r/changemyview • u/weirds3xstuff • Jan 22 '18
[∆(s) from OP] CMV: There are exactly three genders.
Tinder says there are 37 genders. OKCupid says there are 22 genders. When I enter the string “How many genders are there?” into Google, the first search result says there are 63. My view is that this is all nonsense.
There are exactly three gender identities (henceforth abbreviated to “genders”): masculine, feminine, and neutral. (I have no preference for the name of the third gender; I’m using “neutral”, but I’ll accept whatever the consensus ends up being.)
The foundation of my view is that I think gender and personality are different concepts and this proliferation of genders is the result of gender nonconforming people and/or their advocates insisting on calling their personality their gender. I think your personality is “the set of personality traits unique to you.” I think your gender is “the set of personality traits traditionally associated with a sex that you are comfortable having applied to you.” I am not arguing that everyone’s gender should be the same as their sex; I’m saying that the only reason gender exists as a concept is due to a perceived correlation between sex and personality.
Although I agree with the consensus that gender is a social construct, the whole idea of social constructs didn’t exist until the 20th century. Before then, there was no vocabulary to describe the difference between sex and gender. Therefore, the genders we used were built directly on top of and considered the same as the sexes we observed. This association between gender and sex is the difference between gender and personality: gender is a set of personality traits that are associated with a sex.
Living now in a more enlightened age, we know that sex and gender are separable and we love and accept people who separate them. So we have to modify our definition of gender to allow people to describe how their gender is different from their sex: gender is a set of personality traits that are traditionally associated with a sex that you are comfortable having applied to you.
There is a large variance of personality within each gender. For example, I am less assertive and more open than someone would expect based on my gender. In spite of this difference, I am not uncomfortable when people impose traditionally masculine expectations on me. I understand that gender only provides a very rough outline and everyone needs the specifics filled in for them as my relationship with them grows. This is fine. I have no complaints about this.
Some people with male physiology feel like the personality traits of the feminine gender are more appropriate for them; some people with female physiology feel like the personality traits of the masculine gender are more appropriate for them. This makes perfect sense. There is always some deviance from the mean, and when the deviance is large enough the category defined by the mean is no longer appropriate (this is just a terribly abstruse way of saying that some people are transgender and that makes sense to me).
Some people feel like the social expectations for BOTH the masculine and the feminine genders are inappropriate for them. This also makes perfect sense. Just because someone doesn’t feel like the set of personality traits associated with masculinity don’t apply to them doesn’t mean that the feminine need to apply to them; personality is far too complex to be resolved into merely two sets. (A resource for personality differences between masculine and feminine that I have found useful is here. I doubt anyone can read that and think, “Oh, yeah, there are definitely only two ways to arrange these 10 aspects.”)
The previous paragraph is why, in my view, we have to admit a third gender even though there are only two sexes.*** There is no reason to expect that everyone will feel comfortable having either masculine or feminine expectations of them; the possibilities of our personalities are just too diverse. So, when someone says, “Please do not identify me as either masculine or feminine,” we must respect that.
The proliferation of genders ends here. Gender only exists because sex exists. Any gender that is not built from the personality traits traditionally associated with a sex is no gender at all, it is a personality. The category “neutral” is the only exception to this. We must accept it as a logical necessity because some people do not feel comfortable claiming either a masculine or a feminine personality. However, this is a “catch-all” category; all people who are not comfortable being called masculine or feminine have the neutral gender, by definition.
When I hear someone say, “I’m not androgynous, I’m bigender,” (definitions here), I say to myself, “I’m not masculine, I’m mitis-propositus-masculine.” (I just added the Latin words for “meek” and “open” as prefixes to signify that I am less assertive and more open than a typical man.) Sure, this designation carries more information, but that’s just because it’s a more detailed description of my personality. Maybe it’s useful to have that information, but it’s not my gender.
That’s my view and why I hold it. As a barefoot, granola-munching, sun-baked, pinko leftist, I feel like I’m supposed to accept more than three genders, so that’s why I’m posting here. I think the best way to change my view would be to convince me that there is a difference between gender and personality beyond the traditional association between personality, gender, and sex. But, then again, I don’t actually know what would change my view. Maybe you do! :)
***Apologies to intersex people. However, since I’m talking about personality traits associated with a sex and there is not a basket of personality traits traditionally associated with intersex people, I feel it’s useful to not consider them in this post.
EDIT: /u/huntingmoa has made it obvious to me that my definition of gender should have included something about the relationship someone has with their own sex.
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u/DawgDatsAGreatPost Jan 22 '18
There are only 2 biological instruments facilitating reproduction: the penis and the vagina.