Gender pronouns in Canada

Every stereotype exists for a reason. It's complete ignorance to say that there aren't things associated with being in the realm of boy things and girl things. I've got plenty of interests outside of stereotypical girly interests but I don't have a desire to dress butch and I like guys. I also have no question about being a chick, so I consider myself cisgendered.

Male and female are biological facts, not social constructs. Although genetic anomalies and hermaphrodites exist, they are a very, very small exception to the "binariness" of sex. They don't constitute additional sexes, merely indeterminate forms. The "exceptions" to the binary rule actually prove the rule, as they're incapable of sexual reproduction unless they have fully male or fully female sexual organs.

Right. The last time I was in NYC I saw a guy with a T-shirt emblazoned "Gender is over -- if you want it!" I felt like saying "Oh, so if I 'want it', I'll stop having an X and Y chromosome and women will stop having two X chromosomes??"
We can't change biology. We really can't.

What is true, however, is that some people fall between the archetypal chairs of Male and Female. Yes, even people fully capable of reproduction. There are, of course, numerous mothers and fathers who have undergone sex-change procedures. And I think we can safely assume that they didn't do it for fun.

If there weren't a sharp line etched between sexes, how would we have managed to so horrendously overpopulate this-here planet?

However, that narrow line also permits any number of shades of grey. Which doesn't mean that we should buy the nonsense that these things are "merely" a "social construct" (though such a thing as social constructs definitely does exist) or go to town torturing our language in an attempt to free it of reality.

But reality includes shades of grey. We have to learn to live with that.

To turn the example I was given earlier on its head:

To echo @Anna in post 211, I figure my X'n'Y chromosomes are safely intact. But do I love this pic? Ah shore do!

No. Sex is biological.

There are social norms and conventions that go along with being male or female, but those aren't sex. A female person does not become male by acting a certain way.

True, but irrelevant. A masculine woman is still a woman.

Yes, but there's a high correlation between sex and gender. It has a biological basis; this is true across many cultures, and even extends to the animals. Males and females have roles that are strongly linked to their respective sexes.

In any event, while gender may be situational or socially constructed, sex isn't.

Agreed. No matter what "gender" your brain tells you that you are, you are still biologically male or female (or, just to avoid the inevitable pedantic objection: the rare instance of someone of indeterminate sex).

And what I'm saying is that I've often heard the same group of people talk about how we should be getting away from gender stereotypes (something I actually tend to agree with), yet here there are making up new genders because they don't fit within traditional stereotypes.

You may assume when I use "male" and "female," I am talking about sex. Gender is strongly correlated, though, and so I don't object to identifying male persons with male gender and female persons with female genders. That will be correct far, far more often than it is incorrect.

A person's gender may mismatch their sex, but their sex is determined by genetics. Sex is more grounded in objective, quantifiable, measurable fact, and so should prevail for legal, linguistic, etc. purposes.

no. What they think is that the culture EXPECTS certain things from male/female persons and they do not feel at ease conforming to those.

People like me, transsexuals, DO very much confirm the predominant binary culture because we find peace conforming to the opposite gender/gender role expectation that prevails in whatever culture we appear in.

while I washed my hands of debating you when you ducked into the corner of "you can't make me comply!!" THIS statement (in bold) is why I was debating you in the first place.

You've gone beyond "I have the right not to agree to your identity" to "the law should be on my side" which is bullshit.

I think Paladin has willingly fallen victim to what the Germans call "Palmström logic" (there must be a term for this but I don't know it). The classic example is a guy hit by a car while crossing the street at a pedestrian crossing. When he wakes up in hospital, he refuses to believe it happened because the law says you have to stop for pedestrians.

A body is found and brought to the coroner for examination.

Although the sex organs of the descedent are undamaged and clearly identifiable, and though a genetic test clearly identifies normal sex chromosomes, can the coroner draw a conclusion about the person's sex?

I say yes.

Unless you can show how I'm wrong, you agree with me whether you want to admit it or not.

^ Too bad there's no such thing as a soul (anyway it's in court on a procedural hearing re: it's existence).

Fine. Until recently I was impatient with the word "gender" because I figured English had got by just fine with the word "sex" for centuries.

Now I'm not so sure (not sure). Perhaps we should assign the word "sex" the anatomical/physiological meaning and the word "gender" a more nebulous and subjective one. There are plenty of analogies (I say tomayto, you say tomawto, etc.)

Then we can all have our tomato and eat it too.

Even "gender" has strong correlation with sex, in that it's the social and cultural aspects of being a particular sex. And, of course, one definition of gender is that it is a synonym for "sex."

But words are constantly changing their meaning. I was just reading a major daily today and saw the word "concerning" used to mean "worrying". I thought Shit, looks like that has really entered the language (it being a language peeve of mine since I first heard it). But if the paper's style guide now accepts it --- and the copy editors would have replaced it until very recently --- what can you do? We don't write like Chaucer anymore, do we?

As for objective anatomical/physiological reality, well, if there were no mutations, evolution wouldn't work, would it?

So I think we have to learn to live with these realities.

Yes, languages evolve. But that evolution is organic, an outcome of dynamic, complex, ongoing social changes...not the product of some language tyrant.

Is that a change? I've used "concerned" for "worried" my whole life, I think. Maybe that gerund form is new, I dunno.

Not against the evolution of language (in fact, quite in favor of it as it often brings useful new ways to express ourselves)...just not for anyone being able to become the authority guiding that evolution.

Once sexual organisms diverged from asexual ones, there was no going back. If you're a human mutant of indeterminate sex, you're probably sterile and thus an evolutionary dead end.

Again, I'm fine with language evolving. I just don't want someone--especially someone with a political agenda--to become the authority on it. Language evolves quite nicely without any control, thank you very much.

Clearly. But as previously discussed, language tyrants always fail (see Nazis, real, original Nazis). Therefore this is neither here not there ---- if language changes, ain't on account of no tyrants.

Yes, the gerund used as an adjective (e.g. "Fred found his failure to locate the nachos concerning indeed.")

No-one here is claiming otherwise.

Your fears are utterly groundless. See what I wrote in post 4.

Maybe, but the original article (and other publicized similar cases) suggests otherwise.

All it says is that some very limited 'jurisdictions' have issued some "rules". Big deal. Some people may find their consciousness raised, others will ignore them.

If you work in customer relations at Acme Gear & Sprocket, you'll find the rules forbid you to tell customers to Fuck Off. This sort of "tyranny" isn't worth getting uhh.. concerned about.

Since there's a political angle to many speech codes, what takes root at one or two places can spread to others. And where there are rules, there is enforcement of the rules.

There's a difference between rules that require civility and rules that require you to embrace a political position.

agree it's a great pic! Liking it has zero to do with gender. I bow-hunt - relevant because you see nature "up close and personal" in ways the average person never will. You are spitting distance from wildlife that has no clue that you are there - you are invisible to them if they can't see or smell you. So I see animals doing super cute things all the time and it's great. And of course I love kitties!

Actually gender is entirely about language. It's just that over time, it's been used interchangeably because some people are bothered by using the word "sex" in normal conversation.

I have nothing against hunting, provided you:
1) are good enough at it to kill the animal very fast;
2) actually eat everything you kill.

By your example, if said deceased is a post-operative transwoman , the genitals would not reflect the conclusion you suggest. There are other physical features, mainly skeletal, that would.


But those physical sexual traits are not in dispute. You are proving a point no one is challenging. The question at hand is the legitimacy of having a gender identity that is at odds with those traits you cling to. Short of certain sophisticated brain scans, physical traits have no bearing on that question.