Our Shared Shelf discussion

I have struggled a lot with a definition of that term, especially when talking about it in German, and the solution that I came up with that I find the most satisfying when talking about "women" and "men" in general, in generalising statements, without needing much further specifications, is the following one:

„Unter Gender sei in diesem Zusammenhang das von außen zugeschriebene Geschlecht gemeint, das nicht zwingend mit dem selbst empfundenem Geschlecht oder den Geschlechtsmerkmalen übereinstimmen muss, die man als außenstehende Person erwarten würde.“

"In this context, gender is to be understood as the ascribed gender from the outside, which does not have to comply with the own experienced gender or the sex characteristics that you would expect a person to have as the person looking at it from the outside."

(reading your words in German made me realize how I actually miss that language, which is weird because I felt I did not like it much in school...)

The question of gender is really complicated. I mean, for most people, I never had any issue with it. My best friend was a teenage boy when we met, or at least thought he was, and a few years ago (we are 31), he told me he actually was genderfluid, and I was not even surprised, it was "okay". And now I call her by both pronouns (what she perfers), depending on the moment and the context.

I think the fact that I am pansexual is one of the reasons of me saying gender as something that belongs to each person, To me, gender is not a way to put people in boxes, just one of the many informations that made someone who they are.

Now, it's not the case for a lot of people. Gender is a very touchy subject. People can go really bonkers when you go out of your little box or acknowledge the right for people to not stay in that box.

Can I ask you what you mean by the "ascribed gender from the outside" ? Do you mean what we, without knowing anything about the person, would assume or do you mean "being feminine" or "being masculine" ?

Gestalt may be drawn here between the physical reality of our bodies and the words we have crafted to describe it. German is not a romance language and in the study of languages we find specific modifiers which connote region, dialect, and origin. A good example of these three qualities found in one word is the Yiddish "shul" which describes the Hebrew "bais hamedrash" through a linguistic mutation of the French word for school, "Ecole." The origin of the term is from Israel and the regional distinction is established as French. Dialectically, Yiddish is a language spoken primarily in Germany. To complete the anthropological map of the development in the utility of language, the utility itself is scrutinized, isolated from qualities which are used to infer geographical influence. An example of utility is the gender modifiers found in certain languages. "Un verre de the," in French, allows the speaker to communicate to the audience that tea (the) is masculine because both "un" and "de" are gender-specific articles meaning "one" and "of." If a carafe of tea is on the table and one wishes to indicate that one would like to have a glass of it, the phrase becomes "un verre du the," meaning "a glass of the tea." The utility of the gender-modifier thus becomes a phonetic distinction directing attention to the quantity of tea available in relation to one serving. The same cannot be said about wine, however, because the French language further specifies quantities of vin, thus, "un verre a vin," says, simply, "a glass with wine," implying that the speaker would like the audience to continue filling the glass with no further questions asked w/r/t the wine.

The gestalt reveals that the perceived world has many facets determinable by humans which describe it and that agreement must be drawn between qualifiers and the subject (clothing may be a poor example, yet vitamin recommendations vary according to need). German, being of different origin from French (French is a Romantic language), displays this commonality with French in utility, the gender-specifiers enhancing the usage so that indication may be relayed verbally without the use of a finger. Latin, definitive among the Romance Languages, phrases the written word in a different manner than speakers of modern language are familiar with; take, for instance the example of the Latin phrase, "Vini vidi vici," which is accepted to mean in English, "I came, I saw, I conquered." With the first-person implied, the literal definition is as follows: "Having arrived, (I) saw Roman settlements." The contrast between my beverage in France and my adversary's remark to Caesar displays the intimacy which one removes from the terms used to codify law when speaking Latin; Caesar's inspection of the new settlements will complete the contract. The expression is intended to be triumphant, evoking great emotion yet still my glass of tea sounds more appealing to me. Disregarding apparent linguistic complexities, one may decide that when defining gender, deeds, thoughts, and speech more accurately describe the subject than outward appearances do and so even a grocery list may reveal subtle hints about a person's gender. How one presents oneself is inclusive of adornment, but adornment does not define one's presentation and by the same token, the shopping list at the pharmacy which is indicative of biological gender is not a public statement.

"Words as fulfillers of the function of signification in artistic communication will wither like the rules of form before them." David Foster Wallace, "Here and There." Girl with Curious Hair.

Edited it so that the English translation is closer to the German original and that the German original is more exact.