this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2023
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Gender isn't real: it's just an idea (sopuli.xyz)
submitted 11 months ago by hellfire103@sopuli.xyz to c/lgbtq_plus@beehaw.org
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cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/6893359

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[–] t3rmit3@beehaw.org 31 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

Literally everything is just a concept humanity made up, informed by our very specific and limited abilities of perception.

Even numbers are represented differently in different languages, and different cultures teach different methods of interacting with them, and aliens could have completely different paradigms for interpreting physical reality than us altogether.

Anyone who tries to make claims about something being a universal or scientific "Truth-with-a-capital-T" that transcends human definitions is pushing an agenda.

[–] Anamana@feddit.de 18 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Absolutist claims about universal truths aren't always driven by personal agendas. In mathematics or some scientific fields, certain truths are universally accepted based on evidence and testing. These truths aren't necessarily rooted in personal biases but rather in the pursuit of understanding the world objectively. So while one has to be careful, not all claims of universal truth or objectivism stem from an agenda.

[–] t3rmit3@beehaw.org 15 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Science is a human paradigm for interpreting the universe. Certain scientific truths are accepted by humans, at this time, which constitutes a very small part of the universe.

I'm not saying none of the accepted scientific principles may be correct (and I'm certainly not saying they should be discounted by humans, since after all, it's our own paradigm), I'm just saying that they are only coming from a very small and narrow ability to interact with the universe. If they are universally true, it's not because we exhausted all other possibilities; we literally don't have the means to say we've examined anything in all possible ways that can exist in the universe. We can't know what we don't know, after all.

I do think that saying we have achieved anything that qualifies as definitive, objective Truth, beyond the limited realm of human perception and experience, is not true. Nothing within science is universally, unquestionably settled.

For humans? With the instruments and models we have now? Sure, absolutely.

But once again, that's very narrow.

As a little aside:

These truths aren’t necessarily rooted in personal biases but rather in the pursuit of understanding the world objectively.

That is also an agenda. Agenda doesn't mean something nefarious, it just means an ideologically-driven plan. Wanting to understand the universe better within a certain paradigm (i.e. science) is an agenda.

[–] peppersnail@beehaw.org 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

What about the fine structure constant? :P

[–] lolcatnip@reddthat.com 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Or pi, for a more well known example that falls out of pure math rather than having to be measured. But I guess OP will say circles are a social construct, too.

[–] Kwakigra@beehaw.org 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Do circles exist independently of humans who can perceive them? My instinct tells me yes of course but my instinct also interprets with my human brain some outside stimulus as a "circle," so I'm biased along with probably most other human brains. The nature of objective truth gets trippy.

[–] jarfil@beehaw.org 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Round Earth, confirmed to be a social construct 😆

[–] Kwakigra@beehaw.org 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The basic weirdness is that we can't experience objective reality as due to the nature of our minds we can only possibly subjectively experience it interpreted by our senses and sense-making. Although even the ancients could prove the curvature of the Earth by measuring shadows at the same time in places separated by enough distance, a person born blind would have to trust the sighted that shadows exist for example. Since we are aware of some phenomena we can't observe without the use of specialized tools and some branches of science diverge significantly from what's intuitive to us, It's very likely that there are some elements of objective reality (if it exists) which we couldn't possibly observe or comprehend. I know all that sounds like star-gazing bs which is completely irrelevant, and in almost all circumstances it is, but approaching facts as most likely to be true given the evidence rather than certainly true can reveal ways of thinking which could be more useful than our current paradigms. Although unlikely in my opinion, it's possible that in a few centuries the circle may be considered similarly to how the four elements are considered today. I personally can't imagine how that could be possible, but I'm just some random person in 2023. I see the circle and describe it as a circle because that's what I know, and what I know is loaded with context and limitations.

[–] jarfil@beehaw.org 3 points 11 months ago

Yeah, it sounds kind of weird, but you are right of course. We got an example of that in "atoms": originally they were supposed to mean "indivisible minimal components", and for a long time the 4 elements were supposed to be types of atoms... until we discovered that atoms can be divided into even smaller particles (electrons, protons, neutrons), and those particles in turn into even smaller ones yet (quarks), then we had to come with the word "quanta" to mean the new "indivisible minimal component" since "atom" got entrenched to mean "a clump with this number of protons" which nonetheless could vary in the number of neutrons (isotopes) and electrons (ions).

On the bright side, the "quanta" are now a moving target, applicable to "whatever we don't know how to divide any further"... but we might learn how to in the future.

the circle

IMHO, it is likely going to get explained at some point in the future why the circle is a circle, and why pi has the value we see, for us. It might take some radical explanation of the nature of space-time, which will "naturally" give raise to the value of pi, and at the same time describe spaces where it would take different values.

[–] ristoril_zip@lemmy.zip 14 points 11 months ago

Did you guys know the brain named itself?

[–] Kamirose@beehaw.org 7 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

Gender expression and gender stereotypes are societal constructs. A person's sense of their own gender is (probably) not. There have been many times where people have tried to raise their child as a different gender than the child was assigned at birth, and the child 99% of the time identifies with the gender assigned at birth, at the same rate as the general cisgender population. There have also been studies of identical twins where if one twin is trans, the other twin often is as well, at a much higher rate than fraternal twins.

There is a genetic component and a constructed component to gender.

Edit: wording.

Edit 2: See my comment below with sources on the twins study - it's possible I was misinformed on this. The results of studies are mixed.

[–] cumberboi@beehaw.org 2 points 11 months ago (2 children)

This is really interesting if these stats are true. Just to comment on the raising child as different gender, I personally would put this down to wider societal influence as the parents of course dont have full control of what their child is exposed to - they can only control so much. This could be things like bullying, advertisements, minor subtleties present in society (such as the signs used on gendered toilets) and probably others. But just want to be clear that i dont think your conclusion is invalid by any means, just wanted to give my viewpoint on that specific stat in case you hadn't considered it already and maybe we can learn from each other :)

The identical twin study specifically sounds really interesting and I'd love to read about it if you get the time to link it, thanks!

[–] Kamirose@beehaw.org 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I was actually repeating what was said in a video I watched yesterday so I went to look at their sources - here is a relevant study that supports this conclusion - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1743609515339060

However while looking it up in google scholar I did find another study that concluded the opposite, that there's no significant difference between identical and fraternal twins. That study is here. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-17749-0

So it's possible that I was misinformed.

As a bonus, here's an interesting analysis about what even is gender and gender identity in an academic setting. https://academic.oup.com/analysis/advance-article/doi/10.1093/analys/anad027/7204699

[–] RadioRat@beehaw.org 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

I searched pubmed and I’m pretty sure this is anecdotal, unfortunately. Hard to say how much of the volume of non-straight/trans and trans/trans twins on social media is selection bias since the trans/cishet twins aren’t eye-catching. There seem to be a lot but gosh do folks love to hear about twin similarities. It’s worth noting most are fraternal but that’s consistent with the general population.

I understand where Kamirose is coming from, but it’s not empirical (unless there’s a study that used some really weird terminology and I missed it).

Edit: I found a review and its citations do not converge well due to small sample sizes (hard with trans + twins - two rare things for births).

[–] crank@beehaw.org 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I did a websearch for trans twins and found the following 2 links. I did not read them just sharing as it seems you didn't have good luck searching.

[–] RadioRat@beehaw.org 2 points 11 months ago

Thanks for the extra legwork! These are cited by the review. I’m hopeful that there will be more research and data available on gender dysphoria as time goes on with more people being able to seek gender affirming care. 🤞 the horrific backlash doesn’t scare too many into staying in the closet or stymie funds/grants to these efforts.

[–] FaeDrifter@midwest.social 1 points 11 months ago (2 children)

There have been many times where people have tried to raise their child as a different gender than the child was assigned at birth, and the child 99% of the time identifies with the gender assigned at birth, at the same rate as the general cisgender population.

How many is "many"? 100? 1,000? 10,000? Where is the study on this?

[–] crank@beehaw.org 5 points 11 months ago

I wonder if @Kamirose@beehaw.org might be thinking of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer

Reimer was an identical twin AMAB who was raised female due to his penis being mangled during circumcision. The gender was then reassigned as female and the infant had surgical procedures done to align the body with the new female gender. The case was overseen by John Money who made a lot of hay over it, publishing all about how this proved gender was a purely social construction. It was a very famous case study. Ultimately Reimar he felt himself to be male and transitioned to male as an adult. However he was very screwed up by the whole thing and my understanding is his death by suicide is attributed to this whole series of events. There was a lot of weird stuff.

[–] Kamirose@beehaw.org 3 points 11 months ago

That portion is anecdotal. These stories come from either before there were ethics guidelines in psychology so people were studying their own children, or reviews of child abuse cases where the parent was forcing a different identity on their children. This is not something that is possible to (ethically) run an empirical study on, unfortunately.

[–] hellfire103@sopuli.xyz 1 points 11 months ago

It would be good if I could pin comments like this on Lemmy.

[–] curiousaur@reddthat.com 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Should we just stop using the word gender then? What's the point?

[–] thumbtack@beehaw.org 8 points 11 months ago

i mean just because something is a social construct doesn’t mean it has no real effects on people lives or importance in society. money is a social construct too, but it still affects people and society in major ways, and can be an extremely useful tool.

personally, i think that gender is a useful concept to describe a difficult to quantify/describe part of a persons being, and the majority of people identify with some aspect of gender in some way in their lives. because of that, imo, it’s a good word that should be kept around

[–] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 6 points 11 months ago

Gender and Time: Both human concepts I ignore.

[–] RadioRat@beehaw.org 4 points 11 months ago

It’s mostly just inane that people discriminate and judge others on the basis of pretty minor dimorphic differences. I.e “durrrrrrr no penis no math…” is a baseless, but disgustingly common sentiment that functions to oppress women.

I don’t necessarily take issue with cis, heterosexual folks wanting to simplify personal routines and finding a compatible partner, but can we get over misogyny and the investment in gender being at all meaningful please?

[–] crank@beehaw.org 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

If this was a correct idea then there is no need for anyone to transition because their gender isn't real anyway.

This is not a toxic idea if you stay here temporarily on a path to somewhere else but it is actually anti-trans so try to move on to the next brain wave.

[–] hellfire103@sopuli.xyz 1 points 11 months ago

That's...a good point, but not at all what I meant. I am actually trans, though.