Humans obsessed with gender

[Rhea]

I think about this form time to time. How incredibly obsessed humans are with gender. From gender-specific nouns in various languages to the english aversion to calling any human "it" and indeed not having a pronoun for "don't care about the gender, this is just a generic pronoun."

Because somehow it is HUGELY IMPORTANT to know whether the person you are working with, talking to, walking beside whatever has a penis or a vagina.

This article
http://www.queerty.com/12-year-old-...m_medium=social&utm_campaign=birthcertificate
made me think of it more. Because somehow our very citizenship, our HUMANITY rests on knowing which one we posses.

Why why why.

Why does it matter so much whether you are working next to a man or woman? Whether your classmate is male or female. Whether the person wearing that dress or sport coat has a penis or a vagina.

Why do humans appear to INSIST on being aware of the other person's gender?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I think about this form time to time. How incredibly obsessed humans are with gender. From gender-specific nouns in various languages to the english aversion to calling any human "it" and indeed not having a pronoun for "don't care about the gender, this is just a generic pronoun."

It depends on the language. My wife is Chinese--the spoken language doesn't distinguish he/she/it and neither the spoken nor the written has gendered versions of anything other than family relationship words. (Thus she can say "sister" rather than "female sibling" but she has no way say "waitress" other than "female waitperson".) You will find that Chinese people who learned English in adulthood tend to be atrocious in their use of gender because it's not part of their mental map of language. It's far harder to learn new language concepts than to learn new words that fit in the concepts you already know.

 

[untermensche]

I think people care less about these kinds of things than they did 50 years ago and will likely care less than they do today in another 50 years.

But people have mental constructs of the world that are hard to change.

People are only evolved apes after all.

 

[skepticalbip]

It isn’t just a human thing. Other animals pay attention to gender too so maybe it is just one of those genetic things imposed by evolution. Chimps, lions, etc. all have specific gender roles.

At least in the English language we have largely eliminated identifying all objects as male, female, or neuter as in many languages like Spanish, French, Italian, etc.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Real men don't worry about gender. It's more of a woman's issue than anything else.

 

[Bronzeage]

Interesting question.

For most of my life, I have been aware of a small reptilian part of my brain which assesses every female I encounter for their accessibility and suitability as a sexual partner. I have a friend who, when we met was a female. Today, she is a male, and while she never very high on the scale, she dropped off it completely. It's nothing personal, but I think it illustrates that gender is flexible.

Why it is important for us to know the gender of another person, when the possibility of having sex with them is zero, without regard to which sex they happen to be, is just human nature. We divide the world into categories and classes. Every classification starts with a grand division into two parts.

When my youngest daughter was learning to talk and learning the names of all the common animals, her only question when she encountered a new animal name was, "Does it bite?" Her division of the animal kingdom from cats to koala bears was whether or not this animal would be likely to bite her, or not. It was all the information she needed to keep order in the animal kingdom. Things don't change much as we get older. The categories just get more precise and there are more of them, but it always comes down to an important choice between one bin or the other. What sort of genitals a person was born with, or purchased at a later date, is simply our most obvious label.

 

[bigfield]

Gendered language is probably based on an evolved need to distinguish between potential mates and potential rivals. In a modern society, where most people are neither potential mates nor potential rivals, assigning gendered pronouns to everyone is obsolete.

 

[bilby]

People are naturally suspicious when someone has hidden a gender.

 

[Valjean]

English is unusual in that it has Natural Gender, ie: pronouns indicate the biological sex of the subject, hence the conflation of gender with sex among English speakers.

In other languages -- French, German, &al -- genders may be called masculine/feminine/neuter, but they don't correspond to the sex of the subject, so I'd expect the biological confusion to be less.

Of course not all languages use gender, and those that do may classify nouns by high or low status, animate-inanimate, artificial-natural -- or, perhaps, bite--non-bite.

 

[steve_bnk]

Because post puberty we are genetically programmed to mate 24/7.

 

[Togo]

Children in their first year can tell what gender someone is, simply from the way the body moves. Our visual system is designed to pick up things like faces, gender, etc. And if you're young, and reasonably healthy, almost everyone is a potential mate.

 

[Juma]

How incredibly obsessed humans are with gender.

You mesn sex, dont you? Cause that is what is interesting. Gender is boring.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I think about this form time to time. How incredibly obsessed humans are with gender. From gender-specific nouns in various languages to the english aversion to calling any human "it" and indeed not having a pronoun for "don't care about the gender, this is just a generic pronoun."

Because somehow it is HUGELY IMPORTANT to know whether the person you are working with, talking to, walking beside whatever has a penis or a vagina.

This article
http://www.queerty.com/12-year-old-...m_medium=social&utm_campaign=birthcertificate
made me think of it more. Because somehow our very citizenship, our HUMANITY rests on knowing which one we posses.

Why why why.

Why does it matter so much whether you are working next to a man or woman? Whether your classmate is male or female. Whether the person wearing that dress or sport coat has a penis or a vagina.

Why do humans appear to INSIST on being aware of the other person's gender?

I think it has to do with genetics and that it is innate. We know that men will look for women where the difference between their testosterone and oestrogen matches their own, but in the reverse. So guys with a big difference, ie very manly features (big muscles, square jaw etc) will look for women who have very feminine features (big tits, wide hips etc). While more androgynous men will look for more androgynous women. Why this is nobody knows. But probably it's got something to do with it leading to more healthy off-spring somehow.

Anyhoo... so we're genetically programmed to go look for this. But it's subtle. This makes it super important for us to be fine tuned as to what exact ratio between oestrogene and testosterone prospective mates have. So we spend an inordinate amount of time obsessing about minutae regarding gender and how relatively manly or feminine somebody or something is. Regardless if we're planing on fucking them.

What's interesting is that this also works in gays. High testosterone to oestrogen ratios will look for high oestrogen to testorone ratios. Which is really confusing, since the two curves don't match up symmetrically when put opposite each other.

It's also super easy to test since fingers show exactly how great the proportions of our androgen hormones are.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digit_ratio#Evidence_of_androgen_effect_on_digit_ratio

So that's my theory. Relative manliness is important so therefore we obsess about it.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Issues of power, status, life role -- always a major deal. I find it amazing that in many religions, and especially the local flavor in America, the god is so freakingly MALE. Our Father. And somehow the believers don't seem to wonder if that gender attribution isn't a sign that people made the whole thing up.

 

[West]

I don't think it has anything to do with either obsession with gender or obsession with sex. Its just about respect, the evolution of language and identification.

To call someone "it" is disrespectful as it is used to describe inanimate objects, our possessions. Calling someone he or she recognises their distinct personhood, neither object nor possession.

Also it makes identification easier when talking about several people some of whom may be male and some of whom could be female. Use of the term "it" would not identify who you were talking about.

Those cultures who use gender when referring to objects are clearly not referring to, nor obsessed with, the sex of the object.

 

[Jarhyn]

I don't think it has anything to do with either obsession with gender or obsession with sex. Its just about respect, the evolution of language and identification.

To call someone "it" is disrespectful as it is used to describe inanimate objects, our possessions. Calling someone he or she recognises their distinct personhood, neither object nor possession.

Also it makes identification easier when talking about several people some of whom may be male and some of whom could be female. Use of the term "it" would not identify who you were talking about.

Those cultures who use gender when referring to objects are clearly not referring to, nor obsessed with, the sex of the object.

The problem is that the use of a dichotomy in gender language enforces a dichotomy in a mental model, particularly in a situation where the high rate of comorbidity between traits is a powerful driver of pidgeon-hole-ing. If we generated a new genderless personal indefinite article, and insisted that 'he' and 'she' be rude except in context where gender is actually considered core to the conversation, we'd be able to more readily crack the gender binary and further erode the sexual categorizations.

To put it simply I don't want people to expect me to have a penis or like people with appreciable breasts, or emotionally oriented thinkers despite being a pretty stereotypical 'man'. "He" puts me in a box of expectations and social obligations, most of which chafe and none of which are necessary for good social function.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I don't think it has anything to do with either obsession with gender or obsession with sex. Its just about respect, the evolution of language and identification.

To call someone "it" is disrespectful as it is used to describe inanimate objects, our possessions. Calling someone he or she recognises their distinct personhood, neither object nor possession.

Also it makes identification easier when talking about several people some of whom may be male and some of whom could be female. Use of the term "it" would not identify who you were talking about.

Those cultures who use gender when referring to objects are clearly not referring to, nor obsessed with, the sex of the object.

Sorry, but what a load of crap. If it's normal to talk about each other as "it" it wouldn't be disrespectful at all. Chinese do it all the time. Nobody is offended. While Germans put genders on everything, including objects. Somehow German speakers manage to not be offended when compared to an object.

I think you're a bit stuck in whatever languages it is you've learned to speak.

 

[West]

I don't think it has anything to do with either obsession with gender or obsession with sex. Its just about respect, the evolution of language and identification.

To call someone "it" is disrespectful as it is used to describe inanimate objects, our possessions. Calling someone he or she recognises their distinct personhood, neither object nor possession.

Also it makes identification easier when talking about several people some of whom may be male and some of whom could be female. Use of the term "it" would not identify who you were talking about.

Those cultures who use gender when referring to objects are clearly not referring to, nor obsessed with, the sex of the object.

The problem is that the use of a dichotomy in gender language enforces a dichotomy in a mental model, particularly in a situation where the high rate of comorbidity between traits is a powerful driver of pidgeon-hole-ing. If we generated a new genderless personal indefinite article, and insisted that 'he' and 'she' be rude except in context where gender is actually considered core to the conversation, we'd be able to more readily crack the gender binary and further erode the sexual categorizations.

To put it simply I don't want people to expect me to have a penis or like people with appreciable breasts, or emotionally oriented thinkers despite being a pretty stereotypical 'man'. "He" puts me in a box of expectations and social obligations, most of which chafe and none of which are necessary for good social function.

I think you've gone off topic here.

The OP was about whether humans are obsessed with gender, not about whether use of gender terms stereotypes people.

However I would say the answer to the latter is a definite no as if someone uses the term "he" to describe a man it is clear to anyone that some men are brave some are cowardly, some are sporty some are academic, some are rich some are poor, etc.

The word "he" is way too generic to result in stereotyping.

Also the genderless description that you wish for already exists in the word "they", eg, "they did it", when referring to one person.

The use of "him" or "her" just allows one to be more specific for identification purposes.

I don't think a genderless term will ever replace masculine and feminine descriptive terms any more than men and women are going to end up looking the same, ie, genderless.

 

[West]

I don't think it has anything to do with either obsession with gender or obsession with sex. Its just about respect, the evolution of language and identification.

To call someone "it" is disrespectful as it is used to describe inanimate objects, our possessions. Calling someone he or she recognises their distinct personhood, neither object nor possession.

Also it makes identification easier when talking about several people some of whom may be male and some of whom could be female. Use of the term "it" would not identify who you were talking about.

Those cultures who use gender when referring to objects are clearly not referring to, nor obsessed with, the sex of the object.

Sorry, but what a load of crap. If it's normal to talk about each other as "it" it wouldn't be disrespectful at all. Chinese do it all the time. Nobody is offended. While Germans put genders on everything, including objects. Somehow German speakers manage to not be offended when compared to an object.

I think you're a bit stuck in whatever languages it is you've learned to speak.

Sorry, but what a load of crap.

If the chinese have a term which refers to both people and objects then that is fine. If however a chinese word refers only to an object (like the word "it" in english) and is used to describe a person then that is going to offensive. Just like if someone is called a donkey in chinese.

I don't think english is your first language.

Also the fact that chinese words are gender neutral is just further proof of my point that humans are not obsessed with gender.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I don't think it has anything to do with either obsession with gender or obsession with sex. Its just about respect, the evolution of language and identification.

To call someone "it" is disrespectful as it is used to describe inanimate objects, our possessions. Calling someone he or she recognises their distinct personhood, neither object nor possession.

Also it makes identification easier when talking about several people some of whom may be male and some of whom could be female. Use of the term "it" would not identify who you were talking about.

Those cultures who use gender when referring to objects are clearly not referring to, nor obsessed with, the sex of the object.

Sorry, but what a load of crap. If it's normal to talk about each other as "it" it wouldn't be disrespectful at all. Chinese do it all the time. Nobody is offended. While Germans put genders on everything, including objects. Somehow German speakers manage to not be offended when compared to an object.

I think you're a bit stuck in whatever languages it is you've learned to speak.

Sorry, but what a load of crap.

If the chinese have a term which refers to both people and objects then that is fine. If however a chinese word refers only to an object (like the word "it" in english) and is used to describe a person then that is going to offensive. Just like if someone is called a donkey in chinese.

I don't think english is your first language.

Also the fact that chinese words are gender neutral is just further proof of my point that humans are not obsessed with gender.

lol what?