Ktown
What is gender?
Two schools of thought.
- Gender is simply the expression of femininity or masculinity. You can get masculine girls, feminine boys, or vice versa.
What constitutes masculinity and femininity changes over time and history.
Gender has been used to imply that femininity is solely a woman's domain, because it includes characteristics like being nurturing, passive, pretty, delicate. Politically those characteristics have been utilised to keep women in the home. The masculine characteristics of leadership, strength, clear thinking, etc, have been used to allow men to get educated and run the world.
Transsexuals used to want to present as women, but knew they were men, just wanted to present in a feminine way because they wanted to be treated as a woman. They perceived the treatment of women to be something that they would like themselves and felt that they could best express themselves in a 'womanly' way. It wasn't political and they did not see it as humans rights issue. If they passed they used the ladies and women allowed this as a courtesy.
In 2004 the gender recognition act made it possible to legally change your sex, based on a diagnosis of gender dysphoria.
- The term gender has now been split into gender identity and gender expression as a result of objections, largely by feminists.
Gender expression still constitutes femininity or masculinity (appearance). But gender identity is now being characterised as an internal feeling, unprovable, unverifiable and entirely subjective as to whether you internally feel as though you are a man or a woman.
It can't be described in words, you just know.
Hence, numerous articles and studies trying to prove the existence of lady brains and men brains.
The theory being that it is your brain which dictates your sex, not your body.
Hence lady sticks and lesbians should sleep with women with penises.
I've tried to be neutral, but I may have left an opinion slip in, here and there...
But at least I didn't say fuck a thousand times.