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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

If everyone was gender-non-conforming...

130 replies

lionelduty · 02/04/2019 21:51

On these boards we seem to think that being GNC in various ways is great (I hate how gendered kids' clothes, toys, etc are and hate that I feel weird buying my son pink or flowery clothes).

It's also stated quite often that most people can 'tell' if someone's a natal male or female just by looking, but I've genuinely seen people I honestly am unsure about (and plenty of transmen on TV that I would have had no idea weren't born male).

Would life actually be better if we couldn't tell anyone's sex from how they presented? We actually would need to ask pronouns and in single-sex spaces wouldn't be sure if someone wasn't 'supposed' to be there. Do we actually need some sort of gendered shorthand to function as a society or would there be some sort of freedom in removing it?

(Just my idle thoughts but interested in people's views)

OP posts:
drspouse · 02/04/2019 22:04

The species would die out fairly quickly if we couldn't tell someone's sex.
But given different cultures dress massively differently and yet lots of relationships start with almost no common words and couples have children and learn each other's languages, we can somehow tell which Inuit or Balinese person is male or female.

scotsheather · 02/04/2019 22:01

Then we'd all be poor little oppressed non binary people. Wink

lionelduty · 02/04/2019 22:00

we'd probably need to know who to fancy as well, unless we're all pansexual or whatever now

OP posts:
lionelduty · 02/04/2019 21:59

ok, maybe this is a near-future world where we are all GNC and have phased out pronouns (except in medical/biological speak?) so everyone is xey/xem or something.

OP posts:
BesmirchingMotherhood · 02/04/2019 21:56

If you couldn’t readily tell someone’s sex from their appearance we’d have never developed our language to use sex-specific pronouns.