Where does gender fit in?

[spunjalebi]

I saw this article on msn and just about popped my eyes out:

newsweek.com/2010/08/16/life-without-gender.html?gt1=43002

I honestly think it’s a little ridiculous to even consider “doing away” with gender and not identifying one’s self as male or female. What the article fails to mention is that you eventually HAVE to identify yourself by sex, which forces you to pick male or female. Sex is biological and can also be considered a choice in rare cases. For instance, there are people who are born XY (genetically male), yet have the secondary sex characteristics of women but underdeveloped primary sex characteristics or none at all. Yet, the person still chooses to identify as female.

The Bible says that “God created them male and female” but not “unidentified.” I find some of this a little bizarre.

 

[colmcille1]

I saw this article on msn and just about popped my eyes out:

newsweek.com/2010/08/16/life-without-gender.html?gt1=43002

I honestly think it’s a little ridiculous to even consider “doing away” with gender and not identifying one’s self as male or female. What the article fails to mention is that you eventually HAVE to identify yourself by sex, which forces you to pick male or female. Sex is biological and can also be considered a choice in rare cases. For instance, there are people who are born XY (genetically male), yet have the secondary sex characteristics of women but underdeveloped primary sex characteristics or none at all. Yet, the person still chooses to identify as female.

The Bible says that “God created them male and female” but not “unidentified.” I find some of this a little bizarre.

Hi spunjalebi,
This is indeed bizarre! I was struck by the comment made by professor Bockting: “Their identities expand our thinking about gender.” Expand?? I think it does the opposite!
And whose thinking is he referring to exactly? Not mine. And, I venture, not the greater part of humanity. If he refers to himself and his fellow boffins, then I say to him: we are innately dignified. We are not lab rats to be prodded and probed to further some crazy theory.
I was reminded of an item I came across many years ago in which it was declared that there are 16(!) shades on the male/female spectrum. I kid you not.
Prof. Bockting’s comment sadly reflects the sort of moral chaos out there.
We, as true believers, must resist the spread of this kind of thinking.
God Bless,
Colmcille1.

 

[Alexander_Smith]

I saw this article on msn and just about popped my eyes out:

newsweek.com/2010/08/16/life-without-gender.html?gt1=43002

I honestly think it’s a little ridiculous to even consider “doing away” with gender and not identifying one’s self as male or female. What the article fails to mention is that you eventually HAVE to identify yourself by sex, which forces you to pick male or female. Sex is biological and can also be considered a choice in rare cases. For instance, there are people who are born XY (genetically male), yet have the secondary sex characteristics of women but underdeveloped primary sex characteristics or none at all. Yet, the person still chooses to identify as female.

The Bible says that “God created them male and female” but not “unidentified.” I find some of this a little bizarre.

Ah yes, more “forward” thinking from these brilliant 21st century minds. These spineless thinkers are welcome to remove their physical and mental gender identities, but I think I’ll keep mine, and continue to think of myself as a happy Catholic MALE.

 

[spunjalebi]

What is sad is a lot of this drivel is being pushed into curriculum and also in universities. This past school year, I had at least 2 classes where the professors talked about “third genders” and another teacher talked about how there were not any differences between men and women :ehh:

I believe that there are a lot more people than we think out there who have sex-gender issues due to the way they were born, so I’m not saying that someone is “bad” because they were born with chromosomes that don’t match up to their physical appearance. However, for thousands of years humans have survived because of gender and the mechanisms driving the differences between men and women have contributed to our population growth. Science can support “politically incorrect” observations about the differences between being a male and female. Science doesn’t demonstrate that the human species can continue to thrive if we run around choosing to not be identified by male or female.

Gender isn’t a bad thing, what makes it bad are the ideas that God created one to trump the other, or that one is less worthy than the other. But seriously though some of this stuff is off the deep end.

 

[Dj87]

Sex is genetic!! Males are XY and females are XX, however there are some genetic disorders that are male XXY or XYY when the sex chromosomes don’t split properly.

I have a very rare condition known as hypogonadism, in which my body produces no testosterone and it must be sythetically administered. Because of this disorder my secondary sexual characteristcs didn’t begin until I was put on hormone replacement therapy at age 23. Because of my delay in diagnosis, I underwent the most isolated and brutal hazement anyone could ever imagine during my teenage years.

Just before my diagnosis, I had no secondary sexual characteristics at all, no facial or body hair, no temporal recesion of the hair, no deepening of the voice, young almosit childish appearance, and enlargement of the male breasts. After years of injections, which corrected all of my deficiencies, and plastic surgery to correct the gynecomastia (enlargement of the male breasts) I went on to live a normal life. I’m married to a wonderful wife and after years and thousands and thousands of dollars I have a wonderful little boy. A terrific life.

When I was first diagnosed at age 23 I had absolutely no testosterone in my system at all, yet I was still attracted to girls although far to timid to actually speak to any. I was 100%, my gentics were definitely male at 46XY.

Point, no matter how many synthetic hormones that are injected, no matter how bad the body gets mutilated the genetic karyotype in every cell in the body would remain the same 46XX for female and 46XY for male.

 

[ThomasToo]

What is sad is a lot of this drivel is being pushed into curriculum and also in universities. This past school year, I had at least 2 classes where the professors talked about “third genders” and another teacher talked about how there were not any differences between men and women :ehh:

Depending on the class, if it was–for example–sociology, I can see discussion of a third gender being more than apt. The phenomenon is hardly unknown; an easy example is the five to six million hijra in India but others, both contemporary and historic, range from indigenous cultures in the Americas to Plato’s Greece to Mesopotamia. I would offer book suggestions on this topic but frankly I doubt anyone cares.

An important distinction here should be made between sex (biological differences between individuals tied to differences in reproductive capacities) and gender (the cultural factors that surround identity that are tied to these biological differences. There is, for example, nothing about being a man (as a sex but not a gender distinction) that implies one ought to be the primary breadwinner or remain stoic but there is much about being male (as a gender but not sexual distinction) that implies the above in Western society at large.

 

[spunjalebi]

Sex and gender are often interchangeable. There are medical and psychological differences between men and women which can be measured and observed-- I’m not talking about the “sports are for boys, cheerleading is for girls” junk either. What I brought up in that article was to show that there are going to be people out there who will refuse to identify themselves as male or female, because male and female are interchangeable with man, woman, girl, boy, he, she, etc.

 

[Newbie2]

What a load of drivel in that article.

What’s next, people deciding to be “species-neutral”? Yes, I know I look, talk, act and am genetically like a human, but from today forward, I’ve decided to become a Canadian Goose. I am heretofore a species protected from harm by the Federal Government.

And I can now legally p**p all over your golf course or your lawn, and you cannot harass me while I do it.