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It would be even more interesting if humans were a mono-gendered (or effectively genderless...since everyone is the same) species.
I think it's fine to look at general biological markers and categorize people for healthcare reasons. Most of the time being in the ballpark works for most people. Maybe in the future we can have some full body scan thing that picks up the optimal healthcare setup for each individual but in the meanwhile, we'll go with what we got.
But that doesn't have to have shit to do with their internal experience of themselves, or how the social environment should react to them. And I reiterate: "most people". Meaning there's going to be outliers and that's okay, and they'll need more individualized care. Being abnormal is normal.
Imagine coming to Lemmy and being told you picked the wrong gender distro.
That's pretty much how it already works. It's just that the pressure to make the "correct" choice is fucking crazy.
For some of us we didn’t know there was a choice
For all of us we didn't know there was a choice, we were all infants at the time the choice was made. We were still figuring out which amorphous blob gives us the milk.
This is why others decide on sex for us through observation. That much is sensible enough, infants are not great at that kind of thing. But we're discovering more and more that this is an imperfect system and that more often than we realized the answer is not straight forward or in fact that our conclusions are sometimes incorrect even when it appears straight forward.
It's just that the pressure to make the "correct" choice is fucking crazy.
I feel pressured to only ever present as a cisgendered heterosexual person regardless of whether that's correct or not. The pressure is for LGBTQ+ people to simply disappear from public society. Correct has nothing to do with it.
This would only make sense if humans were some neutral sexless gender until they decided, which would have to be biologically enforced until the brain was sufficiently developed enough to choose.
There's an episode of TNG where Data builds his child. He specifically says that he designed their base form to be sexless and speciesless, so that they could choose it for themselves.
If only the Trek fandom at large would acknowledge how unfathomably based that episode is. I swear there's still a massive contingent of right wing boomers driving the narrative.
Yea that's what I meant: If in a hypothetical alt-world, Humans were evolved so that biological sex is neutral for everyone.
But since "Gender" and "Sex" both translates to "性別" in Chinese, so when I first learned those English words, my brain kinda just mixed up both terms and encoded into my lexicon to mean the same thing.
In a lot of western early education they are used intechangably; which is where a lot of the local discourse stems from too. I think its because kids are taught that "sex" is naughty so they switch the terms for "ease" of lesson only to further confuse people. The american public school system atually does this with a lot of subjects.
I think it would be more interesting if you could change at will. Wake up and pick your gender like you pick your outfit for the day.
Ranma 1/2? 😅
Can't you? People literally do that. I truly don't understand this game.
Do you really think people just behave in certain, sex-related ways, because they've been told they're this sex or the other? That sex-related behavioural differences don't appear naturally (and are perhaps reinforced) but are just learned? Also, you definitely can "choose who you want to be", lol, God made us all free-willed entities! But I cannot be a camel, nor can I be a non-material entity, or (ethnically) Nepali. We have degrees of freedom but we are fundamentally constrained by reality. If you deny reality (a very post modern, perspectivist approach that's been very popular in the West for some decades now), then sure, you're no longer constrained but then you lose the capacity to make any "objective" assertions about the world (because you denied an external reality).
Op isn't talking about our current reality, they're posing a hypothetical situation in which humans are born without sex and can choose
Not really, they just mentioned not having a "gender" assigned at birth, allowing you to remain legally sexually indeterminate until you pick a side, regardless of your bits and bobs. Or at least that's how I read it.
The "and" in the title is key. Humans can currently choose their gender expression, so that part can be stripped out with no changes to the world. Not assigning gender at birth is an interesting thought. Some people are really, from my view, weird about making sure their children perform gender correctly as early and often as possible.
Also I think it'd be neat if it was "genre" in English too. People understand there's more genres than horror and fantasy.
It's not really that it's a choice to not be cis, but yeah, we shouldn't assume people's gender at all imho until they tell us themselves (and as children can't tell us until they're older don't assume until they're older), and even when they do it shouldn't need to affect stereotypes or the way we grammatically refer to them or anything, just maybe what body they want to have and who can be attracted to them
Why would you trust anything someone says about themselves outright? What if they're crazy? What if they're lying? What if they're wrong? Is that impossible, or does every person on Earth have perfect knowledge of themselves and their true selves at all times, and always speak the truth?
Why would you trust what someone else says about them rather than what they say about themself? If someone says they're depressed, do you believe them, or do you need 'objective proof'? Gender [dysphoria/euphoria] is the same, it's an internal experience.
As long as i dont have to care and can keep focusing on myself
Developmentally, babies don't even have gender yet. Gender develops in the brain between the ages of 2 and 4 (and keeps developing until the end of puberty). I don't think it's developmentally appropriate to gender babies. All babies are nonbinary, and we should encourage children to choose a gender and pronouns as a rite of passage on their fourth birthday.
I don't know why you're getting downvoted. I agree. Internal sense of gender develops later. If babies do have a gender identity, they can't communicate it. We shouldn't push gender expectations on babies.
Oh, it's just the normal everyday cisheteropartiarchy burned into people's brains why they're downvoting Me. My suggestion goes outside their comfort zone, and they don't know Me well enough to seriously consider what I'm saying, they just feel a negative emotional reaction to radical new ideas. Thinking new ideas is hard work, cognitively taxing, so they perceive My new ideas as a threat.
Stop segregating by sex too, there's no reason to do that unless you need a penis to complete an activity.
How do you know you didn't and you just happened to guess wrong? Like you were like oh "seems cool" then your neurons grew in mismatched.
Check out the Fluidum comic on Webtoons
Chaos.
this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2026
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- No politics
- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.
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