3 upvotes, 2 direct replies (showing 2)
View submission: Do non-binary identities reenforce gender stereotypes?
Gender is quite literally made up. It is a social construct. It isn’t a matter of to me or to you. It is a social construct. It is made up, and it is taught in society. It unfortunately IS a prominent part of society, but it should not be. The notion of gender is obsolete. If by magic everyone stopped ever referring to the concept of gender again and the future generations were never taught about it, gender roles would disappear and no one would need to develop a “gender identity”. It isn’t something naturally inside you. It is literally a byproduct of the social construct that is gender, and overall, that construct has done more harm than good. Society will evolve when we decide to move past it.
Comment by DevelopmentLucky4853 at 13/01/2025 at 02:51 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
We simply cannot know if your hypothetical genderless world would play out that way. I get that you want to believe that and I think if it did it would be better than what we have now. Still, I'm not aware of any societies in history that have not had gender or chosen to discard it outright. Maybe there will be one someday. The anarchists and democratic confederalists are closer than anyone else at equality rn that I'm aware of.
Still, it's pretty clear to me that gender is a word we made up and (re)define together to be of some utility to us. In this case we use it to describe clusters of varying internal experiences: things that exist in the real world inside of people. As far as anyone can tell these internal experiences are not themselves entirely a social construct in the sense that if gender in society was not there to reinforce them they would not simply cease to exist. We probably disagree on that and that's okay but maybe that at least clarifies the specific point of contention.
Are you aware of any research that supports the idea people would not invent gender? Genuinely asking because I for sure would read it.
Comment by DogEnthusiast3000 at 14/01/2025 at 11:50 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
In that sense, everything is made up, even the words we’re using to communicate right now. Shall we move past words and communicate telepathically now? I think humanity is still some decades away from that 😄
The point I could make with this is, that made-up concepts, like words, are a necessary step in our evolution towards… I don’t know, the next kind of human perhaps? So are money, gender, politics, religion, spirituality etc. - they all serve a certain purpose, until we eventually will be able to move past or transcend them.