Is gender 100% bullshit? Or not

I'm not talking anomalies. The interplay between hormone levels and sensitivity mean EVERYONE falls on a spectrum. Intersex conditions are the extremes that cast light on complex nature of sexual biology.

ANd it is harmful to at least half the population to categorise into any gender.

alldayinbed
Bullshit.
Xs and Ys are all that is on offer in the human.

Nope there are 2 sexes. In the same way that humans have 2 legs. Yes some people are born with no legs, but that is something unusual, an exception ( that proves the rule ) . They are not a different type of human.

It is not sensible to give a unique category to every human because every human has a slightly different genetic make up. It is useful to categorise into 2 sexes

In answer to the OP. Gender is a construct, and public understanding of biological sex it is also heavily constructed to support the notion of gender. Have a read of Simon Levay's The Sexual Brain (available online as pdf). Covers this very well with proper citations and studies and is a set text for psychology and biology degrees.

allday you are talking about anomalies. Of course 'not all' applies to any situation. We are talking generally.

Are you assuming that the way the drugs imbalance (hormones) affect you is part of your personality?
That doesn't make sense. It isn't your personality to become unconscious when given a general anesthetic.
Or perhaps I misunderstand.

Hormones play a part in human behaviour. For all of us. Adrenaline will produce the flight or fight instinct in all of us. We all feel anger. We all feel fear. We are socialised to suppress certain emotions.

It always makes me laugh when people say women are more emotional than men. Is anger not an emotion then? Men who express frustration when driving are 'being emotional' but we don't label them as that because we are socialised not to.

@Fairenuff but this is incorrect. Biological sex is not binary. Not all females gestate. Not all can. Not all males are dominant. Some females are dominant. There are thousands of intersex conditions. In fact, unless you have had your chromosomes and hormone sensitivity levels tested, any one of us could have an intersex condition, regardless of whether we have successfully procreated, and not know about it.

If you test groups for testosterone levels you will find sex is not a predictor of level. The interplay between hormone levels and sensitivity is vastly complex. Biology is so much more interesting than there are two sexes, end of.

Women produce offspring. That is our sex role. The role the female sex has in procreation. This makes them vulnerable.

This is an unformed thought, but I’m aware that there seems to be, for me,a link between my hormones and my personality: when pregnant and breastfeeding, I was more emotional, more likely to cry or lose my temper. That’s not who I am at all normally. But it felt like me when my hormones were all over the place. Sometimes I wonder where “me” ends and where my hormones begin. So I wonder could the biological reality of our female hormones be responsible for some aspects of our personality? I don’t know, and I’m only going from my own experience, maybe it’s not the norm. I think the problem is that whilst I am gender critical and think it’s oppressive bollocks, we don’t have a full understanding of how personality or consciousness works so it can be hard be certain.
As I say, just thoughts I have knocking about and haven’t fully considered so happy for anyone to shoot them down!

OP just think of it this way. Humans are mammals. Mammals come in two sexes, male and female. Males are dominant. Females gestate, birth and feed young.

If you asked me what sex my cat was, I would say female.

Humans have observed female behaviour and labelled it feminine. Any behaviour from female humans which is different to male humans has been labelled feminine. These differ over time and from culture to culture.

But sex never changes. It's the same across all cultures and through all time.

Not.

Yes, gendered behaviour is a result of physical sexual attributes and attitudes that have developed because of those physical differences

But not all gendered behaviour eg pink/blue changes across time/societies. Other gendered behaviour eg male dominance doesnt. Different types of gendered behavior? Apols for incoherence - thinking as I write

But is the male violence gendered behaviour innate? Do men have "animal" programming which tells them to rape and hurt women (maybe why they are bigger evolutionary) Do men have to choose to overcome this innate programming, or is male violence purely a product of external influences during their life ?

allday

How is this:

biological sex functions as a spectrum (the interaction between chromosomes and hormones Place everyone somewhere between 'male' and 'female').

Consistent with this:

It's interesting that we tend to hugely focus on what is different across the sexes, and not on what is the same. (Actually most things). ?

Your first statement suggests "female" at one end of a spectrum and "male" at another.

Yes, gendered behaviour is a result of physical sexual attributes and attitudes that have developed because of those physical differences.

@ItsAllGoingToBeFine
General societal trend- men are ten times more likely to kill than women are.

If we take a man from a very safe society, a Swede perhaps, and compare him with a woman from somewhere with a very high per capita murder rate- Mexico for example, she is statistically much more dangerous than he is.

This indictates that men aren't innately more violent, culture and society has a bigger effect.

OP take a listen to The Infinite Monkey cage podcast, battle of the sexes. Covers this stuff really well.

The biological reality of women's vulnerability and male strength is the basis for the framework of control that developed around sex roles and became traditions, aka gender.