Reply to If gender is a social construct, what about age?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I agree with pp about age/middle age and sex/gender analogy. But I think the big difference there is that virtually everyone experiences the age one. I am 33 and frequently thinking, 'my mom was this old when I was 8' and realizing that adults are just people, nothing special. We all go through this age/expectation thing.

The gender thing. Take princesses and puppy dog tails out of the equation and gender isn't REALLY a social construct. It is a biological construct. The nurturing nature of women IS something that society drills into us but it is ALSO something we're biologically predisposed to in order to have our children survive. Men's aggressiveness IS something that society drills in but it is ALSO biologically driven as it sets them up to get a woman to agree to mate with him and then to protect her and their mates. To extract these things is to ignore human biology.

I believe transgendered people exist and I think they should be allowed to live their lives in unmolested unquestioned harmony because they do no harm whatsoever. But I do think they have some kind of body dysphoria type of mental illness. One that can be cured by allowing them to transition so go for it! But the reality is that the vast vast majority of humans are not going through this. They may hate 'girly' or 'manly' things but they are biologically normal and are the man/woman they appeared to be at birth.

I think the current trend of conflating whether it is 'ok' to be transgendered with whether this is common or normal is not the right way to go. It is not normal and it is a medical condition that sometimes requires intense surgical medical intervention. I wish the people who want everyone on the transgender train would cool it a bit because I think we'll lose the war trying to fight that type of thing and I wish the people who are so intolerant towards transgenderism could simply acknowledge it as a mental illness and walk away and stop thinking about it so much.

And don't tell me you could ignore it if it wasn't for the bathroom stuff. Are you worried about little boys alone in the men's restroom? That is a ridiculous non issue that actually will improve a lot of people's lives. Children will be SAFER being able to enter any bathroom with either parent. [/quote]

I think that after millenia of socially constructed gender expectations (w/r/t nurturing and aggressiveness), it is difficult to separate what has been conditioned over many generations from what is biologically inherent. I think that what you associate with a particular age is largely dependent on what your own experiences have been. People whose experiences lie outside the norm will always see things differently than people whose experiences fall within the norm. [/quote]

I think that talking about a biological/social construct for behaviors that have been ingrained in humans for a millenia is semantics. Behaviors ingrained for millenia are there for biological reasons. It is probably a social construct that we're afraid of snakes, but it is now a subconscious trait of humans BECAUSE snakes killed a bunch of us.

What do you want from people WRT trans gendered people beyond acceptance? Genuinely asking. [/quote]

Actual acceptance! For it to be easier for transgender people to navigate every day life comfortably. For laws not to be passed that discriminate against them. For them not to be labeled as mentally ill. For their reality not to be mocked by people like OP. We still have a long way to go.[/quote]

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