Nonbinary gender discussion

Some systems use 3 and more states!

Well, for representing numbers for have much higher levels too, but I’d say that there were COMPUTERS that used 3 states… like 20 years ago already!

the term is ternary, and there are some emerging non-volatile memories that use the ternary system due to some limitations.

A lot of modern Flash memory and (I think) DRAM uses four- or eight-level encoding in the actual storage cells. The external interface is still binary of course.

I just saw this. Synchronicity?

http://readcomiconline.to/Comic/The-Unbeatable-Squirrel-Girl/Issue-4?id=14551#9

Yeah, knew the name, but I would say it was used in computation, not just for storage. Let’s do a quick search…

Well… seems to be already forgotten:

MLC is four-level cells (2²), and TLC is eight-level (2³) cells.

Back to the topic, I think gender is non-binary and I think it is analog. Any attempts of dividing the spectrum into states would leave some people feeling alienated in a group they don’t identify with. The ideal way would be to come up with a gender neutral pronoun for all.

Perhaps in the future, if humans are lucky enough to be that enlightened, we can tell a piece of film or tv show is period from the pronouns used by the characters.

Then what you call gender I’d call it something else, or several things, like sexual tendency, masculinity, feminist, etc… Even if the two last concepts are actually more abstract and subject to discussing.

I don’t understand why people can believe in total bullshit theories with little to none scientific base that criticize concepts way more realistic and clear because they are, according to them, “social constructs”. A tonto-logy.

You know that besides homosexuals, the mother nature also gives us babies born with both genitalia right? Binary gender itself is a human defined concept. There are plenty of animal species out there that are all hermaphrodites, or comes with fluid gender, or no gender at all.

Sure, most of the mammal population comes in just two gender, but that doesn’t mean there are only two gender in nature, even for humans. Claiming so is a over simplification of what we observe in the world, and people hold on to this over simplification because it suits their world view.

In the end it comes down to whether or not we are going to force a minority group to accept the majority’s over simplification of the truth, and be forced to change or hide themselves and what they know from birth as the fact that they don’t belong in either gender.

Quick response, will read completely later and reply accordingly.

AFAIK non binary gender people are not hermaphrodite.

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I’m talking about gender as an analog spectrum.

I realise these people exist, but I’d say there are few enough of them - 1% perhaps? - that there is no merit in generating a whole cluster of new pronouns for them. Some languages don’t even distinguish (verbally) between ‘he’ vs. ‘she’.

The correct English pronoun for someone who is neither male nor female would surely be ‘it’. Since that’s offensive to all concerned, why not just pick a pronoun that’s closest to the person’s internal view of him/her/itself? I’m not convinced there are many people who (if pressed) wouldn’t be able to pick either male-ness or female-ness as their predominant sense of self. As someone said elsewhere, any third party will have to make that assessment anyway from visual cues, so conveying an obvious preference minimizes the potential for offence.

Anyway, there are only four genders in nature: male, female, both, neither. It’s true that some animals and plants can change gender, but humans are definitely not one of them. Trans people wouldn’t experience so much angst if that weren’t so. Hermaphrodite humans are biological mistakes - the person’s mind is (90% of the time) definitively male or female, and heterosexual. People born this way are often the subject of detailed longitudinal studies: I suppose there may be cases where people born hermaphrodites accept the reality of their condition and may even create a gender role around their physical appearance, out of pure necessity, but most are deeply unhappy and want corrective surgery.

Most other types of physical gender discrepancies result in sterility, so you can’t really argue that these are normal conformations.

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I actually use it often when referring to babies because I can’t tell if it’s a boy or a girl. I’m not sure why people get all weird about it. I can’t tell sometimes, what’s wrong with it? I don’t even realize it until someone is like stuff calling my baby a it.

How reassuring!

Hi there. I’m a real, live non binary human being existing in the real world with a neutral gender marker AMA.

I’m also intersex and not a biological mistake… Thanks.

I wasn’t suggesting you’re a figment of anybody’s imagination, and I’m certainly not suggesting you’re anything less than human.

Against Medical Advice?

I’m not entirely sure what you mean by ‘intersex’ since it could mean dozens of different things. I won’t ask you to explain, but whatever it is, it puts you in extremely rarefied company, not least because parents usually ask for surgical adjustments at birth.

Again, I’m not saying that you personally are a mistake, but being born neither male nor female is no more “normal” than being born without arms. It is a genetic mistake in the sense that (1) it is statistically very unusual (2) it is disadvantageous to you personally and (3) it is disadvantageous to your genes, since they can’t be passed on.

In any case, I was really just arguing about pronouns and pontificating on society at large addressing people who aren’t happy with being called ‘he’ or ‘she’. People who are biologically intersex usually choose a standard pronoun and a congruent appearance.

Occasionally I encounter someone who I’m not quite sure is ‘小姐’ or ‘先生’. I have to pick one or the other because that’s the way the language works. I find myself trying to surreptitiously discern bumps and bulges for clues, while being painfully aware that the person is most likely deliberately keeping said bumps under wraps. Sometimes I give up and use neither one word nor the other, which sounds a bit rude.

I feel bad about this. But if I were being a snowflake, I might argue that such people are committing microaggressions against me by being ambiguous, thus putting me in a position where I will be embarrassed and unable to use standard verbal niceties. See how silly this gets?

Inventing new pronouns would not help because I would still not know whether they prefer to be addressed as he, she, it, or some newfangled word … unless they wear those stupid pronoun badges that Americans invented.

So FFS just pick a pronoun already, and drop the rest of us some hints via your clothing or demeanour. I guarantee if I tied you to a chair and refused to let you go until you decided on Male or Female, you wouldn’t sit there for long proclaiming that you can’t. Whatever you picked might not be an exact fit, but it ought to be close enough to be inoffensive.

I suppose it’s a bit OT, but the whole argument reminds me of the debate over the use of ‘he’ in writing (as opposed to ‘she’ or ‘he/she’). I don’t care if an author writes this:

“As the doctor prepared the endoscope, she talked to the patient calmly to distract him from the girth of the implement”.

because Doctors can plausibly be either male or female. I would object to this:

“The coalminer adjusted her helmet and hitched up her belt”

because I have never ever heard of women wanting to work down t’pit.

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Cool.

Hopefully that’s not the most interesting thing about you?

And hopefully you don’t expect the other 99.9% of the world to revolve around your shocking revelations?

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Get over yourself.

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Love your example sentence. Have you ever considered becoming an English teacher?

Hell no. I’d scare the students.