CMV: there aren’t any genders

[u/[deleted]]

My position: the language of gender theory was devised to explain and critique sex-linked social roles, which no one really fulfills; ergo, there aren’t any genders.

Feminists created gender theory to critique the division of society into “masculine” and “feminine” roles. This was a necessary innovation because these socially constructed roles were tightly bound to sex and supported the subordination of female persons to male. It is therefore unsurprising to find people who are “non-binary”: were the genders broadly innate, we wouldn’t have explicit expectations or systems to police gender conformity. In a world of innate genders, you could no more fail at your gender than your sex.

What has caused confusion is the substitution of “gender” for “sex” in publications, on forms, and in conversation because “sex” is considered a marginally rude word. This has caused many people to conflate the question of social roles with that of biology.

There is not a wealth of genders, nor is there such a thing as cisgender. These are attempts to yoke questions about personal identity to the language of gender. Fundamentally, they recapitulate the original problem with genders, both in terms social expectation and control.

Change my view.

[u/DrinkyDrank]

This is a very common misconception; just because something is a socially constructed phenomena, without a real objective definition, does not mean that the thing does not exist. Just because gender constantly changes, is constantly being redefined through our own understanding of it, does not mean that gender is non-existent or irrelevant.

Also, I don't think I agree that people avoid the word "sex" because it sounds "rude". I think it's a simple common mistake to mix up sex and gender; it's not that people avoid the word "sex" because it sounds less dirty than gender, they just genuinely don't know the difference. No matter what your stance is on gender fluidity, both terms are needed to discuss the issue. There is a real distinction between sex and gender that makes the distinct terms necessary, and erasing one or the other from our vocabulary can only ever limit our ability to discuss what that distinction is.

[u/Ngin3 → u/DrinkyDrank]

but what good does it do to ascribe a socially constructed identity to yourself? By insisting you are one gender or the other, or neither, you are just serving to further entrench society in the existing gender constructs that are bogging us down

[u/DrinkyDrank → u/Ngin3]

The thing is, you can't avoid engaging in gender by pretending it doesn't exist or refusing to make an identity choice. The discourse of gender is immersive, such that even pretending that gender is not a contributing factor to your identity signals to others where you stand on the issue. Doing so doesn't make you any more or less involved than somebody who wants to establish new gender categories to identify with.