I guess it’s fine to accept that there is no single answer to a question, but the absence of concrete definability in a colloquial term is just upsetting on its face. I recognize that there’s no real need for it to be monolithic, but even figuring out how to phrase my question without seeming threatening was a challenge.
In the end, I just want folks to feel safe when I speak to them, and through the answers imparted upon me, I’m inching closer to the level of inclusion that I strive toward. I sincerely appreciate the answer, and if there’s anything that I’ve said here that seems at odds with my stated goal, I apologize.
It’s a complicated problem. We’ve got an epistemological question that’s getting mixed up with medical conditions and psychology and the way that society treats the ways that human bodies can differentiate themselves. Exploring sex and gender is often looking at everything from genetics to anthropology to history to language to societal roles, which is cutting across too many disciplines for anyone to navigate perfectly.
And then we have to look at people. We have to look at the way this uncertainty has been weaponized by the fascist project. This uncertainty is ultimately what transphobic violence is seeking to correct - to force an answer to the question.
It is a scary prospect. We have to consider what it would look like to have a society without mandated gender roles, we have to consider what being “male” or “female” means about us as human beings, we have to figure out what it means to live “as a man” or “as a woman.” Are we really tabula rasa? Is childhood a resolution of the phallic crisis and oedipus complex? Why are some hobbies or professions more dominated by one gender over the other? What about the distribution of household labor?
It’s a Gordian knot - there’s an appeal in just slicing the thing in half.
I guess it’s fine to accept that there is no single answer to a question, but the absence of concrete definability in a colloquial term is just upsetting on its face. I recognize that there’s no real need for it to be monolithic, but even figuring out how to phrase my question without seeming threatening was a challenge.
In the end, I just want folks to feel safe when I speak to them, and through the answers imparted upon me, I’m inching closer to the level of inclusion that I strive toward. I sincerely appreciate the answer, and if there’s anything that I’ve said here that seems at odds with my stated goal, I apologize.
It’s a complicated problem. We’ve got an epistemological question that’s getting mixed up with medical conditions and psychology and the way that society treats the ways that human bodies can differentiate themselves. Exploring sex and gender is often looking at everything from genetics to anthropology to history to language to societal roles, which is cutting across too many disciplines for anyone to navigate perfectly.
And then we have to look at people. We have to look at the way this uncertainty has been weaponized by the fascist project. This uncertainty is ultimately what transphobic violence is seeking to correct - to force an answer to the question.
It is a scary prospect. We have to consider what it would look like to have a society without mandated gender roles, we have to consider what being “male” or “female” means about us as human beings, we have to figure out what it means to live “as a man” or “as a woman.” Are we really tabula rasa? Is childhood a resolution of the phallic crisis and oedipus complex? Why are some hobbies or professions more dominated by one gender over the other? What about the distribution of household labor?
It’s a Gordian knot - there’s an appeal in just slicing the thing in half.