This started out as a comment to someone on dA. Ahahaha....
This started out as a comment to someone on dA rambling about sex/gender/etc, and I decided I'd post it here due to length and stuff. It is not entirely accurate, it is all a gross oversimplification of this sort of stuff, and I'm totally not even going into all the little nuances that exist. It's more just a quick-and-dirty (not pervy, just sloppily done) overview, since I kind of wish someone had written this up for me back in my Jr High sex ed class. Or something better than this, really, but at least then, I wouldn't have been so confused and... feeling different. (They always talked about when you start feeling whatever, but I don't recall them saying if. Assuming a heteronormative gender binary interested in sex, and presenting the info in those terms, only works for most students.)
TL;DR before I even begin: The presumed male/female binary isn't a binary, like people tend to think. It might mostly seem to hold true, but it really doesn't. >_>
Full disclosure: I'm an asexual, generally agender, XX female. This actually does become somewhat relevant, at least on the grounds that I can try to offer another perspective on the whole gender/sex/orientation/chromosomal mess that isn't very common, but does exist. :)
Sex, as a noun, is what's between your legs, the biological aspect of this all. What the body is, physically. (Not gender: gender is pretty strictly a mental thing.) Sex and chromosomes often agree with each other, but not always. Further reading: look up Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (people who are, biologically, female, but have XY chromosomes, not XX. Their bodies simply never listened to the hormones in utero that tried to tell them to develop as a male.) and intersexuality (I'm not really sure the PC term for it, but look up Hermaphrodism on Wikipedia, and I'm sure you'll find your way to the relevant tidbits. ♥) and a few other cases, like Klinefelter's Syndrome (XXY chromosomal configuration) and similar chromosomal/developmental abnormalities. Also, note that "abnormal" isn't really synonymous with "defect" it just means "deviation from the statistical norm" :) Many people with AIS are quite healthy, after all.
Then there's gender -- like I said, it's a mental thing, and I'm pretty certain that it's the label to try describing how a person sees themselves. It usually tends to coincide with sex; probably four times out of five or better, people are, more or less, what they appear to be. There's guys that, personality aside -- they could be Macho Manly Men, or they could be very effeminate, it doesn't matter -- identify as male. They want to be recognized and treated as male, they want to be called the male pronouns, addressed as sir, as he and him. Likewise, there are females -- everyone from the dainty cocktail dress loving romantics, to the ones who prefer jeans and full-contact sports -- who identify themselves as female. There are people who are biologically male, or female, or some degree of in between, who identify as the opposite of what they outwardly appear to be. It's not a matter of what's between the legs, nor even personality. It's about self-image, about how you think of yourself, about identity. There's even a special term for people whose gender agrees with their biology: they're cis-gendered. Cis-female, cis-male. (In reading LGBTQ-related materials (and I'm talking about like, serious discussion boards and research papers, not yaoi!) the cis- terms come up quite a bit.)
Sexual orientation... I think everyone gets that definition, these days, thankfully. :) But not everyone consciously remembers that there's more than gay and straight, or that there are degrees of each (bisexuality.) I think the best chart for it I've seen wasn't one of those sliding-scale gay-bi-straight ones, but had gay on one axis and straight on the other, allowing for all sorts of variations on not only which way people leaned, but to what degree. Using myself as an example, on the sliding scale, any answer I would give would be wrong. Though, I could make an argument for being bi, by saying I like both sexes in my bed equally: not at all. XD
And gender roles? Those are social constructs. Those are the ideas that "men should be manly -- and here's what 'manly' entails~" and likewise, such notions about females, though with other ideas about what it allegedly means to be a girl. Today, at least in America, it's becoming far more accepted that there are stay-at-home dads, while sometimes the woman is the breadwinner for the family with her career. The female is not always the submissive one in the relationship. Men are not always good at fixing things, and I know a few who should never be allowed to pick up a screwdriver, unless it's to hand it to someone else who is competent. Gender roles are a form of stereotype about how males should behave, and how females should behave. (And personally, I hope they die out.)
Again, not all of these things need to overlap similarly. I've known people who were gay and cis-gendered, and had an easy time "slipping into" each gender role, depending on the circumstance (the latter of which I'd count as a sign of a more adaptable personality, being able to send certain behavioral cues, to get people to treat them differently. The psychology of unspoken communication is rather fascinating, sometimes.) I've known people who weren't cis-gendered (I can't recall if there's a term for the opposite, aside from gender dysphoria or transsexuality) but were straight -- like, a person who was physically male, identified as female... and was attracted to other people who were biologically female.
Then there are oddballs like me, who might be very clearly one or the other, physically, but aren't attracted to anyone (asexuality is pretty rare, overall -- estimates are only about 2-10% of the population, and even people who might identify themselves as such have different degrees of it all (and thus may disagree as to whether they qualify to begin with, to further complicate percentage estimates.) No attraction to people or romance, but still a desire for sexual activity? No desire for sex at all, but has an attraction to people (might even be "gay" or "straight" in who they find themselves attracted to,) and a desire for romantic companionship? It's a little complicated. I fall into the category of "no desire for any of it; just friendships." but that's understating the varying degrees of friendship, interest, infatuation, etc, too, I think. Hmm. I'll point out Asexuality.org as a starting point, and if anyone wants to poke me for info on my perspectives, I'll ramble more.)
Being agender, I don't think of myself as being female. It just happens to be what my body is. I don't think in terms of male or female, except in the same terms that people might think of brown or blue eyes, when thinking of others -- it's incidental to the person thought of, rather than a defining "how I think of them" thing. IRL, it's easy enough to remember who looks male and who looks female, if their appearances make them fairly obvious, but that's more a mnemonic device for keeping straight who's who, in my head, and trying not to offend people with using the wrong pronouns (and thus, is easier IRL.) Online, I associate people with their names/screennames or avatars/userpics, and what we've talked about, what they've posted. Whether they're male or female doesn't really enter my mind in terms of who that person is, to me, and it doesn't tend to be info that sticks, when it comes to people I know online -- so I'm often enough forgetting about which pronouns they'd prefer, unless it's come up as an issue, like one person I know who's been female, but has identified as male, and it was talked about plenty, and there's been subjects like hormone therapy and such mentioned. So then that kind of thing gets remembered about. So I tend to kick myself when I realize I've assumed incorrectly about what pronouns to use, on grounds of not wanting to offend people, because that's just embarrassing... and most of the time, I tend to just give up and not use the usual he/she pronouns, and default to singular "they" instead. It's closer to the sense of how my thoughts work anyhow.
As far as what people call me, I'm fine with the female pronouns -- it's what I'm used to. (On the other hand, not so with the male pronouns -- they don't really fit who I am any better or worse than the female set, but I'm not at all used to them, so they seem wrong. Like if you're used to seeing your hair a certain color, in the mirror, and suddenly the mirror starts showing you some other hair color. If that even makes sense.) Singular "they" works too, but it's really more a "shrug and ignore it" thing to me; while gender is often an important issue to most people, and I realize this... like sexual attraction, it's one of those things that I kind of feel a bit like an outside observer trying to understand. I'm not a girl or a boy in my mind -- I'm just me.
...and I think I've lost my train of thought, since it's stupid o'clock in the morning. I'm going to drop off to bed. ♥
And I'll probably kick myself for the incoherency in this later, when I'm more lucid, but oh well. :P
This entry was originally posted at http://ladyasul.dreamwidth.org/22205.html. You can comment there using OpenID.
TL;DR before I even begin: The presumed male/female binary isn't a binary, like people tend to think. It might mostly seem to hold true, but it really doesn't. >_>
Full disclosure: I'm an asexual, generally agender, XX female. This actually does become somewhat relevant, at least on the grounds that I can try to offer another perspective on the whole gender/sex/orientation/chromosomal mess that isn't very common, but does exist. :)
Sex, as a noun, is what's between your legs, the biological aspect of this all. What the body is, physically. (Not gender: gender is pretty strictly a mental thing.) Sex and chromosomes often agree with each other, but not always. Further reading: look up Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (people who are, biologically, female, but have XY chromosomes, not XX. Their bodies simply never listened to the hormones in utero that tried to tell them to develop as a male.) and intersexuality (I'm not really sure the PC term for it, but look up Hermaphrodism on Wikipedia, and I'm sure you'll find your way to the relevant tidbits. ♥) and a few other cases, like Klinefelter's Syndrome (XXY chromosomal configuration) and similar chromosomal/developmental abnormalities. Also, note that "abnormal" isn't really synonymous with "defect" it just means "deviation from the statistical norm" :) Many people with AIS are quite healthy, after all.
Then there's gender -- like I said, it's a mental thing, and I'm pretty certain that it's the label to try describing how a person sees themselves. It usually tends to coincide with sex; probably four times out of five or better, people are, more or less, what they appear to be. There's guys that, personality aside -- they could be Macho Manly Men, or they could be very effeminate, it doesn't matter -- identify as male. They want to be recognized and treated as male, they want to be called the male pronouns, addressed as sir, as he and him. Likewise, there are females -- everyone from the dainty cocktail dress loving romantics, to the ones who prefer jeans and full-contact sports -- who identify themselves as female. There are people who are biologically male, or female, or some degree of in between, who identify as the opposite of what they outwardly appear to be. It's not a matter of what's between the legs, nor even personality. It's about self-image, about how you think of yourself, about identity. There's even a special term for people whose gender agrees with their biology: they're cis-gendered. Cis-female, cis-male. (In reading LGBTQ-related materials (and I'm talking about like, serious discussion boards and research papers, not yaoi!) the cis- terms come up quite a bit.)
Sexual orientation... I think everyone gets that definition, these days, thankfully. :) But not everyone consciously remembers that there's more than gay and straight, or that there are degrees of each (bisexuality.) I think the best chart for it I've seen wasn't one of those sliding-scale gay-bi-straight ones, but had gay on one axis and straight on the other, allowing for all sorts of variations on not only which way people leaned, but to what degree. Using myself as an example, on the sliding scale, any answer I would give would be wrong. Though, I could make an argument for being bi, by saying I like both sexes in my bed equally: not at all. XD
And gender roles? Those are social constructs. Those are the ideas that "men should be manly -- and here's what 'manly' entails~" and likewise, such notions about females, though with other ideas about what it allegedly means to be a girl. Today, at least in America, it's becoming far more accepted that there are stay-at-home dads, while sometimes the woman is the breadwinner for the family with her career. The female is not always the submissive one in the relationship. Men are not always good at fixing things, and I know a few who should never be allowed to pick up a screwdriver, unless it's to hand it to someone else who is competent. Gender roles are a form of stereotype about how males should behave, and how females should behave. (And personally, I hope they die out.)
Again, not all of these things need to overlap similarly. I've known people who were gay and cis-gendered, and had an easy time "slipping into" each gender role, depending on the circumstance (the latter of which I'd count as a sign of a more adaptable personality, being able to send certain behavioral cues, to get people to treat them differently. The psychology of unspoken communication is rather fascinating, sometimes.) I've known people who weren't cis-gendered (I can't recall if there's a term for the opposite, aside from gender dysphoria or transsexuality) but were straight -- like, a person who was physically male, identified as female... and was attracted to other people who were biologically female.
Then there are oddballs like me, who might be very clearly one or the other, physically, but aren't attracted to anyone (asexuality is pretty rare, overall -- estimates are only about 2-10% of the population, and even people who might identify themselves as such have different degrees of it all (and thus may disagree as to whether they qualify to begin with, to further complicate percentage estimates.) No attraction to people or romance, but still a desire for sexual activity? No desire for sex at all, but has an attraction to people (might even be "gay" or "straight" in who they find themselves attracted to,) and a desire for romantic companionship? It's a little complicated. I fall into the category of "no desire for any of it; just friendships." but that's understating the varying degrees of friendship, interest, infatuation, etc, too, I think. Hmm. I'll point out Asexuality.org as a starting point, and if anyone wants to poke me for info on my perspectives, I'll ramble more.)
Being agender, I don't think of myself as being female. It just happens to be what my body is. I don't think in terms of male or female, except in the same terms that people might think of brown or blue eyes, when thinking of others -- it's incidental to the person thought of, rather than a defining "how I think of them" thing. IRL, it's easy enough to remember who looks male and who looks female, if their appearances make them fairly obvious, but that's more a mnemonic device for keeping straight who's who, in my head, and trying not to offend people with using the wrong pronouns (and thus, is easier IRL.) Online, I associate people with their names/screennames or avatars/userpics, and what we've talked about, what they've posted. Whether they're male or female doesn't really enter my mind in terms of who that person is, to me, and it doesn't tend to be info that sticks, when it comes to people I know online -- so I'm often enough forgetting about which pronouns they'd prefer, unless it's come up as an issue, like one person I know who's been female, but has identified as male, and it was talked about plenty, and there's been subjects like hormone therapy and such mentioned. So then that kind of thing gets remembered about. So I tend to kick myself when I realize I've assumed incorrectly about what pronouns to use, on grounds of not wanting to offend people, because that's just embarrassing... and most of the time, I tend to just give up and not use the usual he/she pronouns, and default to singular "they" instead. It's closer to the sense of how my thoughts work anyhow.
As far as what people call me, I'm fine with the female pronouns -- it's what I'm used to. (On the other hand, not so with the male pronouns -- they don't really fit who I am any better or worse than the female set, but I'm not at all used to them, so they seem wrong. Like if you're used to seeing your hair a certain color, in the mirror, and suddenly the mirror starts showing you some other hair color. If that even makes sense.) Singular "they" works too, but it's really more a "shrug and ignore it" thing to me; while gender is often an important issue to most people, and I realize this... like sexual attraction, it's one of those things that I kind of feel a bit like an outside observer trying to understand. I'm not a girl or a boy in my mind -- I'm just me.
...and I think I've lost my train of thought, since it's stupid o'clock in the morning. I'm going to drop off to bed. ♥
And I'll probably kick myself for the incoherency in this later, when I'm more lucid, but oh well. :P
This entry was originally posted at http://ladyasul.dreamwidth.org/22205.html. You can comment there using OpenID.