Posted: Aug 23, 2010 4:41 pm
z8000783 wrote:Whilst you questions are good I wonder what the usefulness in attempting to answer them is.
Good point.
I suppose part of it is about trying to understand what's going on in people, when "gender" is used (either by themselves or others) to describe how they are different.
AFAIK the widespread use of the term originated in the 70s, among people who wanted to challenge the accepted idea up to that time that sexuality and personality was inextricably linked to biological sex, and people who didn't conform to those links were therefore "disordered" and had to be cured. Feminists used the term "female gender" to denote aspects of behaviour that are only socially determined as "female", to make clear that they could have female bits without being interested in that behaviour. Gays used the term to clarify that being of one "gender" does not necessitate being sexually attracted to the other, or not to one's own.
But this ties in with what I said above about transexuals: gender only seems to be a useful term (if at all) to describe problems and contradictions between innate sexual characteristics, or interests and personality traits, and social expectations. Where there are no such problems or contradictions, because most of what a person is and likes corresponds well enough with what society arbitrarily expects of them, then there is nothing real we can point to in that person's makeup and call "gender".
Yet the presumptions and terminology have spread outward from the description of how society's norms fail to fit minority groups, to description of the mainstream majority. Thus the way gender seems to be conceived by many would suggest that I walk down the street "feeling like" a man. I don't. I walk down the street feeling like shagging women, playing music or going to the beach. If someone were to come up and ask me to a football game I'd decline, not because of my "gender" but because I'm not interested in football. If someone were to come up and ask me to spend the afternoon shopping for handbags, I'd decline for the same reason.
On the other side of the street there might be a gay woman walking along also thinking about shagging women, playing music or going to the beach. Clearly she has a different biological sex from me, but what does it mean, over and above that, to say she is of a different "gender"?