boddi wites:
> I know it's a leftist truism that gender has nothing
to do with genetics. It's just not true.
Genetics may play a part, but I do not think that you can draw a direct correlation between this gene or that chromosone and this or that enactment of gender. I think that is a simplification.
> Science is there to test hypotheses and science says
there are two genders.
How do you test for gender? In a scientific experiment don't you need a control? What control measure can you create for gender? Gender is a performance. Are we going to say that Jason Robards is the defintive performance of Hickey and all other performances must be measured against it? Is Doug or Miles or you or me the definitve performace of maleness?
> ME: So a transexual never changes gender?
> YOU: No.
Then we are captives to biology.
"But ya are Blanche, you are in that chair and you ain't never getting out."
> How about we limit ourselves to comparisons with species
with whom we have somewhat more recent common ancestors.
But if birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it, why can't we do it, why can't we change our sex?
> There are only two genders and pretending otherwise is a stupid
way to try and get around the thorny issues we must deal with if
we are to create political gender equality. Ultimately, it's
irresponsible.
According to you there are only two genders. Other people see things differently.
> My first point was about male sexuality but the larger point is that
you don't, in my view, create gender equality by muddying the very
simple idea of gender until it has no meaning to Leftists.
But I do not think that gender is a simple idea, and rather than muddying it, aren't we liberating it from the perceptual straight jacket of either/or into which it has been placed?
> pretty much everybody else is comfortable with the biological
definition of male and female and you just start to sound crazy.
Pretty much everybody else is comfortable with the defintion of marriage as being between a man and a woman. Am I and those who support and help my effort for marriage equality crazy? Or are the crazy ones those people with a simple definition of mariage?
> I think male is biologically male. Female is biologically female.
That's it for gender.
But don't genes and chromosones just give an indication of what gender might be, and then biology and environment and friends and family all kick in to have their say in the manifestation/enactment of gender?
> A gay man is no more or less a man than a straight man.
My husband would fight you on that one. LOL.
> Genetically normal individuals
Can you define what a "genetically normal individual" is?
> . . . for whom having a particular social gender identity is so
important that they alter their appearance or bodies can ask to be called
whatever they like.
And what they desire to be called is what they are. That to me would be the progressive stance.
> They can't actually alter their gender or "reassign" it, but who am I to
tell them not to try?
But they do reassign it and successfully so. Who are you to say that they do not succeed?
> And if accepting a person's public declaration of gender benefits those
few unfortunates whose biological gender is cryptic due to a genetic
abnormality, so much the better.
It is not cryptic, it is just not male or female. And why are they unfortunate to be neither male or female? Isn't is possible that they are advantaged in a way we have yet to understand?
> I think gender is a very simple idea and society muddles it, rather than
society narrowly defining gender and the truth being more complex.
No, society has promlugated a simplistic notion of gender (which you seem to endorse) whereas the truth (as in all things human) is far more complex.
Brian Dauth Queer Buddhist Resister