Why are we obsessed with gender?

battosai-01 said:
Gender is socially constructed.

Your biological sex determines how you reproduce. That's kind of an important thing.
If you don't care at all about reproduction, than I guess you shouldn't really give a shit about biological sex either.

TheBrainintheJar said:
Gender actually does affect everyone. You can't avoid sex. Even in war-torn places people somehow still have sex and give birth to people.

Sex is also the beginning of everything. Sex is how people are born.

I haven't met a person that sex wasn't a part of his/her life. No one was indifferent. Some acted indifferent, but they were just uncomfortable.

Also, the feminists and MRA started asking questions about this idea. Once you start asking questions about such a huge topic, it's harder to avoid it.

battosai-01 said:
Gender is socially constructed.

Your biological sex determines how you reproduce. That's kind of an important thing.
If you don't care at all about reproduction, than I guess you shouldn't really give a shit about biological sex either.

Verhus said:
Why are you obsessed with people being obsessed with gender ?

Scud said:
I don't really understand how anybody 'feels' like a certain gender. I just feel like me. I'm a person. I like video games and tea.

hitokiri1859 said:
Guys care about gender especially online because most of them are looking for targets to hit up. Thats followed by asking questions like:

*Do you have any pics of yourself I can see (Other variations like pix pls or pls pics can apply)
*Are you single
*What's your name
*What location are you from
*Ask's some sexual question

RedRoseFring said:
Because people are now turning them into fantasies and creating new absurd ones everyday.
Then again, that is to be expected with freedom and idle time.

Scud said:
I don't really understand how anybody 'feels' like a certain gender. I just feel like me. I'm a person. I like video games and tea.

RedRoseFring said:
Because people are now turning them into fantasies and creating new absurd ones everyday.
Then again, that is to be expected with freedom and idle time.

SnugglyWhuggly said:



This is the thing I don't really understand the most. Why try to hook up with someone online? If it's on a dating website, I'd understand, but why non-date related forums/websites? There's very little chance of you ever meeting the other person, especially when you take into account that people often live in different countries, which are sometimes an ocean away. I'd just assume you'd have better luck actually trying to get with someone who you've actually met in real life.

Red_Keys said:
Congrats on being cisgender and feeling like the majority of the human population. Perhaps now you should work on that thing called "empathy".

DisdainMatto said:
I've made 2 threads about this, I think. Don't blame me.
The thing is Gender Politics is insanely easy to debate about because for both sides it's based on emotions, not facts.

battosai-01 said:
Well there is an assumption that your gender and sex are going to be the same thing. Unless you're trans/gender queer/gender fluid or w.e fucking other tumblr shit you wanna call yourself. Thus the whole reproduction argument.

AnnoKano said:
I posit that people are interested in finding partners online because:

• That's where they do most of their socialising
  
• They have niche hobbies and are unable to find people who share their interests local to them.
  
• They find conventional social events boring but still like talking to people.
  
• They like the idea of getting to know a person well before knowing what they look like.
  
• They feel they're able to be themselves online, but not in their personal lives.
  

It's quite easy to make fun of people looking for love on websites but I think the answer isn't as simple as "they are losers who can't find a partner any other way".

Although I also think a lot of the 'flirting' that you see on sites like MAL is intended to be taken as a joke. People asking for pictures... most of the time, I think they're just being creepy on purpose for lulz.

Finally, people can and do wind up getting together with people they met online, even those who live oceans apart.

SnugglyWhuggly said:

I'd say ditto to this for the most part. I think there often tends to be too much emphasis on a person's gender, rather than who they actually are as a person (not always, don't bite my head off here).


This is the thing I don't really understand the most. Why try to hook up with someone online? If it's on a dating website, I'd understand, but why non-date related forums/websites? There's very little chance of you ever meeting the other person, especially when you take into account that people often live in different countries, which are sometimes an ocean away. I'd just assume you'd have better luck actually trying to get with someone who you've actually met in real life.


Which is one of the many reasons why I think people are generally "obsessed" with gender, when new genders/sexualities are being created all the time, not even because a person "sexually identifies" as being an attack helicopter or whatever, they're just creating new genders for the sake of it.
Even when a person has too much free time, I don't understand it meself.

Red_Keys said:
Congrats on being cisgender and feeling like the majority of the human population. Perhaps now you should work on that thing called "empathy".

Martin said:
To me, there are only two sexes in the world.

Everything else can go fuck off, thanks.

Martin said:
To me, there are only two sexes in the world.

Everything else can go fuck off, thanks.

Pirating_Ninja said:
There ARE only two sexes. Nobody is arguing otherwise. To argue otherwise would be cerebral. What they are arguing is that there are more than 2 genders.

Rarusu_ said:
Hard to say why we are so obsessed. The ground to all gender idealization comes from how we raise our kids, and we raise them after how we think they will be best prepared for the 'real' world. In other words we are already a lost generation. We will never experience the gender free society (of course there will always be boys and girls, but speaking of expectations and roles based on one's sex).

All of us, enjoying the 2010s are living in a time when we are moving away from the industrialized society to a high-technological service and IT society. This process has been here for awhile now, since the 70s/80s. (Third wave feminism occured at the same time and is now peaking).

Everytime when a society is in these "middle worlds", we will begin to revalue ourselves, our lives and the world, because we face new challanges and at the same time gain new and perhaps more possibilities. We will start questioning and reasoning. An argument that made sense when we moved away from an agricultural to an industrialized society, won't necessarily make any sense now. The world is changing, at least the material one does.
I think that is why there is a lot of debating about these kind of topics nowadays. We happen to be between two eras.

If we look at the individual, some people gain on gender roles. Whether they are male or female doesn't matter. If there wouldn't be any gain, well then we wouldn't see any gender idealization either.
On the other hand, I think that most people don't want to be judged upon based on their own gender/sex. Unfortunately, to be a hypocrite isn't something rare among us. Once people realize that they have to free others to free themselves, to let go of their own idealization, then we will see a more rational and a more socially equal society.

SnugglyWhuggly said:
But what about gender-specific roles/expectations, or "attributes" associated with either gender, such as "masculinity" and "femininity"? I don't think they really have anything to do with sex/procreation, but they get quite a bit of attention as well.

battosai-01 said:
Gender roles and expectations are born from culture, but sometimes simply practically. Men went to fight and die in wars because it doesn't take that many men to repopulate. Women took care of children, because they gave birth to them and were are the limiting factor of reproduction. Men were expected to protect women and be the bread winners, working for hours on end for the same reason. Generations of men going to war and killing people, working soul-crushing jobs to put food on the table and generations of women taking care of children and the home doesn't just go away after one or two generations. This stuff stays with us as a culture and a people. It's not that easy to "socially condition" away. I feel like a lot of the progress we're seeing now is due to overpopulation and reproduction not being a big concern.

If you want equality let men raise their children and tell women to go off to war to kill and die. The work thing thankfully has already been fixed, nice to have women suffer along with us in the work place. Maybe our generation is the tipping point where we just stop giving a shit about gender roles. I personally don't give a shit and I'm not going to fight a war for something I don't care about and I'm not even that interested in having kids. I just wanna do things that make me happy and I could care less if they happen to be traditionally masculine or feminine.

geniobastardo said:
What Rarusu said.

When you're sweating your forehead over an issue that has almost negligible affect on your life, then it's time to realize that you really don't have a 'life'. People seem to be obsessed with gender because it is somewhat related to 'sex' which is the oh-so-notorious thing these days; people may want to purport that sex is only natural or whatnot but they have to admit that when they see a guy at the bar who banged three chicks last night alone, they feel 'depressed'; they go into an inferiority complex and when they come home, they'll engage in such futile debates till they fall asleep crusading for nothing.

Sure there were some 'stupid gender roles' but the way that phrase has changed into ''genders roles are stupid'' is a bit alarming. I explained it in a post in some other thread. Here it is:http://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=1437427&show=50#msg42590354

Read the last paragraph. I still think it's all a fad and not really an actual problem though.....

Fenryr19 said:
Because left-wing retards care only about themselves and pretend to be altruistic by yelling at everyone about the group they belong in to hide that their true goal is themselves.
"We woman suffer so much, we need privileges blah blah blah"
"We black people suffer so much, we need privileges blah blah blah"
"We homosexuals suffer so much, we need privileges blah blah blah"

CNile said:
Gender exists for a reason, and gender roles are not just some bullshit made up by society. They come from biology, and the reason they exist is because they work better than anything else. A man should specialize in masculine things, a woman in feminine, neither should try to do both, neither, nor the opposite. This is because the two are inherently different and are better than each other at different things. Even setting that aside, women are repulsed by feminine men, and men are not attracted to masculine women.

SnugglyWhuggly said:

Sounds like a very boring and repetitive world you've described there. Sure, there are biological differences between the sexes, both mental and physical, but why should that automatically mean that ALL men should have "masculine" roles, and ALL women should have "feminine" ones?

Both of those things ARE largely socially constructed. Women are often pictured as being cooks for example, but there isn't any biological difference in cooking ability. Men can be as good as cooks as women are, and vice versa. There are actually very few things that men and women have "specialised" roles in. Men are generally better at physical labour however, and women are generally better with more social-related roles, such as teaching, child raising, etc. But that isn't always the case.

Everyone's different, just because a person is born a certain sex, it doesn't automatically mean they're be good at everything that's "associated" with their biological sex.

Pirating_Ninja said:
Very true . . . However, on average what the opposite gender finds attractive is if they more or less fit there perceived "gender". I hate to say it, but more than society, being attractive to the opposite sex is a pretty large reason to act a certain way. While people can disagree with this, or say it needs to change, no one person speaks for the entirety of their (or the opposite) gender, in other words it is just cheap ideals.

SnugglyWhuggly said:

I agree, but when it comes to attraction, I think "masculinity" and "femininity" are based more on a person's mannerisms/demeanour/how they carry themselves, rather than a person's occupation. Not that the latter doesn't come into play as well, but you can still find plenty of feminine, female doctors/surgeons, or masculine, male clothes knitters, for example. And I think they would generally be considered more attractive than "masculine" females or "feminine" men, regardless of their jobs or hobbies.

Pirating_Ninja said:
Not necessarily true either. Occupation in some regards is a result of this. For example, a surgeon will usually have most likely be more masculine (regardless of whether they are male or female) simply because of how competitive it is required to get into the field. Similarly, an employee at a daycare will typically be more feminine, regardless of the gender, simply because of the fact that it involves a more gentle / caring demeanor. There are exceptions to the rules, of course, however I think that at this point it is important to separate the term masculine / feminine from gender for a brief moment. These terms are honestly just a convenient way to reference a list of characteristics, so by saying that something is more of a "masculine" job, I am not saying then that it is more suitable for men, I am simply saying it is more suitable for that set of characteristics. Now, what does this have to do with gender? Well we have been conditioned since birth (and some theorize even before this, at least if you believe in Evolutionary Psychology at all) to desire to exhibit specific traits or find others attractive. Men who are confident, and have a stable / well paying job are considered more attractive. Basically what I am saying is that men pursue masculine traits to be more attractive to the opposite sex, as do women to be more attractive to the opposite sex. It is NOT a coincidence that in many occupations there are vast gender differences despite countless movements / events / scholarships / etc. to try and rectify this.

Essentially what I am saying is that while there are exceptions to the rules, a "masculine job" will on average be worked by "masculine people", and a "feminine job" will be worked by "feminine people". The reason that these two then further carry over to gender, in my opinion, is simply due to a desire to be "attractive". I think what we shouldn't fight is the assumption that X is masculine or Y is feminine (who are we to tell people to shoot themselves in the foot for our own beliefs, knowing damn well that most people of our own gender would not find them following our advice "attractive") but rather that someone's gender should be linked to masculine / feminine. This will still create problems, Going against the grain will not put one in a favorable position, but that person is the minority, you shouldn't ask the entirety of humanity to change their perspectives for the minority.

(Don't think I explained that too well, and probably going to get a lot of hate for saying what I didn't mean, but too lazy to go back and try and clarify)