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People have not moved away from the “gender is what’s in your pants” narrative. Transphobes still misgender based their victims’ (presumed) genitalia.
I didn’t muddy it, you misunderstand what social construct is, and “sex” is muddy in and of itself. As I said, sex is not so firmly binary.
Among other social constructs such as gender, as useful as they can perhaps be when looking for a generalisation of “what are the terms for you to be understood in?” I have recently been questioning sex. Sex is often referred to as the biological bits, but is that true? No, because it’s an incomplete picture.
Biologists seem to currently accept sex is a mosaic of sexual characteristics. This includes but is not limited to genitalia and chromosome—the two most thought about elements I’d wager—and your chest, your hormone balance, but also measurements like around the hips, waist, shoulders… And of course, your role in reproduction, especially if you can reproduce.
Many of these characteristics are mutable, especially in today’s society with hormones and surgeries. Functionally speaking, they don’t matter, we as a species are not at risk of extinction and simply do not need to care about it. Sex was fraught even as a measure of reproductive capabilities anyway. We should care for each other’s happiness first and foremost.
But even mutability aside, sex isn’t consistent between men and women, with different hormone balances and even some variations in chromosomes or the capacity for sexual reproduction. Also, see the existence of intersex people, who, by their existence alone, shatter the binary.
I don’t believe sex is a useful categorisation. Sex and gender and expression and the things you enjoy are different, but they’re also both still constructions with your presumed gender being extrapolated from the most visible elements of your sex and huge variability for each person therein, but the correlation is starting to feel weak.
Sex and genders, as structures, are the product of cisheteropatriarchy, ie sexism. Even in sports. Social constructs generally arise as a necessary division for societies to make given their material conditions, and it was used to increase populations. I would say it is time to leave such vestigial logic behind.
I second this. It’s a little solipsistic to dismiss everyone you don’t like as “bad intentions” because you simply can’t know their intentions. All I know is some people do their best to make me feel good about myself and my identity and some either don’t or can’t and there is functionally little difference for me between those latter two camps.