Is there REALLY such thing as gender?

Yes, there is such a thing as gender.

I don't have anything to back this up, but I'm pretty sure boys and girls feel different from quite a young age. At a certain age, boys start hanging out with other boys, and girls start hanging out with other girls, because they start feeling like a certain "gender."

I definitely feel like a male. Even if we didn't have the distinction between male and female, (most) guys would still feel different from (most) girls, and the other way around, even though they might not know why.

At least that's what I think.

 

There's a lot more about gender than what's typically feminine or masculine.

A definitive solid answer, among others, would be the way the nerve system and hormonal glands work within the body; one way is squarely male and another one is squarely female (while some gradations from an individual to another, of course).

A good example would be my wife. She's a transwoman and she's grown through her childhood and puberty with the endocrine system that resembles a woman's greatly; having grown breasts, not much body hair, soft skin and all the likes. She is one of those lucky ones who have a natural step ahead for transition!

Another good example would be (I'm a transman) the way my nervous system feels to me. There are definite "connections" that are wrong or just don't happen at all because my brain is male, it doesn't connect as well with my female body. On the other hand there is the phantom member phenomenon going on too; like when somebody looses a limb and still feels through that limb that they lost even though it's not there? Well there's that.

Other than definitively physical differences about one's gender, there are many mental and social differences that are NOT social constructs.
One I really like to point out are family roles, especially the ones that feel right and the ones that don't.
Example; it really kicked me in the butt when I became a dad; I didn't want to be taken for the mom. I'm a dad with the responsibilities and the pride that comes with that, and there's no doubt about this at all.

There's many other examples but I'll stop there as it's getting long!

 

Yes. But it is not innate.

 

In a lot of people's cases, yes it is very much so innate. What about that little girl who's first words were: I'm not a boy! and who is obviously transgender, and followed as such? It's not like she had pressure to be a girl at this age; if anything the world pressured her to be a boy because she's born with a penis.

There ARE differences that ARE innate. Saying otherwise is offending to people like me who have to "deal with it" since birth.

 

Yes there is as far as the physical to which we are born We can also be changed to the opposite gender. That being said The mind does what it wants with gender and we have no control over that unless we make ourselves miserable.
So in the mind gender is fluid and can change or not match the body. IMHO

I don't believe in the girly boyish thing. We are who we are.

 

There is physical gender, which is either male or female (or both) in all known sexually-reproducing organisms.

Then there is psychological gender, which is the gender you identify with. For most people it's the same as their biological gender, but for some, it differs.

 

Exactly. Except that the psychological gender is very closely related to the body too and that's something most cisgendered people don't know.

 

Because what is masculine and what is feminine is subjective.

The mind is the brain, it is just as physical as your arm or leg. If your brain more closely resembles a female, but its contained in a male body, then you are transexual. If you happen to like girly clothes, or your favorite color pink, that means that you happen to like things that in our society are associated with women. That DOESNT mean that you have some type of physical affliction. I'm not arguing that transgender/transexual people dont exist, I'm saying that the nature of their feelings does not stem from some type of mind body switch up. Because the mind is the brain and the brain is just as physical as everything else.

 

Sex is physical, gender is mental. I think there is such a thing as gender, but it is a scale. It is NOT either girl or boy, whereas it is for sex. You are born with either a penis, or a vagina. You create either male or female hormones (excluding anomalies such as birth defects, or people born with both sexual reproductive organs yada yada). But your brain can either follow that, causing cisgendered people, or not follow that, causing trans* people or genderqueered people etc.

I also think gender can change over time. For me, I have gone through various stages of being more or less masculine and feminin, though only in the way I dress. I've always thought the same. I think gender has a large input from society, where there are two shops. One for girls, one for boys. Girl's shops has skirts, guy's shops have jeans and hoodies. But our brains aren't like this. At least mine definitely isn't. I wish society was more accepting and understanding of that.. :/

 

But gender isn't about femininity or masculinity. It's about being a boy or being a girl (or inbetween).
As in, the most feminine boy in the world who still feels like he's a boy, is still a boy, no matter his femininity or his sexual organs. That's gender.
Say, I'm going to be nice and informative today and share this video. Please see it: Human Sexuality is Complicated... - YouTube

 

Yeah, I know a guy at my school who is only person i told about this place as after I came out to him he said maybe he is transgender too. But DANG, how many would be that lucky? I mean his body is petite, face has a nice effeminate look, and he got long curled eye lashes to boot! Not much would need done at all.

Me, I used to enjoy my friends who were guys, although I attempted always to have friends with girls. I felt more at ease and "at home" around boys, while girls acted as if they are as delicate as a flower petal and walked about that way. I didn't consider myself rough and tumble, but every woman was so scared of me hurting their little girls by playing to hard. It made me feel like I had to be careful of my own strength...even in PE class as an adult, if I really get into the boxing part of kickboxing, the girl seemed scared or something. So I had to hold back a lot cuz I was scared if she would fall over or get hurt. That is not much fun.

My own body ended up in my late teens betraying me. If I was to be a "woman" (puke), I should have only grown the female characteristics, as did mom, gramma, my female cousins...even my intersex cousin I believe I only saw femaleness in their faces. But my face had a mixture of traits, almost like I had begun to become a man and stopped. It made me uncomfy, to think male thoughts, and see a boy in the mirror, but suffer periods monthly and tits growing and NOT have the one appendage I had assumed would grow bigger.

I don't know why these things are different about me, just that they are not typical for true females. I inherited some of both genders, and it confused me very much until this April I looked up transgender. At least I think I know a bit more why my mind has that "phantom" part, and why I see myself in my mind looking male, and why trying hard for decades to understand women and fit in did not make me into one of them and can't ever truly fit in.

My inner gender is male! And I am now thrilled God gave me outer looks that are male, not strong female looks that some transguys got! I have more love for my body believe it or not since coming out. I am not a weird female as the women have always called me, I am a typical guy. Duh!

So in the case of opposites we got male and female. But we get intersexed which have a combo of both. Then we get guys like me that were assumed female, but in puberty began to display male and female phenotype traits. And finally we got females who think male, and males that think female.

Gender, do we have 2? Ideally, yes. It makes things so much easier to just have two to choose from, don't it? GOP or Democrat, Left or Right handed, escalator only goes up or only goes down, mayo or miracle whip, black or white....nobody wants the various shades of grey cuz it overwhelms the mind with too many choices. In retail, I learned to never ever show more than 3 choices or they will buy none. Why? Even if there are good things to all of them, it will overwhelm the shopper and confuse them, even the smart ones. It is just our nature to want it simple. And male or female is simple!

I got told by a lesbian I am too complicated, make it simple, be like her a lesbian. Um...I aint never thunk anything like a lesbian. I keep surprising peeps I come out to as a man that I am not a lesbian while untransitioned. Well, I don't think like a woman. And there again is the problem with simple gender.

Solutions I got?
none.
sorry.
I even prefer the binary myself. I hate in-between. I just want out of it and into manhood.

 

I may be pointing out the obvious here, I don't know -
There is such a thing as gender as defined in...I don't know...Dictionaries
Boys (male - male attributes)
Girls (female - female attributes)
So yes. Despite generalisations and characterisations. If you have them girly parts, you're a girl. If you have those boyish parts, you're a boy.

Maybe I don't understand the question ._.

 

read what everybody before you said, maybe then you will see what we are discussing is more than dictionary cis-gender definitions.

 

A Kinsey-Type Scale of Gender

I also believe there are genders or sexes, but it seems to me that it is more complicated than just male and female. I think it is a combination of what you are genetically, what you are anatomically, the make up of your chemistry, the role you play, whether you are transitioning, and other factors, the most important of which may perhaps be gender identity--how you see yourself. For example, one pre-operative MtF transsexual on hormone therapy who may not yet consider herself truly female until she's had the sex reassignment surgery may constitute a different gender than a pre-op MtF transsexual on hormone therapy who has no desire to have the surgery. From our point of view then, the first is a particular gender still in transition: we just don't have a name yet for it, but I think it's a distinct MtF gender. The second is a woman who just happens to have a penis, which I think is a distinct gender different from traditional male and female. Heck, I wonder whether even the traditional two genders may each themselves have a scale within them (or between them) that is composed of these same differing factors, including degree of gender-identifying characteristics (i.e. to what degree you display sex characteristics of the opposite sex, like women who look and act more masculine and vice versa). Therefore I'm suggesting a complex gender scale, like Jim suggests, which each individual person can locate themself on somewhere, much like the Kinsey scale of sexual orientation.

One of the things that is feeding my theory is my own sexual orientation. I myself am a bi-confused male. I fantasize about penises and male-male sex all the time and have had a number of anonymous oral encounters with men, but have only twice felt any passion or chemistry with the man I've been with. In real life, then, so far, I seem to mostly connect sexually and emotionally with women with the traditional female gender. But I've been wondering if perhaps what I'm looking for is that second gender example I mentioned above, a woman with a penis. I haven't yet dated or have had sex with a transgendered person. But because attraction is such a complicated thing, including gender, anatomy, chemistry, appearance, personality, and so on, I've started wondering whether I would be most compatible with a non-op MtF woman.

 

^ It is always possible...
You may find somebody just perfect for you, and they may not fit the perfection of gender binary.

 

Yes, gender exists, and there's more than two of them. It's also possible not to have gender.

 

Can you prove that with empirical evidence? If a man grew up in an all female society he may not be comfortable being transformed into a woman, but that doesnt mean that he's "inherently male" it just means that he prefers being in a male body. Quit acting like there is a science behind it. The fact is that some people relate more to those who are typically born as the opposite sex that they are. f-m/m-f... It doesnt mean that they were born that way or that they are inherently male/female...it just means that they're something they dont want to be and thats fine. We develope personalities at an extremely young age, and some of us may not be as aggressive or we appreciate beauty in the same sex more than the opposite... once agin that doesnt mean that there is a split between the body and mind... it means that we all have things we like and things we dont and sometimes we differ when it comes to core things like sexuality/gender. If society were to kind of "redo" itself, maybe men would end up being attracted to makeup because they like to look pretty, and they would wear skirts because they have good circulation...All im saying is just like you like people to keep an open mind when it comes to accepting trans people, dont think that it doesnt apply to WHY people are the way they are. There are MANY theories out there and not one of them has been proven.

---------- Post added 8th Jan 2013 at 04:59 PM ----------

What if nobody has an innate gender and some people are just attracted to things that are associated with a gender created by society thus from a young age they identify AS that gender? In some native american cultures they have a third gender... a "nothing" such as the one you describe. Normally its people who exhibit androgynous interests such as women who were warriors and men who were "homemakers". They were almost always buried as the opposite sex, so a man who prefered to live as a woman was buried in female garb and same with f-m.

 

But.. what do you mean with relate more to those who are typically born as the opposite sex? Relate to what? One guy can differ so much from another guy. Same with girls. A girl and a guy can be exactly the same in everything except their bodies. So what do you mean some people "relate" to someone of the opposite sex more, when there are so many differences within that sex?

Transgenderism is not about relating to masculinity or femininity, or any other kinds of society-bound gender roles or stereotypes, it's about feeling like you didn't get the right body, regardless of what society thinks people within those bodies should act like.

At least that's how I always understood it?

 

(I'll use M-F in this post)
But why are they uncomfortable in their own body? I was always under the impression that its because they feel feminine/womanly. Obviously I'm an outsider looking in, but when reading about transgendered children I've always noticed that its that the child displayed qualities that werent associated with the sex that they were born as, they developed sex opposite mannerisms, an attraction to the same sex, etc... and then as time progressed they realized that they wanted their body to match their brain. (or at least thats how its portrayed in interviews and docs) Obviously its different for everyone, but arent there transexual/gender people who are perfectly fine with their genitalia? I don't understand how some people can feel a certain gender at all. I understand how you can like cars/barbies and adopt a gender, but I quite frankly don't believe that gender is largely biological. Which isnt to say that transgendered/sexuals are "choosing" to be like that, we dont really have a choice in what we feel and what we like and what we dont, I'm just saying that gender seems more like a societal construct rather than a biological phenomenon. (although who knows, it may have a biological component to it?)