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I think "gender reveals" promote the white evangelical "gender binary" paradigm.

The Christian religious concept that everyone is one of two genders has been debunked.
Studies show that people have a sliding scale of gender traits, gender identity, gender presentation, and sexual orientation.
Trying to force children into some arbitrary gender box can be harmful.

Gender can't always be determined from appearance. The person could be intersex, have gender combo chromosomes, have a brain hormonally initialized for the opposite gender of bio gender, etc.

As children age, a certain percentage will realize they are gender fluid, transgender, bigender, agender, or some other nonbinary identity.

Yet nonbinary children labeled "girls," could be told, "You can't do that..you'll get all dirty! And look out for your dress!"

Or an assumed boy could be ridiculed for wanting to dance, or take drama classes, since "boys" don't do that.

In my case, I resemble a feminine woman, but now consider myself nonbinary (and demisexual). Growing up, I was constantly climbing trees, throwing rocks, making slingshots, throwing knives, shooting arrows, lassoing wild boars from my mustang, etc.

If I had known about gender issues, my own behavior could have given me a hint that I wasn't as "cis female" as I appeared to be at birth.

Pic is me at 14 years old on my mustang stallion, Lightning, on our Haiti mission, near Cap Haitian.

birdingnut 8 May 10
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5 comments

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0

The idea or suggestion that gender is an identity spectrum in most cases is extremely sexist.
It says you are less of a boy if you wear a dress.
You are less of a girl if you play rough and tough.

Identifying as Male or Female only hold a singular purpose. Creating offspring outside of that it is meaningless.

But its not meaningless, and that's exactly the difference between gender, and genetic sex (male or female). Sex is exactly what you said- a fairly black and white thing that doesn't matter unless there is baby making involved. Everything else about the looks and feels and thinks and wants and preconceived notions of boys and girls... is gender. It's a fuzzy thing, on a continuum, has is very much about social constructs and judgements, and nothing to do with baby making.

I totally understand your issue with the idea that there's some pendulum between "all boy/man" and "all girl/woman", and anyone in between is judged as "less than". I'm not going to go down the rabbit hole of trying to interpret other people's thoughts about gender, or about their own gender. Just very glad for people who do feel comfortable with their own gender, and bonus if it matches up with their genetic sex.

3

Just let people be what they want to be, except if it brings harm to anyone.

4

I personally struggle with saying that because some people aren't born physically male or female that means that gender is fluid. The vast majority of humans are born with specifically male or female genitalia and those who aren't are the exceptions. I think the problem lies wholly in humanity's tendency to want to push people into gender roles, telling them how they should act, what they should wear, and who they should be having sex with based on our understanding of gender. Look at the wording here in this post and you see that the idea of gender fluidity is based on gender traits, identity, presentation, and sexual orientation. It's based on the assumption that males act one way and females act another. Take away that assumption and the problems virtually disappear, despite the fact that most people are still physically male or physically female.

1

I actually posted this to my Facebook page, which is still inhabited by many silent white evangelical friends and relatives, if they've not been defriended for posting racist/bigoted memes.

I hesitated, not wanting to trigger religious attacks, but then remembered that my post is LONG, and both conservatives and Christians are not known for reading, LOL!

2

Most of my adult life, I've understood that human sexuality is like a string..and we're all beads, sliding on that string. Some of us remain in one position, while others slide a bit. And that's normal and natural and healthy...as long as society doesn't attempt to shame us.

PS..Sounds like you had a great childhood!

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