"pregnant Man" Files For Divorce

[cmotherofpirl]

This reminds me of the scientist explaining the theory of meta-universes, sounds interesting in theory, but the practicalities are mind-boggling.

[CatherineM]

My ears were burning. A human's gender is the gender they are born with according to God, the Church, and many states. We are going to see more and more of this mess as we allowed same gendered persons to "marry," more than one mom and one dad to be on a birth certificate, surrogates, etc. They are talking about test tube babies using more than two sets of genes now.

If the grown ups are confused, God help the children involved. States are going to be in a real mess trying to settle these divorce and child custody issues. We are going to need a bunch of King Solomon's soon.

Now none of this included those who are actually born with indeterminate gender. Their crosses are so heavy that I can't even contemplate enduring it. Can you image being a mom asking the OBGYN, is it a boy or girl and having the doctor say they don't know, or saying a bit of both. Even worse being a kid that physically looks like a girl, but then starts developing as a boy at puberty because they are genetically a male. Their burdens make those who just want to change their genders look quite frivolous.

[Gabriela]

I'm a little confused here, but possibly because I've been a little over-educated in the gender studies departments at my universities. "Sex" is the word usually used to refer to biological parts. "Gender" is a "social construction" that normally correlates clearly with sex differences. Only obviously that correlation is getting all messed up these days.

Are you all using "gender" for some Catholic reason I don't know about?

[Gabriela]

And BTW, if y'all think that's bad, watch this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyoh3vj4UTA

[cmotherofpirl]

[quote name='CatherineM' timestamp='1345249644' post='2469434']
My ears were burning. A human's gender is the gender they are born with according to God, the Church, and many states. We are going to see more and more of this mess as we allowed same gendered persons to "marry," more than one mom and one dad to be on a birth certificate, surrogates, etc. They are talking about test tube babies using more than two sets of genes now.

If the grown ups are confused, God help the children involved. States are going to be in a real mess trying to settle these divorce and child custody issues. We are going to need a bunch of King Solomon's soon.

Now none of this included those who are actually born with indeterminate gender. Their crosses are so heavy that I can't even contemplate enduring it. Can you image being a mom asking the OBGYN, is it a boy or girl and having the doctor say they don't know, or saying a bit of both. Even worse being a kid that physically looks like a girl, but then starts developing as a boy at puberty because they are genetically a male. Their burdens make those who just want to change their genders look quite frivolous.
[/quote]
Are you using sex and gender as interchangable terms?

[r2Dtoo]

[quote name='Papist' timestamp='1345210750' post='2469129']
Let's be clear. This was not a pregnant man. This was a pregnant woman that had her body modified to appear as a man.
[/quote]
Wait, you mean Hasan is having babies now? I'm confused.

[CatherineM]

Yes, I am using them interchangeably. A person's gender is the biological sex they are born with. I do not believe it is a social construct. Calling it that is just a way of trying to make the idea of sex selection surgery more palatable to mainstream society.

[southern california guy]

Just get a sex change and then you can play in professional women's tennis!

[img]http://www3.pictures.zimbio.com/gi/Renee+Richards+Tribeca+Film+Festival+2011+-gIRXXlK-sGl.jpg[/img]

[beatitude]

[quote name='CatherineM' timestamp='1345429157' post='2470392']
Yes, I am using them interchangeably. A person's gender is the biological sex they are born with. I do not believe it is a social construct. Calling it that is just a way of trying to make the idea of sex selection surgery more palatable to mainstream society.
[/quote]

Radical feminists believe that gender is socially constructed, but strongly oppose sex selection surgery/gender reassignment. The two things aren't necessarily related.

Examples of the social construction of gender would be the 'blue is for boys, pink is for girls' idea that predominates in our society. It affects the clothes children are expected to choose and even the games they are expected to pick out at the toy store. In non-western societies, this doesn't always hold true - pink and blue are given different significance. Even in western cultures, they haven't always held the meaning they have now. (In the eighteenth century, for example, pink was associated with men - I've just been reading a Jane Austen novel in which pink is given as a male character's favourite colour.)

Radical feminists are critical of gender, believing it to constrain people unreasonably, but they don't see it as something you can just change. For them, a man who decides to 'become' a woman at the age of forty will never be a woman. He hasn't had the life experiences of a woman, or experienced the discrimination that women face, or been shoehorned into the same gender roles, and changing his body parts and hormone levels will never be enough to make him a woman. So it is possible for you to see gender as something externally imposed, and still oppose sex changes.

[Gabriela]

[quote name='CatherineM' timestamp='1345429157' post='2470392']
Yes, I am using them interchangeably. A person's gender is the biological sex they are born with.
[/quote]

If gender and sex are the same thing, what's the purpose of having both concepts? It seems to me they must refer to different things. And the social construct (as beatitude describes) is a useful idea, regardless of how liberal groups use it.

[CatherineM]

The English language has many words that can mean the same thing. My mom and grandmother would have thought the idea of debating whether someone's sex was their gender or not quite silly. In fact my mom often told me that if I had so much time on my hands that all I was doing is sitting around trying to find something to think about, that she could find me something to clean. I suppose telling a woman she should clean instead of over thinking stuff made my mom a bigot. She did have a very clean house though.

[Gabriela]

[quote name='CatherineM' timestamp='1345442196' post='2470507']
The English language has many words that can mean the same thing. My mom and grandmother would have thought the idea of debating whether someone's sex was their gender or not quite silly. In fact my mom often told me that if I had so much time on my hands that all I was doing is sitting around trying to find something to think about, that she could find me something to clean. I suppose telling a woman she should clean instead of over thinking stuff made my mom a bigot. She did have a very clean house though.
[/quote]

Yeah, I've got a thesaurus. ;-)

I don't think it makes your mom a bigot, but I do think it is an excellent illustration of socially constructed gender roles. It's a useful concept, is all I'm saying, if we distinguish it from sex. There are many societies in the East in which men wear "dresses" (things that look like dresses) and women wear pantaloons. And that is the traditional gender division for them. But it's related to sex only by social imposition. There's nothing inherent in women's nature that causes them to "more naturally" fit into a dress, or to cleaning. Recognizing that those roles are socially imposed (I'm not saying they're bad at all) is useful. It's always useful to recognize assumptions. (Dare I say it's quite liberating? :-P) Simply recognizing for what they are doesn't mean we have to buck them all and go gallanting around wearing (what is in our society) each other's clothes and doing (what is in our society) each other's work. It frees one up to accept what is "imposed" on one, and to embrace it, either as liberating or as a penance, rather than struggling all one's life to do something one doesn't feel comes naturally, and feeling like a bad man/woman because of that.

[CatherineM]

As I do not wear dresses, I don't think gender has to do with clothes. My father in law wears a kilt every day, even when it is -40 outside. When I talk about gender, I'm talking about our internal selves. I also don't like pink, but I do occasionally wear a pink Yankee hat to mass.

[cmotherofpirl]

[quote name='curiousing' timestamp='1345475122' post='2470605']
Yeah, I've got a thesaurus. ;-)

I don't think it makes your mom a bigot, but I do think it is an excellent illustration of socially constructed gender roles. It's a useful concept, is all I'm saying, if we distinguish it from sex. There are many societies in the East in which men wear "dresses" (things that look like dresses) and women wear pantaloons. And that is the traditional gender division for them. But it's related to sex only by social imposition. There's nothing inherent in women's nature that causes them to "more naturally" fit into a dress, or to cleaning. Recognizing that those roles are socially imposed (I'm not saying they're bad at all) is useful. It's always useful to recognize assumptions. (Dare I say it's quite liberating? :-P) Simply recognizing for what they are doesn't mean we have to buck them all and go gallanting around wearing (what is in our society) each other's clothes and doing (what is in our society) each other's work. It frees one up to accept what is "imposed" on one, and to embrace it, either as liberating or as a penance, rather than struggling all one's life to do something one doesn't feel comes naturally, and feeling like a bad man/woman because of that.
[/quote] Clothing is related to culture, Gender is related to role: they are not synonymous.

[Annie12]

[quote name='IcePrincessKRS' timestamp='1345130502' post='2468615']
I like how well your avatar pairs with this story. lol
[/quote]
took the words right out of my mouth!