sexual orientation

[adfhfbrwrew12]

Also, I think that Zainin was more implying that if we didn't have gender roles and all genders were truly equal in society- we would have fewer people who need to transition or identify as anything else. Some transpeople only/primarily have social dysphoria and transition because it's the only way to be treated as they want. There are also people who are already non-op even if they wisht hey could be treated as who they are.

If everyone could choose the role they wanted without transitioning- then anyone who has mild bodily dysphoria wouldn't need to transition and we'd have fewer transgendered people in that sense. I don't htink Zainin was implying that this would erase bodily dysphoria- but if the two genders were truly equal then there'd be no pressure to transition to be treated as the man/woman you are. And I do think it's wrong to make people feel like they have to transition to be seen as who they are, just as wrong as denying transition to people who need it.

Quoted for truth. This is exactly what I was saying and I'm glad someone saw it.

And to rephrase myself another more whimsical way...

Why have apples and oranges and peaches? Can't they all just be fruit? They are all nutritious and good, after all, though some people have a preference for some and not others (sexual orientation, if this isn't clear), while some like all fruit and some would rather just never eat fruit at all. There's no need to separate them!

...except for the fact that the word "apple" exists to separate the idea of an apple from a pear, and that it would become muddled after a while to discuss all fruit with just the word "fruit". Not that the system is perfect- there are many undiscovered fruits, or subcategories (berries, for instance) and not all people are clear on what's what- such as the fact that a tomato is a fruit and not a vegetable.

Please don't read things that I didn't say into my speech, or make brash accusations. I'm much more patient and thick skinned than others, thankfully, but this is how disharmony can start. Nobody should be afraid to, on a support forum of all places, where we're as anonymous as we wish to be, speak their thoughts for fear they'll be labeled as whatever hatred you wish.

Anyhow, this is not what this thread was about, and I'm personally not going to thread steal anymore. If anyone would like to continue, we shall do it elsewhere.

[Allosaurus2]

Actually, it would. Our current pronoun situation pisses me off- it's too convoluted. You don't know who 'her' refers to if there's more than two women involved, and and making everyone 'they'w ould only compound it.

It's not that complicated to clarify the situation by using someone's name or some other signifier instead of a pronoun.

[AlexTheSane]

Let me put this to people: a number of languages do not have separate pronouns for "he" and "she", such as Chinese. They use the same word to mean both pronouns. Is this language any more confusing because of this lack of distinction? No, it works perfectly well. Would anyone argue that China, whether modern or historically, is less paternalistic and sexist than western societies? Absolutely not (foot binding, anyone?) Are there fewer Chinese transpeople? I don't know, we should get some numbers on this.

There are studies that show that languages can affect the way people categorize the world, but none of the one's I've seen that have to do with gender have been very unsastisfactory, biased, or otherwise flawed. Even the ones that have supported this (mainly to do with prepositions and physical relations between objects) were inconclusive as to the extent of the effect.

[ninurta]

... what good purpose do gender pronouns serve?

Clarifying many thoughts when put to word.

After all, I doubt any of us would really be transgendered if "she" was 100% equivalent to "he" in every way or vice versa. They are seperate thoughts and entities and should not be described with the same word. That is why, say, a transman would get offended if called a "she"- because he is not a "she" at all. But if you remove these words, there's no clear way to dictate the difference. The easiest way for me to dictate my gender, usually, is that I'm not a he nor a she- both but neither. This usually works very well. To my knowledge there is not a single language that doesn't have gendered pronouns or words that describe a speaker or target subject's gender.

Remove such things and you lead to a rather garbled mess in an already murky world of thoughts.

Well in Sumerian, there is seperate genders sometimes for masculine and feminine, some in the pronouns, and the feminine is also used to be a masculine. Some languages just see no difference.

For example, Ninurta means Lord Ninurta as would Enurta, but it also means Lord (fem.) Ninurta.

[WhatIsBeautiful?]

isn't this thread about sexual orientation?