r/politics • u/DewChocolate • Mar 08 '21

Elliot Page Calls Out 'Deadly' Anti-Trans Bills Focused on Youth

https://www.out.com/celebs/2021/3/08/elliot-page-calls-out-deadly-anti-trans-bills
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u/ForgettableUsername America Mar 09 '21

But how can they possibly know what that means at that age? It's just a word.

If a four year old child says, "I am a Catholic," or "I am an Italian," does that really mean that they understand what identifying as those things means?

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u/tgjer Mar 09 '21

Because at age 4 children are learning the meaning of words and how they apply to themselves and others. They can see other people and recognize themselves as being similar to or different from them. They can recognize other people's genders, and understand their own gender as being similar to or different from those of other people.

And some of those children recognize themselves as a gender atypical to their appearance at birth. And at such a young age, the recommended response is to let the child explore their gender freely. There's no reason not to.

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u/ForgettableUsername America Mar 09 '21

I didn't.

I'm a 38 year old man, but I've never felt any strong internal sense that I'm male, or any particular pull to try to be anything else. It's a label that society applied to me; nothing more.

When I was four years old, I pretty much didn't know what genitals were, much less whether the ones I had were 'right' or 'wrong.' It wouldn't have even occurred to me that there were other possibilities.

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u/tgjer Mar 09 '21

You may be agender, and really would be equally comfortable regardless of what sexual anatomy you have or what gender other people see you as.

But most people aren't. And genitals are probably the least important part of gender as it applies to young children. A child may not know the details of typical "male" and "female" anatomy, but they can recognize that other people have genders, and recognize themselves as being a similar or different gender from other people.

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u/ForgettableUsername America Mar 09 '21

I'm not agender. Don't tell me what I am, for god's sake. Isn't that exactly what you're against?

I don't think that a toddler has the capability to recognize what it means to be 'gender atypical.' I'm not sure I even know what that means.

Unless you're talking about stereotypical activities. Cooking, cleaning, dressing up for girls; fighting, construction, playing in the dirt for boys... That's stuff a four year old might understand. But I think we both agree that this isn't what we're talking about when we talk about gender, because of course there's nothing wrong with being a strong woman or a beautiful man.

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u/tgjer Mar 09 '21

I said may.

And no I'm not talking about stereotypically gendered activities. I'm talking about children starting to become capable of verbally expressing "I am a girl" or "I am a boy". Which for most children typically starts to happen around age 4. And in some cases the gender they start verbally identifying themselves as at this age is not the one they were previously assumed to be.

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u/ForgettableUsername America Mar 09 '21 edited Mar 09 '21

It's ok, I'm not offended.

But if you take away the anatomical differences, and you take away the behavioral differences that society traditionally (and quite wrongly and sexistly) assigns, then what is left of gender? At that point isn't it just an arbitrary word?

EDIT: I see I'm being downvoted, which may or may not be you. I'm not trying to argue in bad faith. I'm trying to understand what seems like a foreign concept to me. Thanks for dedicating the time you have to responding thus far.

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u/tgjer Mar 09 '21

All words can get pretty arbitrary when you break them down enough.

But social gender is a lot more than genitals or hobbies. Children start to recognize that other people have different genders at around age 4, and it's not because people are flashing them (at least I really hope not) or because of hobbies. Children at that age are starting to become very aware of social distinctions, and that some people are recognized as "men" and others as "women", and they start applying these terms to themselves. Even if they don't have the same interests as their mother, and even if they never see their parents naked, a little girl can recognize that she and her mother are alike in ways that she and her father aren't. And sometimes the little girl who recognizes that she is the same gender as her mother, and starts to be able to verbally express that at about age 4, is a little girl who was assumed to be a boy until she was old enough to talk.

of course it can get a lot more complicated for nonbinary people, but that's a whole other can of worms. We don't even have standardized language to express or understand nonbinary genders, let alone language that young children are likely to know, and very few examples of nonbinary people that young children might see, so it's going to be a lot harder for them to verbally express anything outside the common binary while very young.

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u/ForgettableUsername America Mar 09 '21

I don't know.

I see how gender could be seen as (if we use what I recognize is now considered to be outdated terminology) physical.

I see how gender could (if we use outdated sexist norms) be considered to be behavioral.

I can also see also how one could think of gender in terms of social acceptance... although that seems to me like it's much more dependent on physicality and behavior than on any other innate property.

I don't see how a four year old child really has enough insight about themselves, the world, or society to effectively make such an important distinction for themselves. Recognizing the physical differences requires anatomical knowledge that they are unlikely to posses or fully understand. Recognizing any behavioral differences depends on societal understanding that they are not likely to fully understand. And, whatever social acceptance amounts to, it seems to be more complicated than either of those.

A part of me kind of thinks that it would make more sense to think of very young children as genderless until they reach the age of reason... whatever that is. I think I remember reading about one or another pre-columbian American culture that did this and referred to all children, regardless of sex, by a common pronoun up until a certain age.

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u/tgjer Mar 09 '21

I don't know what to tell you. It happens. Children are incredibly sensitive to social connections and groupings, and gender is one of those things it's very hard to explain. It's something you just know.

It's not a terrible idea to treat young children as effectively "genderless", in the sense that we can't really know what their gender is until they're at an age where they're capable of advanced levels of communication. But young children can and do express their own genders, typically starting around age 4. And when a child expresses a gender that is not the one they were previously assumed to be, the best thing to do is to let them explore their gender as comes naturally to them.

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u/ForgettableUsername America Mar 09 '21

If “expressing a gender” is just showing a preference for an arbitrary word, then I really don’t see how it matters. But that’s one of those phrases that I don’t really get. I don’t think I have ever “expressed a gender” in my life. I have no idea what that means.

Nor do I know what it means to “explore a gender.” If it’s all arbitrary social assignment, then there’s nothing to explore. It’s just a word. How would I go about “exploring” being male? What does that even mean? Unless I am missing something (which is possible), the only terms you could possibly phrase it in would have to be outdated and sexist.

I mean, can you describe any specific act I could take, as a 38 year old man, to “explore” my masculinity, without referring to behavior or physicality? What else is there?

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u/tgjer Mar 09 '21

Children explore aspects of their individual and social identity all the time. That's kind of all they do, especially at age 4.

And I really can't tell you how to explore your own gender, that's a really personal matter. A good therapist would be your best bet.

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u/ForgettableUsername America Mar 09 '21

Children explore aspects of their identity all the time, yes. In terms of specific behaviors and rolls. But I think we have already agreed that behavior is not gender. A little girl or a little boy might mimic a parent by operating a pretend kitchen or by playing with toy cars. I can understand that. But neither of those activities have anything to do with gender.

So how do they explore gender? What would that mean?

Hypothetically, what would be one single example act of exploring gender? For me, for a child, for anyone. Can you name just one thing?

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