Male teen and Monsoon, and apparently a discussion about non binary gender and intersex.

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Re: Male teen and Monsoon, and apparently a discussion about non binary gender and intersex.

Post by skirted84 »

Also working in retail I can see how snap judgements are often made whatever the logic and rowdy young people seem to jangle the nerves more than others. Thats always been the case even before mask wearing and social distancing were essential requirements of a responsible shopper. In fact I felt it myself at a younger age I was an inconvenience in shops especially skirt shopping where they dont expect young men shopping, now I feel more courtesy all round.

As for the turn this thread has taken, most young people expressing "non binary" identity are unambiguously male or female in the biological sense. Even intersex people are classed as male or female although with variations, the figure who don't is quoted as 1 in 55000.
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Re: Male teen and Monsoon, and apparently a discussion about non binary gender and intersex.

Post by moonshadow »

You know the thing that gets me, is if a woman comes into a man's space (fitting room, restroom, etc) we're just supposed to roll with it. It's like nobody cares.

Well I do. I don't like double standards. Men are far from perfect, but women are just as bad. If we're going to segregate the sexes, then do it all the way.
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Re: Male teen and Monsoon, and apparently a discussion about non binary gender and intersex.

Post by Pdxfashionpioneer »

Carl wrote,
a gender-normative heterosexual male who is perfectly happy with his lot in life save for what's on offer in the men's section for style choices.

And that last phrase boots you out of the gender-normative/cis-gender category. Sorry Carl.

Carl also wrote,
From a purely mechanical biological view, Stu has it correct as far as it's understood by the geneticists.

Rive_Gauche is a biologist and therefore I would think stays up to date in genetics as part of his day job. Are you suggesting you know more about the subject than he does? I ask because he was pretty clear that Stu was not up-to-date and therefore not accurate in what he was saying.
Behaviors are mostly learnt things

And you know this for sure how? The last I checked, this is still --as it has been for ages -- an open question.

Moonshadow wrote,
if a woman comes into a man's space (fitting room, restroom, etc) we're just supposed to roll with it. It's like nobody cares.

Well I do. I don't like double standards.

Clearly, I don't know how these things are done down South, but up here in the Pacific Northwest, when a company decides they're going to convert one or more restrooms to the multi-unit, non-gendered variety, guess which flavor they choose? ... The Women's, because it's a cheaper, easier conversion; all they have to do is change the sign and circulate a memo telling everyone where to find the non-gendered restroom and the women to deal with it. Which, by the way, they do.

When I started going to my temporary job at Intel in dresses, and occasionally a skirt, I used the non-gendered restroom almost exclusively. And let me tell you, the women seemed to be more comfortable with my being there than I was! Seriously. Obviously, I couldn't see anyone else in an immodest position and they couldn't see me, but I sure could hear them as they relieved themselves and I sure did feel like I was intruding. On the other hand, I sure wasn't going to adjust my hose and refresh my makeup in the Men's room so, it was the typical thing, you take the lesser of 2 evils.

And finally, back to Fred's initial question,
OK! I have been reading this mess for long enough now it is time to ask the real question!!
What has this conversation accomplished other than make people mad?

You are trying to turn a sows ear to a gold purse.

At the risk of stating the obvious, if this thread has such an ill effect on your blood pressure, DON'T READ IT. I promise you, I will not be the least bit offended because I WON'T KNOW much less CARE. But hopefully, there are people who visit this site who have wondered about these questions and are learning something.
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Re: Male teen and Monsoon, and apparently a discussion about non binary gender and intersex.

Post by rivegauche »

What has this conversation accomplished? Well, I didn't start the non-binary argument. The internet is awash with pseudoscience, written by people who sound like they know what they are talking about when they really don't. People without science training should think twice before shouting down those who have been educated in science. Pseudoscience on the internet is very, very dangerous, especially when it is (ab)used to impose restrictions on society. It HAS to be called out. I didn't actually say I was a biologist - I just said I was trained in biology - and I don't claim to keep abreast of advances in genetics but most people with science training keep up to date across a wide range of disciplines, and part of the training in science is finding information and being able to separate the BS from the real stuff - THAT is where the training comes in most useful. Science is a way of thinking and using information. One has to question the motives of people who market BS as science to promote their prejudices, and I have some sympathy for the non-scientists who are bombarded with this stuff every day of life - no wonder some people struggle with it and repeat the bits they like. Scientists actually disagree a lot, but it never, ever degenerates into the promotion of misinformation - any scientist who tried this would be viewed with suspicion for years afterwards, and could well lose their job along with their credibility.
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Re: Male teen and Monsoon, and apparently a discussion about non binary gender and intersex.

Post by pelmut »

crfriend wrote: Tue Apr 19, 2022 10:36 pm From a purely mechanical biological view, Stu has it correct as far as it's understood by the geneticists.
I would have agreed with you if you had said "as far as it's understood by many of the public", but it certainly isn't understood that way by geneticists or biologists in general.

(Imagine you were trying to explain how computers dealt with negative hexadecimal numbers to someone who clung to the belief that all computers actually counted in tens and insisted you should frame your replies to fit in with their beliefs.  That's how I feel as a biologist being told how I should understand genetics by using concepts that ignore everything we have learned about the subject since the 1930s.)
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Re: Male teen and Monsoon, and apparently a discussion about non binary gender and intersex.

Post by moonshadow »

Pdxfashionpioneer wrote: Wed Apr 20, 2022 5:11 am Clearly, I don't know how these things are done down South, but up here in the Pacific Northwest, when a company decides they're going to convert one or more restrooms to the multi-unit, non-gendered variety, guess which flavor they choose? ... The Women's, because it's a cheaper, easier conversion; all they have to do is change the sign and circulate a memo telling everyone where to find the non-gendered restroom and the women to deal with it. Which, by the way, they do.
While I can't speak for all restrooms in my region as I've not seen every single restroom there is, I can say that I've never seen a multi-unit conversion. [0] There are three types of public restrooms, men's, women's, and family (the family restrooms are usually in national box stores, e.g. Lowes, Walmart, etc)

Eliminating a women's restroom WILL cause a public outrage here.

I my area I would advise all transgender people to use the men's room... for their own safety. Cis-women spaces are STRICTLY reserved for cis-gendered women ONLY. If you are a trans-woman and enter a womans sacred space, you damned well better PASS. Your life may depend on it.

There is no way I hell I'd walk into a women's room around here.

If you were to come to Tennessee, and enter into a women's room, I will hear about it on the local news, and your actions will result in an entire slew of anti-transwomen legislation, courtesy of the Tennessee GOP... and that's if you're lucky... I may read that you're now in the hospital fighting for your life.

I can appreciate your optimism, but my region is like the middle east for trans-women. They would be well advised to tread lightly and fly under the radar. Optimism will get your a$$ shot here.

Don't get me wrong, the south is a good place to live, just follow these basic rules:

Don't criticize God and

Don't mess with the [cis-gendered] women

Abide by those two rules and you'll get along fine

[0] One exception would be these single occupancy restrooms I've seen in gas stations since covid, where one restroom (usually the mens) is for the store employees, and the other is for customers... but as they are one holers it really doest make much difference.
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Re: Male teen and Monsoon, and apparently a discussion about non binary gender and intersex.

Post by crfriend »

Pdxfashionpioneer wrote: Wed Apr 20, 2022 5:11 amCarl wrote,
a gender-normative heterosexual male who is perfectly happy with his lot in life save for what's on offer in the men's section for style choices.

And that last phrase boots you out of the gender-normative/cis-gender category. Sorry Carl.
Well, that was needlessly offensive. It's a style choice, not a signifier. Learn the difference. It's not difficult.
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Re: Male teen and Monsoon, and apparently a discussion about non binary gender and intersex.

Post by Coder »

moonshadow wrote: Wed Apr 20, 2022 10:56 am
Pdxfashionpioneer wrote: Wed Apr 20, 2022 5:11 am Clearly, I don't know how these things are done down South, but up here in the Pacific Northwest, when a company decides they're going to convert one or more restrooms to the multi-unit, non-gendered variety, guess which flavor they choose? ... The Women's, because it's a cheaper, easier conversion; all they have to do is change the sign and circulate a memo telling everyone where to find the non-gendered restroom and the women to deal with it. Which, by the way, they do.
While I can't speak for all restrooms in my region as I've not seen every single restroom there is, I can say that I've never seen a multi-unit conversion. [0] There are three types of public restrooms, men's, women's, and family (the family restrooms are usually in national box stores, e.g. Lowes, Walmart, etc)

Eliminating a women's restroom WILL cause a public outrage here.
Same for my more liberal neck of the woods.

Oh, they'll add a third restroom - a single room with a lock - typically marked as multiuse including non binary. I've seen these in two new buildings that have been built in the past five years and several retrofitted in older buildings - but I have never seen a conversion take place. I toured a new building recently - the men's / women's were marked with the typical pants / skirt characters we have grown so used to and annoyed by - the "non binary" room had a weird rotund shape that was a bit, well, off-putting, but also wearing pants (there's probably a reason for that). I wasn't too keen on taking a photo of the sign with coworkers right next to me, if I'm over there again I will.
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Re: Male teen and Monsoon, and apparently a discussion about non binary gender and intersex.

Post by Bodycon »

I like this thread.

Enough passion and thought to just stay on the right side of niggle without offense.

I agree with a binary approach to sex, with "others" being genetic mistakes or whatever the less abrupt terminology would be. Yes, they exist, however are the exceptions and in statistical terms are discarded from the count. Like two headed lambs.....

That may be against current science, however science is always changing and unfortunately is no longer pure, but influenced by societal trends. I have no doubt that gender nomenclatures will either expand exponentially as each and every variation gets its own code (similar to where LGBT (etc. etc. ad infinitum) is heading (interestingly if it was to be fully inclusive it should involve straights, then, maybe, we could realise that we are all just people, albeit mostly flawed) or maybe someone will see sense and hit then reset button.

Male teen and Monsoon?
It appears, like two headed lambs, to be a rare occurrence....todays headline - tomorrows chip wrapper.
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Re: Male teen and Monsoon, and apparently a discussion about non binary gender and intersex.

Post by rode_kater »

Bodycon wrote: Wed Apr 20, 2022 8:44 pm That may be against current science, however science is always changing and unfortunately is no longer pure, but influenced by societal trends.
I disagree with this. Science is a process which tries to understand the real world by doing repeatable experiments. The results of those experiments are not influenced by societal trends (unless the experiment is about society). Interpretation is always tricky, but that's why you need to keep making newer and better experiments.

The confusion is that what scientists mean when talking about sex and what the average person means when they talk about sex are essentially unrelated. The former is the result of experimental verification, the latter is created as an intersubjective reality by society as a whole and may be informed by science but in general society will come up with some definition, which doesn't even need to be that same everywhere.

As with the whole LGBT spectrum, maybe it has a scientific basis, maybe it doesn't. But that doesn't matter! As long as people believe the spectrum exists it will, and you cannot prove that there is no scientific basis as you cannot prove a negative. As it is now it appears a large number of people consider it to be a helpful way of framing the discussion so I expect it to have a long life.

In general all these discussions are really about human rights, and humans rights as a whole have no basis in science at all. They're all made up by humans and nature will not lift a single finger to enforce them for us. In fact, the universe seems to go out of its way to make sure there are exceptions to every rule.

The main attraction of the LGBT spectrum (for me anyway) is that it tries to deal with people as they are rather than how others think they should be. As a centrist progressive libertarian I consider this a good thing, but I know much of the world disagrees with me there.
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Re: Male teen and Monsoon, and apparently a discussion about non binary gender and intersex.

Post by Pdxfashionpioneer »

Post by crfriend » Wed Apr 20, 2022 3:05 am

Pdxfashionpioneer wrote: ↑Tue Apr 19, 2022 9:11 pm
Carl wrote,
a gender-normative heterosexual male who is perfectly happy with his lot in life save for what's on offer in the men's section for style choices.

And that last phrase boots you out of the gender-normative/cis-gender category. Sorry Carl.
Well, that was needlessly offensive. It's a style choice, not a signifier. Learn the difference. It's not difficult.
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At the risk of being repetitive, as I tried to communicate to Dust, even though you are one of the moderators you do not get to impose your idiosyncratic definitions of words on the rest of us. The part of thegender norm for men in our society is that they exclusively wear bifurcated clothes on the lower halves of their bodies, unless they have something that resembles an excuse to wear a kilt.

Therefore, males, such as you and I who check a lot, if not all, of the other boxes are not and cannot be gender-normative or cis-gender. And, to be completely clear, not checking one box does not in any way, shape or form mean or even imply that a given male fails to check any other box. Period.

All of my above sentences are statements of facts. I fail to see anything that you or a reasonable person could be offended by.

Except maybe the inference that you may not be a reasonable person. :wink: :wink:
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Re: Male teen and Monsoon, and apparently a discussion about non binary gender and intersex.

Post by Ray »

Passive-aggressive with that last sentence, David? Or is it your sense of humour? ;-)
Last edited by Ray on Thu Apr 21, 2022 8:08 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Male teen and Monsoon, and apparently a discussion about non binary gender and intersex.

Post by pelmut »

Bodycon wrote: Wed Apr 20, 2022 8:44 pm I agree with a binary approach to sex, with "others" being genetic mistakes or whatever the less abrupt terminology would be. Yes, they exist, however are the exceptions and in statistical terms are discarded from the count. Like two headed lambs.....
Suppose two-headed lambs had an unsuspected evolutionary advantage and, just by chance two of them were born in neighbouring flocks and bred offspring.  They would stand a better chance of surviving than the other lambs, so in due course there would be more of them.  Eventually two-headed lambs would be quite common as just another variety of lamb.  One day a disease appears that spreads rapidly through sheep -- but one-headed sheep suffer the worst and their numbers are reduced to the point where they become the rarer variety, so people accept that sheep are two-headed animals for some unknown historical reason.  

That is how evolution works.  Random changes occur all the time, some turn out to be advantageous, some don't.  There is no perfect 'normal' from which all others are 'defects'.  All you can say is that the current variation is the best-suited to the current circumstances until another one comes along that is even better suited -- or the circumstances change.

To take up a point that was raised earlier: asexual animals evolve too, otherwise sexual animals would never have evolved from them.  Parthenogenesis is a much slower method of evolution, it doesn't have the hectic swirling mix-and-match effect that occurs in sexual reproduction but it gets there eventually.

Once you understand the process of evolution, you begin to see it in other things.  Commercial companies vie for business and very often the ones with the worst ethics appear to be the most successful -- until they over-reach themselves and go bust, leaving the field open to the plodders who were waiting in the wings.  Cookery is a series of 'experiments' (at least, it is the way I do it) and gradually little variations or happy accidents get scribbled in the margins of recipies and passed on to others.  Internet scams are always evolving, last year a Nigerian millionaire, this year an Amazon delivery.  Politicians scrambling on the latest bandwaggon... the list goes on.

Evolution-spotting is a fascinating hobby that isn't just confined to animals and plants.
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Re: Male teen and Monsoon, and apparently a discussion about non binary gender and intersex.

Post by Pdxfashionpioneer »

Ray wrote: Thu Apr 21, 2022 5:59 am Passive-aggressive with that last sentence, David? Or is it your sense of humour? ;-)

Apparently, you missed the 2 winking emojis.

Of course, I was joking!

Tho, sometimes I wonder ... and I'm sure Carl reciprocates the sentiment.
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Re: Male teen and Monsoon, and apparently a discussion about non binary gender and intersex.

Post by moonshadow »

Dave,

I thought the primary test of whether one is transgender or not ultimately begins with how we identify ourselves.

How is it a skirt makes a man transgender but a pair of trousers doesn't male a woman transgender?

If skirts for men become mainstream as trousers for women have, would we cease to be transgender then?

Look, I understand what you're saying. In the current time skirts are considered feminine. But it wasn't always so, though I will admit they will likely be so for a long time into the future.

But a skirt is just a piece of fabric, it, by itself doesn't make one transgender. I don't have a hard time facing the fact that I'm probably a little transgender, not so far along the spectrum that I am calling myself a woman, but I do have a strong feminine way about me. So if someone calls me transgender it doesn't really bother me.

But calling Carl transgender does bother him, and for all we know, he's not as feminine as I tend to be, so why not just leave it alone? He says he's not trans and his gender is masculine. He of all people should know what rolls around between his own ears.

Whether one is a transgender or not is a personal matter of self reflection and identification. We don't get to decide the gender of others anymore than a bigot gets to insist that a transgender woman is just a "man in a dress".
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