#gender is a human concept and they do not have assigned sexes

[bludpudding]

The Corinthian is Not a Man

just because Corinthian uses he/him does not automatically make him male in the traditional sense of the word. thank you for coming to my ted talk.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Ryan Adamczeski at The Advocate:

Donald Trump claims he has "nothing to do" with Project 2025, but he has a playbook of his own that would be devastating for LGBTQ+ Americans and other marginalized communities. The former president's reelection website features a section entitled Agenda 47, which hosts dozens of videos of Trump outlining his policies for if he returns to office. Several policies threaten the LGBTQ+ community, spanning across education, health care, and the military. In one video titled "President Trump's Plan to Protect Children From Left-Wing Gender Insanity," Trump promised to outlaw gender-affirming care for minors at the federal level, and “cease all programs that promote the concept of sex and gender transition at any age.” He also promised to ban transgender athletes from competing on teams that match their gender identity.

Trump stated that he "will ask Congress to pass a bill establishing that the only genders recognized by the United States government are male and female — and they are assigned at birth.” He then claimed that being transgender was "invented" by the "radical left," though he did not use the term "transgender" once throughout Agenda 47. “No serious country should be telling its children that they were born with the wrong gender — a concept that was never heard of in all of human history — nobody’s ever heard of this, what’s happening today," Trump rambled. "It was all when the radical left invented it just a few years ago.”

[...] As for public education, Trump vowed to "cut federal funding for any school or program pushing critical race theory, gender ideology, or other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children." He also promised to "create a new credentialing body to certify teachers who embrace patriotic values."

While Donald Trump may claim to have “nothing to do” with Project 2025, it and Agenda 47 are practically like-for-like in many key policy areas. #Agenda47 #Project2025

[serpentface]

With eunuchs in-universe, is it the whole package or just the Bals

*******This contains clinical but somewhat graphic descriptions of castration and its logistics, be warned*******

As with Real Life history, that varies by tradition and intent. It can be anything between exclusive removal of the testes (leaving the scrotum and everything else attached) and the full removal of the penis, scrotum, and testes. These procedures carry a non-insignificant physical risk in even the best medical contexts available in the setting, and the latter is the most dangerous due to the presence of major veins in the penis and potential complications with the healing process (even if the procedure itself is successful, the urinary tract becoming obstructed during healing will be fatal unless successfully corrected). 

In Imperial Wardin, people castrated as a strictly punitive measure have the penis, testes, and scrotum all removed (or sometimes just the penis). This is expressly intended as a form of humiliation, mutilation, and sterilization. Eunuchs made for non-punitive purposes by default Do Not have their penises removed. (There ARE instances where people who have bottom dysphoria may take this opportunity to have everything removed, this is just nonstandard procedure).

This has levels of rationalization in terms of how the reproductive system is physically and metaphysically conceptualized to work. This is largely based in observation- castrated animals and humans do not undergo typical masculinizing puberty (and even adults may gradually lose some male secondary sexual characteristics post-castration), often have reduced sex drives, and are infertile. In cases where only the penis is damaged or removed but testes are intact, an animal still undergoes normative development and exhibits a sex drive, it may not be physically capable of mating but is not truly sterilized.

Therefore 'maleness', fertility, and virility is all reckoned as being Stored In The Balls. The testes are THE defining feature of male sex assignment in this cultural sphere- having no/nonfunctional testes (whether by birth or active removal) makes a person considered Not Male. The penis is considered more of a secondary aspect of the male system- it can be an Indicator of fertility and virility, but is not a Source. It's the part of the body that enacts the male system's expected functions on the external world- both on dead literal levels (organ through which ejaculation occurs, used in intercourse to produce pregnancy) and more metaphysical levels (a tool to enact change and transformative effects and associated with masculine strength and protection, which gives phallic imagery its strong apotropaic functions).

The castration of Galenii is regarded as a sacrifice of one’s own fertility and reproductive potential for the benefit of the land and people, a degendering and desexualizing act (loss of 'maleness', becoming genderless) that separates one from the trappings of standard social systems and human bodily need, and as induction to the service of Mitlamache, devoting one's entire body and its potential to serve this Face. Therefore the testes are removed to eliminate fertility and male sex identity, the scrotum itself is removed as a permanent mark of service, and the penis left intact. In non-religious eunuch roles (in court and as servants, in theater), the procedure often just involves the testes being removed (leaving the scrotum intact) in order to serve the basic intended de-gendering and sterilizing function, without additional layers of Marking the body in devotion.

Castration is most prominent as a concept with the mammalian peoples and their vulnerable, easily accessible external genitalia, but also exists in some qilik and caelin/delkhin cultures.

Qilik have no penises (mate through cloaca contact), but can have their (internal) testes removed (basically the same process as caponizing roosters). This process is often framed DISTINCTLY as a form of feminization, as castration prior to puberty usually prevents the development of typical male coloration and results in an individual having most of the secondary sex characteristics of a hen/faeder (though usually being smaller in average size). Castration after puberty will not prevent development of male-typical coloration, but prevents the brighter seasonal molts and skin color changes.

To speak broadly about the cultures of an entire species, qilik eunuchs are VERY rarely produced as a form of punishment (qilik cultures trend towards matriarchal power, so connotations of emasculation and humiliation found in patriarchies are rarely present). It instead is usually a form of induction into priesthoods, separate gender spaces, and/or celibate social roles.

Caelin and delkhin DO have penises, and their testes are less accessible within the body than in qilik. Thus, surgical removal of their testes is highly invasive and VERY dangerous, and as such is rarely performed for any reason. The penis being removed is substantially more common in caelin and delkhin cultures, and is a form of punishment in the vast majority of cases. This is somewhat less dangerous than in humans (as the caelin/delkhin urinary tract does not run through the penis and therefore does not directly risk being obstructed in the healing process) but is still very risky and painful. It also does not affect typical development of typical male secondary sex characteristics (it only renders an individual mechanically sterile) and thus does not usually carry additional implications for gender and sex designations that occur in many eunuch-making practices.

Archin identity is built in the collective, with individual drones and queens being essentially the colony's reproductive system, so there is no motive to sterilize an individual. Forms of ''castration'' (by a really, really, really loose sense of the term) do exist in the context of conflict, in which a colony's reproductive members will be specifically sought out and killed. Much of a colony's resources is invested in its drones and their killing may be a major blow with political consequences (preventing reproductive alliances from being fulfilled), but they are ultimately replaceable. Killing a queen sterilizes a colony, and is a death sentence. The collective personality of an archin colony will be dead within a year without new eggs being laid to continually replace the short lived individual units. Sterilizing a colony as such is a form of brutality and humiliation in conflict, either used to give an enemy a slow 'death', or force their hand into an unwanted colonial merger.

Forms of castration have no presence in yotici (who have internal genitalia (aside from their clasper 'arms', which have no direct reproductive function), reproduce by spawning, and rarely delineate gender to begin with) or talking crows (who do not have the ability to perform surgeries).

[lime-bloods]

had a really interesting conversation with a friend this week about the Ultimate Self versus character growth, particularly in relation to Vriska and the hell tiers. in the past I've advocated pretty strongly for the Ultimate Self as core to Homestuck's themes, and as part of that I've been pretty defensive against its detractors because I think the idea is largely misunderstood and unappreciated. and while I still believe an appreciation for what the Ultimate Self represents is a really important tool for understanding Homestuck proper, now that we've moved out of Homestuck and into a new fictional framework I've come around on the importance of being able to critique the concept as well.

there's been a lot of talk lately about whether classes and aspects are really reflective of "reality"; whether Homestuck really says that someone might be defined by arbitrary labels applied to them by a video game - even if that video game literally is responsible for the propagation of reality - or if these are merely roles that we are expected to play but are free to break away from. I've always been in the latter camp; I've made quite a few posts now about how the class-based roles assigned to heroes of Sburb are reflective of the class-based roles assigned to trolls on Alternia, which are themselves biologically-essentialist assumptions that play a similar role to sex and gender among humans. and the Epilogues attest to the queer reinterpretation of such biologically-essentialist social structures; gender is an arbitrary label perpetrated only by cruel, self-serving cycles, and can be cast off if one's self-liberation calls for it. so the conclusion one might draw from this is that the Ultimate Self and the classpect are in a way opposed to each other; that the Ultimate Self is androgynous, without blood, and without class.

however.

it must be recognised that while Homestuck is one story, the Epilogues detail the exploits of characters who have stepped outside of that story and - depending on which Volume you're reading, and the outlook of each individual character - either into another story or outside of "narrative" altogether. and within a narrative, the roles assigned to each character do have special significance. just as one labelled "Thief" is expected to play the role of self-interested antagonist, and one labelled "jadeblood" is expected to live out her life looking after larvae underground, the "narrative" places certain expectations on characters designated as "boys" and "girls". as far as the narrative is concerned, characters are not "people", but rather ideas to be played with, and that's exactly what the Ultimate Self is - the "idea" at the core of a character's being. so it could equally be argued that a character's class, aspect, blood colour or gender are part and parcel with their Ultimate Self, and therefore that, stepping outside of the rules that govern Homestuck, shrugging off the Ultimate Self could be just as important as - or interconnected with - shrugging off gender.

crucially, Homestuck is a story about teenagers, and there is baggage that comes with this conceit. the coming-of-age story is one of self-discovery; the disrobing of the cocoon of childhood and the uncovering of the "true self" underneath is core to the genre. but importantly, at least in Homestuck's case, this never actually means becoming an "adult". coming-of-age stories are about teenagers because teenage makes for great stories, and as such it's only natural that a Lord of Time interested in creating a neverending story would try to engineer neverending teenagerdom. allusions to this abound, particularly surrounding Alternia, a planet populated entirely by teenagers who awaken from literal cocoons every evening only to return to their cocoons of a morning when it comes time to sleep. their quadrants seem hand-designed for the express purpose of making not "healthy" relationships but compelling ones, driven by the confusion of teenagers learning about themselves for the first time. by pretending to be a story "about" reproduction, Homestuck uses the fact that its heroes "enter right around the cusp of sexual maturity" as a smokescreen for the truth that Homestuck characters are expected to "come into" their genders in just the same way they "come into" their class and aspect roles.

in this sense, while the attainment of the Ultimate Self may superficially represent the dispersing of narrative contrivances like "timelines" and "alternate selves", it also follows Homestuck's "children coming into themselves" script to the letter. and to uphold our "full potential" as the Ultimate version of Self, as Hussie describes it, is to fetishise the prenatal kernel from which our entire life grows, untouched by any worldly corruption; to insinuate that we grow forward by stripping away our outer layers like insects, rather than by embracing each new layer as it comes, is a romanticism of childhood that borders on the reactionary. when viewed through this lens, what is "true" is also what is "innocent" - just as the world Before-Us, before Lord English's "corrupting influence", is innocent, Edenesque before the fall brought on by a serpent's bargain.

the Epilogues and more pertinently Beyond Canon, meanwhile, are very essentially not about teenagers at all! breaking free of the old cycle of storytelling also means breaking free of that expectation to stay a child forever, and in a world no longer inhabited primarily by children, how much need is there, really, for a "true self" that determines everything about your being? within the bounds of Homestuck, we can accept that characters like Meenah and Vriska must by their very natures be selfish because selfish teenage girls fill a vital narrative niche, and because when you grow up in a situation like Vriska's, being selfish isn't necessarily the same as being a villain. but becoming an adult means growing up, and among grown ups, on a planet where selfishness is no longer a survival mechanism, being selfish often does make you a villain, and there is an expectation that in order to continue being a hero one must learn and change. and in a world where a Thief no longer has to be selfish, how then can it still be said that every character has an immutable platonic Truth at the essence of their being?

the presence of the sprites in Vriska's purgatory illustrate this idea perfectly. because a sprite is an "idea", they represent a step toward the Ultimate Self, just as the sprite^2 is another step closer. but a sprite is also a ghost image; a photograph captured of a person in a particular moment in time, forever unchanging. this is why the sprites seem to simply disappear at the conclusion of a game of Sburb: while they are immensely powerful and vastly knowledgeable, their significance is tied to a specific purpose within a specific context. whether they simply cease to exist or commit deliberate suicide-by-meteor on the dying battlefield of skaia, they demonstrate an understanding that as great as it is to be an immortal and omniscient sprite, they lose their purpose for existing once the game of Sburb ends: just as the Ultimate Self loses all significance and purpose once the game called Homestuck ends. Davepeta demonstrates this exact superfluousness within the Plot Point; while they may have been a fountain of knowledge about all things arcane within Homestuck, when it comes to actually "growing up", there's not a single piece of advice they can give!

finally, and probably most crucially of all, Beyond Canon has not merely stepped outside the bounds of the rules of the original Homestuck, but outside of its authorial purview altogether. if escaping into Universe C means escape from Lord English's expectations for what it means to be a "man" or a "woman" or a "Page" or a "lowblood", then escaping into Beyond Canon also means leaving behind any of Andrew Hussie's expectations for what it means to "be your Ultimate Self". this is exactly why the story is CALLED Beyond Canon, and is central to exactly the kind of questions it is asking about canon; if Hussie is no longer in charge, why should "the Ultimate Self in Hussie's Own Words" (as linked above) remain the "canon" answer? and these characters' new home, in the custody of a diverse team of new creatives, is reflected by the multiple competing narrative forces within the story; it's probably significant that the character who shows the most reverence and concern for his Ultimate Self is Dirk, the very same character who wishes to bring Homestuck back to its heyday with throwbacks to nostalgic and outdated plot artifices like Sburb! no doubt the story's other key schemers, like its various Calliopes, have their own points of view on the meaning of the Ultimate Self and Homestuck's other mysteries, and the writers responsible for this story in our own world should be allowed to have their own views as well. in order to live up to its very premise, Beyond Canon can and must be allowed to offer up different opinions and interpretations to those of the original text.

ultimately this is key to understanding why Beyond Canon is not a traditional "sequel" and should not be thought of as such; why it was never Homestuck 2, only Homestuck^2, and then dropped the 2 altogether. in much the same way Homestuck was a story not "controlled" by its fans but rather written in continuous conversation with them, Beyond Canon, now finally under the control of fans, is a story in conversation with the text that came before it. in the end this is what any narrative-about-narrative boils down to; there can be no "reality" in fiction, only a version of reality as told by a given narrator. and while we are forced to take a narrator at their word when offered no other options, that doesn't mean every subsequent narrator is going to narrate the same story from the same point of view! it's important to have an understanding of the Ultimate Self as portrayed by Andrew Hussie because it deepens your appreciation of the original Homestuck, and a well-formed appreciation for Homestuck will in turn increase your understanding of Beyond Canon: not because HS and BC are the "same story" by any means, but because better knowing HS will make us better prepared to engage in the conversation being made when BC deconstructs, subverts, and even critiques the story we already know.

[nierly-amazing]

Controversial opinion: Nier Automata's story would have benefited a lot from the creative freedom of being an indie game with more queer & disabled writers, and writers from heavily colonized places

Probably less controversial to those who are still following my gay ass.

It already manages to be a masterpiece on it's own but there's always going to be constraints in big budget games to appeal to a wider audience--like the rumor/fact/idr that 9S was going to be a girl initially but got changed. There's a lot of good input queer and disabled creatives could have offered from their life experiences and how it relates to some of the transhumanist themes in the game. A lot of people seem to forget the machines have been colonizing earth and genociding the androids for 6000 years and those themes could have been expanded on more too.

Like yay we get lesbian 6O and implied trans Pascal but it doesn't really go anywhere with them. The anime does go more into Pascal and machines swapping parts and 9S completely dismissing it but then they never touch on it again (unless they still plan to but with 4 episodes left I doubt it). I want to see 9S have a crisis over it, (and 2E 2B have a crisis over him having a crisis about it).

It'd be interesting to see more a of a discrepancy between high-end porcelain doll yorha models and underfunded ancient Resistance androids. They all look like normal humans. Even the ship of theseus trader guy with the bad leg looks like a regular android. Give me some androids with fucked up body mods that causes 9S to have another crisis (because this boy can fit so many crises in him). Something something parallels with relationships to gender something something 9S is trans and transphobic--doesn't understand the FEEELINGS or what to do about them.

Yorha could have much stricter rules on body modification that's drilled into the android's heads from day one and then they see the machines swap parts with no reservations and resistance androids swap parts with some reservations. Even the whole "emotions are prohibited" thing could be touched on more with more internal struggle in 9S over his inability to act emotionless, and perhaps touch on the point of conflict with 2B who poorly pretends to have her emotions in check.

Maybe some conflict between the machines in pascals village and how rigid they are in trying to emulate humans. Like a group trying to emulate rigid gender roles despite not having assigned genders or sex characteristics, and a group that just does whatever. Like "no you have to choose" but also "humans didn't choose (mostly) so who cares".

And then there's the fact that most machines in pascal's village are not fully sapient, or are maybe coded as children still learning the world and something something its 1am something something how much should their level of sapience matter

Even with 9S's memory "issues" we only have 1 moment in the anime where he has a flash of past memories. Imagine if his descent into grief-stricken madness in route C had his old deleted memories start resurfacing and mixing with his current ones. Or maybe the machine network had copies of some of them and used them to torment him more.

Imagine if they showed Anemone and Devpop try harder to help him but weren't able to due to them not fully understanding what he's going through and their own hangups about machines. Imagine him being unable to really open up to anyone because he doesn't fully understand what he's going through.

9S """racism""" toward machines isn't at all unique to him. They've been genociding the androids for 6000 years, everyone hates them. I want to see more opinions from resistance androids, especially regarding pascal's village. Even Anemone/Lily aren't completely fine with the idea of trading with machines but are basically forced to out of desperation since the council of humanity left them on read. I want to see more of their internal strife with the concept. I want to see some conflict between resistance and yorha androids, too, and conflict within the resistance over the idea of aiming for a peace treaty.

There could also be some good conflict between 2B and 9S over 2B's willingness to just "accept" pascal's village. Since they both have valid points for their opinions (2B's a big softie and doesn't want to fight and 9S sees pacifist machines 'suddenly' popping up after 6000 years as a mega giganto trap (and why wouldn't he?)).

I would have liked to see more interactions with other androids and how they manage in a posthuman world and them trying to replicate humanity from 11,000 years ago. We have little bits and pieces like the bit where the operators give commander a bunch of brown things for valentine's day instead of chocolates.

Oops I thought I was gonna write like 2 paragraphs but I blacked out and wrote an essay. It's late I might expand on this tomorrow but here's some stuff 2 think about

(and bonus extra controversial opinion but it's kinda fucked up that there's the whole theme about robot sentience and then you can go stab fish in the face for fun and kill moose and boar for a quest so an android--who doesn't need to eat at all--can try eating them. Like here we are arguing about fictional robot sentience and then ignoring actual real animal sentience in our daily lives to the point where we don't even question how messed up killing them for non-survival reasons is)

[phantomarine]

Do the phantomarine gods have a "standard" when it comes to sexuality/gender (like how cishet is held as a standard among humans)? Like they have no sex but they do have an assigned gender to an extent, are they normally aroace so Cheline got taken off guard with Cheth... not being that?

I would think their sexuality was a standard born out of a factual reality rather than a social construct. The group of gods born from Cheth and Cheline's mother are all siblings, and they knew no others of their kind outside of their family. Hard to do anything at all when 1) boinking humans was a no-go, 2) boinking each other was a no-go, and 3) there are no other unrelated gods to boink.

So I think it's less of a 'they all comfortably defaulted to being aroace' and more of a 'there was literally no other available option so they all agreed to try and suck it up - and failed.' I've alluded to the gods being made for specific purposes more than once, and it's very much the case - they weren't really made to be people, they were made to be concepts.

Which I'm sure made the more naturally social/curious/romantic gods go a little bonkers over the centuries. Certainly the case for Cheth and Cheline, in their own way.

[inhonoredglory]

I think it makes sense to say that angels as ethereal beings in heaven are sexless but if one or two spend 6000 years on earth BEING male-sexed human bodies it no longer makes sense. As people keep recognising, eating food, drinking and driving fast among other things are all deeply embodied experiences and these have fundamentally changed them as people. The whole Jesus story is the same deal, being embodied human is transformative. We live in a time when the concept of embodiment is deeply unfashionable and Cartesian dualism is entrenched, where endless body mods and casual drugs and careless manipulation of core human physiology is enacted with barely an afterthought for deep-reaching and irreversible consequences, but it's a deeply sick framework for seeing the world

(In response to this meta about ineffables and romance/asexuality)

First of all, they don’t have “male-sexed human bodies.” They are literally "sexless unless they really want to make an effort” (Good Omens, 1990).

Like all of Neil Gaiman’s angels and demons (see The Sandman), Aziraphale and Crowley have no set genitalia, don’t (by default) engage in sexual activity, and they don’t always present or dress as male through history (although they often do).

critical-gemini-hero (excerpt): "Good Omens is the first big show I’ve seen to basically avoid transphobia all together when the opportunity presented itself, and even say fuck you to the gender binary as a bonus." Neil Gaiman (excerpt): "Thank you! That was definitely what we were going for." (source)

So no, they quite literally do not have “male-sexed human bodies” and they do not ascribe to human gender norms.

In addition, what you are suggesting is that “being in a male human body” equates to “feeling male” and “feeling sexual” because “the body dictates internal experience.”

There are literally millions of people, actual human beings living in physical bodies, who (despite living in culture) still DO NOT feel that the gender assigned to their bodies is reflective of their lived, internal experience. Merely having physical attributes does not mean you have a corresponding internal experience. You can be forced by your parents, teachers, elders, peers and everyone else to FEEL a certain way because of your “sexed human body” but it won’t make it true inside you.

If one's internal experience were so unimportant, then we wouldn't have 82% of transgender individuals consider suicide (source) because of the stigma of trying to get out of the norms assigned to them because of their "sexed human bodies."

Aziraphale and Crowley have lived in history long enough to know how varied and complicated the concepts of gender AND sex have been historically. As spiritual beings, I think seeing how much humanity has varied in its ideas on sex and gender only confirms to them how unlike humans they are (with humanity’s obsession with genitalia, sex, reproduction… food, shelter, warmth, breathing––all things that angels and demons do not need to survive).

They love humanity, they love its pleasures and inventions, but they are still very much detached from it. Looking like humans definitely doesn't help them feel like humans at all. (Look at how they talk about us!)

What are we, sniffer dogs??? They don't know what we feel like on the inside or how our biology works (we sure ain't sniffer dogs) because despite some surface appearances, they don't have the same internal experiences as us. Despite being here since the dawn of time. Despite looking like us in many ways.

They can magic up clothing and sideburns and eldritch heads to scare trigger-happy corporate men, and yet somehow gender and sex (as specifically Western-binary concepts) are something they'd totally get down with?

Also, your line of reasoning imagines people having no internal motivation or desire and suddenly get a tattoo and start to become a “bad person” or something. Yes, of course changing our bodies can affect our psychology, but our internal identity much more often influences our bodily choices than the other way around. I'm taking the drugs because I'm already depressed. I'm getting the tat because I want something cool on my body. I'm taking testosterone because I want my inner identity reflected in some ways on my physical body.

[communistkenobi]

in Whipping Girl, Serano grapples with "nature vs nurture" "biology vs society" and so on, and she seems to fall into a sort of centrism where both models are wrong (or rather, only partially correct). her argument is that on the one hand, gender is very obviously socially mediated and (re)produced, and on the other, there is something within people that precedes the social and determines our comfort level with the gender roles we must perform in our lives - she calls this subconscious sex, this thing that everyone has, including cis people, but in trans people it produces this feeling that we are not living our gendered life correctly, that there is some disconnect deep down, that our assigned gender is dissatisfying in some intangible way that can only be resolved via transition. and this subconscious sex is maybe biological or maybe psychological, but it's something that can remain unmoved by the gendered social pressures we are forced to navigate, and therefore there is something "true," or at least compelling, about a partially biological conception of gender. It's not classical gender essentialism but rather a retraction of the essential element of gender away from our genitals and into our brains.

and i find this nature vs nurture dichotomy she explores extremely frustrating. first, for the obvious fact that it assumes a very limited experience set for trans people (a lifelong struggle with gender dysphoria that begins in childhood and culminates in a binarist transition from "one sex to the other"). this model is correct for some people, but it is also the model that medical and psychiatric institutions rely on when "diagnosing" us as "real" transgender people, excluding the possibility of exiting the binary altogether, of rejecting it outright, or of even experiencing the binary in different ways.

two, I don't actually think gender essentialists are making biological claims about sex and gender when they talk about the inherent differences between men and women, because the scientific consensus on the biological components of sex are far more complex than genitals = gender, a fact that has no bearing on reactionary beliefs about gender and sex. Gender essentialists are making political claims using the rhetoric of the biological, the natural. These people have political platforms and goals that are not even remotely restricted to the realm of biology - gender segregated bathrooms and change rooms as well as sports and competitive games, banning transition care for trans people, the violent enforcement of patriarchal & white supremacist western gender norms, the attendant political beliefs about the criminalization of sex work, and frequently, the banning of abortion - these are claims about the built environment, about entertainment & play, about medical care, about labour, about law and the role of the state in producing gender. What is "biological" to transphobes & homophobes is what is natural and unchanging, but paradoxically must also be violently imposed upon people in every sphere of their life in order to be maintained. You see conservatives do this all the time - they talk about natural law, about the rule of man, "survival of the fittest" being used to gleefully explain social murder, "natural differences in men and women", biological claims about racial superiority, and so on. These are not biological claims because these claims do not bear out empirically, they are claims using the authority of tradition cloaked in the authority of biology. "It's always been this way" is not about biology, it is a call to return to a mythical past, a past closer to the imagined "natural state" of human beings prior to the intrusion of "society" and its attendant degenerate tendencies that corrupt "pure" human beings (almost invariably articulated as antisemitic conspiracies about who "orchestrates" this societal degeneracy). They use biological rhetoric because of the supposed apolitical, objective, empirical nature of the natural sciences - they refer not to the epistemic discipline of biology but to the claim of objective authority conferred upon biology. biology cannot be countered with the social because it is outside the social. "facts don't care about your feelings" is a dead meme phrase by this point, but it is probably the perfect distillation of these peoples' worldviews. They are correct not because their beliefs are empirically proven, but because their beliefs provide a rationalisation for the world they want to build. It is the modern version of the divine right of kings. There is nothing "biological" about any of these discussions other than the fact that they argue about how human bodies can or should be used - which, if that's our standard for biological, then everything is biological.

Are trans people biologically their gender? I think we need to reject the premise of this question. It is conceding too much ground; it pivots the discussion to "proving" transness in laboratories, to arguing about our genitals or our chromosomes instead of health care or housing or labour or public space. It accepts as valid the rhetorical sleight of hand that bigots do where they mean "unchangeable" when they say "biological" - something that nobody believes anyway unless you want to also object to like, the sterilization of medical equipment or heart surgery. We circumvent and alter biology every day. Reactionaries do not care about biology even a little bit and we do not need to humour them by pretending otherwise. We have scientific understandings of gender that do not adopt a biological lens because that lens is unequipped to deal with what is going on in front of us.

I'm sympathetic to Serano's desire to locate an origin for the dysphoria a lot of trans people feel, particularly because it allows us to more easily justify our existence. I'm also sympathetic to the fact that when she wrote this book, the public discourse on trans people was very different from what it is today; she's not even close to the first person to engage with this nature v nurture debate because it's the debate all trans people are at some point forced to reckon with. but ultimately I think this conception of transness is both politically a non-starter and a concession to our enemies that we do not need to give

[t34-mt]

hi, i hope you don't mind this question, but what sport does nau'stikah exactly play?

surprised an anon knows he plays sports, i don't remember if i even mentioned it on my blog honestly? also no i don't mind character asks im just shy :>

organized combats in the style of southern momui'oma region, specifically Nuinuk colony, which is the biggest momui'oma colony and holds the biggest festivals of the region. Some would argue out of every coastal group that Nuinuk festivals are the best to attend to, a must even. The main sport nau'stikah practices are organized theatrical combats, usually taking place during the renowned festival month where they're presented several times a week, the schedule being quite tight sometimes for the actors.

although theatrical combats are held all year, but the most prized and memorable happens at this month which is momui'oma's new cycle celebration. Other combats will be held for small festivities of the colony and do not attract so many voyagers. Passing by people will be here sometimes because of Nuinuk being a big colony in general. other sports are mainly a hobby because he enjoys physical activity (and showing off but that's a detail he wont admit). One of them being wrestling which is a sport born in northern regions, believed to have been started in polar maanul groups. It was imported in Nuinuk via northern immigrants. the wrestling is different and incorporates things from the southern continent theater standards thus creating its own sub genre in momui'oma. It works quite close to staged wrestling we have!

organized combats are mainly staged, wearing gears that look closer to a festival costume but still have the required padding on the stomach area to endure talon kicks. While the talon kicks wont cut them, they still can get out of here with nasty blue marks if the combat was intense. The shows are over the top, and incorporate almost dance-like performances too. Since they happen during the theater play acting is part of the sport too. The combat recreates either folklore or mythology tales, or made up storyline between fighters! The combatants are seen as popular sports figures among colony but the favorites will hold an almost "unbeatable near living diety status. Which is what nau'stikah immigrated here to achieve, and he did! he did acquire his own unique title as many fan favorites do. His being "fire catcher".

talon kicking combat is a thing worldwide, with different rules and gear worn, and levels of dangerosity in it. For example talon kicking in plateau region inside the mountain range is quite violent. little to no gear worn, they're short, around a minute or less but quite damaging. They firstly originated from a plateau kyhuine courting practice, where "female" members would fight violently for the prettiest "male" (i put " " because the way their concept of gender works there isn't through assignment via birth sex like humans generally do) as a show off of their capabilities, and while that practice is still alive it also derived into a sport with rules. But the intensity of it is still very present.

babbling -> i still want to develop one that requires swinging (not throwing) an instrument. But at the same time, i have to make a diagram of arm movement and how far they can move them around. since their arms arent on a ball socket joint, they can't do a full circle rotation. they can move it up to a certain degree and rotating it backwards is very limited. I think id be enough for what i have in mind though. Their butterfly joint is limited but not bad though. Also if they ever had sports that require throwing it would be thrown like a frisbee, again using the butterfly joint instead.

people forget this often but humans are like little freaks that are extremely good at throwing things and other primates arent able to do it as well as us. a lot of our sports when you think about it revolves around running around and throwing things, which are the 2 things our bodies excell at. and i think its fun and cool, humans are cool in their own ways ok. anyways, for maanuls and kyhuines their sports generally will also revolve around running around, length jumps and talon kicking

[redditreceipts]

https://www.tumblr.com/genderkoolaid/736795285384216576/

🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯

The only coherent, non-rabidly misogynist and factually right thing OP say in this whole thing is at the very beginning when she recognized transgenderism as a completely made up modern human concept XDDDDD

Okay, let’s go through this word by word:

you can piss of both because it's just blatantly wrong and stupid. I could also say "the earth is flat" and piss of the catholic church and trans activists. what have I proven? nothing.

correct so far lmao

well yeah, everyone shares common experiences with trans and genderqueer people, because nobody identifies and behaves 100% according to their assigned gender at birth

woah, if I didn’t know that this was a gendie blog, I would think that this is a terf lmao. yes, some women are trans (aka trans men), and some men are trans as well (aka trans women)

I mean yeah, if you define “transphobia” as “opposition to gender nonconformity”, she sure as hell lived through transphobia. it’s just a bullshit definition, because being gender non conforming does not imply being trans. the thing with these definitions (i.e. defining trans as “not identifying with your gender assigned at birth” or defining transphobia as "an opposition to gender non-conformity") is that in this type of analysis, there is simply no space for gender non-conformity. every type of discrimination a gnc person experiences is transphobia, and every gnc person is trans or genderqueer.

yeah, maybe she just wore this type of clothing because she liked it. maybe she thought it looked stylish. maybe it suited her best. maybe she had sensory issues with skirts and dresses. maybe she really got a message from God. maybe she wanted to protect herself from sexual violence. it literally doesn’t matter, because she should be able to wear whatever she likes for whatever reason

good for her that she stood by what she wanted to do and started wearing the clothing she liked (which happened to be associated with the male sex in that time). and yeah, the society of that time was sexist, so they probably wanted to punish her for crossing gender roles

i mean, many gnc women wear clothes that are typically associated with the male sex for very different reasons, not just as a means to an end. women have always seen things that defy the patriarchy as vital to their soul, like loving other women, abortion, wearing certain clothes, doing certain trades etc. all of these things could have gotten them killed at one time or the other. you just pick “wearing masculine clothing”, because for you gender is just about fashion statements. 

also, nobody presents as cisfeminine, because femininity is an unreachable standard imposed by patriarchy, and “cis” would imply a total identification with that absurd standard. everyone is gnc in one sense or the other, some less and some much more, so there is really no inherent transness about Jeanne D’Arc. 

no, I don’t care about what the Catholic Church says, and we also don’t know whether Jeanne D’Arc actually heard some divine commandments or whether she just had mania or schizophrenia or something. It doesn’t matter at last, because “genderqueer” is not a useful analysis of anything. the human condition is one of being “genderqueer”, because at least for women, it is considered genderqueer to not shave - our natural bodies are “genderqueer”. you’re “queering” something that didn’t exist in the first place - a happily gender-conforming woman. Jean D’Arc is "genderqueer" because she did what she wanted, like every woman who does what she wants is "genderqueer". every free woman is “genderqueer”, every happy woman is "genderqueer", every courageous woman is "genderqueer". 

so in conclusion, this is not per se wrong, because gendies will just define any word how they like it and don’t do any analysis in the end, because the definition of things like “genderqueer” or “trans” is constructed in such a way that it always confirms the point the author wants to make. but because of its tautological nature, we don’t learn anything. 

but the huge problem with this type of analysis is that the language of “her gender expression”, “her masculine gender expression as vital to her soul”, and the individualised analysis of an experience that fundamentally, all women share to varying degrees: the inability to remain both a whole human and to submit to patriarchal demands. You can’t be gender-conforming and be a full autonomous member of society. And in that sense, being “trans” or “trans-adjacent” is an emotion that every woman shares, some more and some less. The thing is that gender roles were never meant to produce a woman that fulfils them completely, they were only ever meant to occupy women’s minds enough so they don’t start a revolution. 

But why do we have to call that very natural impulse “genderqueer”, implying that feeling like this distances you from womanhood in any way? Feeling like patriarchy is restrictive is the most female thing anyone could experience, and is a confirmation of Jean D’Arc’s womanhood. 

[exocynraku]

hi! no idea if this has been answered, but have you considered how groups of seals think about queerness as a whole? are there trans seals? how do they perceive gayness or a complete disinterest in sexual relations (and, tying into this-seals who have no desire to have a partner, whether or not it's platonic?) no pressure to respond d: love ur little guys the gene sheet is so cool

Short answer: our human concepts of gayness and transgendism don’t properly/fully apply to caeseal societies because gender is not a concept that exists. It’s just never been invented. sex-based genders (boy and girl), masculinity/felinity and tradtional gender roles don't exist. The only thing that does exist is different ways seals will PERSONNALY refer to themselves (pronoun wise i talk about mostly). I say personally because the pronouns seals use are ALWAYS DIFFERENT! specifically catered to the singular seal! (with the except of it/its which you'll have to read my long answer for if you want to understand that) Our human concepts of asexualism/aromanticism/things akin to that DO exist but play a more prominent role in pods. Hunts are kind of an odd ball, lol. Long answer: caeseals and their relationships with sexuality and gender are a lot more different than ours, mostly because:

 caeseals have little to no physical difference between sexes excluding reproducing organs. i'm still debating if i want to add any sort of sex-linked gene(s). this is very unlike most real species of seals but i decided on it mostly because i . Like it more than normal sexual dimorphism? that's sort of it. 

with no obvious sexual differences there also isn’t really a concept of ‘masculinity’ or ‘femininity’, and traditional gender roles haven’t been invented. 

and this all does play a part in caeseal society. how sexuality and “gender” both work differ between pod and hunt groups ! 

hunts: with mates being assigned, what we know as traditional romance is pretty much nonexistent. hunt seal romance is more akin to friendly rivalries.

sexual and romantic attraction really isn’t something that cross hunt seals minds. it does occur, but very few will act on them until later in their life (after they’ve mated, when they can do whatever they want). Excluding a distaste towards sex, which they’ll usually act on sometime after getting paired up by killing their partner.

the sex of hunt seals is known by the leader of the hunt. since they are the ones who choose pairings, they need to keep track of everybody to make sure pairings would be able to reproduce. 

all hunt seals start their lives being called ‘it’ (it/its). this also works as a catch-all term if you need to refer to a seal you don’t know the gender of.

most hunt seals will eventually stray away from 'it' as they grow. there are many reasons one may, and i couldn't list them all. but, as they stray away, the terms they choose are usually entirely unrelated to their sex. instead, it's usually related to their fighting style! 

all seals, no matter the group, attack by biting. but attacking is not all you need to know, especially in hunts. hunts teach all sorts of specialized moves, ranging from defense techniques, knowing your limits & how to use your differences to your advantage, surprise attacks, how to use your surroundings, etc etc. and a lot of seals have somethint they specialize in.

hunt seals use this when choosing how to refer to themselves. have you ever heard of kiki and bouba? how kiki sounds sharp and pointy and bouba sounds soft and round? hunt seals apply the vibes and feelings of different noises (letters) to the vibes and feelings of the thing they specialize in. 

a seal who specializes in surprise attacks would go for something short and sudden sounding (ex: t/k/v/j), maybe a noise that'd instil a feeling of dread. (ex: ss/ee) 

a seal who specializes in a battering-ram style charges to throw opponents around would want something that starts slower (oo, uu, aa, hh, gg) and ends solid, but not sharp. (d/g/b/m) 

etc etc, i could make a million examples. hunt seals who specialize in multiple styles could use multiple pronouns or mix two together. if a hunt seal's style changes over time, so could how they refer to themselves. 

what feeling a certain letter evokes does vary SLIGHTLY hunt to hunt, but that doesn't matter, and a hunt seal wouldn't introduce themselves to a seal from a different hunt. they'd just fight each other. 

i’ll probably make a guide for what letters hunt seals associate different things to. but that’ll be later

pods: pod culture around relationships is a LOT more complex than hunts and is a bit hard to define. Gender is . still a bit complex but it’s definitely easier to understand than their relationships

similar to hunts, pod seals begin their lives being referred to as it (it/its). but the way pod seals figure out what terms they’ll be referred to as isn’t actually determined by them. as seals grow up, the people around them and the people they’re close to, usually immediate family, will start referring to them in different ways. whatever their family thinks fits them. as time goes on, eventually certain terms will fall off and others will stick. and eventually, usually when they’re about halfway thru their juvenality, one will REALLY stick. that’ll be how this seal refers to themselves.

similar to hunts, these terms are usually made up, but not related to sounds. they’re related to things that the seals family associates with them. usually physical objects/things or ‘vibes’. this is a little hard to explain, but eventually i’ll make an easier guide/make examples.

If a seal for whatever reason doesn’t like the term that’s been decided for them, they can ask for more suggestions/pick a different one their family recommended/make one up themselves/etc. It’s rare for this to happen but it’ll show up every so often. 

Pods relationships are open and ‘cheating’ is not a concept that exists in their society. Seals who never end up in relationships with other seals do exist but they’re hard to find. Most seals are able to keep track of who they’re in a relationship with but those who like having lots of partners will occasionally keep lists. 

Most seals end up in relationships with those who they grew up with but meeting someone totally new does happen. And when i mean meeting someone new, i mean both from a different pod and inside your OWN pod. This might seem crazy but, i think i’ve mentioned it, pods can get VERY BIG!!!! There is most DEFINITELY a chance there’ll be some seals you don’t meet for a long time or are only acquaintances with. 

Pod relationships are pretty complex but CAN be understood if you put a bit of brain into it. The only relationship that’s not hard to figure out are familial relationships as those just work as. That’s my family. That’s not my family. Otherwise, pod seal relationships usually consist of offshoots of platonic, romantic or sexual. (ps: when i say platonic i don’t mean stuff like friends or acquaintances those are their own thing that word just how they do normally in real life) to give a few examples, someone could have a solely romantic relationship with another seal, but be open to romantic or sexual relationships. Someone could like romantic relationships but only with people they don’t know very well. I could quite literally go on forever. 

But, when referring to another seal, pod seals will generally say ‘i don’t know that seal/we’re acquaintances/we’re friends’ or ‘we have a relationship/we are partners’ and then expand further or not depending on comfort. I’m not sure if i explained that well (like ive done with most of the stuff in this post putting my thoughts into words is brain melting) but i’ll have to cap it here before i die in some sort of way. But i’ll get around to making nice guides eventually, probably when school stops swamping me (who knows when that’ll be though) 

[overthefartingwall]

there's been something on my mind as a transmasc gomens fan and i'm not sure i can quite put into words what i'm trying to convey here so forgive anything that doesn't come off quite right... but there's something very transgender about aziraphale. i absolutely adore crowley's genderfluidity and i think it's portrayed really well in the show and i'm glad it's an aspect of the character that gets the love and attention it deserves from the fan base. but i also think there should be some acknowledgement of aziraphale's relationship to gender that i, personally, also think is worth noting and worth interpreting as queer in nature. i'm very aware that in canon angels and demons don't have the same concept of gender that humans do but that's precisely why i view aziraphale as trans in his own way. both aziraphale and crowley play with human concepts and activities routinely, and that's a large part of their characters. we see it with food, with clothes, with books and plants, with hobbies, etc., and we definitely see it in how crowley constantly plays with gender. but as for aziraphale, it tends to get overlooked because he consistently presents as male. but there's something very trans about that? that a being that isn't assigned any sex or gender familiarizes himself with human manhood and sees himself in it, chooses to participate in it over and over again, is a man even though that wasn't expected of him... idk it's obviously not the same thing as being assigned female at birth and then transitioning to male, but there is still a transition to male... this is such a long post for such a simple point does anybody understand what i'm getting at here

[silenceofthewave]

Homosexual: a person who is sexually or romantically attracted to people of their own sex.

That is you 🏳️‍🌈

[Still confused, the mech's visor lights up as it performs a google search. After a moment, it responds.]

Cybertronians: Do not possess the human concept of "sex", nor "gender".

Human Standards: Dictate us as intersex. However, Cybertonians do not identify with this.

Cybertronians: Often only have a gender if it is assigned to them by species who possess the concept- like humans. Otherwise, we are simply without one.

Soundwave: Rejects the notion of gender. It is a mech, a Cybertronian, and does not identify with whatever label humans want to put on it.

[ankoku-teion]

Dioraden: Dragonborn conlang - genders

ok, so. my approach to building this conlang is that language and culture are inseparably intertwined. so I find i cant build one without the other. as with everything Dioraden, this is a WIP. there are bits missing and things may get shuffled around to fit, its not meant to be perfect or idealised, and there are deliberately problematic elements of the culture that are reflected in the language.

getting my thoughts on the dragonborn approach to gender sorted out is proving difficult to do using notes in a spreadsheet, so im writing it down here. if anybody want to make any comments or suggestions, or ask any questions: please, please please do! it helps my process immensely.

bear in mind also that this is entirely for a fantasy race in a fantasy setting and is not meant to be directly representative of any real world identities or groups. that said, i am open to learning new things.

the view-link to the entire g-sheet is here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15rrKWM-kTKqSK7uD7AWxeXxnSvli9CwyIu9vJrs_H6o/edit?usp=sharing

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

the dragonborn have a far more complicated relationship to gender than is typical of the other races in the setting.

the first dragonborn were hybrids created via magic from human stock to be servitors for the last true dragons, who they worship as gods. they live in a matriarchal clan-based society with two biological sexes born in a 2-1 ratio of male to female. they are hatched from eggs rather than born as live young.

those are the biological circumstances that underpin the culture. sex and gender are, of course separate but related, and this is where the greater part of the complexity comes in:

dragonborn are gender-trinary. meaning their culture has 3 basic genders; the Feminine, the Masculine, and an as-yet unnamed third gender.

given the matriarchal nature of their society, the feminine is the default gender, in much the same way that in english, the masculine is often treated as the default. e.g. the dragonborn word for mankind is more literally translated as woman-kind. their word for "woman" is "Rodoki" which is also their own word for their species. etymologically, it comes from the words "Rodeigo" - dragon/god (these concepts are synonymous) and "kidoh kidoh" - child/descendant. (Kidoh - child of my brood, as opposed to Ohaki - person who is a child. the repetition of Kidoh indicates multiple generations, with a third optionally being added for emphasis of a distant ancestor.)

thus the word "Woman" can be literally translated as "child of the gods" or "descended from dragons" - Dragonborn.

most biological females are women, and most women are biological females.

Rosika and Rodeka are the words for the other two genders but i havent decided which will be which, once thats setled ill just refer tot he third gender by that word. etymologically they are derived from "woman+river" and "woman+hard+fast"

most men are biologically male. but only about 60% of biological males are men.

the vast, vast majority of non-cis* dragonborn belong to the third gender. about 40% of biological males and a few percent of biological females belong to this gender. it becomes readily apparent in early childhood if a child is 3rd-gender, and it is incredibly rare for a biological make to identify as a woman or vice-versa.

*the semantics of how the terms cis and trans might best be applied here are beyond me, discussion is eagerly welcomed. im being careful with my language here because i really dont know how to translate these concepts properly. the closest analogous concept in humans is enby, which we dont consider to be cis, but also, all of these people conform to their AGAB, though even AGAB doesnt fully apply because a. they hatch from eggs, and b. they aren't considered fully people until they start to speak, so it would be 'Assigned Gender At Speach' i guess? a biological male identifying as a woman, or a biological female identifying as a man would be undeniably trans, as would anyone who was assigned man or woman in childhood and later identifies as third-gender. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------

an additional layer of complexity is added by a fourth genderless identity, similar to our a-gender. with it/its pronouns, though these are distinct for people vs objects.

i haven't created the words for this yet, but it exists, and its on my list of gaps to fill.

a dragonborn of any gender may choose to take on this genderless identity at any time, for a limited period or as a permanent state. often, but not always, this is done as a sign of dedication to a task or creed. however people who are simply agender do exist.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

finally, there are 3 gender neutral singular pronouns. the primary one is Li (pronounced lie) which directly translates as the singular "they" in english. with the plural "they" being Linah. the second singular they is Linoh, and the thrid is Litah.

the 3 singular theys exist only to allow the speaker to easily distinguish between multiple unidentified people in casual conversation. e.g. instead of "the first one said [X] and the second one said [Y] so they hit them," it would be "Li said [X] and Linah said [Y] so Li hit Linah."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

so, in conclusion:

2 biological sexes 3 genders a fourth genderless identity. and 3 additional gender neutral pronouns @four-leafed-queer-gal @ms-macintosh what do you think? feedback is welcome.

[f--e-u-e-r-t-r-u-n-k-e--n]

Collection of notes: On the confusion between gender and personality. Allowing confusion. Allowing not knowing how to define.

[I've been wanting to make a collection of notes for a while then I saw this interaction between users and thought it was time to contribute. but without the intention of making fun of them. Mocking attitudes prevent people from daring to research and learn.]

Personality n. the enduring configuration of characteristics and behavior that comprises an individual’s unique adjustment to life, including major traits, interests, drives, values, self-concept, abilities, and emotional patterns. Personality is generally viewed as a complex, dynamic integration or totality shaped by many forces, including hereditary and constitutional tendencies; physical maturation; early training; identification with significant individuals and groups; culturally conditioned values and roles; and critical experiences and relationships. Various theories explain the structure and development of personality in different ways, but all agree that personality helps determine behavior. >APA Dictionary of Psychology.

Personality psychology. The branch of psychology that systematically investigates the nature and definition of personality as well as its development, its structure and trait constructs, its dynamic processes, its variations (with emphasis on enduring and stable individual differences), and its maladaptive forms (i.e., personality disorders). The field rests on a long history of theoretical formulation (e.g., trait theories, psychoanalytic theories, role theories, learning theories, type theories) that has aimed to synthesize cognitive, emotional, motivational, developmental, and social elements of human individuality into integrative frameworks for making sense of the individual human life. It has also developed numerous tests and assessments to measure and understand aspects of personality. >APA Dictionary of Psychology. Questioning is a word that is used when people may question who they are sexually attracted to (…) is also used when people may question the feelings they have about their own gender. >Robie Harris "It's perfectly normal : changing bodies, growing up, sex, and sexual health" Effective Personality is a multidimensional construct, with a psychometrically confirmed structure, consisting of four spheres: Self Strengths (self-concept and self-esteem); Self Demands (motivation, expectations and attributions); Self Challenges (decision making and coping with problems); and Self Relationships (empathy, assertiveness, communication).

The first sphere, Self Strengths, refers to two questions: Who am I and How do I value myself? On the other hand, the sphere of Demands of the Self would answer: What do I want, what expectations do I have to achieve it, and on whom or on what does it depend for me to achieve it successfully? The third dimension asks: What do I do when faced with a problem? How do I make the right decisions when faced with a problem or difficulty? Finally, the sphere of Relationships of the Self poses the question: How do I relate to others? (Martín del Buey and Martín Palacio, 2012). (…) Gender differences are the discrepancies in men and women at the cultural, social and value levels, which have been transmitted over the years through the socialization process. The report made by the National Institute of Statistics of Chile (2011) shows the gender inequality between men and women with respect to the roles played by each one, as well as the different responsibilities of one and the other are also presented. Gender roles are the behaviors accepted as masculine or feminine, so they are directly related to the tasks and performances assigned to men and women differently (Instituto de la Mujer, 2013). "the processes of adaptation of gender roles have been strengthened to the extent that it is socially recognized that gender inequalities produce profound inequities that affect the development of women in all spaces of social, public, private and institutional life" (Instituto Nacional de Estadística de Chile, 2011, pp.12). Gender stereotypes refer to those beliefs and ideas imposed and rooted in society about the characteristics, aptitudes and attitudes that each gender should have (Instituto de la Mujer, 2013). Some examples of female stereotypes consider women to be dependent and emotional; while some examples of male stereotypes consider them to be courageous, rational, independent, decisive, etc. The United Nations Development Program shows that the Chilean woman is mainly represented as a mother, but also as a hard worker and fighter; while the image of the Chilean man is related to irresponsibility and machismo, as well as the provider figure. >Castellanos Cano, Silvia; Guerra Mora, Patricia; Bueno Álvarez, José Antonio. DIFERENCIAS DE GÉNERO EN PERSONALIDAD EFICAZ EN UNIVERSITARIOS CHILENOS International Journal of Developmental and Educational Psychology, vol. 5, núm. 1, 2014, pp. 131-139 Asociación Nacional de Psicología Evolutiva y Educativa de la Infancia, Adolescencia y Mayores. Badajoz, España A quarter of a century ago, philosopher Judith Butler (1990) called upon society to create “gender trouble” by disrupting the binary view of sex, gender, and sexuality. Key to her argument is that gender is not an essential, biologically determined quality or an inherent identity, but is repeatedly performed, based on, and reinforced by, societal norms. This repeated performance of gender is also performative, that is, it creates the idea of gender itself, as well as the illusion of two natural, essential sexes. In other words, rather than being women or men, individuals act as women and men, thereby creating the categories of women and men. Moreover, they face clear negative consequences if they fail to do their gender right.

Butler’s notion of performativity echoes a range of social psychological approaches to gender and gender difference. What we social psychologists might call gender norms and stereotypes (e.g., Eagly, 1987; Fiske and Stevens, 1993), or gender schemas (Bem, 1981) provide the “scripts” for what Butler’s describes as the performance of gender.

We are not the first to point out the relevance of Butler’s work to social psychology. Bem (1995) drawing on Butler’s work, argued in that as gender researchers we should create gender trouble by making genders that fall outside of the binary visible, in order to disrupt binary, heteronormative views of gender within and outside of psychology. Minton (1997)

To be clear, Butler does not argue that biological processes do not exist or do not affect differences in hormones or anatomy. Rather, she argues that bodies do not exist outside of cultural interpretation and that this interpretation results in over-simplified, binary views of sex. In other words, biological processes do not themselves result in two “natural,” distinct, and meaningful, categories of people. The two sexes only appear natural, obvious, and important to us because of the gendered world in which we live. More specifically, the repeated performance of two polar, opposite genders makes the existence of two natural, inherent, pre-discursive sexes seem plausible. In other words, Butler views gender as a performance in which we repeatedly engage and which creates the illusion of binary sex. She argues:

“Because there is neither an ‘essence’ that gender expresses or externalizes nor an objective ideal to which gender aspires; because gender is not a fact, the various acts of gender create the idea of gender, and without those acts, there would be no gender at all. Gender is, thus, a construction that regularly conceals its genesis. The tacit collective agreement to perform, produce, and sustain discrete and polar genders as cultural fictions is obscured by the credibility of its own production. The authors of gender become entranced by their own fictions whereby the construction compels one’s belief in its necessity and naturalness.” (p. 522) >Thekla Morgenroth and Michelle K. Ryan, Gender Trouble in Social Psychology: How Can Butler’s Work Inform Experimental Social Psychologists’ Conceptualization of Gender?

The second critical theory of gender is queer performative. This theory revolves around any gender action that varies from heterosexual behavior. Any gay, lesbian, transsexual, bisexual, transgender, etcetera person is in the gender queer group. The word queer refers to straying from the normalcy of heterosexuality to any abnormal sexual or gender preference (Wood). Researchers of the queer performative theory realized that because gender changes in all people and people do gender, categorizing gender as a verb makes more sense.

The interchangeability of gender traits in stereotypical straight and queer people is easy and often done. The gender identity of a person is fluid and not a rigid structure (Wood). Gender identity change is common now in most every group of people.

Respect and knowledge of all types of gender queer people is a major goal in this theory (Wood). If all races, groups, and sexes are to be respected then shouldn’t all other traits? Queer performative theory has two main points to convey. The first point is how gender should not bind a person’s attributes and characteristics. Physical traits can always change. People dye their hair other colors, get braces, lose weight, and go bald. Queer performative aims to prove that gender just like those physical characteristics can be changed. The term “man” interchanges from an eighteen year old, to a WWII veteran, then to a bedazzled drag queen. Consequently, the term woman interchanges between a young bride, to Cat Zingano, to Marilyn Monroe. The sex of a person is only one part of a whole human being (Wood). People cannot look to the sex of another person for the gender stereotype they wish to impose upon them. Even biological sex characteristics get murky at times. Back in 1629, a court was troubled with the case of manservant T. Hall (Meadow). Hall was both womanly and manly to the people around. The people physically checked Thomas/Thomasine and when they could not prove or find a sex, court order Hall to wear both women’s and men’s clothing at all times (Meadow). Nearly four hundred years ago this case was given and stories nowadays hardly have changed. The second main idea of queer performative is how our gender is in a constant state of flux (Wood). We could never live completely without changing out gender outlook. Identities are performed when dads watch baseball meanwhile bottle-feeding their newborn child. Gender identities are expressed when second grade girls do not cry when they are teased but retaliate with force. Some girls love to be girls; others just like to be themselves without any boundaries at all. I grew up in dresses. I actually had to learn how to crawl on my hands and feet because my knees would become caught in the skirts. When I grew and was in grade school, I still wore dresses very often. However, I would fight, kick, and hit any boy or girl who said any harm to my friends or me. Gender is not a wall or structure! >Critical Theories of Gender. https://www.azwestern.edu/sites/default/files/awc/student-success-center/15-03-02_Critical_Theories_of_Gender.pdf

[Takes references from "Wood, Julia T. Gendered Lives: Communication, Gender, and Culture. 10th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Pub., 2013. Print".]

[ckret2]

Hi. So, question. Are the genders of Bill's dimension like bees? I've been wondering, as lines are considered female (""drone equivalent""), whereas any other shape with more sides are male, but. you know. come in literal different shapes (ie. workers, guards, queens, etc.) Obviously this framework of comparing them to bees is more of a metaphor. Stark biological variance and how it interfaces with gender has GOT to do some interesting things to their concept of gender.

I want to avoid "even once you set aside reproductive roles, lines are so massively different from polygons that you can separate 'polygons' and 'lines' into two groups as if polygons share some inherent similarity that makes them more similar to each other than any of them are to lines," and I also want to avoid "each distinct shape has a special hardcoded biological function like some kind of fucked up 'natural' self-reinforcing class system."

So, no. I'd rather they not be like bees.

Truth be told, it would take a huge amount of effort to invent a bunch of fresh new unique genders connected to all the shapes' different sexes WITHOUT defaulting to some sort of cringy over-simplified "and here's the warrior sex with a bunch of warrior personality traits, and here's the scholar sex with a bunch of scholarly personality traits, and here's the politician sex and the merchant sex and the farmer sex and—" Like the social restrictions from human sexism are already bad enough, do we really need to upgrade "assigned gender at birth" to "assigned job at birth" like this is Brave New World or something? I'm not writing a dystopia here. And after all that effort, it would have absolutely negligible impact on the fic that I'm doing all this worldbuilding for.

So—unless I stumble upon a zero-effort idea I can explain in fic in under 40 words that DOESN'T make my agender ass cringe in "really, we're replicating THAT conception of gender?" distaste—I'm gonna continue going "each shape is a separate sex with a separate assigned gender, trust me bro" and y'all will just have to take my word for it. If you can't tell what exactly it is that makes Bill's gender different from Kryptos's gender it's because they're aliens and it's just too foreign for you to comprehend. Trust me bro.