compsci teacher's making us store gender as an enum to prove we know how enums work so i decided to have fun with it
@keith Hey, male and female are perfectly good! I'm male and will not change that. >,,>
@IceWolf @keith But it’s not a gender—“man” is a gender. “Male” is a sex. :)
Further, if heated to its decomposition temperature, “woman” separates into at least two other genders, butch and femme. Since modern gender science has shown us that “woman” is not an elemental gender, we must also examine whether “man” is a compounded gender-substance. Thus far, indications for its unity are not promising.
@Verdigris @keith "male" is absolutely a gender for me!
... is this a trashpost? Because suddenly I'm feeling like I have to defend my gender. >,,<
@Verdigris @keith I'd argue sex would be the equipment loadout and related stuff, like "innie/outie", not male/female.
history, linguistics
@IceWolf @keith
Long before anyone had figured out that cells exist, anatomy was the only marker of sex. And it came about that somewhere in the merger of Medieval French and Old/Middle English, “femelle” was documented as indicating “any creature that has a cunt”. (Literally. It was a simple body-part name back then, with nothing vulgar about it.) And the reverse for “male”/“masle”.
So today, in the mainstream English language, when someone says “male”, it’s a sex. And conflating sex with gender is something it’d be really nice if that mainstream would stop doing. I didn’t intend to catch you in that crossfire, either, Frost.
(Also, I wonder what ordinary four-legged wolves call their genders? English seems unlikely to represent them well.)
history, linguistics
@Verdigris @keith Me, I just call my gender "male wolf". I dunno what ordinary wolves would call it!
and I maintain that with "male" shifting into being a whole Identity, it's now a gender even if it didn't /used/ to be. I mean, *pawgestures at himself* I'm male and that's completely independent of my junk. It happens to match but it doesn't have to – a couple of my headmates are female and have outie junk too!
history, linguistics
@Verdigris @keith I'd say "male" in mainstream English /is/ generally gender, not sex.
...Otherwise you're basically saying binary trans(gender) people aren't [actual gender] if they haven't done a bitswap because It's A Sex.
linguistics
@Verdigris @keith Those aren't the words! Just like I'm not a transwolf.
I'm a wolf.
A trans wolf, "trans" as an adjective.
"transwolf" would imply I'm Not Really a wolf, still just a human who _thinks_ he's a wolf. And no fuck that I'm a wolf.
linguistics
@IceWolf @keith
“Trans<gender>” (no space) is the dominant usage I’ve seen among the trans* folks I know, so it’s what I use. Proponents of each claim that *theirs* is the one that’s more true to perceiving the person so described as belonging to that persons’ felt-gender. Because language is !!FUN!! :D
The point I was trying to make, though, is that regardless of whether someone calls themselves a transman or a trans man, they’re *men*, regardless of whether the biological components which aggregate into the property “sex” are in any particular state. (Someones’ visible anatomy, karyotype, and hormonal status can be *very* disparate from one another, without any involvement from the medical system.)
Some transmen (and trans men) also have a problem with their starting genitalia. Some don’t. Anatomy doesn’t make ‘em any more or less men.
linguistics
@IceWolf @keith
Look, your gender is what you feel, and I’m not trying to say you feel anything in particular.
I’m saying that there’s about a thousand years of weight behind a different meaning of the word which you’re using to *describe* your gender. It is entrenched in English, and people are therefore likely to misunderstand you—as I did!
Selecting some other word(s) to describe your gender when interfacing with people other than your headmates is likely to save you repeated triggerings, given that you also keep company with other people who are invested in cleaving the words for sexes from those for genders. Since you’re non-binary to begin with, and a nontrivial amount of that is the wolf-aspects of your gender, maybe something along the lines of ’wolf (male)’ would express what you’re after in a way that’s less likely to be misinterpreted?
Up to you, of course.
linguistics
@Verdigris @keith Nah
I'm male ("male wolf" is just more specific). And just giving up on "male" as a Sex Word And Not Gender doesn't help any binary male people.
linguistics
@Verdigris @keith *nodnods* It just, you're saying that "male" IS anatomy so anatomy would make me more or less /male/.
and no my junk is completely irrelevant to my maleness just like my headmates' junk is completely irrelevant to their /femaleness/ [not "women"].