Hello everybody! I'm Des and I'm currently in the *confusion intensifies* stage. My question is as follows: Sex is a defined, easy-to-check term: you look at a person's gonads/hormones/whatever and you can tell whether they're male, female or some inbetween situation. Gender, however, isn't as well-defined. People say "male", "female", "boy", "girl" and a whole lot of other things without saying how, say, Donald Trump, Usain Bolt and Elvis Presley are all males. So, basically, I'm looking for this sort of definition that says "everything that's X is male, except those who are Y", assuming there is one (both a friend and my psychologist basically said 'nope').
Well, I read it, and it seems to me that the conversation petered off without an actual conclusion? Certainly there wasn't any "male points to this box and female points to another box" definition. I'm still confused. EDIT to add: IMO, saying that "gender is a subjective feeling" and everybody has it different means that words like "male" and "female" (when used in the gender sense, not when used in the sex sense) have no meaning (because a word's meaning is basically what enough people agree that it is).
Well that conclusion is just silly. Of course they have meaning with regards to gender - male generally aligns with being fine with or wanting to have the type of appearance and genitals associated with cis male people and wanting to be recognized as male by other people, female generally aligns with the type of appearance and genitals associated with cis female people and wanting to be recognized as female by other people. There's also all sorts of gradations in between. When it comes to gender, if you're looking for clear cut categories, neat boxes, or Objective Truth, you're out of luck. It's messy, as is everything to do with subjective experiences and human cognition.
