In the United States, New York State recognises 31 "genders", not just the two male and female genders we all grew up understanding.
This gender expansion is the trend globally now. The significance of debate is nascent and crosses all domains of socio-political life and thus requires global and courageous rational discussion.
For those who remember, there was only ever (since the origin of the term in the 15th century) two sexual genders until this century, when more than two made an appearance recently in popular and media culture.
Wittgenstein would have argued that where there is a distinctive concept, there is a corresponding term. Language has its limits. But what can be said, can be said clearly. If a thing cannot be said clearly, it cannot be said.
Some concepts are not so clear and defy categorisation or even definition, but unless we categorise them anyway, we can't discuss them without people not knowing what thing we're talking about.
That is why names for things are only convenient tools to introduce the discussion, to indicate the realm of a concept. In serious intellectual discussion, the name should be abandoned and replaced by its description, as Bertrand Russell pointed out. Abandon the name and discuss the description.
So, we categorise items as belonging to a set that share something in common. Everything belongs to a set. So there has to be something that all items in that set share in common. Then the set is given a name, so that discussion can begin through identification of the general issue. Once identified through the name, only then can discussion begin.
The concepts, or sets, of the categories Men and Woman share many things in common, but we sub-categorise Men and Women because of obvious, mostly physical, characteristics that separate them: such as Women having the potential for childbirth, XX not XY chromosomes, hormonal cycles and differences of appearance from Men in general.
So, now we understand how the two categories came about, we can proceed.
Our definition of Gender is based on a reference to being or identifying with masculinity or feminity. This definition is based on the problem that proponents of gender alternatives have not defined the term themselves. So we are left with their descriptions. Their descriptions of their gender identity always refers to physical sexual characteristics between men and women.
The existing definitions of "gender" are either circular or refernce sexual characteristics.
So let us proceed on the traditional use of the terms.
There were only ever two genders of sex, which was proven by the discovery of the XX and XY sex chromosomes all animals have in every single living cell, except red blood cells in the early 1900s. But we all knew about the differences between Men and Women long before this discovery anyway. It's why we have divisions in society, language and lore between men and women. The physical difference, especially the genitals and child-birth, is obvious and beyond dispute. Every society in the world throughout history has separated Men from Women. The differences are mostly sexual.
Thus, the term gender has been almost synonymous with this sexual physical characteristic, but gender came to be meant something more psychological, or psycho-socio-sexual in the 1960s.
The term Gender, began as meaning "type" or "kind", before being applied in the 15th century to the two sexes.
Think how you use the term "genre", which is the French term for gender, meaning "type".
So, fast forward to the last 10 years of literature. In the popular, artistic, scientific and academic literature there were only male and female sex genders for the whole of human history until about ten years ago.
So what happened?
Well, in the late 1990s, we started hearing the voice of the minority on the Internet. After the Internet, anyone could say anthing; anyone with the smallest voice and the most unusual views found a public platform to publish their views and their voice - to sell to all.
The Internet enabled minorities to consolidate and communicate and promote and argue their views. No proof or justification was needed.
The Internet explains the apperance of the range of views we have today in pop culture and in the media.
Many of these minority groups, once consolidated, began lobbying society and government to strengthen their views, seeking equality, recognition, support, and human rights to achieve what all minorities seek: objectivity, veracity and validity.
Before the Internet, minorities could only protest publically, cause a scene, write articles in fringe publications. They were largely ignored. The Internet changed that in a heart beat.
Ethnic groups, ideological groups, people of differing sexual oritentation, religious groups all found a voice, a means to consolidate and a means of recruitment and support ONLY because of the Internet and the provision it provides for free speech.
Free speech included the ability to bypass mediating publishers and moderators, who previously would have rejected their attempts at publication, rejecting their bizarre, minority opinions, their small voice.
Through the Internet anyone can publish any shit. There is virtually no regulation or control, so that We and You can now say absolutely anything we want, true or false. Anything, that is, unless it is considered Politically Incorrect.
Political Correctness was already mature when the Internet appeared. PC prevented anyone from arguing against the voice of the minority, on pain of being labelled racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamaphobic.
So, the Internet and Political Correctness combined in support of the development of minorities and their views.
One such view, having the power and broadcast of the Internet and the protection of Political Correctness, is those with non-traditional views about Gender.
These people argue two points:
1. The term Gender is not a dichotomy but wider in scope than we used to believe; some people don't fit into the traditional concepts of male or female. They claim to be neither, and/or something different.
2. Some feel they have been treated as one gender or the other, but feel like they are the other or neither.
So what do they mean, they are either, neither male nor female, or both?
Well that requires answering the question, what does Gender mean? If you reject the traditional and common usage you don't have much else to go on.
So assuming we've all used the words incorrectly until now, what do the terms Male and Female and Gender mean today?
This questions is older than you'd think.
Otto Weininger had something to say about this 100 years ago. Weininger observed that Male and Female idenitites are extremes on the same spectrum. They are not separate sexualities, but the same sexualities on a spectrum from male to female and we all fit somewhere on the spectrum. Some males have aspects of a female and some females have aspects of a male. That explains Net ball.
However, people use words differently. If you asked the average person on the street the last 500 years, what do you think it means to be male or female, you would get the same answers:
Male gender means, has the sexual physical and psychological characteristics of a man.
Female means, has the sexual physical and psychological characteristics of a woman.
So what are these sexual characteristics?
What are all these variations from male and female? Was Weininger right?
Most of us are wondering, how can you possibly have more than male and female genders?
The X and Y Chromosomes were discovered over 100 years ago. The Y chromosome is responsible for the development of masculine sexual organs and systems, such as sperm production - not a female characteristic - and potential for child birth.
Certainly there is a set of physical characteristics that lead to the quick discovery of whether an animal has the potential to conceive and give birth to other animals or does not: we call the animal capable of childbirth female and the animal with sperm a male.
Some argue for female characteristics beyond physicality: feeling, identity etc.
What on earth does that mean?
How can an animal that has none of the female physicality have any idea what is means to feel and identify as female? It can't be possible because it is illogical.
I cannot feel like an elephant, or an African man, or a brick, in exactly the same way.
There is no reference to start from, by which one would first conceive the comparison between the two entities, before progressing to feel like the other.
A female baby grown up in isloation cannot at some stage feel like a man, because they have no man available to know what is meant by "a man".
In this sense, and in these terms, a woman feeling like a man can only be a socialised feeling, akin to the very socialisation argued to be the reason for dividing sexes by external appearance and expected behaviours and interests.
Further, what would it mean to feel like a female? Would that feeling entail feeling like having children, sexually aroused by males? I can't imagine these being accepted by those who make the claim. These are physical and we keep hearing that it's not physical. So what would it feel like for a man to feel like a woman, outside physicality?
Our challenge to proponents of gender radicals is to demand the answer to the question,
"Excepting physical aspects, how do you know what it's like to feel like, to identify with, a man/woman, a gender other than the one assigned to you at birth?"
If you're a Man physically, you have penis and produce sperm, how can you possibly know what it is to be a woman physically or otherwise? A woman has a monthly period, a potential for childbirth, and many more types of hormones than men affecting their mind, their moods, their behaviours and over time their personality, their view of the world, etc etc.
Unless you go through these physical characteristics throughout your physical development to maturity, how can you claim you know what it's like to feel like a woman?
Weiniger may be correct, that a man can feel like a woman, because they occupy a place on a spectrum. But how can anyone deny that one Gender can give birth to a human and the other cannot?
It may well be that the term Gender is no longer useful. It represents nothing and should not nor need to be used in conversation.
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