[culturehandy]

I pitched this in the Community Forum and it was well recieved.

This thread is all about the politics and cross cultural and societal views on gender.

I started thinking increasingly about gender when the media frenzy about Caster Semenya emerged. It is my opinion that the only reason people questioned Ms. Semenya's gender is because she appeared to be "masculine". That is, she looked masculine according to the ideas of society at large. Had she had softer, more "feminine" features, questions of her gender would not have come up.

So, what is gender? We know that there is sex, your biological sex, but gender is a social construct.

[girltrouble]

that's an interesting point koffee(so glad every time you contribute, btw), and some people hold that up nature, but i think a lot of that is socialization. i think girls are taught to respond one way, boys, another. as one who has had/is relearning those rules, it is the hardest to break, because often we have no idea we are doing it. i think this is also a good reason to push/hope for raising gender neutral children.


@candy. yup. and i'm a cronic deleter too. since we can't actually delete, i do the only thing i can, edit it down to a "."

....that said i like the idea of posting random "." but i'm too lazy. i'd rather write a novel of a post, and then decide i'd gone entirely off topic, said something wholly inappropriate/offensive/stupid/self involved/personal, or that i'm dominating the conversation then delete the whole thing in favor of "."