If you make things confusing, people will be confused

[Prometheus]

Never has this been more evident than dealing with the issues and [particularly] language surrounding sex, gender, and orientation. There are so many words and phrases and as to boggle and confound. I often think THAT is exactly the point. They are often used interchangeably and when you can't follow the train of language, you cannot help but take a misstep that allows people to pounce on you and denigrate you as something you're not simply because they purposely misled you.

I'm going to try to untangle all the bullshit. Hopefully I don't muddy the waters even further, but since the language is meant to do just that, I may have no other choice.

Let's start with "sex"

There are only two sexes and we generally refer to them as "male" and "female." Don't let anyone try to tell you different on that number. The number is two. That's all. There are "sperm producers" (male) and egg producers (female). Period. This isn't just about genitalia. It's about the "plumbing."

Mammals (that's what humans are) without the plumbing to create either sperm or eggs are "neuters." Some people might use the term, "asexual" (which means without sex) but that word is also used in conversations regarding orientation, so that's where I going to put it.

Animals that can produce both sperm and eggs depending on their role in the reproductive act are called "hermaphrodites." This is not a "third sex." It's just a term to describe an animal that has both sets of plumbing. There are still only two human gametes: sperm and eggs. <insert Monty Python reference here>

There are no functional human hermaphrodites (at least none that I could find) so that word has fallen into disrepute and the preferred term is "intersex." Intersex people have some hormonal, chromosomal, gonad, or genital disorders (they don't like that word either, but that's what it is) that "do not fit the typical definitions for male or female bodies" according to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. They represent some number between 0.018 to 1.7% of the population depending on whether or not their "disorder" is recognized as "intersex."

Again, this is not a "third sex" but a term used to describe some mish-mash of the two.

This brings us to the term, "Sex Assignment." No. It's not homework for your Health or Biology class, but a term used to describe how, when a doctor or midwife sees a penis and declares a child male or sees a vagina and declares the child female. The word "assignment" is often used pejoratively by the LGBTQ+ crowd to make it seem as though obvious genitalia aren't enough to make a reasonable assumption of about the internal plumbing. They are trying to conflate the notions of "sex" and "gender" which they will later insist are distinct.

To me (and I would hope, the rest of the rational world), when the sex is obvious from the genitalia, no "assignment" has been made, just a statement of fact.

But that's when we get hammered by the Intersex folks. Maybe they were born with "ambiguous genitalia" and someone had to make a call. Maybe the parents simply didn't have insurance that would cover the expensive genetic tests to reveal chromosomal abnormalities. They REALLY hate that term (abnormal), but it is what it is when you represent a fraction of a percent of the world's population. I didn't mention it earlier, so let me be clear: there are a couple dozen different intersex conditions that add up to 0.018 to 1.7% of the population and several of them have no actual scientific estimates. Some of them seem to only present in very specific populations.

Anyway... "sex assignment" is just a term for people to use when they want to make themselves out to be special or different.

It also comes in handy when discussing "Sexual Reassignment Surgery"... at least until they started calling it "Sexual Confirmation Surgery" regardless of how many people underwent the procedure only to later admit that they had made a mistake.

I guess we need to talk about transsexuals now. This is where the terms "gender" and "sex" get really muddied but in a nutshell, transexuals are people with a desire to permanently transition from their "assigned sex" - AKA their scientifically proven sex - to the opposite sex through transitional therapies such as hormone replacement and or sex reassignment surgery.

Here's the thing. You can call the surgery whatever you want and call yourself whatever sex you want, but if the surgery removes the plumbing associated with gamete production, the resulting mammal is a neuter. Your grandma got a hysterectomy? She's a neuter the same as your cat that got spayed. But, because she still has a vagina, we play nice and say that she's still a female... and that's all about gender, so let's get into it.

Gender

This is where we step away from the hard science that shows there are only two sexes and we start getting into the murky world of "identity" and "expression."

Let's start with some basics. I'll just quote the opening line of the wikipedia page: "Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to, and differentiating between, femininity and masculinity."

"Femininity" is about being "girlish" or "womanish," if you prefer. while "masculinity" is about being "boyish" or "manly."

There is much debate on how much these characteristics are influenced by nature or nurture with only the most irrational minds negating "nature" out of hand. The effects of testosterone and estrogen are widely known so let's just move on to "nurture."

"Nurture" is generally centered around the notion of "gender roles" which are simply the behaviors and attitudes that any particular society expects of a person based on biological or perceived sex. Boys should do boy stuff and girls should do girl stuff. They are easy to understand since they generally proceed from the natural differences between the sexes: men are the "hunters" and women are the "caregivers."

These roles have evolved over the millennia. Women work... "hunt" if you will, and men can cook meals, clean the house, and change diapers. None of these things makes anyone "transgendered" even if they are fulfilling the traditional role of the other gender. And if you give me shit about changing diapers, I'll beat the fuck out of you!

Sorry. My "nature" got the best of me there. Let's continue.

Some societies - or at least segments of them - cling to traditional gender roles because of the many factors inherent in enculturation. They aren't going to go away fast and trying to force them out of existence will only cause the adherents to dig in their heels. That's "nature" again.

"Gender expressions" which do not fit the normative view of gender within a society are often mocked and may even result in violent attacks against the person "expressing" themself: the "swishy" homosexual male or the "aggressive" lesbian. It's not right but it is to be expected when the biological sex of a person doesn't match with their personal expression of gender. No laws are going to change that fact. They are simply advancing the notion that there will be a penalty for mocking or enacting violence on a person who acts differently in the hopes that the punishment will deter future bad behavior.

The death penalty and life-long incarceration haven't done shit to stem the number of murders, so you had better just get on with your lives. Sorry.

A handful of countries in the world actually acknowledge a "third gender" but even their definition of it still relates to the two sexes and gender expression.

So what are all of these "genders" that we hear about in the news? What is it to be "pan-gender"? Do you go for a mani-pedi in the morning then knock back a few shots of whisky while playing pool in the evenings? I thought that was being "metrosexual"....

If there are just the two genders (masculine and feminine) then all of the other "genders" are simply variations in the percentage between the two that are expressed and "pan-gender" and "gender-fluid" are the same exact thing. At this point I'm wondering if all of the self-labeling isn't just an attempt to separate oneself from the crowd while still being part of the crowd without ever having to physically distinguish oneself.

In the end, it's all just a bunch of wasted effort battling against gender roles that have more or less ceased to exist in most of the western world anyway.

That brings me to transgender people. These are people who want to live according to the gender roles of the gender opposite to that of their biological (or "assigned") sex. They actually embrace gender roles, whether it's chic clothes and makeup or pumping iron, growing a beard, and getting tattoos. I guess, if you're going to switch sides, you might as well go all out, right?

"What are your pronouns?"

"I,me, mine," just like the Beatles sang about!

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know we're talking about 3rd person pronouns. Let me have my moments. This is a long post. Cheers to you if you made it this far!

The 3rd person pronouns (including determiners - "possessive adjectives") are (without duplication) he, she, it, they, him, her, them, his, her, its, their, hers, theirs. As long as we stick to these standard pronouns, I'm fine, but I'm probably not going to learn 16 new ones (13 if they follow the same pattern) and I'm certainly not going to learn 48 of them if 3 different people have 3 different sets of 16 and I don't think it's fair for anyone to ask me to. Choose the male, female, or 3rd person plural and be done with it. It's not that I don't like you or respect you but asking me to learn all sorts of new words just on your account is rude and (quite honestly) narcissistic on your part.

/pronoun rant

This is where I should have a section about sexual orientation but I've been typing for a long time and you're probably pretty bored with the topic by now, so let's just call it a night and say that with all of these variations in gender and the misunderstanding that there are more sexes than two, discussing the names for orientations could take us into the wee hours of 2037.

Let me just say that I generally don't give a fuck what sex, gender, or orientation you are unless you're offering to have sex with me. Then certain things are going to become important to me because I'm me the same way you are you and if you give me shit about turning you down then you're just another hypocrite who needs to go fuck themself.

Clear?