Originally posted by Surtur
Fair enough. Also I made a mistake, you didn't say there were 3 genders, but 3 sexes.How many genders do you think there are?
No one knows for sure. Could be infinite. Could be zero. And to make matters more complicated, these categories and the ways we describe them change constantly. Thus is the nature of social constructs.
This topic is actually extraordinarily complicated, and I think people are more willing than you think to be "un-PC" about it, provided it comes from a place of genuine intellectual curiosity.
There's been plenty of scholarly critiques of the transgender movement. There's the obvious feminist divide. Many trans exclusionary radical feminists see a huge problem with men living their whole lives as men, enjoying all the privilege it may bring, then feeling entitled to women-only spaces a few months into transitioning. To them, you're appropriating a history of female-centered oppression when you skipped the worst parts of it. (In their view).
Post-modernist viewpoints(feminist or otherwise) may take issue with transgender-ism because it reinforces the same social constructs and possibly gender essentialism that they worked so hard to fight against. You sorta hit on this here.
Originally posted by Surtur
In other words, is a guy who does nothing but throw on a wig, some makeup and a dress and says he is female...actually female?
They might agree with you. What does it mean to be a woman? You wear a dress and use make up? Long hair? Adjust your gait and posture to more conventionally feminine modes?
Well, none of these are what a woman is. These are socially constructed ideas about what a woman is. These don't actually make you a woman on their own, because they are illusions we created for ourselves. If that's true, and "woman" isn't actually a thing, then a trans-woman is actually a feminine man. Which is cool. Nothing wrong with that. Everyone should be free to express themselves however they choose. However, these folks would argue, that sex is the only thing that mattered in the end. Gender was just a rigid and irrelevant set of ideas we made up ourselves.
Alternatively, we can argue these social constructs are well-defined enough that these things can mean woman. In this case, yeah, a dude can totally identify with enough feminine gender norms to be a woman.
Or, we primarily identify people by the secondary sexual characteristics they present, not their genitals. Maybe fitting into the proper box visually is what's really required here. Then again, that excludes masculine presenting transwomen and feminine presenting trans-men.
And, in the future, they're may be legit, "true" sex changes...
In short, man. Shit is complicated. The important thing is that we treat each other like people. A woman shouldn't get dragged behind a bus because she wants to live as a man.