To elaborate on what others have replied already, the algorithms will show you what will keep you on the platform, not what you like. Optimising for this means keeping you angry, not happy. Angry and divided people stick around so they can tell the other side how wrong they are (or watch their favourite pundit do that for them)
All of those ways include a male and a female as far as I know?
Gender is what you are describing as socially constructed as per textbook definition.
Your textbooks are clearly outdated. That’s fine, sociology and gender theory evolve. Read some queer theory, in particular Judith Butler.
if your battle is just about the terminology of how to classify someone’s anatomy
It’s not just about terminology, it’s about the social constructs that are inexorably linked with that terminology. It’s not overcomplication to point out that only a tiny fraction of observable sex (fertility) is actually immutable, and even that won’t be for long. All others are both mutable and socially chosen to represent sex.
Out of curiosity do you mind me asking what part of the world you live in?
I do mind, sorry, my points aren’t linked to any particular country or culture and so I wouldn’t want you categorising them as such, intentionally or not.
That may have been true once, but no longer – there are no shortage of ways for queer couples (or, for that matter, infertile cishet couples) to have children.
Even if we assume that reproductive categories are so supremely important that we should socially categorise based on them (which I reject), that just brings us back to my original point. Why are infertile people still categorised into a binary sex that has nothing to do with their reproductive capability?
Because sex as we culturully underatand it is socially constructed. We use markers that don’t reflect reproductive reality. Perhaps once they were the best proxies we had for a guess at reproductive capacity, but not any more.
The short and somewhat cheeky answer is that we recognise differences in people’s eyes by recognising differences in people’s eyes. You don’t need to refer to what we have historically designated “sex” to do that.
But here’s the longer answer: I’m sure it’s true that in the aggregate you can observe some differences in the eye that correlate with sex. But so what? That, along with any other aggregate difference, doesn’t actually validate sex as a useful category. The simple fact is that any way you split a population in two, you will see aggregate differences. These differences are then simply used to reify that categorisation as more important and concrete than it really is.
Let me illustrate this with a hypothetical. About half the population requires glasses (or other vision correction), and half doesn’t. If we constructed social categories and social roles around these, people would start caring enough to research what the physiological reality correlates with. Is there a difference in athletic ability between glasses-wearers and non-glasses-wearers? Is there a difference in height? and so on and so on. These real physiological differences are then used to reify the social construct, and when someone invents contact lenses, suddenly people go “but these categories are real! look at all this evidence showing how these categories are different!” and so on and so on
but so what? You can split a population in two however you like. Short and tall, glasses or no glasses, male or female. All come along with lots and lots of associated physical and mental differences in aggregate. Why do we think sex matters more than the others? Certainly not because of any physiological differences that actually matter in the modern world. It’s socially motivated.
Even if you want to separate sex and gender and define sex using sexual characteristics (not actually a good idea, see works by Judith Butler and Julia Serano among others, although I wont fight that point here), almost no sexual characteristics are immutable. The only ones that I can think of are chromosomes and gametes, but chromosomes aren’t even binary (or observable without a microscope) and gametes arent a good basis either – should being infertile affect your sex?
Really interesting link, thanks for sharing.
Anarchism does not (necessarily) call for a total lack of organisational structure, first and foremost it calls for the abolition of unjust hierarchies. I think a lot of anarchists would broadly agree with the main points of that article.
If you think there is no viable alternative to captitalism, I’d highly recommend the book “Capitalist Realism” by Mark Fisher, which tackles that very subject :)
btw please write “trans woman” instead of “transwoman”, I’m sure you didn’t intend it but the latter is frequently used by as a dog-whistle by fascists to avoid admitting we are women.
Sure, and just quit heroin while you’re at it.