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Jestful Statement - 016 - HD
🕑 Added 2022-01-01 04:01:08 +0000 UTCOh noes! Unless...
Commentary
But what if it DID work that way?
A lot of an anime stories would be a lot simpler and have less conflict, that's what.
Picking up from the last comic...
In the previous comic, Ellen brought up societal gender norms.
These norms are an artificial construct, as evidenced by how much they can differ between societies, and how people of any given gender can be completely contrary to those societal gender norms.
It is, however, a mistake to equate societal gender norms with personal gender identity.
It is an understandable mistake, given how much emphasis we can put on those norms. It is arguably by design that such norms can be seen as defining gender.
Gender identity, however, is something more innate to a person, and is separate from those societal norms.
One's gender identity has nothing to do with fashion, who is expected to be in the kitchen, or whatever else someone somewhere has decided on for gender norms in a given society.
Something that is potentially confusing is that people will often express their sense of gender identity in ways that overlap with these gender norms.
Someone who identifies as a woman might, for example, prefer dresses and skirts. Dresses and skirts are not why they identify as a woman, but as someone who grew up in our society, and identifies as a woman, they might want to wear dresses and skirts.
Or they could just as easily think dresses and skirts are neat in general, and that everyone should wear them if they want to.
My point is that the expression of one's gender identity may include gender norms, but those gender norms are not what defines their gender identity.
Honestly, I'm not trying to be harsh on anyone who finds this confusing. This is stuff I've been sorting through my entire life, and prior to writing this, I still needed to carefully sort through my thoughts on it.
If this sounds confusing, it's because it is.
Bottom line, however, is simply that societal gender norms are separate from gender identity.
Comments
Doomed
Please let Santa Ellen and Santa Nanase Hug Elf Grace for Christmas.
John Weiss
Many of the Original Nations of North America had __3__ or __4__ __genders.__ The additional gender(s) were for, basically, anyone who didn't fit in the usual two cisgender categories. Almost always, it was just one additional gender, and it was AMAB who were not cis and/or not hetero who ended up in that gender. The Hopi Nation, the Navajo Nation, the Zuni, the Lakota … those are the ones with a "category-3" that I can remember off of the top of my head. There are more. But here's the thing: This 3rd-gender is a __catch-all__ gender category. Are you what we would call a trans woman or aa AMAB nonbinary person? You're in this 3rd-gender. Intersex? You're also 3rd-gender. Gay man? In ya go. Masc-gay-man? Too bad, you're in the 3rd-gender, doesn't matter that you're butch. [That last one actually varied from culture-to-culture. If you were a Kinsey-6, no interest in women but also no interest in anything feminine whatsoever, then in some of those Nations, you'd still be "male".] Like all things human, it's simultaneously a simplification, and full of complexities. 😃 Every culture around the planet, throughout history, has come up with ways to deal with people who aren't born, "with the default settings." In the Mediterranean and northward into Europe, we almost always killed those people. In Sumeria [4000-5000 years ago], and in pre-contact North America, there were additional social categories and roles created for them.
Daryl Sawyer
It's also important to make a distinction between "gender" and "sex". It is an unfortunately difficult distinction to make, due to the unfortunate tendency among English speakers (it seems endemic to the language, itself) to use euphemisms for euphemisms for euphemisms for euphemisms for the act of sexual reproduction... and this pursuit of euphemisms has lead us to use the word "gender" where we actually mean... a lot of different things, including "sex". I once had an English teacher correct me when I used the word "gender" as a euphemism for "sex" in her hearing, "Words have gender; people have sex". Now I think that was technically correct, but while it wasn't correct for the reason she meant, her reason was *also* correct. Gender can refer to a linguistic concept. Gender can also refer to a social construct. But I do not believe it is ever correct to use the word "gender" to refer to one's biological function in sexual reproduction. That is "sex". If we weren't constantly playing the euphemism conga, if we were able to look our biological functions square on and deal with them like intelligent beings, there would be no need for awkward constructions like "birth-assignment gender". We wouldn't use the word "gender" for that, at all. Rather than weird constructs using the word "trans", we would simply say that someone is a male woman, or a female man (for something other than a stupid-yet-hilarious pun regarding lady mail carriers). There could be (and are, I believe) a great many more than two genders, but with that, we can still acknowledge that the vast majority of people can be discretely sorted into two sexes (the vast majority, because intersexuality is a thing... a thing that tends to suffer erasure at the hands of the LGBTQ alphabet soup).
Elana
So the fish are to blame. Lets make a protest march against the oppression by fish :P
John Trauger
The law of unintended consequences, Grace... :)
Prof Sai
SOME gender norms are artificial constructs. But others are based on the reality that hermaphroditic reproduction is suboptimal, even for microbes. You have to start with understanding _that_ reality before moving up to how gender works in mammals and humans. There is some really screwy ideas going around where people try to blame "society" (in other words, men) for stuff that the earliest fish did.
IvyReed
If grace had access to a genie, it would have to confiscated to prevent an "everyone hugs and cuddles all the time" apocalypse.
