Changing Perspectives On Gender.

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Changing Perspectives On Gender.

Post by peter »

Can I quote in full a short item in a news magazine I read entitled "Gender-bending jargon" [the item, not the magazine, which is called The Week].
The first thing you need to know about the new sexual revolution isn't how to do it; it's how to talk it. Using terms such as straight, gay and bi-sexual is indicative of a 'binary' view of sexuality. It is fast becoming the equivalent of walking around in plus fours, peering at human desire through a monocle. These days young people are declaring themselves 'pansexual', 'genderfluid' and 'genderqueer'. Many now seem as preoccupied with finely catagorising their sexual and gender identities as their grandparents once were with their stamp collections. In the past gender-bending was a means of defying labels; today it more often seems like a way of aquiring them.
With this in mind I decided to see how culturally up-to-speed I was by noting what in my [granted low] understanding of the matter, could reasonably now be designated as sepparate sub-divisions of the accepted two genders.

On the Male side we must start [for ease's sake, no other] with the 100% heterosexual male. Then we might have the 100% gay male which must be further sub-divided into the effeminate and non-effeminate gropings. There will then be the fine and infinite gradations that run between 100% male heterosexual and 100% homosexual ends of the spectrum - on each side of the susequnt sub-grouping into effeminate and non-effeminate.

Now we move into the more complex areas of the trans-sexual, the hermaphrodite, the transvestitie, the gender realigned, the partially gender realigned, the as yet but waiting to be partially gender realighned an on and on ad infinitum.

By now I suspect the ifinite complexity of the labeling in any real practical sense, would lead most of us to understand that there would be, in this system, as many gender identity labels as there are individuals alive at any one time - and not the one of them worth any more, or any less than any of the others..........and on this basis I pronounce the matter as just another small piece of evidence of a world gone mad! ;)
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Post by Obi-Wan Nihilo »

There appears to be a great deal of cultural influence where gender and sexual orientation are concerned.
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Re: Changing Perspectives On Gender.

Post by Vraith »

qfufs wrote: Then we might have the 100% gay male which must be further sub-divided into the effeminate and non-effeminate gropings.
Emphasis mine...oh really? :lol:

What I really meant to ask is: why no effeminate and non-effeminate subs of 100% straight males?

To be inappropriate in language [esp. for a thread like this]...I know plenty of straight guys who are "little bitches."
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Post by Fist and Faith »

I don't think there's infinite gradation between 100% hetero and 100% homo. How is that measured?
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Post by peter »

I think the cultural influence in this, as Don notes is highly significant. Amongst the younger staff members in the store it seems almost de rigeur to profess to some highly personalised quirk of sexuality. We have the guy whose gay only when drunk, the flamboyant camp, the lesbian girl who clearly likes guys better, the bisexual guy whose claim is based solely on his ability to consider different photos of men in terms of their attractiveness (but feels no sexual urges toward men).........and on and on. But the point is that all of this goes on in an atmosphere of complete tolerance and absence of prejudice - and that to an old man like me is both refreshing and endearing. I think they're doing better than my generation did.
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Post by Avatar »

I think, like so many other socio-cultural things, it's evolving as we go along.

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Post by peter »

Going back to fists point is there even such a thing 100percent hetero or homo

( this is the first post I have ever made that has with the exception of the brackets been entirely dictated into my handheld device hence the absence of punctuation which the Machine does not appear capable of receiving instructions about )
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Post by Vraith »

qfufs wrote:Going back to fists point is there even such a thing 100percent hetero or homo
I'd say there is, though it's less the dominant thing than people believe...and always was. It really is the perspective that's changing, not the existence of variation.

A guy who is only gay when drunk???
Really???
Someone is lying to themselves.
8O :D
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the difference between evidence and sources: whether they come from the horse's mouth or a horse's ass.
"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
the hyperbole is a beauty...for we are then allowed to say a little more than the truth...and language is more efficient when it goes beyond reality than when it stops short of it.
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Post by Avatar »

:LOLS:

Multiple gender identities in individuals have been recognised for thousands of years. Just saw an interesting display of masks / carvings representing it, will try and find the link.

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Post by peter »

I kid you not V - this is the guys claim! And further, only when he drinks beer. On spirits he's a regular lady-killer :lol: .

Another interesting combination we have is a straight guy in a relationship, albeit non physical I believe, with a lesbian girl (or so she claims). They are clearly deely fond of each other and have been together for three or so years. I have massive respect for this type of convention breaking.
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....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
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Post by SoulBiter »

I am then the monocular viewer when it comes to gender. There are guys and there are girls. The exception being the transvestite who is born as both.... But typically even for that, its what they look like to me when I view them through my monocle.

Sexual orientation is separate from gender when I view it. I still typically see all sexes as being straight, until they say or do something that makes me think otherwise.

I will NEVER use any of the gender neutral pronouns...or any of these non gender specific ones.
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Post by Avatar »

The principle seems obsolete to me. *shrug*

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Post by sgt.null »

SoulBiter wrote: The exception being the transvestite who is born as both....
hermaphrodite.
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Post by SoulBiter »

sgt.null wrote:
SoulBiter wrote: The exception being the transvestite who is born as both....
hermaphrodite.
Yep.. a mistake in terminology. Good catch
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Post by Linna Heartbooger »

SoulBiter wrote:
sgt.null wrote:hermaphrodite.
Yep.. a mistake in terminology. Good catch
There's this one short story that was so thought-provoking.. and at the center of it were two things:
...a childlike imagination that assumed the dignity of every person.
...and a hermaphrodite.
It was really thought-provoking for me / forced me to think about fascinating questions.
SoulBiter wrote:Sexual orientation is separate from gender when I view it. I still typically see all sexes as being straight, until they say or do something that makes me think otherwise.

I will NEVER use any of the gender neutral pronouns...or any of these non gender specific ones.
See, I've tended towards "assume everyone I talk to is straight unless I'm told otherwise," but I've become convinced there are problems with that approach.

I do find some of the gender language stuff awkward, as well..
peter wrote:Another interesting combination we have is a straight guy in a relationship, albeit non physical I believe, with a lesbian girl (or so she claims). They are clearly deeply fond of each other and have been together for three or so years. I have massive respect for this type of convention breaking.
I first time I heard of that was in this piece: "The Hidden Paths of Love"
Eve Tushnet wrote:...“mixed-orientation marriages” (marriages in which one spouse is openly gay or same-sex attracted, but discerns a calling to marry an opposite-sex spouse—life is complicated, y'all)
So, my first reaction was rather like yours, peter.
And you know what the very second darn thought into my head was?
"Oh man, I would like to bust out that expression and be like, 'Haven't you ever heard of a mixed-orientation marriage before?' " with various friends of mine who have tried to provoke me (in part because of my lack of knowledge in this area) before.

So the temptation to try to show off stuff you supposedly "know" because you learned a new term that someone used is... one I'm not exempt from!
And.. it's really, actually, not great.

There are like all these heterosexuals fighting- and the fighting still gets quite fierce, you know, here in the U.S.
Meanwhile, people who experience same-sex attraction are worrying about who they should or should not tell... getting blind aggression from tons of us who are relatively clueless, and steadily making decisions about what they're going to do in life.
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Post by SerScot »

SoulBiter

nevermind. Nitpicked before I did.
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Changing Perspectives On Gender.

Post by Avatar »

a) It's not their body.
b) Conveniently ignores the harm to the mental health of severely gender dysphoric people.
c) Decides for other people what the "fundamental order" of the human body is.
d) Not their mind or perception or reality.
e) Not their body.

Equally seriously though, I assume this just means that Catholic health care institutions won't carry out gender identity treatments / surgeries / whatever. That's fine, I'm sure trans people are not flocking to Catholic institutions to receive such care.

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Changing Perspectives On Gender.

Post by wayfriend »

It fits the mold of "keep it like it's always been" conservatism. The CC is nothing if not conservative.

God supposedly loves us just as we are. That should our being the sex we need to be.
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