Hi folks,

I was curious about how many of you might be interested in what I tend to think of as gender "curving" rather than a 1 or 0 gender switch. For example, the masculine male who becomes a fem boy (or vice versa, the fem woman who becomes more masculine).

I've always been fascinated with this sort of thing, and don't know how many others think about it. A lot of the appeal for me is the middle ground between the two extremes.

-J

Think you are talking about feminization of a male. Emasculation of a female

There is an area that is between the two sexes. You may be thinking along the line what many call asexual. Not being of either sex. Sort of in the middle. There is many different descriptions on just what asexual is.

Another term you may like is to have a sex of androgynous. That is having no out word appearance of being male or female. Gender neutral.

Sort of, yes. Although at least to me "asexual" or "neutral" imply "sexless". A male can be made less masculine, but not necessarily feminine, just as a female can be made less feminine, but not necessarily masculine... But I think it is possible to move between masculine and feminine without being neutral, because the two sides are not really opposites. So I guess it's hard to define exact terminology.

Bobbie said, "

bobbie (imported) wrote: Sat May 31, 2008 9:27 am Think you are talking about feminization of a male. Emasculation of a female.

"

I think the word you are looking for is masculinization --the abnormal development of male sexual characteristics in a female (usually as the result of hormone therapies or adrenal malfunction.)

Emasculation is a synonym on castration which is hard to do to a genetic female.

But there is a definite point here. Masculine - Feminine is not a one dimensional scale passing through a point of zero or asexual. It is more a two dimensional graph with one axis masculine - feminine and the other non sexual - highly sexual. Thus a lot of gender benders are not asexual but bi gendered. A great many people find shemales highly sexual.

Transward

...

italmusclebtm (imported) wrote: Sat May 31, 2008 10:16 am to me "asexual" or "neutral" imply "sexless".

Epicene is an adjective which refers to a person or thing which has characteristics of both sexes, or no characteristics of either sex, or is of indeterminate sex.

italmusclebtm (imported) wrote: Sat May 31, 2008 8:45 am I was curious about how many of you might be interested in what I tend to think of as gender "curving" rather than a 1 or 0 gender switch.

Sex and gender are VASTLY more complex than a simple either/or, 1 or 0. There are many different factors involved, some of them scalar, rather than polar.

One of the critical times in any person's life is that moment when the doctor or nurse makes a quick observation of the external plumbing and proclaims, "It's a boy!" or "It's a girl!" or "It's a a a ....." The "Prader Scale" was developed to help describe those who don't fit either of the polar categories.

If it's not the external plumbing, we can, at least, use the chromosomes, can't we? There's XX and XY, except for those who are XXY, XYY, XO, etc.

The internal plumbing need not match the external plumbing, as in those with Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, for example.

This is before we even get to the complexity of what's inside the head.

My first (and only) professor of human sexuality, Bernie Goldstein, said that he had isolated TWENTY-SIX independent scales on which human sex and gender could be measured. If there are only two polar points on each scale, that would give Two to the twenty-sixth power possible human variations of sex and gender. That gives us over 33 MILLION different human sex and gender combinations.

If there are THREE possibilities on each scale, there are more possible variations than humans who have ever lived!

Most of the scales have more than three possible variants. Each human being's combination of sex and gender is as unique as his or her fingerprints.

It's definitely NOT a simple male or female....