gender 2.0

As the meeting was not, in fact, very illuminating or given to thought, I'm not treating it like other meetings.  The topic had been discussed before, probably as my own idea.  I have my treatment of the previous discussion here.  The Leader and the True Philosopher also had their ideas at the time.  The discussion continues in public life, although the exact nature of gender is not evident to many people, whether they participate in the discussion or not.

For me, gender is an internal idea, what one imagines oneself to be.  It does not depend on physical characteristics or the notions of others, but what one feels inside.  This seems to be supported by studies where children were educated to think of themselves as one gender when in fact they believed themselves to be of the other/another.  It also shows in the reactions many children have to being told their interests are of the "other" gender.  After the kerfluffle of Target removing the gendered signs from their toy department, some studies were brought to light that indicated that children who are given toys for the "opposite sex" are not as interested in them.  They might still play with them, but not as much and they ask fewer questions related to the toy and what fields or issues it might be connected with.  In the Target scandal, there were a number of people who objected to anything not being explicitly labeled as for boys or girls because it's "natural" that they have different interests.  That's fine, of course, but if it's so natural the labels shouldn't be necessary; the natural differences will appear without any outside interference or impositions.  Somehow, we know what we are and what group we belong to, even if society tells us differently.  The Leader told us an anecdote about his niece, who he was baby-sitting one day.  She was then a small child, just a few years old, but that day she was wearing blue overalls and had her hair cut very short, making her look boyish.  Some little old ladies came over and said she was a lovely boy, which infuriated the girl.  We didn't get to hear if she had chosen her clothing and haircut herself, but even if she had she still felt strongly that she was a girl, goddammit.  Even cross-dressers are not always wistful about actually becoming a member of the opposite sex, they just want to enjoy some of the dress and accoutrements.  The main topic of conversation ended up being the discrimination attached to gender, rather than the idea of gender itself, and the Leader spent a good bit of time talking it up, as well as the True Philosopher considering it anew.  Several people brought up some tired old tropes about differences like women being better with language, but any identified difference was treated as immutable and eternal.  It was a frustratingly superficial and fruitless chat.  Towards the end, the question was raised about new genders based on sexual orientation, which struck me as frivolous and stupid.  Not because there is an iron-clad definition of gender that doesn't allow orientation to be a factor, but because nobody had any definition to begin with and couldn't be bothered to attempt one.  If it had been, "I think orientation has something to do with your gender, so maybe gays should be considered something other than male or female," is an understandable comment.  But blundering into, "Iz teh gayz no menz n wimminz cuz jenderz?" is thoroughly ridiculous and really, purely time-wasting.  There was also some yammering about athletics, defended incomprehensibly with "but you can't deny the differences!"  Every human individual has differences from the rest, but the question when it comes to discrimination based on those differences is if it makes sense to discriminate.  Dividing people into teams with all the players being of similar abilities makes sense.  Saying that the team you get assigned to determines your personhood does not.  Furthermore, if there is no question about the differences, than there isn't much reason to bring the goddam point up.  No new information, no new perspective, no creative way of viewing reality.  Not very philosophical at all. Just blathering.  Even more aggravating perhaps was the denial of gender-based discrimination in the workplace, under the old "if it doesn't happen to me it doesn't happen to anybody" trick of worldview.  Utter bullshit. Gender is only one of the many axes of discrimination, of course, but since it was supposed to be the focus of discussion, it was what we should have defined plainly and clearly so at least everybody would have had a field to play on instead of crashing through the woods of vagaries and deliberate lack of clarity.  Even the Source didn't bother to show up or leave any sort of comment for us, so I'd say this topic was doomed from the start.  Thankfully, it probably won't come up again for a while.  Or if it does, we'll know better about definitions.  It really does get boring when it's obvious nobody knows what anybody else is talking about.