TOP UPDATES FOUR PILLARS CINEMA/TV GAMES MANGA/ANIME MUSIC WRITINGS FAQ LINKS
TOP UPDATES FOUR PILLARS CINEMA/TV GAMES MANGA/ANIME MUSIC WRITINGS FAQ LINKS
"How many genders are there?" has become a shibboleth today, and in the purest sense! In the Biblical story that the term comes from, the Gileadites identified members of an enemy tribe known as the Ephraimites by asking them to pronounce the word "shibboleth," and if they pronounced it with the distinct regional dialect that identified them as an outsider, they were killed. Given the acrimony that any answer to this question will evoke, it seems particularly suitable to call it a shibboleth for certain political tribes!
The progressive answer to this question is that gender is separate from sex. The idea runs that sex is a biological fact of being male or female and gender is a social construct about how human societies interpret that biological binary. This answer is dogma. But dogmas can be true, and this answer is essentially the correct one. The reason I label it as dogma is that very few of the people who repeat this have internalized it based on anything more than wanting not to be rejected. It's actually a pretty radical idea (radical =/= untrue).
Gender is a social construct. All abstract conepts made by humans are. Even the idea of a sex "binary" is, strictly speaking, false, because there are rare exceptions to most of the determining factors we use in setting up this binary, whether these are the possession or absence of certain genitalia, XX or XY chromosomes, sperms and eggs, hormones, or whatever else. Exceptions exist no matter how rare, which means it is not a binary.
That said, if I was to answer the question of "How many genders are there?," I would say "Two." Why? Well, for the same reason that if someone used the phrase "fly like a bird," I wouldn't correct them because some birds like penguins and ostriches don't fly. A different language-game is being played here. And I fear the erosion of that language-game of two genders, as it is a language-game rich with myth and symbol.
A social construct is not something we create or mould. It is something we can only respond to. I generally am polite and refer to people with he, she, or they as specified in daily life. But I cannot pretend that I can participate in a language-game with more than two genders in everyday life. I can in a lab when looking at cells. Perhaps I could do so in daily life if I grew up in a tribe with two-spirits. But I cannot pretend this idea makes any sense to me.
This concerns me. I fear a society with such widely different social constructs. Social constructs are all that keep civilization in order.