more to help them cope.

 

If you want to post medical studies, read what actually has been studied. Here? Brain parts sizes. I've read about this study (in different sources) and it's not something that proves anything besides basic size of brain parts. And, if you read closely, you will discover they say the differences are there, but are very, very subtle (they use word negligible afair).

Toddlers display differences.
Mental ilnesses affect people differently according to sex.
There are still valid studies showing differences not in superficial structure, but how the brain is internally wired.

People raised as their sex come out as transgender. If we were blank slates, then there would be none such people! I was conditioned to male gender since forever and none of that changed me.

We use word gender here because sex is connected to genitals and body shape.

There are differences between male and female ends of the spectrum and all that this mri study shows is that these differences are not as structural as people thought, that they are not related so much to size of anything. This is all that this study shows.


Saying we are blank slate would mean all happy males and females, and being transgender would be as much of a choice as changing religion you were raised with to something else. We all know both sexual orientation and gender identity is not a choice.

But using the transgender argument might be redundant. The evidence is out there. Just because the differences are subtle, doesn't mean they do not exist. Like, connections between hemispheres. Grey matter density. And so on.
And that botched circumcision case is a stark proof of gender being innate. If that poor guy was a blank slate, he would have been happy as a girl since this was what he was raised as.

The only thing that is really hard to determine is 100% separation of social gender and gender of your mind. Or sex of your mind, I really don't care about semantics.