devoras: Honestly that's still playing into their silly games. There's no need to further clarify sex with chromosomes and such, best to ignore them, subtly mock and make fun of the ridiculous ideas if they make too much noise to comfortably ignore, and leave it alone. The normal scientific definition of male or female is all we need.
But the scientific definition of male and female is that made on the basis of genetics, and has been ever since we first started to understand genetics. It is a more fundamental definition than the traditional one of looking at external attributes, and it is also much less ambiguous.
devoras: I just want the silliness to be optional in games so I don't have to deal with it. If someone wants there to be an option to pretend that gender is a social construct in a game that's fine, whatever makes them happy, as long as it's an option I have the option to ignore.
I say keep it simple in games, male or female selection, then on top of that add an option for people to choose a different gender than their sex if they want. We don't need to have all this controversy, it's an easy fix. Everyone can be free to enjoy entertainment as they like.
I understand your flexible conflict adverseness, but the problem with this way of doing things is that it helps to normalize the idea that there are more than two sexes, and that you can change your sex, and that you feel uncomfortable in your body that magically allows your spirit to identify as another sex.
That is the thin end of the wedge. We know these wackos and we know how they operate, give them a finger and they take an arm, give them any space whatsoever and they'll wedge their foot inside the door. Voluntarily giving them space to pretend their ideas hold any merit, is the beginning of the end. It is pandering in its purest form.
lace_gardenia: Ok, let me attempt to clarify something here: in the discussion context you are talking about, "sex" and "gender" imply different things. Yes, the words are very much synonymous in everyday discussion, but here they are more specific. The word choice is unfortunate, but that's English for you.
Like so:
- "
Sex" implies physical characteristics. This is
not the part that is a social construct, and I have never talked to anyone who thinks it is.
- "
Gender" implies mental and social/cultural characteristics. It is
this part that can be a social construct, especially the social/cultural part (duh).
I found an article:
https://www.scienceabc.com/eyeopeners/what-is-the-difference-between-sex-and-gender.html You can compare to how in science, the word "theory" implies something else than it typically does in everyday discussion. Scientific fields have their own jargon, and this is not a new thing
BULLSHIT! All of this.
Gender is a grammatical term to classify nouns into one of three categories, which just happen to be named 'masculine', 'feminine' and 'neuter'. They bare absolutely no relation to "mental and social/cultural characteristics". The genders might as well have been named 'red', 'blue' and 'green', or 'animal', 'vegetable' and 'mineral', or any other group of three classes. In fact, some languages have a different number of genders. Does that mean their people have more sexes? No, of course not! Because their is no link between the two, other than that words describing a man or a uniquely male body part, tend to be masculine in gender. That's it.
If you want to decouple physical, mental/spiritual and social/cultural characteristics of sex, that is a different discussion. But you CANNOT hijack the word gender, and start using it and redefining it as suits your needs at any given moment!
You also don't do this in any other scenario. The word theory means the same in daily life as in science, and if you are using it differently then you are abusing the term and you should stop and get educated. This kind of nonsense is exactly how we ended up with people thinking 'gay' means 'homosexual' as opposed to 'merry, colourful, flamboyant', 'queer' means 'sexually deviant' rather than 'weird, odd, strange', and 'niggard' and 'blaggard' make any kind of comment on race.
This type of terminology hijacking is symptomatic of post-1960s western culture and it needs to be corrected. Currently, we are instead stimulating the problem by reward those who manage to be simultaneously ignorant and arrogant. And that leads to the kind of bullshit quoted above being perpetuated.
