Freddielinton wrote: Mon Jul 27, 2020 10:57 am
jasmineyoungtg wrote: Mon Jul 27, 2020 1:50 amno, i'm a woman. she/her thanks.
post deleted
Freddie, why is it so difficult to call someone what they want to be called?
Also, that actually IS how science works. This is gonna be a long post but hopefully people can learn something from this. I'm no scientist but this is from general reading, research and how I've learnt to interpret things (thanks Asperger's and Dyspraxia for my sideways thinking).
Gender isn't biological. It's societal.
It's a social construct, created by humans.
SEX isn't even biological, technically.
The idea of things being male or female is a human construct designed to differentiate between two different genitalia and reproductive organs. We named them as such, because it made it easier.
Science however laughs at that, because there's people born with neither and people born with both.
Those genitalia are usually defined by chromosomes. Most of the time they match the genitalia and therefore the Sex we as humans define, but sometimes they don't.
If you wanted to know someone's Sex, the only actual accurate way of doing it is to find out which chromosome they have.
BUT, doctors don't have time to test you, so they check the genitalia, so most of the time it's accurate, sometimes it's not, but Sex as a defintion is a social construct in and of itself. The only thing nature does is assign you genitalia and which type of reproductive action you'll perform (initiating (not the right word but you get my meaning) or giving birth).
Transgenderism is about Gender. Gender being a social construct that has varied in social norm definition throughout history and throughout and across cultures.
Gender defines the social norms you are expected to live by based on how we perceive people of a certain Sex. The biggest reason for there being such a chasm, is that naturally, waaaay back when, the humans nature designated to give birth (whom we later called Females), weren't as strong as the ones who would initiate sex. I mean, it's kinda the same in all of nature, but there's different ways in which it affects species. Females then, as time went on, were more inclined to look after the young, whereas the Men were hunter gatherers.
Eventually, societal barriers were introduced and Gender became synonymous with Sex, because, well, humans like things not to be complicated and at the time it seemed plausible.
But there are and were societies in which human beings have been seen as basically androgynous, which we actually are, with regards to Gender.
Due to the various needs of humanity, the way humans like to differentiate things, Gender became a thing that existed, to seperate Men from Women. Then, as humans LOVE to give things roles and societal norms, Genders developed societal norms. As time goes on, those things become baked into human psyche.
The reason I know this is because I can use an example from Black culture:
Black people weren't, since our existence, racially abused and discriminated against.
Go back, 600, 700 years and we weren't facing active discrimination against us because of the colour of our skin. Not on the level of systemic and systematic racism, anyway, or at least, not that I know of.
We were living it up, across the world, but mainly in Africa and we were enjoying being seen, largely, as human beings. Though, obvs, humans love to see people not the same as them as under civilised so we did face that.... BUT to a large extent, we were seen as humans, just..... under-civilised humans.
Flash forward those 600/700 years, and without being told it, most Black people can tell you, we are very much aware of our race and colour, on a subconscious/unconscious level.
Not many Black people go out the house actively thinking "I could be attacked, right now, in my own neighbourhood, regardless of where or who I am or what I've done, just because I'm Black".
BUT, it's ingrained in how we think. It's at a point where it's natural and close enough to be born into us.
Everything we do and think about, our brain has filtered through "I'm Black" and therefore how may that affect us.
Walking down the street, means you're aware of every white person around you, you notice people who might fit the description of those that do us harm. Interviews, meetings, just meeting new people, everything you say is automatically filtered. You don't even realise you're doing it, but we do it. We see things differently, our brains work out threats differently, and all of this is basically ingrained, even though it is based off a societal problem not found in nature and isn't something that defines our species.
The same principle basically goes for Gender.
Gender roles and norms got so built in that we don't REALISE they're irrelevant.
They don't actually exist.
But we think they do, and we're so used to them being linked to Sex, that we can't separate the two.
Gender is literally just what social norms fit you best. That's it. In a way, if I had to define it.
You can change your Gender because Gender is fluid, because social norms and constructs are fluid. If they weren't, men would be wearing dresses (check out the Victorian era).
Humans are androgynous with regards to Gender. We're either/or.
The only way to accurate separate what we call Gender and Sex is to say that largely, one group has a penis, the other group has a vagina and can give birth. Or even more accurately, test people and check out which chromosome they've got.
Science can alter that though. You can cut off someone's penis, or use science to stop someone giving birth and probably you could probably remove someone's vagina to an extent. You do that for two people, one "Male" and one "Female", and according to Sex, they'd cease to be "Male" and "female". They'd also both be unable to reproduce. BUT they'd still be human beings. Now, if the Female wore mens clothes and fit the societal norms assigned to Men, and the Male did the same but for societal norms assigned to Women......would that make the "Female" a "Male" and the "Male" a "Female"?
How would you tell?
They don't have the reproductive organs. They can't reproduce by being impregnated, because one can't now have a child.
They're just human beings.
Science can change our reproductive organs. Technically, if you can (which I think we can), change a fetus' chromosomes before a certain point, you could quite literally change what nature originally prescribed to be have a penis, maybe, into a human with a vagina.
Yes.....Science and nature actually allow us to change Sex.
Science and nature also allow us to adapt the hormones in our body to replicate what certain chromosomes would give us from birth.
Nature isn't rigid, neither is science, neither are social norms.
So, it's wrong to think Transgenderism isn't science.
What you're actually doing, is understanding science and nature wrong, and conflating societal constructs with scientific ability, facts and the fact that nature is actually largely binary.
EVERYTHING we use to describe nature is a social construct. How do we know? Coz you couldn't ask another species about it and expect they'd use the same words or descriptions or even understand you.
We as humans are too used to thinking that....,because we put a name to something, that our definition is correct. Nature just...is. It's basic. If it's not something that can be observed across the natural kingdom, it doesn't exist in nature and therefore isn't scientific to nature. It's almost certainly a social construct.
Money, Fashion, Gender, Societal norms. We live by their definitions but they're definitions we created ourselves and can change ourselves and are in no way set in stone.
Once a Lion exists and walks, you can't change it into a Zebra right? You'd think so, but if we as a society decided to swap the names, as humanity as a whole, a Lion would now be a Zebra and a Zebra would be a Lion.
Are we wrong if we, decide to call a (new)-Zebra an (old)-Lion? No. What it is, is something that walks on all fours, one group have what we call a mane, is what we'd describe as golden, have what we'd call fur, they hunt skinnier beings on all fours, with what we'd call stripes, with what we call colours, the colours we call black and white. There are other characteristics that set them apart.
That definition of it being a Lion and a Zebra, is basically how we prescribe Gender, but using things we can't see.
Lions and Zebras don't exist. They're just names we've given to other members of other species to define how we see them and to differentiate.
You can't physically make what we would call a Lion, into a Zebra. Nature has already designated it those characteristics. But we can change what we call them.
In humanity, we have the ability to adapt our bodies to match the hormones of someone born with a different chromosome than us, and therefore affect the way the body works and even our physical appearance. No need for surgery. Hormones in and of themselves can do that.
That's natural, because if it wasn't, we wouldn't be able to do it. Literally, it just wouldn't happen, your body would reject it and die.
When non scientist people say something isn't natural, most of the time, they're using that phrase wrong. They're using it to say "this thing doesn't fit societal norms and therefore can't be possible".
Unless you literally CANNOT do it in nature, it's natural.
Anything you can do in nature is natural. Any part of nature that can be altered, is natural, because nature is just the make-up of things, and the animal kingdom (which we are a part of).
Morality is a different thing (is it moral to change a fetus' DNA to make so called "designer babies".....is it moral to abort a fetus?)....I'm not getting into those arguments about the morality of things, but they're moral questions. They're both perfectly natural. Depending on where you stand, they might not be moral.
Yet....humans conflate the two.
Same argument is used for Transgenderism.
It's natural. It just doesn't fit societal norms, and humans like societal norms because we think they have to stay rigid in order for society to function (they don't. Take away money and human beings won't cease to exist. We existed and thrived before the advent of money, we're just so used to it we can't imagine how to live without it. Not the same thing.) so, human beings decided it's not natural because it's easier to say than "damnit, we've got to change society to reflect the new thing we've just learnt".
It's science and scientific, because we use science to explore it.
It's real; we have had a large enough sample pool over a large enough span of time to confirm that it does indeed exist.
It's normal. The fact it has existed for so long, across so many cultures and peoples, means that it is what we'd define normal; as in, it is something that regularly happens and therefore is something that is natural to human beings, (using natural in the sense of it exists and has no adverse effects in its basic state, as opposed to unnatural like a disease or some aberration in nature that, whilst is natural in its existence, doesn't happen across humanity enough for it to be seen is something that humans are designed to exist with without adverse effects).
Its negative impacts purely come from societal norms causing a conflict between, essentially someone's inner personality and being and what the world around them says they should be like.
Transgenderism is normal, real and scientific fact.
It's not science that has gotten it wrong.
Transgenderism isn't unnatural. It's just unsocietal. There's a MASSIVE difference between the two.
Once you realise that, you'll realise that it's not Transgender people that should change, or science or nature that's wrong.
It's just society and the way we perceive things that needs evolution and a radical update.
