Gender is also a social construct that's currently changing due to a cultural shift. If people consider themselves something other than strictly male/female, I'll respect that. It doesn't bother me at all, and I can definitely understand where they're coming from. It's just difficult to remember all the different ways to refer to different types of people but I'll try my best to oblige. Just, to the really fiery people out there, please don't crucify or judge me if I mess up :x
I'm personally fine with the male/female construct (the old fashioned he/she thing which I admit doesn't really account for the variation of different types of people who exist in our world but is often applicable and is less complicated), and I just feel in the field of health and medicine it's important to preserve that binary (maybe add an "Other" option if you were, say, born with both sexual organs/etc, but it's strictly for cases where biologically you don't fall into either the male or female category) because different health concerns can be relevant depending on your organs, and the gender you were assigned at birth, etc.
Edit: I do feel having 90 different gender constructs on a website is kind of excessive though. There needs to be enough that people feel they're generally accounted for, but not so many that the general public won't even be able to really remember what each of the 90 ones specifically means.
The point of having these gender constructs is so that we all, upon hearing the label someone assigned to themselves, immediately get a better understanding of who the person is as an individual. And if there are too many constructs for the general public to memorize all 90 and be able to recall immediately and without error, then that's a problem. Maybe a solution would be larger categories with further subcategories in case people want to get more specific (eg. Continent -> Country -> State/Province/County/etc)?
The constructs shouldn't have to identify the person to a T, anyways. There's a reason we spend time with each other to get to know each other. We shouldn't just immediately know everything about a person upon first glance. There is always more to everyone than just their labels.
Last edited by Foxglove; 07-04-2016 at 10:02 PM.
Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.
Just Google "gender social construct" It's a view that is definitely popularly embraced by many people and I think it's a good idea to distinguish between biological sex and the social construct of gender.
"Sex" (biological marker) is not socially constructed.
But, as for gender... here is a quote off "othersociologist.com/sociology-of-gender/": "Gender, like all social identities, is socially constructed. Social constructionism is one of the key theories sociologists use to put gender into historical and cultural ..." and Wikipedia says similarly as well, as do the sociology professors at UC Berkeley who I took classes with, and so on...
*Edit: I know there are many out there who say that even biological sex IS a social construct, which ok I can see that, since I feel like there is room for more categories to better acknowledge the state of a person's body based on whether they're trans, what have you... but just for the sake of simplicity of explaining :x (We still do need to have certain discrete categories that make it easier for medical personnel to address the health concerns and needs of your body.)
** Edit #2: I'm definitely not an expert in this area and I still have so much more to learn about this topic and I may be wrong about things as well, but I'm very open minded to it all
Last edited by Foxglove; 07-04-2016 at 10:41 PM.
Ah, fair enough, hairy muff. I was under the impression gender meant sex, but it looks like it has been hijacked;
1.
the state of being male or female (typically used with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones).
"traditional concepts of gender"
I would be interested to see the definition of gender from a 50. Year old dictionary however.
Some definitions of gender are the sex of a person , but the point I was trying to make is that under the definition of gender being sex, gender is not a social construct . We were on the same page but reading it differently.
Last edited by jongeh; 07-04-2016 at 10:39 PM.
That's a really good point, that the definition may actually be different in a 50 year old dictionary, and you're probably right, it is likely different! But the fact that it's changed in the dictionary over the course of 50 years helps demonstrate that gender is a social construct; it changed over time, as dictated by the demands of increasing social awareness and our ever-shifting/evolving culture
Because this young generation gets bored with their lives on the Internet and regroup in the cesspool named Tumblr. They like to break social norms and think that's how life is meant to be. Hey, I'm all for imaginary worlds but when you try and convince people in the real world that you identify as a banana that is something that will get you in the loony bin faster than you can say "men in white coats".
I'd like to see them have a real relationship one day and start a family, have a stable job, etc...you know, things normal people do. Or maybe they'll mate with a plan...yeah I don't want to even think about it.