No Stupid Questions

Shelters for domestically abused women need to be female only.

Ok. I get the sex differentiation when needing medical care. What I don't get is why we have to tell everyone else what gender we are. If you can do the job, what does it matter? If you are driving, what does it matter? You can change your appearance at any time. Now, I know that injuries can happen anywhere, but there are so many variables in appearance and dress that it seems pointless. Emergency services don't demand sex identification before treatment. Doctors treat injuries not sex. Yes, there can be treatments that need this information, doctors do ask for a valid reason. I know I'm neurodivergent. I just feel like it's not really my business whatcha got going on below the "packaging" in a non-having sexual relations soon kinda way. If I would like to have sex with you, I would then start with what I've got going on, then ask if you're ok with that. I've always assumed the people I've had sex with were human, haven't gone wrong with that yet. I didn't decide to have sex with someone on what I think is under their clothing. Communication is key folks. I have made assumptions in my life, but a quick, kind correction is not going to ruin my day. Yes, I've made passes to persons who turned me down, who hasn't? Didn't slow me down. I've mostly worked in office situations, but I did have a few years driving tractor-trailers, even there, you really don't know what the "packaging" covers. I think it's just all just busy bodies poking their noses and prejudice into others people's lives. They can just fuck off with that shit. So many want to bring up safety reasons, maybe we should start with stopping non-consent culture and supporting those who have suffered. Today's culture explicitly supports non-consent culture. It's disgusting. Sorry for the wall of text.

(from our thread in Actual Discussion) It exists as you see it in this weird middle state now because gender used to be completely synonymous with sex (and for most people, it still is).

I first became familiar with the idea of gender in High School in the 90's. Unlike most, I have forestry credits as I was in boarding school and had some very odd classes. We ran an apiary and made our own honey, kept and raced sled dogs, worked a restaurant we ran, ran a library, etc.

We were also tasked with taking care of a square kilometre of forest up in Northern Canada and, as such, had to learn about plant species native to the region. Doing that, we learned about plant gender.

Plants have a gender because they lack a biological sex; it is a different classification system. In regards to humans, however, dictionaries (and people using the term) at the time used it interchangeably with the term sex. The only differentiation that I ever saw between the two was in dealing with plants or heavily academic papers dealing with some very specific things.

Intersex humans were, at least taxonomically, an aberration and not a classification. Early on they presented and operated as whatever their dominant sexual traits would indicate and frequently did not deviate and there was little issue with this.

But even without "gender," and even in the early 80's when I was born, there was a wide berth in what it could mean to be a man or woman. When people were talking about stereotypes, they seemed to be speaking about things that I'd seen in old TV shows from the 50's and 60's, not things I was familiar with in real life. That "housewife and single breadwinner husband" home shit was long past and seemed antiquated even then. It wasn't BAD to be stereotypical or not, mind you, but other than a few farming households I knew, I never saw the "stay-at-home-Mom" dynamic. Every family had a different dynamic and people fit where they built themselves space to do so. I knew very few "stereotypical male" Dads or "stereotypical female" Moms other than on TV, and we all knew damn well that TV wasn't true to life.

When I witnessed third-wave feminist messaging start to get big in the 2010s speaking about this stuff like it was common, expected, and had to be destroyed, it was odd to me. It was like they were fighting with ghosts from days long past.

I recognize that my personal experiences don't match everyone, but I lived in Cincinnati, Edmonton, Calgary, Saudi Arabia, Kingston, Amsterdam, Thailand, Kentucky, and many more. The only place I witnessed what could be described as "traditional roles" was in Saudi, and even then it was only defined by a few laws, not the way people actually acted. I knew many friends that had their father completely cowed by their mother even in that insane theocracy.

All that to say that gender in humans... doesn't seem to have a purpose to me. Since gender can be fluid in humans, it is not at all worth categorizing in humans. It means, effectively, nothing. It's like trying to categorize hair colour down to the hex code; it accomplishes nothing whatsoever.

Sex is a medically distinguishing characteristic and is easily definable. It adds clarity. I get why it needs to exist. It has value.

Gender? I don't understand why it came to be used for anything as it hasn't done anything other than stir basic culture war garbage.

Not necessarily legal but tracking genders is extremely important for data analytics in almost every field. For example knowing certain diseases affects genders differently allows scientists to create better medicines or medicines that target different things. Like medicines that are specifically designed to be safe for pregnancy.

We have laws making it illegal to discriminate according to gender. If there are zero legal gender categories, there is no legal basis by which one can say discrimination has occured, so nobody can technically commit such a crime.

The two biggest reasons i can think of are:

1. It's medically relevant information. If you're incapacitated, this could be vital information to whoever treats you.

2. Legal protections. Gender is a protected class. To receive those protections and to know when they apply, this information is required.

Medical issues.

Men and women have different anatomy and needs. Knowing your biological sex for medical reasons is kinda important.

Everywhere else, it's a social construct and does not matter in the slightest.

identification

We don't. They're entirely immaterial to a modern world.

The instant 2 atheists got married, it opened the door to people of any gender pairing to get married. Marriage is just a social contact between 2 consenting adults ahemwith tax incentives. Only religion dictated which genders are allowed to do what.

Conservative hand wringing over public restroom use is mitigated by making all bathrooms gender neutral. Easy fix.

What else? Pink is for whoever the fuck likes it, you salmon short wearing closeted frat bros. You do you. Blue is for people doing Frozen cosplay. I dunno, gendered colors are so stupid.

We don't.

Many users have mentioned medical reasons, but there are also a bunch of legal privileges that only one gender has. In my country,

• Some number of jobs (usually 33%) are reserved for women. Some states reserve a small number of jobs for transpeople / intersex / third gender people.
• Maternity leave > paternity leave
• Many government schemes are only for women.
• In a divorce, if the children do not have strong preferences for either parent, they are sent with the mother.
• At night, women cannot be kicked out of trains for travelling without tickets.
• Women can only be searched / arrested by policewomen.
• Religious accomodations, like Sikh men but not women having a right to carry knives in high-security areas.
• In Delhi and nearby areas, men are less likely to get sexually assualted.

The important thing is not the legal genders, but that we can hate somebody we don't know for something they haven't done.

Because there are many laws that grant some benefits to one gender but no the other. For example:

• In Poland women get to retire earlier
• In many countries there's mandatory conscription only for men
• In many countries maternal and paternal leaves are different
• Physical requirements for some jobs (police, firemen) are lower for women
• There are legally mandated proportions of genders in companies or in political parties (in parliamentary clubs to be exact)
• In Spain there are laws that specifically protect women from violence committed by men and special courts that handle them
• Many other laws/rules that require some % of public grants to go to women

You can remove all those laws but that will make feminists unhappy. Most of those benefits are backed by women and passed by leftists governments. As long as those laws exists you need legal genders.

Reading the comments I'm surprised how many people don't know about them.

why are there legal genders?

historical reasons

Why do we need legal genders?

we don't

Different laws apply to different genders

We don't.

Here in Germany one of the few good things that came out of our previous federal government was the SBGG, which - among other things - allows you to delete the entry. And before anyone points it out: I'm aware it isn't perfect.