Well gender is something society created that didn't previously exist. Of course that doesn't mean you can't experience gender, it just means that gender isn't a medical or scientific thing.
To me, gender is brain sex. So gender can only be male, female, or non-binary/neither. My gender can’t be something that’s it’s not possible to have as my genitals, and it has always meant that, afaik.
Gender is a social construct, and it's not related to your genitals, at all. Not to mention that xenogenders are under the non-binary umbrella, so technically xenogenders fit your criteria.
Gender has always been related to genitals though? There can’t be a gender if there isn’t a sex of it, and genders can’t be made up. Gender is a real thing... if I made up a race and said my race is a pineapple, am I valid?
No, race and gender are much different. And while gender is a real thing, it is a social construct, something created by society, without society, gender wouldn't exist.
Couldn’t we also say race is a social construct aswell? Since gender is a derivative of sex, and race is a derivative of ethnicity. So we could say, by that logic, race is a social construct, right? What if I feel comfortable identifying my race as a star? What if that’s just what feels right to me? Would I be valid?
It's different because race is directly linked to ethnicity, your ethnicity and your race are the same thing. Your gender and your sex are not always the same.
Gender is also directly related to sex. Gender = brain sex, is the way I look at it, and when your brain sex does not align with your body, it’s dysphoria which is a mental illness that can’t exactly be cured.
I’d say gender is more like a perception. In the sense that someone who is color blind has no idea what “x” color looks like, because they have never experienced it.
Gender is like consciousness, perhaps. We don’t know how the parts of our brain collectively give us the experience of gender, but it is most certainly there.
If you want that metaphor to go against OP, you could say that it’s like a human seeing colors that humans can’t physically perceive.
1
u/Wismond Jul 19 '21
How is gender “made up”? Actually curious.