And I can dress like a Dark Sith Lord and demand that you address me as "My master". What is so special about sex/gender that people can identify as a sex they are not, but identifying as something else you are not, well that's just crazy?
— Harry Hindu
Ask yourself: why is the above laughable rationalization more important to me than being friendly and somewhat accomodating to transsexuals? Why don't I want to be friendly and somewhat accomodating to transsexuals? — ZzzoneiroCosm
You act like deciphering intent and motive is all that difficult. — Hanover
What determines someone to be a man or a woman? Genotype? Phenotype? Psychology? Social role? Naming? — Michael
The larger issue concerns what it is we are born with when our parents fist. — Joshs
how our personalities differ from each other, how one has a temper and the other is shy.
If you were to simply deny gender-related claims but support the idea that personality traits give us global styles of perception that are robust, then I would say your thinking and mine weren’t far apart.But my guess is you want to deny any connection between personality and cognitive style, because when it comes down to it, gender is a personality style.
Beyond that, I think issues of gender/sexual identity are trivial, superficial, transitory, and a waste to invest into. — baker
There are few things less noble than resenting or undermining people for who they are. — Tom Storm
You re lucky you have the luxury of not having had to grow up a feminine acting gay male who was endlessly reminded by his male and female peers of how non-trival, non-superficial and non time-wasting gender behavior was to them. And it was precisely because they assumed my behavior was merely an arbitrary and silly choice, a learned phenomenon, that they were able to justify their ridicule and bullying to themselves. — Joshs
We are born with many personality traits that are robust and stable. to recognize them in others is to see their style, the art of their being with you. Recognizing the art of their personality style allows you a greater intimacy with them. Gender behavior is an art of being, and not seeing it deprives both you and others of this intimacy of relation.
, people who want to improve thier life are told to "change their mindset", "overcome limiting beliefs" and such, which goes to show that neither personality nor cognitive style are necessarily (deemed) permanent and pervasive. — baker
Can you overcome shyness? Yes, but the underlying disposition is still there. One simply learned to channel it. — Joshs
People on the autism spectrum don’t line to be considered pathological. They prefer to be considered as having a cognitive style. One can say the same of those with Wilson’s syndrome and many other inborn dispositions that give distinct personality profiles. Is autism a belief that one could or should outgrow?
They make themselves look like a woman in order to get the social and economical benefits that women have.
Some examples:
In poor Asian countries, many young men transition into women because this way, they can more easily find work as female(-looking) singers, dancers, and prostitutes.
A petite, balding man is generally not considered attractive as a man; but if he transitions into a woman, he makes for an average or even above average good-looking woman with the psychological, social, and economical perks that come with that.
If a woman is stuck in a lowly job or doesn't climb up in her career, nobody bats an eyelid; but expectations are higher for men. So some men, afraid of career failure, transition into a woman where career failure is not so heavily stigmatized.
Male-to-female athletes: those men couldn't cut in the men's league, but they can outperform women. (How about female-to-male athletes??) — baker
By consenting to such a procedure, they express their disdain for social norms, and they want their disdain to be respected by those who hold to the social norms. — baker
Gay men perhaps display a less guarded posture with perhaps more relaxed musculature; they seem a bit more carefully groomed; slightly better put together clothing -- regardless of what they are wearing; a more open sort of verbal expression. Perhaps one is more likely to find gay men at an art gallery than a used car auction, but I know people who contradict that. Gay men do seem to regard (see, evaluate) other men more carefully than straight men. — Bitter Crank
I think people are more flexible and more malleable than the official discourse acknowledges them to be — baker
But, gay signals and gaydar work well enough most of the time. — Bitter Crank
The most sensible persons I have known have all been homosexual men. — baker
A homosexual man told me that most homosexual men are macho types like heterosexual men. — baker
the quickest way for a woman to find a good friend is among homosexual men. — baker
I can say that this thread has shaken out some pretty crazy and entertaining posts, and I do thank you for your contribution in that regard. — Hanover
A homosexual man told me that most homosexual men are macho types like heterosexual men. — baker
"I woke up last December in a hospital bed and before even glancing toward my lap, the room spinning from anesthesia and my lungs partially collapsed from four and a half hours on surgical ventilation and hundreds — plural — of stitches and a 40-square-inch hole in my thigh where I’d been skinned down to the muscle, I could suddenly feel, in a way I could never have fathomed, that this was what being alive was." — Andrew4Handel
Do you think other people owe it to you to accept you and comprehend you? — baker
It’s interesting and perhaps revealing that your description of gender mentions only who one is sexually attracted to, and nothing about what I would consider to be a more central aspect of gender for many in the gay community , which has to do with a global perceptual-affective style, of which sexual attraction is merely one small aspect. For those who dont grasp this , it is incoherent to talk about gayness outside of sexual attraction, and I think that is part of the problem. — Joshs
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