X Years Ago Today

[sorcyress]

One year ago today, it was 2008, and I was (shocking nobody who's ever had an extended conversation with me ever) interested in gender and sexuality.

I also believe I originally meant to post up some thoughts on that poll, ages and ages ago, and then got distracted. At the very least, go fill it out for me if you haven't, okay? Or, if you want to do the really quick and dirty version in the comments of this post...

You list as [gender(s)]:
Explain:

You are attracted to people of [gender(s)]:
Explain:

You consider yourself [poly/mono/etc]:
Explain:

You are currently in relatinships best described as [none/mono/poly/complicated/etc]:
Explain:

And, bonus question, since I forgot it in the original poll:
Your preferred pronoun is:

Seriously. This kind of thing fascinates the hell out of me. Babble¹ about gender and sexuality and stuff like that in the comments, please!

~Sor
MOOP!

1: No, really, Har, Dodger, etc. I like hearing people's thoughts, especially about this. I am encouraging long comments, damnit. Don't let yourself be limited by the thought that I'm going to be overwhelmed --if you're that worried, just toss a one line summery at the bottom for ease of skimming. I promise to read the whole thing though.

Comments

Re: opinion contradicted by evidence

[woozle.livejournal.com]

(Hmm, and here I thought I was being diplomatic...)

There are a large number of traits associated with gender. They are "associated" because, for a majority of the population, a genetic male will have mostly male traits and a genetic female will have mostly female traits.

If you were to plot a scattergram showing the location of each individual (in some large population) in a multidimensional space with one dimension for each of these traits, there would be heavy clustering around two points which would more or less describe the archetypical male and female -- and the line in between these two clusters would also be more densely populated than other areas of the space.

Perhaps this is what you mean by stating that there are only two poles, with a linear spectrum between them. Such a graph would appear as two fuzzy dots with a fuzzy line connecting them. Most people would be in those dots or near that line -- sure.

What it sounded like you were suggesting is that everybody -- or most people, at least, with not enough exceptions to be worth considering as a group -- would be right on a straight, fairly narrow line between those two points, and that the points would be only slightly fuzzy at best.

If you are actually saying the latter, then I'll need to go fetch my evidence, but maybe I just misunderstood you.

Re: opinion contradicted by evidence

[macaroniandtuna.livejournal.com]

Actually I'm not sure which of those I'm saying. I guess to say for sure I'd have to know what that second dimension is and how any outliers would lay very far at all from the line, and perhaps the problem is that I'm unable to think of anything.

Re: opinion contradicted by evidence

[woozle.livejournal.com]

The claim I'm defending is that it's "multidimensional", by which I mean "many dimensions", not just two.

Somewhere I started making a list, but I've no idea where it is at the moment, so this is just off the top of my head:

The basics - physical gender, sometimes confusingly called "sex": chromosome configuration (XX/XY/other), genital configuration (not always clear-cut), chest configuration (including functionality of mammary glands), amount of subcutaneous fat, skeletal shape (hip size being the most obvious detail, but there are others), hormone levels, facial and non-pubic body hair amounts, physical strength (especially upper-body).

Behavioral characteristics: "girlyness" (e.g. liking flowers, ponies, kitten) vs. "manlyness" (e.g. liking motorcycles, trucks, guns), passivity vs. aggression, emotional vs. analytical, cooperation vs. confrontation, empathy vs. control, nurturing vs. self-interest...

Attractions: the main two dimensions here are whether you're attracted to men and whether you're attracted to women. (There's a high degree of inverse correlation, and most male-bodied people are attracted to women only, but I should think that the obvious exceptions to this rule alone would prove my point.)

I could go on, but that's the stuff that's easier to explain.