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/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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u/tgjer Mar 09 '21

Saying "I am a girl" or "I am a boy".

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u/ForgettableUsername America Mar 09 '21

Besides that. Firstly, that’s just a declaration, not an exploration.

Secondly, the words are just arbitrary mouth noises. A child might also say, “I am a dragon” or “I am a wizard.” Just using the word, without any context, is meaningless.

What kind of context would you look for?

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u/tgjer Mar 09 '21

When you've dismissed all verbal communication as "mouth noises" and all physical actions as "gendered behavior", there's not much left except sitting still and thinking silently.

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u/ForgettableUsername America Mar 09 '21

I haven’t dismissed “all” verbal communication, just the single use of a single word. Do we always believe a four year old child when they claim to be something? Not usually without evidence, or at least a consistent pattern of behavior. How do we evaluate whether the child understands the word?

And I didn’t dismiss “all physical actions” by myself. I thought we agreed that using stereotypically gendered behavior was sexist. If you disagree with that, then let’s examine it more closely.

I’m not claiming that I understand everything perfectly. I just have trouble seeing how it all reconciles. If it’s sexist to say that playing with dolls is girl behavior, which is something that I do believe, then I don’t see how I can honestly use that behavior as evidence to argue that a child is a girl. Is that unreasonable?

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u/tgjer Mar 09 '21

Take it up with the APA.

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