Male & Female both opposites

[kristoff]

One of the things that seems patently clear in reading a number of responses here is that altogether too many equate plumbing with gender. Obviously we have penis people, vagina people, and various combinations or variations between. These are physical characteristics, just like your nose, eyes, or whatever. They do not equate with gender. They do not equate with identity. They may influence these things but they are not the same thing. Thank you Jesus for an excellent response.

[thefraj (imported)]

What did bother me a bit was your statement regarding transsexuals...

Erica,

Of course you are female, and always have been. I'm sure that - as you think back to your childhood - you probably recognize how you were very different to the boys as you were growing up. Little things - at the time - I'm sure became bigger things at puberty. Roles, expected behaviour, dress and body. How it would have felt as though you were being forced into a role that you did not feel comfortable in. I understand these things, because we are not all that different as you seem to think.

And yet - on the surface - you are still nothing more than a castrated male who dresses in womens clothes.

But this second paragraph overlooks you as a person and your rights as a human being. It does nothing to take into account your inner feelings, beliefs and true identity. But above all, when that identity does not match the reality, it can really hurt to be reminded of that identity discrepancy. As I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. We are not all that different.

Everyone is entitled to an opinion, even when that opinion actually harms others. And it can be good to be mindful of how we express them. And what was said yesterday about a eunuch just "being a castrated male", and there being no such thing as 'third gender' catagory (whatever you call it) - for me - was a malign statement akin to the second paragraph of this post, which undermined my right to an identity. It dehumanized, and caused a greater reaction after another member in this thread previously chose to compare me to a dog.

We are not all that different. To this day, I've never been able to use a urinal. Hehe, funny isn't it? I've never been able to stand. Even at home. Even alone. In the past it's caused some real problems. I'd never felt comfortable growing a beard. Even though my ex-girlfriend once asked me to. At school, I hated football, rugby and other rough contact sports. I remember at 9, asking a teacher to let me play netball with the girls, instead of football with the boys. I've always had effeminate body language, always been softly spoken. Always used to get gold stars for poetry and writing, as opposed to math. In the school yard I used to enjoy some toys and activities that usually only girls would enjoy. I remember learning how to make daisy-chains, I remember collecting toys that were not primarily aimed at boys.

It's a complex issue, because there are a myriad of reasons why people in this community want to be castrated. And I only ask for the same kind of understanding I would extend others on this issue. Some here will see themselves as fully male without balls. That's fine too

But for me, I am quite simply not entirely male and not entirely female. I don't give a flying fuck what other people think. They can insult me, use demeaning language and enliken me to a beast. I know myself, and I am strong. And I am not asking to be accepted as someone who is 'neither male nor female'. I am telling you how I feel. Whether you choose to believe it or not is up to you. Just as some people will not believe Erica is really a woman. People are entitled to their opinions, even when they are harmful.

[SethRose (imported)]

I think we all, if we are honest with ourselves, struggle with gender and sexual identity at some point in our lives. In my experience it is a healthy, though at times soul crushing and heart-breaking, reaction to a mind trying to understand its place in the universe and finding the pigeon holes available lacking. It will be no less of a heart-break to keep in mind that this shows that whatever your place you are not a slave to conformity, but it is worth remembering.

I always opted for the middle ground, professing myself as bisexual, or androgynous, but honestly even this is a limited pigeon hole that does not describe me. As Jesus points out very eloquently; we are restricting ourselves if we assign any dimension as our own or only.

The dangers of such personal bondage did not become evident to me until I took an interest in American politics. If I am in a room with a dozen other people and claim that I am a Democrat, half of the room will think I’m a hippy and have a pungent odor. If I profess that I am a Republican, the other half of the room will think I am a greedy bastard. If I claim to be a 3rd party then all of the room will think that I am naïve. So what do I care what any of them think of me? Then by the same token, why would I care to align myself with any of them?

I hope that anyone here still reading this far into the thread and questioning their identity considers the possibility that they should just stop and smell the flowers. Don’t let CNN tell you who you are. Don’t let your church tell you who you are not. Simply mastering a personal sense of self against media saturation alone can be rewarding and bring happiness to just being.

Failing that, I learned this trick from a Buddhist: Take a deep breath, and smile. Feel how good that feels. If you like it just keep breathing and smiling; the rest of life’s quandaries won’t disappear but you’ll see them in a new perspective and how insignificant many of them are. I know sexual identity feels like such a fundamentally important detail to wrestle with, believe me I do, but give this breathing and smiling thing a go in between bouts.

[Toni (imported)]

Instead of "male" and "female" there should be lots of words to cover everyones gender / sexual orientation. A bit like the Eskimos having lots of words for snow. Lesfenach? Lesbian Female Eunach (that's me)? I never was good at English. Maybe someone could come up with more original words?

[Eunuchist (imported)]

Navajo, for example, lumps humans into SEVEN different categories of sex and gender, compared to our two. Everyone has to be put into one of the seven.

I've heard something similar from one of my internet friends last year, although it was only briefly mentioned and I didn't put much thought to it. He claimed that certain "redskin" tribes had specialized definitions of transgender individuals, including eunuchs/transvestites who played important gender roles in these tribes. I wonder if that were the Navajos, then? (also is there any evidence of castration usage among the Indians?)

Roughgarden discusses animal species that have multiple genders. She gives ample evidence of the reproductive advantages that multiple genders can provide to the survival of a species. The final section of her book discusses the multiple genders of humans.

I was always fascinated by this fact, ever since my first discovery as a child that those cute little bee workers were actually sterile asexuals. The whole bee colony, for instance, is comprised of 99,9% hardworking "eunuchs", one or two sexually mature queens, and a handful of winged males (wich briefly constitute about 10% of the populace during summer). All of the social insects practice (some would say evolutionary progress toward) eusociality, wich in nature is usually a sign of a higher degree of organisation and intelligence. Among mammals the naked mole rat is the only extreme natural example, wich unlike insects also count sterile males, although historical human soceities in a sense progressed to a similar level of eusociality by the use of eunuchs (artificially). Although I did not read her book, it makes me wonder whether Roughgarden ever mentioned Byzantium and ancient China as passable examples?

[SethRose (imported)]

I can't say I've ever before shared your fascination, Eunuchist, but I have now. I've spent this morning reading up on eusociality. I am particularly impressed by kin selection. This is some of the most revealing information I've ever encountered. I feel as though a huge veil I didn't even know I was wearing has been lifted from my eyes. My mind races with all of the wonder here. How much would this information shape and change the nature of our philosophy and direction of our social sciences? Would Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. have had insights to evoke a greater kinship between Americans of all ethnicities? What would be different in Nietzsche’s writing if he had known? This last will vex me endlessly, I am certain.

This meshes well with my own observations on homosexuality in modern cultures versus historical norms. Much of the current, and thankfully declining, discussion on homosexuality today can be dismissed as problems stemming from asserting personal rights against fundamentalist moral authority. It became necessary to identify as homosexual to push for a change in cultural values and perceptions. Unfortunately homosexuality became an identification rather than a behavior, which confuses the issue and has its own set of complications. I’m as guilty of this as Neil Patrick Harris and Lance Bass. Now I see in kin selection a natural precursor to the behavior of homosexuality, which brings us back to the original discussion of this thread on identity.

As we have evolved into vastly more complicated creatures, we have also evolved vastly more complicated societies. We push and push against nature and evolution on a daily basis in our arrogant pursuits; which is by necessity how nature and evolution have shaped us to behave. We are now greater than natural selection through our medicine and compassion, but that doesn't mean we are immune to it yet. We find ourselves at a cross-road of human evolution where we have not fully taken it upon ourselves to assume complete authority in this manner, and so we have nature introducing "abnormalities" to us, which nature feels are necessities for us. There is a crisis of resources and lack of population control in our world. China recently released an assertion that by 2050, if the population is not controlled, there will be so many people it will take 2 Earths to provide the resources necessary to sustain us all. For now, though, we are still in evolution’s embrace and we are under her guidance as much as our own. She provides us alternatives to this calamity in the form of many different types of behavior that we may engage in instead of brainlessly breeding ourselves into famine.

Those that find themselves wishing to engage in non-breeding activities that insist on identifying with an English word should more appropriately identify with “hero” than “gay” or “eunuch”.

(Note all uses of Nature as a “She” and other anthropomorphism are for brevity, and are not meant to imply any extra-corporeal intelligence at play. The feminine pronoun refers to rather the delicate dance that nature has been up to for the last 16 Billion years, which would require Shakespearean sonnets to accurately express and are beyond the scope of this post.)