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7/07/2015 8:03 pm  #1


What determines your gender?

Discuss. What, philosophically, determines if you're male or female? Can I at least get recommended literature on this? Thanks.

 

7/08/2015 4:34 am  #2


Re: What determines your gender?

I suspect you're asking a question that rests upon a set of distinctions that are often collapsed.

I think it's patently absurd to deny something like biological gender as an abiding dichotomy in human form- you might as well deny that we have hands or differing heights.

However, you're probably talking about so-called "gender identity": what I heard called once, in a question begging way, the "social script we build for each other on the basis of our biology".Whether I "act like a man" or "act like a woman" is a complicated matter, and clearly there is a purely conventional aspect:clothing choices for instance, seem to be mostly arbitrary for the genders, though linked to some deeper human realities. Sexual behavior expression seems to have some cross-cultural cross-historical constancy, etc. That would, from a philosophical perspective, need to be all drawn out and elaborated. Is that what you're getting at?

=13pxI would suspect that, also, this isn't the audience for this set of ideas. I'm willing to entertain the question, but I'm inclined to think that the political/personal crisis that motivates this conversation is based on a feeling of general alienation plus a false set of solutions to that alienation. If you feel separated from society and others (and who doesn't in this present world?) and you attribute it to the fact that your body or emotional makeup don't quite match the perceived role you're supposed to fall into, operations to change your anatomy are not going to fix the problem. Your problem with the script probably won't iron itself out by cutting yourself up or putting on different clothes, since that's just a different way to violate the script, and if it wasn't why doesn't it just take you as you are rather than asking for drastic alterations?


Fighting to the death "the noonday demon" of Acedia.
My Books
It is precisely “values” that are the powerless and threadbare mask of the objectification of beings, an objectification that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values.
~Martin Heidegger
 

7/08/2015 7:13 am  #3


Re: What determines your gender?

I think we can still address the issue without getting morassed in the whole "LGBT" fiasco.

There is a phenomenon known as XX Male Syndrome, in which due to a deficient meiosis in the father the male child can be born without a Y chromosome, thus making him genetically a female.

The question in such a case would be what we ought to define gender on, the "hardware" or the genetics?


Noli turbare circulos meos.
 

7/08/2015 7:43 am  #4


Re: What determines your gender?

Etzelnik wrote:

The question in such a case would be what we ought to define gender on, the "hardware" or the genetics?

Is an orange an orange because of its color or its genetics?

False dichotomy.

Male and female are broad descriptors, and genetics is a clean quantitative way to track that difference in most cases. Overall form is what matters. What modern thought is unwilling to accept is not that the distinction is broader than genetics but that we might observe deficient cases of being a man/woman. It would rather create a new gender than admit a deficiency re form.


Fighting to the death "the noonday demon" of Acedia.
My Books
It is precisely “values” that are the powerless and threadbare mask of the objectification of beings, an objectification that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values.
~Martin Heidegger
 

7/08/2015 7:47 am  #5


Re: What determines your gender?

iwpoe wrote:

Etzelnik wrote:

The question in such a case would be what we ought to define gender on, the "hardware" or the genetics?

Is an orange an orange because of its color or its genetics?

False dichotomy.

Male and female are broad descriptors, and genetics is a clean quantitative way to track that difference in most cases. Overall form is what matters. What modern thought is unwilling to accept is not that the distinction is broader than genetics but that we might observe deficient cases of being a man/woman. It would rather create a new gender than admit a deficiency re form.

 
I'm not creating a new gender. I want to know which of the two genders manifest in the body is deficient.

I'm not even talking in a social sense. I'm talking in a religious or legal sense- such as in regards to marriage.

We also have androgynous disorders. How does one define it?


Noli turbare circulos meos.
 

7/08/2015 7:54 am  #6


Re: What determines your gender?

Etzelnik wrote:

iwpoe wrote:

Etzelnik wrote:

The question in such a case would be what we ought to define gender on, the "hardware" or the genetics?

Is an orange an orange because of its color or its genetics?

False dichotomy.

Male and female are broad descriptors, and genetics is a clean quantitative way to track that difference in most cases. Overall form is what matters. What modern thought is unwilling to accept is not that the distinction is broader than genetics but that we might observe deficient cases of being a man/woman. It would rather create a new gender than admit a deficiency re form.

 
I'm not creating a new gender. I want to know which of the two genders manifest in the body is deficient.

I'm not even talking in a social sense. I'm talking in a religious or legal sense- such as in regards to marriage.

We also have androgynous disorders. How does one define it?

I know *you* aren't. It's not unusual, however.

Most cases of androgyny would boil down to an apprehendable male or female person outside size averages or with some atypical facial or bodily features. That is to say, either a kind of mild deformity or else a kind of personal self-loathing.


Fighting to the death "the noonday demon" of Acedia.
My Books
It is precisely “values” that are the powerless and threadbare mask of the objectification of beings, an objectification that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values.
~Martin Heidegger
 

7/08/2015 8:36 am  #7


Re: What determines your gender?

iwpoe wrote:

Etzelnik wrote:

iwpoe wrote:


Is an orange an orange because of its color or its genetics?

False dichotomy.

Male and female are broad descriptors, and genetics is a clean quantitative way to track that difference in most cases. Overall form is what matters. What modern thought is unwilling to accept is not that the distinction is broader than genetics but that we might observe deficient cases of being a man/woman. It would rather create a new gender than admit a deficiency re form.

 
I'm not creating a new gender. I want to know which of the two genders manifest in the body is deficient.

I'm not even talking in a social sense. I'm talking in a religious or legal sense- such as in regards to marriage.

We also have androgynous disorders. How does one define it?

I know *you* aren't. It's not unusual, however.

Most cases of androgyny would boil down to an apprehendable male or female person outside size averages or with some atypical facial or bodily features. That is to say, either a kind of mild deformity or else a kind of personal self-loathing.

 
The Talmud (T. Bikkurim) discusses the hypothetical androgynous who has both male and female organs. We come out that it is 'it's own creation' and must follow the stringencies of both.


Noli turbare circulos meos.
 

7/08/2015 8:47 am  #8


Re: What determines your gender?

Etzelnik wrote:

The Talmud (T. Bikkurim) discusses the hypothetical androgynous who has both male and female organs. We come out that it is 'it's own creation' and must follow the stringencies of both.

The true hermaphrodite is a legitimately difficult case. Philosophically I would say they are a case of a more general deformity of human form (as opposed to a deformed male, for instance): as is a person born with no limbs. How they should be handled is a difficult case, and I would not wish that fate on any person.


Fighting to the death "the noonday demon" of Acedia.
My Books
It is precisely “values” that are the powerless and threadbare mask of the objectification of beings, an objectification that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values.
~Martin Heidegger
 

7/08/2015 9:17 am  #9


Re: What determines your gender?

I know it is a controversial point,  but is there even such a thing as gender? It seems a new and loaded term to describe the division of the sexes in such a way that someone might be a different sex innately to their biological sex. Without further proof I am somewhat opposed to the very term gender.  For such a usage it seems to have arisen within the last few decades to serve a particular viewpoint.

 

7/08/2015 9:27 am  #10


Re: What determines your gender?

'Sex' is the older term. I took it naively in it's Latin sense as 'type', but yes a lot of its present power lies in its ability to muddle the sexual binary. I don't think it's incompatible with 'sex' however, and I'm willing to grant the view that there is something like a set of conventions that grow up around sex, which are contingent.


Fighting to the death "the noonday demon" of Acedia.
My Books
It is precisely “values” that are the powerless and threadbare mask of the objectification of beings, an objectification that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values.
~Martin Heidegger
 

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