On Gender

Clippings from news sources involving fashion freedom and other gender equality issues.
Freefrom
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Re: On Gender

Post by Freefrom »

This is remarkably good thought provoking stuff on a subject I've pondered in isolation for quite some time, forgive me for enthusiastically joining the conversation.
Can I go back in time further Uncle Al? At the end of the 19th century, in this corner of North West Europe, life for the masses would have been a daily grind to provide food and shelter, indulgences such as cloths were few and far between, save for 'Sunday best'. Children were clothed identically in tunics or dresses to optimize the opportunity of 'hand me downs'.
After the staggering loss of (male) life during WWI there was an unprecedented inequality in gender, for the first time women who wanted a mate had to compete hard with each other to get one. This is the point at which (I believe) western women fell prey to the fashion industry and a generation learned they had to look pretty in order to stand out from the crowd, that same generation went on to teach their daughters to do the same. Skirts and dresses were the base uniform, style, colour and other embellishments are add on. Being fewer in number men had the greater choice of mate and could afford to be selective which only served to throw fuel on the female competition fire.
I'm hardly a voyeur but have carefully watched women interact together in mixed social situations. They appear to invest the greater proportion of time and effort in competing with each other for looks, style and deportment than they do reaffirming old or creating new friendships. Hate to say it but maybe that's where the word bitchiness comes from?
To return to topic.
I am of the opinion that clothing has less to do with gender and more to do with attracting and keeping a mate with the exception of work or leisure pursuits when practicality is the over riding consideration. As Darryl has suggested that statement probably has to carry the added burden of Genotype, Phenotype and the confusing ebb and flow messages our Endocrine systems send out.
I very much like the 'alphabet soup' analogy previously mentioned far better than 'spectrum', after it takes all sorts to make a world. :)
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Jim
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Re: On Gender

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moonshadow wrote: What does all this mean in plain English? Are they in favor of gender freedom or is it the same old same old from the church? It sounds like the latter....
It means they are taking the writings of scholarly gender theory seriously enough to create a scholarly response. Yes, their response is a man is a man and a woman is a woman.

I don't let my clothes that society may judge as females' make me question that I am male, masculine, or a man.
Grok
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Re: On Gender

Post by Grok »

The adoption of twin-tubes by females supposedly blurs the distinctions. However, the difference in skeletal structure very obviously shows through the clothes.

T-shirts are another example where the garments are similar, but the anatomical difference shows through the clothes.
Last edited by Grok on Wed Jun 12, 2019 6:46 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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moonshadow
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Re: On Gender

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Jim wrote:
moonshadow wrote: What does all this mean in plain English? Are they in favor of gender freedom or is it the same old same old from the church? It sounds like the latter....
It means they are taking the writings of scholarly gender theory seriously enough to create a scholarly response. Yes, their response is a man is a man and a woman is a woman.

I don't let my clothes that society may judge as females' make me question that I am male, masculine, or a man.
Well... can't argue with that. As for what "gender" is... I don't know. What is the gender of my 4 spayed cats? I dunno. One is luvin' one is mean, one is lazy the other is active. All four born female... all four spayed. I have one neutered cat and he mostly just does his own thing, he seems to have a fascination with refrigerator magnets.

I read a mean comment by an evangelical who stated that transgender people are playing "grown up make believe".... the irony was striking. Will science ever prove the nature of human gender? Maybe.. maybe not, but as for figuring out what a makes a man masculine or a woman feminine, who knows? Where is our point of reference? There are countless religions the world over that claim to have the answer to the "God question" yet science can not validate their claims either....

So what if "trans" is a "made up concept"? Humans "make up" stuff all of the time to try to answer life's little mysteries.

I mean this with all due respect, and I'm not trying to attack the church or any religion, but comparing apples to apples... religion and transgenderism have a lot in common at the core. I'm not a Christian, but I still respect people's choice to be Christian, I'm not transgender either, but I still respect their views too, and as long as the two don't get in each other's way I'm fine to stay out of the debate on either side. I must apologize in advance but I can't help but roll my eyes when a religious institution claims to have all the answers pertaining to the human condition.

Nothing we say or do or believe will make any difference outside the orbit of our planet.

Let people find their way in peace... that's all I'm saying.
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Fred in Skirts
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Re: On Gender

Post by Fred in Skirts »

moonshadow wrote:Let people find their way in peace... that's all I'm saying.
But in todays world it seems that you have to find their "Idea" to have peace. I for one believe that we will have to have a global change of heart before people will be able to find their way in any real peace.
And that is not going to happen except in a SCI-FI world.
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crfriend
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Re: On Gender

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Fred in Skirts wrote:
moonshadow wrote:Let people find their way in peace... that's all I'm saying.
But in todays world it seems that you have to find their "Idea" to have peace.
This is more nuanced than I suspect most people think. In Fred's notion above I would move the emphasis from "idea" to "their" because we all have slightly different visions of the same reality. Very few things are black/white or cut-and-dry. With the exception of physical laws, everything else is at least partially subject to interpretation. We need to factor that into account. This is why some random object may provoke mere curiosity in one observer, greatly amuse a second, enrage a third, and have no perceptible result on a fourth -- and also why we need to be at least somewhat careful.
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Daryl
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Re: On Gender

Post by Daryl »

Ralph wrote:
dillon wrote:But there remains more we do not understand about the gender "spectrum" (if I may use that idea) than we do understand.
I'd go so far as to say it's not even a spectrum, because that implies a zero-sum game where various traits make you more masculine/less feminine or vice-versa.

Certainly, there are traits which are historically considered more masculine or more feminine. But suppose you assign a score to each trait (physically aggressive = -5, nurturing = +5, more analytical = -3, more intuitive = +3, etc.) If I have a mix of traits -- some of them very masculine (-5), some very feminine (+5), some slightly masculine (-2 or -1), etc. so the sum of those values adds up to around zero... does that accurately describe me as gender-neutral or androgynous? I'm not *on* a spectrum; I just have some traits that are considered masculine and some that are considered feminine.

Does that distinction make sense, or am I nitpicking over trivial semantics?
Makes sense to me.

I have a bias toward red apples. One of them pointed out to me the other day that more properly it is non-binary, because it has both red and green parts of its skin. I ate it anyway.

The entire "gender" thing is trivial semantics as far as I am concerned: tautologies stacked upon vacuous truths stacked upon fevered imaginations stacked upon politically expedient reifications...uh, I better stop before I really get going...

What's important is accepting people as they are, full stop. Tom girls, Nancy boys, and all the rest of you unique contributors to "we", just make sure you vote, pay your taxes, and don't send me any spam.
Daryl...
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denimini
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Re: On Gender

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Daryl wrote: What's important is accepting people as they are, full stop.
Very much the point I was hoping to make.
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Dust
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Re: On Gender

Post by Dust »

Daryl wrote: What's important is accepting people as they are, full stop. Tom girls, Nancy boys, and all the rest of you unique contributors to "we", just make sure you vote, pay your taxes, and don't send me any spam.
As far as I can tell, we don't even have a good term for boys with stereotypically feminine traits or tendencies. "Tom boys", i.e. masculine behaving girls, are fully accepted and celebrated. The reverse isn't even named, unless you count insults and name calling as naming.

I can't help but wonder if some guys are getting pushed into the whole LGBT thing because at least there they get a recognized label for themselves and some small amount of support...
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Re: terminology

Post by Grok »

To further confuse things, there was that fellow who came up with that term "casual crossdresser". He used that term for the title of his web site, but eventually changed it to "Fashion Freestyler".
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Re: On Gender

Post by Freedomforall »

Society tends to feel the need to label things. This point is illustrated across the spectrum from the medical profession to teachers. You name it and labels are found everywhere. I wonder why we can't just be people. Our identity should not be found in gender or other descriptive words. It is extremely limiting and degrading to define ourselves by labels. I never think of myself as male or female. I just think of myself as a person. My gender never enters my mind.
john62
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Re: On Gender

Post by john62 »

We need to label things to determine what is good what is bad, who is friendly who is the enemy.

John
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Re: On Gender

Post by Freedomforall »

john62 wrote:We need to label things to determine what is good what is bad, who is friendly who is the enemy.

John
John that is an interesting perspective. I always thought in terms of absolutes when I was younger. The older I get the more I tend to see life in shades of gray. I am not sure that labels exists to determine good or bad. Perhaps something can be neither good nor bad. Not everyone will be a friend or an enemy.
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moonshadow
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Re: On Gender

Post by moonshadow »

It seems nobody is 100% good or 100% evil.

Face it.... computers are binary.... people are not.
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Re: On Gender

Post by Ralph »

All this talk of the need to label makes me think of the concept of "granfalloons" from Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's In The Cradle.

He goes into quite a bit of detail on the subject of how humans have this desperate need to belong, so we invent pointless and irrelevant bonds with other humans. I'm hopelessly oversimplifying here. It's been over 40 years since I last read it, but you get the idea. You're a boy? Hey, I'm a boy too. Wow, look how much we have in common!
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