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I'd say that gender itself is an unnecessary concept. We used to have sex alone and that was good enough.
In Chinese Daoism they have this big emphasis on avoiding distinctions, of not trying to define the universal dao. Once you differentiate between good and bad, you create good and bad and split everything up when it should be united. Normally, I think this is ridiculous. But in this case, it seems reasonable. The concept of gender creates confusion and unnecessary problems. Without the idea of gender, people could still be more or less masculine or feminine. There were tomboys, which originally had eugenic connotations of strong, capable, athletic women advancing the race. Yet there wasn't an awareness of them being gender non-conforming. Enid Blyton's George for instance was a girl who acted like a boy, yet Blyton was an arch-conservative, reviled by progressives. She didn't have a concept of George being trans, there was no notion of gender in the work, only behaviour.
Vis versa, you could have men who behaved effeminately, yet were still men. The idea of gender creates and strengthens a link between sex and behaviour that has all kinds of complicated, troubling implications. Public officials aren't even in a position to define what a woman is after this epistemological apocalypse. The root cause of the problem was inventing gender and the best solution IMO is abolishing gender.
Just because you don't put a name to it that wouldn't 'abolish gender'. Whether or not it was conceived of as such, gender roles as separate from sex clearly existed prior to the semi-recent past - without the existence of gender, what would it even mean to behave as 'more masculine' or 'more feminine'? If anything, putting a name to the notion of gender surely helps to abstract behaviours away from sex rather than strengthening, as without it the only language with which to describe gendered behaviour is sex-based.
Without gender:
"I'm a woman that like shooting guns, intense physical exercise and get really competitive."
"Ok, you're a tomboy, a woman that likes manly things, things that most women don't like. That's unusual but whatever."
With gender:
"Are you sure you're a girl and not a man trapped in a woman's body? Are you a man? What is your gender? Do you want us to cut off your breasts or create an artificial penis out of flesh from your arm? This is a really serious issue of determining your true authentic self."
Just because what we now call gender roles are called gender roles, there's no need to have a concept of gender. We could call them sex roles instead. Gender isn't needed.
So we could indeed rename it but what would the point be? It wouldn't change anything. You're 'without gender' examples still includes roles at least two of which are not really connected to sex in any meaningful sense. Gender is present there whether you want it to be or not. Also, I'm not sure why you think that using concept of gender somehow entails that one must believe that expressing gendered attributes of the opposite sex necessitates a sex change. It has no real bearing on that question.
What do you mean it wouldn't change anything? One is implying you should introspect furiously, and consider surgery, just because you have particular preferences, and the other shrugs and accepts you as you are. You think these are basically the same thing?
They are connected to sex in the sense that they are strongly correlated with it. This is the whole reason why gender theorists claim you're a boy for playing with trucks, etc.
The point would be to not create superflous entities with no explanatory power.
You have to prove that claim. There's nothing that the concept of gender helps you explain that can't be explained without it as far as I can see.
Probably because this is exactly what experts in the fields of gender are explicitly saying?
The other commentor said this but I don't see why using the concept of gender implies that deviating from gender norms is a sign of trans-ness. Just acknowledging something exists isn't an endorsement of the way its currently treated in society. What I mean by that is that if I use gender to refer to the socio-cultural attributes generally associated with being a man or woman, especially those with no direct link to sex, that by no means entails that I also think it's good that there are such gendered attributes, and if you deviate from what's expected you therefore need a sex change. Indeed, there are many gender abolitionists who would do away with any notion of gendered attributes if they could, which would presumably also render the whole idea of transitioning obsolete, but they still use the concept of gender - in order to criticise it - but it usefully describes an existing phenomenon.
Also, literally no-one of any relevance claims 'you're a boy if you play with trucks'. What gender is for, among much else, is to describe the expectation that boys play with trucks, which exists whether I like it or not, which has no connection to sex that I can see.
Because gender is not primarily discussed as a mere set of behavioral tendencies that might be analyzed by anthropologists in a detached way, it's primarily discussed as a core part of your identity, and "a core part of your identity is not what you think it is" obviously implies making some radical changes to be more in line with it.
Would a clinical psychologist running a gender clinic in a children's hospital, saying things like that at a transgender health conference be someone of some relevance? Would the medical professionals in attendance, giving absolutely no negative feedback to these claims, be someones of some relevance?
I do think that gender is frequently a core part of people's identity, but in the first place I don't think that's something you can ignore by using different words, and secondly that doesn't mean I think it ought to be a core part of someone's identity. 'Your behaviours tend to align more with male gender roles' might be an argument for a woman to transition, but an alternative answer would be to simply stop caring about wanting to align your gender with the one usually associated with your behaviours. Me thinking that latter answer is often a much better response, however doesn't suddenly mean gender or gender roles don't exist, simply because I'd rather they didn't.
Well yes but it would depend exactly how 'like that' such statements actually were.
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Yes, as usual both sides are to blame. Many on the right are not helping matters by having an attitude of "you are not a real man unless you... (some stereotypical tough manly shit)". It is basically the same sort of thinking that transgenderism advocates engage in, but they do not realize it.
Call this comic crude all you like but it hit the nail on the head:
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbfb3231f-317c-472d-aab8-9aed5a70367a_690x461.jpeg
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As far as I understand this trend is not only about some vague ideological warfare and language games. The words like diversity or hate crime or even conflating words female/woman/transwoman serves specific legal purpose, like for instance specifically naming "diversity" as an exception when it comes to preferential hiring practices. In a sense it is genius, it may be easier to redefine the word woman so that it includes transwomen so then one can automatically apply all the legislature and judicial history in one's favor as opposed to defining it as a separate category and lobbying for brand new legislature covering this topic.
It seems to me that, if anything, the exact opposite is the case. Terms in legislation are typically given very specific definitions, and terms like "woman" usually don't appear in sex discrimination statutes. Nor do hate crime statutes refer to hate or even define separate crimes, as opposed to increasing penalties for existing crimes where the victim is chosen because of their actual or perceived race, color, religion, or national origin.
Rather, this phenomenon seems to be used outside the strictly legal realm (eg, in addition to your examples, the use of the term, "groomer").
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