TL;DR - why do we need so many terms? can we all not use just a simplified pronoun system (as explained below, or if someone else comes up with something better), and can we stop adding a sexual preferences as a part of gender, as that is something too personal in my opinion?
I primarily want to understand how it relates to a person’s identity.
Before starting, let me partially introduce myself. I am a male, and If I get my terms correctly, I am possibly Aero Ace. I am (possibly) coming of a privilige that my percieved gender identity is same as that of what I accept myself to be. Also, I have not read any literature or watched much content about this stuff. I am not asking anything about why would someone have a “different gender”. I just want to understand how it relates to you as a being.
And before going ahead, I am not sure gender is the best word or not. If it is not, please correct me. And I am sorry in advance in case I say stupid or bizzare or straght wrong stuff. Please forgive me if possible.
Also I am quite ramble-y, so reading and understanding what I write may be hard, or non-sensical, so pardon me for that too.
My first question is, why do we have so many terms? I know the answer is somewhat obvious, that everyone has there own preferences, and it may not align with someone else, so to identify themselves, they would get a different label. (kinda like names, if everyone had same names, it would cause confusion) But I also want to ask, Is using a label not somewhat alienating?
Try to understand my perspective, I have almost never mentioned my gender to anyone. Possibly it is because my “attire” says it. Or maybe it is because I am not a very social person, or the fact that I have never had a “personal” conversation with some other person. My general conversational idea is how it goes with siblings - slightly informal, a lot of stupid slander, and jokey stuff, and the actual stuff. If someone comes to me, and mentions there gender, I kinda do not know how to process it. because as I understand, 1 part of gender ideentity is what “orientation” (sorry if it is a bad way to put it, but I want to mean how they dress, or how they want to adressed as) and another is sexual preferences. I understand that If I know there gender, I can atleast address them as they prefer (also I do not know how to do it in general. I am an old school guy, I use they/them/their for people older than me (as a form of honorification), with small children (it is somewhat amusing, and also children like it when they get respeect) and whenever I do not know what gender a person is, or how does that gender prefered to be addressed). But this gave me the thought, that why do we not use the same pronouns for everyone (for example they/them), or maybe 2 pairs, one for formal, one informal, or 1 more pair, for singular and plural. Why do pronouns have to depend on gender?
The second part is sexual prefernces. I do not know much about sex or sexual preferences. I am a young adult, and have not had to know about this for any person that I have met yet. I have never had the interest to know about this for someone, neither have I retained this information. I understand that if you are looking out for partner/s, then you would have to share this, so we would have to use some words for it. But why do we have to keep this as a part of gender. As in, why would I want to share this information with my governments (who do census), or for my visa applications. Should this not just be something personal?
I understand that one reason to have some words for it is inclusivity. If, for example, we want some group to better assimilate with society, and we want to do some “positive discrimination” (I do not know if this is appropriate wording or not, what I mean is for example, reservations, or some other kind of actions to integrate some people in society), then we would need some terms to make rules with. And that makes sense, but then again I feel that revealing your preferences is a bit too revealing. Am I overblowing this? I also understand that completely ditching the sexual part from gender might not be possible today. It would probably require a more accepting society. For example, in most places, gay marriage is still illegal. I do not know why laws have to have laws defining marriage (it may have something to do with subsidies going for marriages, or definitions of families/spouse being used by insurance companies or any other banking system, where your spouse also gets certain benefits/rights), or gay adoption is illegal, but can we not make something like - any reasonable person/s can adopt anyone (where reasonable part is just to maybe seculde criminals, or people with prior histories of child related offences, or if they are not financially stable - but all this is very separate discussion)
If a person tells me their gender, how should I react/respond to it? Is my current line of actions appropriate (just address them with their preferd pronouns, and if I do not know that, use they/them; completely ignore the sexual part of it)
Another thing that I want to ask is, why do some groups use different acronyms? I remeber hearing about this the first time, and the word used was LGBT. Then I heard LGBTQ, then LGBTQIA+, and today I heard LGBTQ2. I presume that since more people are getting aware, and they are trying to express themselves, they need some newer words, and hence the acronym would keep on evolving, if so, is it not a endless exercise? Am I being insensitive If I use one over other (for quite some time, I have been sticking with lgbtqia+, in hope that + means extensions, as in, others, so hopefully it is less excluding than others, but if that is not the case, please correct me.)
edit - moved my summary to the top as tl;dr
Sexual orientation is not part of gender! In which way do you think it is?
I am sorry, but it kinda because of the cultural non separation of these 2 concepts in my mother tongue. I did explain it a bit more in another comment
Hm, where? I only saw you talk about gender vs sex, for which there is no difference in my native language either. And they certainly are closely related to the point where the majority of people identify as the gender corresponding to their sex.
However sexual orientation (such as “straight” or “gay” or “aroace” for example) is an entirely different thing as it describes your attraction to other people.
this is the comment chain - https://lemmings.world/post/28743360/16394388
Okay, to avoid confusion maybe I should use the same term you used, which is sexual preference, and not sexual orientation. This is what I’m talking about (from your OP):
The only one who talks about this in the linked comment chain is the other person, and only tangentially.
So, again I suppose, in which way do you think this is part of gender?
that was not the part of chain i wanted to refer to. Essentially, my native tongue (or culture in which I was raised), there is (was) no difference between sex and gender, as in, there were not separate concepts. What you guys would call a gender (and this is also partly based on interaction in this chain, where I even ask what does being a male even mean) - users preference of pronoun, or attire, etc is what I called orientation in my op (again, I also said in op that I do not know if that is correct term for it, and it was not).
the paragraph you have highlighted was the only part where I refered sex as sex (the one associated with your partner/s). Other than that paragraph, I mostly (I am guessing here, again, for me concept of gender is new and still fuzzy) meant gender.
I would apologise again for mmy lack of knowledge on this stuff, and this post has helped me understand gender better.
Even the gender/sex distinction isn’t a clear one. When you get into the details biological sex is a very complex topic, and most of the ways you can define someone’s sex are mutable (contrary to popular belief)
The split is also often used as a dogwhistle by conservatives who want to be transphobic in polite society, but that’s another topic altogether.
Yeah. I think sex as a general classifier is not very useful, both in a colloquial and also medical context. I know that firsthand due to taking HRT, which already causes very medically relevant changes but of course not across the board for all sexual characteristics. But I wanted to keep it relatively short :)
Both are social constructs.
For example: the mammals class of animals is a social construct, While mammals would still have characteristics like being warm blooded, or not laying eggs, the classification wouldn’t exist if people didn’t invent it.
Its also not a perfect classification, platypuses lay eggs but are still classified as mammals.
Sex is the same, its people who have certain hormones, certain chromosomes or certain genetailia, but there can be people who don’t have the “Proper” chromosome / hormone for their sex, but they still are classified as male/female.
I think its important to look at what purpose a social construct serves, Mammals are a social construct, but they still serve a useful purpose (not saying sex/gender serves / doesn’t serve a useful purpose).
There are plenty of people whose first language is English and who have confused, or still confuse, the two things anyway. As you say, it’s at least partly cultural. They don’t really teach this stuff at school, or at least they didn’t when I was there.
I was one of the confused people once. Then I learned better (and I’m still learning).
I think what’s important is that we’re willing to learn.
(mutilating the legendary quote) “You should keep learning things from other nations. If you stop doing so, your knowledge gets stagnant and stale” - Uncle Iroh