If you think about things that way, go right ahead, no one’s stopping you. I just think the concept of gender at all, except with regards to physical sex, is silly and outdated.
Ludovic, your position is offensive to me – it implies that I am “silly and outdated” for being transsexual. It is also, obviously, wrong.
Ah, but Kelly, remember that Ludovic has the luxury of never having had to think about his sex or his gender. “The dizzy man thinks the whole world spins round,” as Mr. Shakespeare said.
Why don’t the trangendered/transsexual/different-gendered people get their acts together and come up with a clear glossary. Some things just look made up, there are only so many possibilities. This whole personally-made definitions end up with every person being a gender island
I may be conservative but I still count only to sexes: male and female; genders are for nouns and pronouns (and, in Spanish, adjectives)
minor hijack
Are Egyptian-Americans also African-Americans?
I didnt say you were silly and outdated, although it’s possible that you are. It’s just what I feel with regards to my own personality. It very well may be universally true, and I have a hunch that it is, or perhaps gender does indeed matter, but I’m not going to argue that one way or the other since, as eve said, it’s fortunately not that important to me.
But Eve, how do you know that I have never thought about my sex or gender? I think that it is less important to me than to the billions of humans who have actually never thought about it. How do you know that I have not thought about it and came to the conclusion that it is irrelevant?
Rodrigo, do you think there’s some sort of Transsexual Command that has the authority to bind all of us to a specific set of terms?
I’ve got news for you.
Ludovic, please read what I wrote in this thread about variable strength of gender identity before you spout off about the irrelevance of intrinsic gender. Making such a claim is equivalent to claiming that all transsexuals are delusional.
And please don’t conflate gender identity with gender role. The two are entirely different concepts.
You may well have thought about it—but you’re like a six-foot-tall man telling a midget that “shortness” is a silly, outdated concept. A lot of us have had to deal with “gender” on a day-to-day basis.
Kelly, didn’t you get the Transsexual Command memo? We’re all meeting next week. Bring paper plates; I’m bringing the salad.
I think there’s a difference between “Gender” and “Sex” as far as differentiating humans.
Sex (Male/Female) refers to the anatomy.
Gender refers to the role humas play in society.
I believe I heard this first at college. (Anthropology)
Well, the International Straight Guy Association is working pretty well, maybe the Transsexual Command can be modelled along its lines.
Seriously, the only thing I want is to know the right word, but every person with a gender issues (I was going to say problem but it’d’ve got me killed) get to invent a word, don’t ecpect the rst of us to get ir right all the time and understand we mean no disrespect in, let’s say I call you “transgenderd” are you consider yourself “different gendered”. BTW, I still don’t get the difference.
Just don’t call us “tranny” or “shemale” and you’re off the hook, as far as I’m concerned.
FDISK.COM: gender does NOT refer to role. Gender role refers to role. Gender is a separate concept, and not everyone who is female adopts or follows a female gender role.
Rodrigo, I have something of a glossary on my website. Of course, others may disagree with me on whether those terms are appropriately defined.
Oh, and Eve, I routinely refer to myself as a “tranny” or as a “tranny dyke”. I think “tranny” is one of those words like “fag”: fine to use if you are one, bad to use if you’re not.
“Shemale”, on the other hand, is inexcusable.
Kelly, I agree with that post:
I am not going to tell someone they are not who they claim they are. I was just inquiring as to whether many such individuals, yourself included, are of the same opinions as the masses of unthinking people who assume that gender is an extrememly relevant issue for everyone. That would make you silly and irrelevant: but you did not claim that.
However, this quote gave me pause:
I am not claiming that all transsexuals are delusional. However, when it comes down to it, I do make the claim that objectively speaking, gender is pretty irrational and illogical. So is sexual intercourse, but I have reconciled my desire for sexual intercourse with the fact that it’s a pretty weird and irrational thing to be concerned about. I simply care about it, and cannot change that, simply recognize it is a part of me.
Not to equate the two, but you would agree that there is not necessarily an objective reason gender should be relatively important to you (versus me?)
Ludovic, I don’t understand what you mean by gender being “objectively irrational and illogical”. That’s rather like saying that the color blue is objectively irrational and illogical. Trying to deny that gender exists is about as irrational and illogical as denying that the color blue exists.
By claiming that gender is illogical, you are essentially claiming that you, having “evolved” beyond the “need for gender”, are “better” than those who have not. I reject that thesis. I am a human, not a Vulcan. Emotions are not wrong; having emotions and reacting to them is not illogical. Attempting to stamp out all emotional response from one’s life, however “logical” that may seem, is inhuman.
My gender is objectively important because my happiness depends on recognizing my gender and behaving according to it. Trying to deny me my gender identity will make me unhappy, which is an objectively discernable state. Therefore, it is objectively logical for me to recognize and respond to my gender.
I didnt say I was above illogic. In fact, I agree with you that it would not be logical to not try to satisfy your emotional needs. I’m just saying those needs are not.
So what you are saying is that my emotional needs are illogical.
I don’t see the problem with that. Mine are too. The best I can do is acknowledge that and live with it anyway.
All of our emotions are only understandable to me in view of evolution. Still, while I can comprehend my desires for intercourse and socialization and survival in that light, they are still illogical in that they make no sense to me, really.
I think that what Ludovic is trying to say is that all emotional needs are illogical, really, according to certain senses of the word “illogical” - i.e. they draw their source from something other than logic. But that doesn’t mean that they’re bad or wrong.
Is that a fair assessment, Ludovic?
Here is a post by another member of an egroup I am on which makes a good summary IMHO of the differences between transsexual and transgender (posted with the author’s permission).
(For the sake of completeness, this quote comes from the context of a discussion about medical/theraputic protocols for transsexual people compared with transgender people.)
I hope this quote helps make the distinction for some people. I just want to add that while I agree with the majority of it, I don’t think that anything that encourages a divide-and-conquer attitude within trans* communities is particularly helpful. I also want to acknowlege that other transsexual/transgender/trans*/genderqueer people on this board may have other opinions based on their different experiences.
Thanks, phraser for making me even more confused 
. We really need to nail down what “gender” is, especailly if, as I suspected, and phrasers quote confirms, it is something different from both physiological sex and traditional gender roles. If it is NOT that, in your (everyone on the board-you) opinion, what IS it, other than physiology, gender roles, and genetics? (that quote, and the linked thread, and Kelly’s web site, did not help things.)
And yeah, matt, that was pretty much what I am saying.
Kelly:
Sure, gender exists physiologically, sociologically, and genetically. But it seems that in discussions such as this it is often referred to in a different way, which I cannot pin down even reading the above links. I am not denying that this nebulous definition exists, but trying to deny that it exists would not be irrational and illogical, since it is not very well defined or well-testable in the first place.