Twitter posts on Gender and Sex

[wolven7]

"strixus: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2008/jul/30/olympicgames2008.gender - read this.

"strixus: Now, read this. http://notes.strixus.net/2008/04/23.php now, WRAP YOUR HEADS AROUND IT.

"strixus: gender is not sex. sex is not gender. and for fucks sake, none of [it] has jack all to do with who you like to spend your weekend with."

Now go put that everywhere.

Comments

[mendori.livejournal.com]

This is sort of a personal issue for me, so I get rather irate at how stupid people can be about it. The other problem is that english is a bastard ass language that lacks enough proper pronouns and nouns for me to correctly explain how all this works.

No thing in human variation is binary. All things in human variation are gradient.

You learn this as one of the first and most frustrating points of forensic identification. There are norms for genders. But they aren't fixed rules. You can't just check one bone, or one joint, and be sure. And sometimes, the bones tell you entirely different things.

And those are only bones.

Soft tissue physiology is frighteningly complex. Fetal development doubly so. And psychology is a wild mix of physiology, developmental (physical AND mental), and social norming that is so wacky its a wonder half of us don't end up sexually imprinted on sheep.

Gender and sex are wildly variable things.

And on top of it we have imposed a set of imaginary social constructs that tell people what to be and how to be because of physiological dangly bits. But what do you do when those dont match? Or arent normal? Or dont match how you feel? Or even stranger, that you dont match any of it at all.

We need to let go of the current social constructs of gender, sex, sexual identity, and gender specific behavior. There is a continuum of human behavior that these concepts simply don't work for, and we have to be willing to change our minds about even the most basic concepts when they dont fit the facts.

I'm not going to throw the tripe of "everyone is bi" around. It's as much bullshit as the other end of the spectrum.

A lesson from statistics. The ends of your data set are not normal. Its the CENTRAL tendency that is. The ends are interesting, because they tell you about the center. And the center tells you about the ends. And this gets even more fun when you are working in five and six variable dimensions within a data set.

And hell... if we can't get past this, how are we going to cope when parts become plug and play?

[l-the-fangirl.livejournal.com]

Done.

About two weeks ago in fact.

http://www.toothycat.net/wiki/wiki.pl?Gender

See also thier page on transsexuality, which I had to SCREAM BLOODY MURDER at. Transexual =! Transgender =! Transvestite. Grr.

Given that I'm the author of Dat Story About Timothy Talia Andrew Black, you can probably tell that this is an issue close to my heart. I smoulder with generic rage!

[wolven.livejournal.com]

It's the kind of thing more people need to understand.