What is gender?

[Unveiled Artist]

I originally put this in LGBT cause I didnt know if peoples answers would be more personal given I do wanted to know yalls personal opinions and experiences. Copy cat of my question. Here we go....

I was wondering. It's more than light-hearted curiosity but doesn't apply to myself.

What does gender mean?

I was reading online on my friend Google and it says anywhere from a social and cultural construct to a female or male sense of self. It also mentions that gender and sex doesn't align with each other.

Which is kinda confusing especially for many of us who have not questioned their sense of self by gender. I hear some say they are manly or my father says when I told him years ago I'm gay, he wondered where my femininity when as in he sees the female and male relation interlocked. But he is very homophobic and very uneducated in sexuality and gender matters. Which makes it very hard to educate him since I live in a small world of stereotypes.

So, whether you are LGBTetc what is gender to you apart from cultural constructs and sex?

 

[Dawnofhope]

I originally put this in LGBT cause I didnt know if peoples answers would be more personal given I do wanted to know yalls personal opinions and experiences. Copy cat of my question. Here we go....

I was wondering. It's more than light-hearted curiosity but doesn't apply to myself.

What does gender mean?

I was reading online on my friend Google and it says anywhere from a social and cultural construct to a female or male sense of self. It also mentions that gender and sex doesn't align with each other.

Which is kinda confusing especially for many of us who have not questioned their sense of self by gender. I hear some say they are manly or my father says when I told him years ago I'm gay, he wondered where my femininity when as in he sees the female and male relation interlocked. But he is very homophobic and very uneducated in sexuality and gender matters. Which makes it very hard to educate him since I live in a small world of stereotypes.

So, whether you are LGBTetc what is gender to you apart from cultural constructs and sex?

Gender may make no difference whatsoever to some spheres of life but becomes much more important if we are considering having a family and our respective roles.

 

[Unveiled Artist]

Gender may make no difference whatsoever to some spheres of life but becomes much more important if we are considering having a family and our respective roles.

Thank you.

That maybe true. It can also vary by who defines it too. For example, though I cant speak specifically for transgender, I think in their case it goes beyond family and respective roles.

For example, although I am gay, and there are stereotypes that gay women* and men present themselves by interest and environment as the opposite gender (skirt or pants) rather it just being our style. While I like wearing jeans and short hair, I consider myself a female.

I dont think many people LGBQ take this for granted. Im sure its biological but Im not sure the logistics in it. I recieved a great explanation from one of the members here about transgender, but wondering about gender in general that doesnt always refer to gender disphoia.

 

[Ellen Brown]

I originally put this in LGBT cause I didnt know if peoples answers would be more personal given I do wanted to know yalls personal opinions and experiences. Copy cat of my question. Here we go....

I was wondering. It's more than light-hearted curiosity but doesn't apply to myself.

What does gender mean?

I was reading online on my friend Google and it says anywhere from a social and cultural construct to a female or male sense of self. It also mentions that gender and sex doesn't align with each other.

Which is kinda confusing especially for many of us who have not questioned their sense of self by gender. I hear some say they are manly or my father says when I told him years ago I'm gay, he wondered where my femininity when as in he sees the female and male relation interlocked. But he is very homophobic and very uneducated in sexuality and gender matters. Which makes it very hard to educate him since I live in a small world of stereotypes.

So, whether you are LGBTetc what is gender to you apart from cultural constructs and sex?

I think that sex and gender are two different things. Further, I think that our rigidly binary gender system perhaps causes some of the LGBT issues, and most certainly the T issues. This is just my own rebellious, snotty opinion. I think that there are just lots of folk out there who are not strongly masculine or feminine, who would be quite pleased if people just left them the "F" alone. There are some very feminine men who never thought to put a skirt on, and there are very masculine women who never thought to, oh, what ever.

Bible thumpers who like to rant that "Gawd, made them male and female", should just give it a rest and go pull the wings off Butterflies. Anyone with a High School education knows about Genetics and how that is not perfect and flawless. Your tackle and your nature may not always match.

Rant OFF.

 

[Ingledsva]

I originally put this in LGBT cause I didnt know if peoples answers would be more personal given I do wanted to know yalls personal opinions and experiences. Copy cat of my question. Here we go....

I was wondering. It's more than light-hearted curiosity but doesn't apply to myself.

What does gender mean?

I was reading online on my friend Google and it says anywhere from a social and cultural construct to a female or male sense of self. It also mentions that gender and sex doesn't align with each other.

Which is kinda confusing especially for many of us who have not questioned their sense of self by gender. I hear some say they are manly or my father says when I told him years ago I'm gay, he wondered where my femininity when as in he sees the female and male relation interlocked. But he is very homophobic and very uneducated in sexuality and gender matters. Which makes it very hard to educate him since I live in a small world of stereotypes.

So, whether you are LGBTetc what is gender to you apart from cultural constructs and sex?

Gender is just an agreed upon classification, usually male and female. They usually just look for XX, or XY, for sex, but we know there are other groupings, and identities.

Sex and Gender listings definitely have to expand with new science which shows there are actually many release points.

"Sex" is actually dependent on when certain chemicals are released during gestation.

In other words a "heterosexual male" is just one release point for those chemicals. The same with "heterosexual female", and all the people on the sliding scale below, above, or between those two.

There are a lot of different "sex/gender" points on this sliding scale, and I have no idea how they are going to figure this out so that it includes all sexes and identities.

*

 

[Dawnofhope]

Thank you.

That maybe true. It can also vary by who defines it too. For example, though I cant speak specifically for transgender, I think in their case it goes beyond family and respective roles.

For example, although I am gay, and there are stereotypes that gay women* and men present themselves by interest and environment as the opposite gender (skirt or pants) rather it just being our style. While I like wearing jeans and short hair, I consider myself a female.

I dont think many people LGBQ take this for granted. Im sure its biological but Im not sure the logistics in it. I recieved a great explanation from one of the members here about transgender, but wondering about gender in general that doesnt always refer to gender disphoia.

No one can walk in the shoes of another. It’s hard to imagine the reality for a transgender. We all need to read the reality of our own lives and be sensitive to others. If we achieve that then knowing the best course of action or finding our truest voice becomes easier.

 

[Unveiled Artist]

No one can walk in the shoes of another. It’s hard to imagine the reality for a transgender. We all need to read the reality of our own lives and be sensitive to others. If we achieve that then knowing the best course of action or finding our truest voice becomes easier.

Have you wondered what gender is or many things we take for granted beyond our opinions that differ from others?

Although I havent gone through gender disophia at its strongest, during my coming out stages, I did have a point where I felt I was male. However, it was so long ago that at that age, who would really ask that question and even more understand it?

I have pondered what it meant to be straight since sexual orientation is also an identity. Though, I do understand orientation as a identity but not gender. Something we take for granted.

 

[Unveiled Artist]

I slept like around 4pm now Im wide awake. Haha. 2am here

 

[Jim]

So, whether you are LGBTetc what is gender to you apart from cultural constructs and sex?

My earliest memory of the word “gender” in public discussions was when people started questioning and criticizing the imposition of social roles in society based on whether a person is a woman or a man. In those discussions, the roles were called “gender roles,” maybe to avoid possible misunderstandings from calling them “sex roles.” The meanings of “gender” have evolved and multiplied since then, and I won’t try to cover the whole range. It mostly just needs to be guessed in each discussion, from clues in the discussion itself, and invariably it means different things to different people in the discussion.

In discussions about gender identity, it looks to me now like trans people sort people into “men” and “women” in the same ways that other people do, by the way they look, act and dress, and the sound of their voice; but they sort themselves into one category or the other in a completely different way, by a feeling that “I’m one of them.” Most or all people might have experienced that feeling at one time or another, of seeing or hearing about some group or category of people and feeling like “That’s it, that’s me, that’s who I am!” That might be the way a trans person feels about people of the sex type opposite to theirs.