Re:Visiting Chelsea Manning in prison
by vertex-four on Thursday May 26, 2016 @01:23PM
(#11779768)
> You can't think yourself into a different sex
No. You can think yourself into a different gender. Gender isn't sex - this has been written about since 1963, and is generally agreed on at this point - gender is a combination of personal and cultural mental attributes, while sex is generally "what your body physically is". This messes up slightly when you get to certain sex-driven gender attributes, but, in general, it's a reasonably clear line.
Sex is mostly irrelevant unless you're intending to sleep with someone or you're a doctor, and even then what you're asking about is generally a certain set of characteristics where a number of people fall between the lines. If you're a trans woman who's undergone GRS and you say "my sex is male", that's going to confuse an awful lot of people.
Edit: My specific point, in this response, is that identifying as a gender which does not match your sex is not "playing pretend" or less important somehow, as you insinuated in your original post.
No. You can think yourself into a different gender. Gender isn't sex - this has been written about since 1963, and is generally agreed on at this point - gender is a combination of personal and cultural mental attributes, while sex is generally "what your body physically is". This messes up slightly when you get to certain sex-driven gender attributes, but, in general, it's a reasonably clear line.
Sex is mostly irrelevant unless you're intending to sleep with someone or you're a doctor, and even then what you're asking about is generally a certain set of characteristics where a number of people fall between the lines. If you're a trans woman who's undergone GRS and you say "my sex is male", that's going to confuse an awful lot of people.
Edit: My specific point, in this response, is that identifying as a gender which does not match your sex is not "playing pretend" or less important somehow, as you insinuated in your original post.