From e8157376182081845d007a4ebc7232c2f0a7efbe Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: "Jocelyn Badgley (Twipped)" Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2021 19:22:26 -0700 Subject: [PATCH] Enhancing the What is Gender sections --- public/gdb/history.md | 2 +- public/gdb/what-is-gender.md | 66 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++------- 2 files changed, 54 insertions(+), 14 deletions(-) diff --git a/public/gdb/history.md b/public/gdb/history.md index 63168e9..db2510f 100644 --- a/public/gdb/history.md +++ b/public/gdb/history.md @@ -72,7 +72,7 @@ Gender Dysphoria is, at its core, simply emotional reactions to the brain knowin Cisgender people receive them as well, but since the signals usually align with their environment, they take them for granted. There have been a few notable occasions, however, when a cisgender person has been [put into a situation](https://www.teenvogue.com/story/maisie-williams-arya-stark-game-of-thrones-affected-her-body-image) where they experience gender dysphoria. Attempts to raise cisgender children [as the opposite sex](https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/12/us/david-reimer-38-subject-of-the-john-joan-case.html) (Content warning: suicide) have always met with failure when the child inevitably declares themselves differently. -These impulses of euphoria and dysphoria, arousal and aversion, they all manifest in many different ways, some obvious, some much more subtle. Dysphoria changes over time as well, taking on new shapes as one moves from pre-awareness into understanding and through transition. The goal of this essay is to break down these manifestations into their distinct categories and describe them so that others may learn to recognize them. This is a very lengthy essay, so I have separated it into multiple pages. +These impulses of euphoria and dysphoria, arousal and aversion, they all manifest in many different ways, some obvious, some much more subtle. Dysphoria changes over time as well, taking on new shapes as one moves from pre-awareness into understanding and through transition. The goal of this book is to break down these manifestations into their distinct categories and describe them so that others may learn to recognize them. However, first I must stress something very important, so important that I am putting it into big bold letters: diff --git a/public/gdb/what-is-gender.md b/public/gdb/what-is-gender.md index ae09b66..058512a 100644 --- a/public/gdb/what-is-gender.md +++ b/public/gdb/what-is-gender.md @@ -16,9 +16,14 @@ tweets: # What is Gender? -{!{
{{import '~/tweet' ids=[ - '1228717614630940672' -] tweets=meta.tweets className="hide-reply" }}
}!} +{!{ +
+
+ Gen·der - Noun
+ The range of characteristics pertaining to, and differentiating between, femininity and masculinity. Depending on the context, these characteristics may include biological sex, sex-based social structures (i.e., gender roles), or gender identity (the personal sense of one's own gender). +
+
+}!} If you trace the etymology of the word to its Latin roots, gender simply means "type". The Norman French term **gendre** was in use in the 12th century to describe "the quality of being male or female." @@ -28,11 +33,19 @@ Many people attribute the term to psychologist John Money, who proposed using "g > > Margaret Mead moves from the specific delineation to the more general comparison of male and female in several communities, finally coming to an analysis of sex-patterns in our own midst and for our own time. +{!{ +
+ {{import '~/tweet' ids=[ + '1228717614630940672' + ] tweets=meta.tweets className="hide-reply" }} +
+}!} + Human Sex (the adjective, not the verb) is broken down into three categories: -- **Genotype**: The genetically defined chromosomal kareotype of an organism (XX, XY, [and all variants there of](https://twitter.com/sciencevet2/status/1035250518870900737?lang=en)) -- **Phenotype**: The observable primary and secondary sexual characteristics (genitals, fat and muscle distribution, bone structure, etc) -- **Gender**: The internal mental model of a person's own sex. +- **[Genotype](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genotype)**: The genetically defined chromosomal kareotype of an organism (XX, XY, [and all variants there of](https://twitter.com/sciencevet2/status/1035250518870900737?lang=en)) +- **[Phenotype](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenotype)**: The observable primary and secondary sexual characteristics (genitals, fat and muscle distribution, bone structure, etc) +- **[Gender](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender)**: The **un**observable sexual characteristics, the internal mental model of a person's own sex and the way that they express it. Any of these three aspects can fall into a position on a range of values. Your elementary school health class probably taught you that Genotype is binary, either Female (XX) or Male (XY), when the reality is that there are a dozen other permutations that can occur within human beings. @@ -43,10 +56,20 @@ Likewise, many people believe that Phenotype is also binary, but biology has rec Gender, however, is a lot more... esoteric. There are a lot of different ways that people have attempted to illustrate the gender spectrum, but none have quite thoroughly captured it, because the spectrum is itself a very abstract concept. {!{ -
-{{import '~/img' images.spectrum className="" link="https://bahamutzero.tumblr.com/post/56838411871/gender-a-visual-guide-when-most-people-think-of" style="margin-bottom: 5px"}} -{{import '~/img' images.graph className="" style="margin-bottom: 5px"}} -{{import '~/img' images.gender_unicorn className="" link="http://www.transstudent.org/gender" style="margin-bottom: 5px"}} +
+
+
Some of the methods used to describe gender
+
+ {{import '~/img' images.spectrum }} + {{import '~/img' images.graph }} + {{import '~/img' images.gender_unicorn className="" }} +
+
+ Sources: + [Tumblr] + [TransStudent.org] +
+
}!} @@ -58,12 +81,29 @@ Present evidence seems to suggest that a person's gender is established during g Gender also affects the expectations that the brain has for the environment it resides in (your body), and when that environment does not meet those expectations, the brain sends up warning alarms in the form of depression, depersonalization, derealization, and dissociation. These are the brain's subconscious ways of informing us that something is very wrong. -On the social side, gender involves presentation, how we communicate, what our expectations are from life, and the roles that we fulfill as we walk through life. These are all cultural factors, things which have developed within the population over time, but regardless of being essentially "made up", they are still connected to a gender identity. A person tends to connect to the social aspects of their internal gender, without even realizing they are doing it, and when they are denied access to those social aspects, this results in discomfort with their social position in life. +{!{ +
+ Hab·i·tus - Noun
+ Socially ingrained habits, skills, and dispositions. The way a person perceives and reacts to the world. +
+}!} + +On the social side, gender involves our [habitus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitus_(sociology)): our presentation, our mannerisms and behaviors, how we communicate, how we react, what our expectations are from life, and the roles that we fulfill as we walk through life. The author Susan Stryker described habitus it in her book [Transgender History](https://smile.amazon.com/Transgender-History-second-Todays-Revolution/dp/158005689X): + +> A lot of habitus involves manipulating our secondary sex characteristics to communicate to others our own sense of who we feel we are---whether we sway our hips, talk with our hands, bulk up at the gym, grow out our hair, wearclothing with a neckline that emphasizes our cleavage, shave our armpits, allow stubble to be visible on our faces, or speak with a rising or falling inflection at the end of sentences. Often these ways of moving and styling have become so internalize that we think of them as natural even though---given that they are all things we've learned through observation and practice---they can be better understood as culturally acquired "second nature." + +Indeed, these are all cultural factors; things which have developed within the population over time. Regardless of being essentially "made up", they are still strongly gendered and a person tends to connect to the gendered habitus of their internal self, without even realizing they are doing it. When we are denied access to those social aspects, this results in discomfort with one's social position in life. John Money's experiments attempted to confirm his belief that gender is entirely a social construct, and that any child can be raised to believe themselves to be whatever they were taught to be. His experiment was a massive failure (see the Biochemical Dysphoria section). Gender does not change, every human is the same gender at 40 that they were at 4. What changes is our own personal understanding of our gender as we mature as individuals. These negative symptoms (depression, derealization, social discomfort) are the symptoms of Gender Dysphoria. -What **Gender is *not*** is sexual orientation. We describe orientation using terms relative to one's gender (homosexual/heterosexual/bisexual), but gender itself does not affect sexuality and sexuality has no role in gender. +What **Gender is *not*** is sexual orientation. We describe orientation using terms relative to one's gender (homosexual/heterosexual/bisexual, etc), but gender itself does not affect sexuality and sexuality has no role in gender. -In generalist terms this essay will be describing gender in a sense of binary identities (male/female) vs non-binary identities (agender, bigender, genderqueer, etc), but this is purely for the sake of writing simplicity. Please know that the depth of gender experience and expression is far, far more complicated than this simple breakdown. +## What does it mean to be Non-Binary? + +Non-Binary can basically be simplified as a lack of exclusive affinity to Male or Female. This may be a lack of affinity to either identity ([agender](https://gender.wikia.org/wiki/Agender)), a total affinity to both ([bi-gender](https://gender.wikia.org/wiki/Bigender)/), a balanced affinity to both (androgyne), an affinity that changes from day to day ([genderfluid](https://gender.wikia.org/wiki/Genderfluid)), a partial affinity ([demigender](https://gender.wikia.org/wiki/Demigender)), or even an affinity to the entire gender spectrum at once ([pangender](https://gender.wikia.org/wiki/Pangender)). + +It could be an affinity to some aspects of a gender but not others. For example, a [demigirl](https://gender.wikia.org/wiki/Demigirl) could be someone assigned female at birth who only feels a partial connection to womanhood and femininity, or may be a male-assigned individual who is taking hormone therapy to relieve physical dysphoria, and has a female phenotype, but does not experience a strong connection to the social aspects of womanhood. + +In generalist terms this book will be describing gender in a sense of binary identities (male/female) vs non-binary identities, but this is purely for the sake of writing simplicity. Please know that the depth of gender experience and expression is far, far more complicated than this simple breakdown.