Conceptual Distinctions: From chromosomal definitions to gender
in Epiphanies
This discussion was created from comments split from: Can someone explain ….
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But the point I'm making is that we're not assigned a sex at birth, but assigned a gender. Your birth certificate says female because the midwife made a guess based on your body's appearance, but many AFAB people have turned out to be intersex later in life - this is why sports bodies don't do chromosone testing, because a lot of women athletes turn out to be intersex. You (general you) can be cis and intersex precisely because AGAB is *not* the same as sex - an intersex woman who is also AFAB is a cis intersex woman, with her sex being intersex and her gender and gender identity both being female.
AFAB and AMAB are used because eg cis women and trans men may both have periods. They're not terms used to describe intersex experiences, which are generally described as CAFAB/CAMAB or coercively assigned female/male at birth. This is because generally intersex children are not legally able to be recorded as intersex on their birth certificates - they are assigned a gender precisely because their sex cannot legally be recorded.
To my understanding, the assignment of the labels 'male' and 'female' by a medical person, based on perception of genitals, is assignment of sex. My understanding is that the current usage of the terms sex and gender is that sex is about body, and gender is about internal experience. I know (as I said) that the assignment can be incorrect, and that is why the word 'assigned' is used (much like the word 'alleged' or 'claimed' in other contexts).
I am not saying AFAB is the same as sex. Rather, it is indicating that this is what your sex was assumed to be (and yes, different terms for babies who are seen to be intersex and a deliberate choice is made), in a medical environment where it's literally all about your genitals. So it would make more sense to talk about sex and assigned sex.
Or does gender now have this meaning in the trans communities you are in, in your country? Does it now mean the label on your birth certificate? I have not seen it used this way in any online communities, nor in person - and we had LGBTQIA+ training recently at work, which has links with the current organisations representing LGBTQIA+ people, and we were given quite a thorough run-through of terminology. So if this is a new meaning being used in some places, I'd be curious to see some links.
@fineline I don't think it's accurate to sharply divide between gender = internal experience and sex = bodily experiences, because bodies are intensely gendered by ours and this can be very clearly seen by using eg race as a lens here. Like, the way in which Black women are for eg seen as hypersexual and more masculine and as experiencing less physical pain than white women is an example of how different women are gendered differently based on their bodies. When white doctors are taught in med school that Black women have fewer pain receptors than white women, body vs internal experience is no longer a helpful metric by which to discuss sex and gender.
Also FWIW I'm in the UK, and different LGBTQ+ people have different preferences regarding terminology. There isn't an official list somewhere!
True, but there are lists made that are widely agreed upon, as well as discussions about terminology. For communication to work effectively, a significant number of people need to have a shared understanding of the meanings of the words they use, or at least to be having discussion to come to an agreement, or else everyone is talking at cross purposes.
I just haven't come across your particular use of 'gender' v 'gender identity' before, and so I was wondering if you'd made it up, based on how you think the words should be defined, or if there were circles and discussions where this terminology was actually being used. Because if I were to start using 'gender' according to your definition, I think it would cause quite a bit of confusion in a lot of trans circles.
Hi Pomona, it wasn't an accusation, as in I didn't think you were being deceitful or doing anything wrong. I simply couldn't tell from your wording if you were saying, (a) 'As a trans person, I personally think this wording would make more sense,' or (b) 'These terms do have different meanings now that are accepted and used by people in the trans community.'
Quite simply, I found your response to my asking for a link so vague that I was trying to work out what you were saying. Because, if it were (a), then of course it would cause confusion if I started using the terms this way.
You said earlier that "sex" refers to chromosome combination, despite the use of the word "sex" predating any knowledge of chromosomes. That seems to me implausible.
(I could go off on a lemma about Kripke's theory of rigid designators - nouns and names refer to the same essential substance in all possible worlds - and that it seems intuitive to neurodivergent people - it did to me when I first read Kripke - and why I now think it and similar less worked out theories of meaning must be wrong. But that's maybe a lemma too far.)
Wrt sex being chromosonal, we know that intersex people exist and that being intersex is sometimes only discovered at a chromosonal level. In previous times there wasn't the same knowledge of genetics and intersrx conditions, although most cultures have had representations of people who we might now call intersex. Intersex people are very literally neither male nor female in terms of sex, but that's not always obvious from external/visible sex characteristics. So therefore a chromosonal definition is more accurate even if it's less commonly used.
Also, catachresis, the application of a word as the closest available term to describe a situation that wasn't previously considered, is a thing. It results in polysemy. It doesn't render the previous usage inaccurate.
Chromosomes are - as you know - only one determinant of physical sexual characteristics. There are other factors at work in the developmental pathways. Picking out chromosomal arrangement as the "accurate" meaning of sex in isolation from the other stages in the developmental pathway seems to me arbitrary and unwarranted. And it doesn't seem to me that the kind of essentialism implied ever does anybody any favours in any other context.
I see some sites and studies where gender and sex are contrasted, in terms of inner sense of identity v. physical (including both chromosomes and genitalia).
Some where gender identity and gender are contrasted, in the same terms as above.
Some where gender identity, gender and sex are contrasted (gender being a third category about societal expectations, while sex is still physical, about both chromosomes and genitalia).
Pomona, I would find it helpful if you could give a link to where others say what you are saying here, as it isn't making practical sense to me, and isn't seeming helpful for trans people, but maybe if I saw it discussed by others in different words, it would make more sense, and would help me see that this is a wider discussion.
But it's a sex assigned based on guesswork by a midwife's glance at a baby's genitalia rather than karyotyping - and intersex babies are not able to be recorded as intersex, but must be recorded as male or female even when that's not true.
Aside from anything else, UK law doesn't differentiate between sex and gender - a trans person with a Gender Recognition Certificate gets a new birth certificate with their new sex.
But only because they were either determined to be intersex at birth and arbitrarily assigned as male or female (since in most places babies must be registered as either male or female even if they aren't) or discovered they were intersex later in life after settling into a gender identity. That's why some intersex people are also trans, if their actual gender is different to their assigned gender.
If they're assigned a sex, how can it be actually a sex? This is my point - if sex can be socially imposed like this it's not really accurate to think of it as biological sex when it's a social imposition. Surely that is a pretty textbook case of gender assignation...?
Societal expectations are in part based on that genitalia though. It doesn't mean the societal expectations are correct, but for eg giving baby girls pink things and baby boys blue things is literally just colour coding babies based on their genitalia.
I've never heard anyone ask what sex a baby is. Gender has become the usual word to use I think even though nobody can know what a newborn's actual gender identity is.
I'm a trans person and it's helpful for me, I don't see why it has to be useful for others or used in a wider discussion to be valid.
I'm not saying that genitalia is somehow not part of the physical body, but that genitalia isn’t necessarily indicative of sex. Genitals can be misleading but chromosones aren't. Aside from anything else, gender affirming genital surgery exists and there is no one set of genitals that exists for one particular sex. The idea that some intersex people aren't obviously intersex at birth isn't new.
There's nothing arbitrary about assigning female at birth to a person who has every external indication of being female, unless you want to say ALL assigning at birth is arbitrary. Chromosomally interesting women can go all their lives without knowing they're not XX. Many only find out when they're unable to conceive and the medical professionals start to investigate why and discover their ovaries are really testicular matter.
All assigning at birth IS arbitrary if one baby girl has testicles and one has ovaries. Which is of course not to say that intersex women aren't really women if they identify as women - Caster Semenya is for eg a cis intersex woman, and is no less of a woman because she's intersex. The point I'm making is that the concept of sex is as much of a social construct as gender is if two people of the same 'sex' are so wildly biologically different. 'Biological sex' isn't very biological if it's just based on guesswork.
I think that one of the tensions around gender identity in society, is that it’s purpose is changing,
It used to be that recognising someone’s gender through non-verbal cues allowed you to predict what they would be likely to be interested in, what roles they might take in society, sexual orientation and their role in reproduction. It had a social function, to act as a rule of thumb to facilitate social interaction.
It seems to be changing now to be a form of self-expression - to be more about an expression about how you feel internally than communicating this kind of information. One of the results of that, is the categories keep splitting, as people make more and more specific statements about themselves. (The same is true of sexual orientation to some extent.)
I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong with this, and social categories have always been mutable over time and place.
However, I think it explains some of the impetus behind the questions about how people know they are transgender etc. I think sometimes people are focused on these questions because their view of the function of gender is different from the people they are asking.
IME, the question usually asked is what sex, rather than what gender. Although I think I'd probably phrase it as "What did they get?" to which the answer would be either boy or girl. But "what gender is the baby?" rather than "what sex is the baby?" sounds weird to me, though perhaps I'm old and out of touch.
Or probably even more commonly here, the question is "Did they get a girl or a boy". There may be some who ask "What sex is the baby", but no-one would ask "What gender is the baby". I don't think you're old and out of touch.
Originally posted by Doublethink:
Also, it’s worth pointing out that parents will have to respond to the child some way - choose clothes, toys, paint rooms etc.
When we had our first, we hoped he would subsequently be joined by a couple of siblings, and so we aimed to buy clothes, toys etc which could be passed down. We painted the room pale green with green curtains with an animal print - elephants / lions / hippos IIRC and a matching animal frieze round the wall.
I don't recall it being too difficult to buy clothes for a baby boy / toddler with the view of a potential younger sister wearing them in turn. Plus, our son wore some hand-me-downs from his female cousin.
Nowadays I think it would be much harder. Clothes seem to be sharply divided between blue and pink, with trucks etc on the "boy" clothes and unicorns and sparkles on the "girl" clothes. Even things like wellie-boots which are eminently pass-downable, and used to come in primary colours or black seem to be pink or blue now.
The root etymology of the word "sex" is the genitals, from which it became extended to reproductive function generally. Chromosomes are one factor in reproductive function and have a causal effect on genitals and secondary sexual characteristics. But they're only one causal factor. There is no good reason to say that they're what the word "sex" really refers to. Chromosomes are only of interest in so far as they affect the things we are interested in. We don't have a special word for any other pair of chromosomes.
If a woman has XY chromosomes but the Y chromosome is completely inactive to the point that she is able to conceive and bear children (according to Wikipedia this can happen) then it makes no sense to describe her sex as male. In the context of talking about intersex people and possible fertility you might talk about her as intersex. In most contexts her sex is female.
All concepts are constructed by humans. We don't believe there are Platonic Forms that determine what concepts we ought to have. The concepts we have are determined by the use we have for them. Concepts are socially constructed, but their application to reality is determined by what they're applied to.
The question isn't whether the two women in question are biologically different in some ways, but whether they're similar enough biologically in the ways the word "sex" is used to describe.
Monotremes lay eggs. That's wildly different from placental mammals. Taxonomists could have erected a new Class for them in the way they erected a new Order for tuataras. But it was decided that producing milk made momotremes similar enough to count them as mammals.
We need concepts because the world has more phenomena than we can handle without generalising. Applying a concept says (correctly or incorrectly) that an entity is sufficiently similar to a paradigm example to be handled in the same way for a particular purpose. Because there are more entities and phenomena than concepts sometimes we come across phenomena that don't fit any paradigm example well. Then we have to either come up with a new concept or extend one of the concepts we've already got. In the latter case, we have ways of clarifying that this new specimen is not a typical case and is far from the paradigm in some respects.
In the case of sex it seems to me that we started with two concepts based on two paradigms and then adjust those concepts or introduce a third concept of intersex for people who don't fit those paradigms in one way or another depending on why we think that particular conceptual framework is relevant.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard “What gender is the baby?”
The usual here is "A girl or a boy?" Nothing as formal as "What gender is the baby?"
My first question is usually “How is everyone?,” meaning baby and mom. My second question is usually “What’s the baby’s name?,” which often (but not always, of course) makes asking “girl or boy?” unnecessary.
Hmm... I'm finding myself increasingly confused by your logic, Pomona. I didn't say it had to be useful for others or more widely used. I was initially asking if it was more widely used, or if it was a definition/distinction you made up because it was personally useful to you. I was asking because it would be useful for me, also a trans person, in wider trans conversations. It doesn't have to be useful to me, of course. However, if it is a more widely used term, then it would be, and I would find it helpful to read more about it.
Your reply to that previous question I asked, where you seemed quite indignant that I asked if you were making it up, led me to believe it was a more widely used definition, and so, because I assume you do a lot of reading around this, I asked for some links.
Is what I'm saying making sense to you? Are you now saying this is your personal definition, which you are exploring here? Or simply that it's more widely known but you don't want to give links (which of course you are not obliged to do)?
I'm confused because normally in a trans/non-binary group, if someone said something I was unfamiliar with, I would ask about it and they might give me some links, sharing resources, etc., in a friendly way, and I would do the same with them. There is no ulterior motive. If you don't want to, you can simply say you don't want to. If you still don't understand what I am saying, it seems best to discontinue talking to each other, because I find it exhausting when people continually argue with things I didn't say, and I don't want any more of that.
But therein lies a problem, because we're talking about controlling the narrative around sex/gender - and that narrative applies to everyone.
With many EDI* issues the principle of a minority deciding what they should be called has no impact on anyone else: if Welsh people decide they should be called Cymraeg it makes no difference to whether French people are still French or English people are still English. But with transgender what's being changed is the very meaning of man/male and woman/female. That change of meaning perforce changes what everyone else calls themselves as well, which to me means it's not something that can or should be left entirely to the minority to define.
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*= Equality, Diversity and Inclusion
Actually, I can't see how it does. I am male and a man and I can't see how trans input on those changes that.
Similarly the idea of gender - of the perception of the self as occupying a particular place on the male/female bandwidth doesn't, ISTM, displace anyone else's. I am Unfeminine Female, different to Maternal Female - actually maybe you could model it after gaming alignments? Or think in terms of Male-ness or Female-ness rather than two utterly distinct categories.
It changes what the words "male" and "man" mean, and therefore changes that meaning for everybody.
SSM was unarguably a change to the concept of marriage, from being between a man and a woman to being between two individuals regardless of their sex/gender.
It changes the whole fundamental basis by which that "bandwidth" is defined.
As you brought up gaming alignments, ISTM that this whole thing is more like saying Lawful doesn't have to require any particular set of actions or adherence to laws at all, and anyone can be Lawful as long as they identify as such, regardless of what they actually do. I'm sure any gamer can quickly see how that would in fact render the concepts of "Lawful" and "Chaotic" utterly meaningless, and would make the whole alignment system useless as it wouldn't tell you anything about how the character can be expected to act in any given situation.
Whereas I would say it just challenges your belief that you perception of male/man is the same for everyone. Was it ever? I'm reminded of an incident somewhere in the early history of colonial India when some captured British soldiers were dressed as dancing girls, because they were clean-shaven. Lacking beards they clearly could not be men.
You and I are about as affected by this as we are over debates as to whether Scots is a separate language or a dialect of English. It doesn't change the form of the language we speak or its name. We remain English speakers.
It does affect Scots speakers, because it questions whether they are speaking English or not.
Similarly, questions about the periphery of what "man" encompasses affects those deemed to be on that periphery, not those of us bang in the middle.
Your thinking on this is painfully binary.
I think it more akin to having thought “lawful” meant adherent to the laws of of the Swordcoast, and then realising it can coherently mean adherent to any rule code.
OK, but if someone started posting here in Scots I'm pretty sure they'd be told to knock it off as this is an English-language site and lots of people can't understand them. I'm also 100% certain that anyone complaining about not being able to understand it wouldn't be told that they're a prejudiced bigot because the person posting it defines it as English and therefore it is, and any lack of understanding is entirely the fault of the reader.
I'm no longer sure that there is a single characteristic or criterion that can be used to define "man" other than each individual's self-identification.
Assuming you are, as @KarlLB put it, “a male and a man,” I’d say you might have a point if you could show that the end result of this discussion in culture is likely to be that you can no longer accurately identify as “a male and a man.”
But you haven’t shown that or even attempted to.
Meanwhile, what @mousethief said.
What does it even mean to "accurately identify as" something when that something has no definition against which to measure said accuracy?
I seriously doubt that the end result will be that you and I are no longer male and men. And you haven’t shown how it affects you or lessens your maleness or your man-ness if someone else whom you or others might not have thought of as male or a man is now thought of that way.