scholarly journals Mutual conditioning of gender and love: Towards a non-gendered idea of humanity

2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Slater
Keyword(s):  
Gender Diversity ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Philosophical Debate ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Gender Divisions ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Cultural Freedom ◽  
Cultural Constructions

It is a presumed opinion that gender and love mutually condition each other and that this presumption ought to be embraced by cultural norms, religion, human rights and the ethic of freedom. The notion of mutual conditioning presupposes a healthy and principled environment that facilitates the free dynamic interaction between gender and love. It is the purpose of this article to explore the outcomes of the gender revolution and the additional strands of complexities that it contributed to the human condition. Although feminism has created terminologies such as sex and gender, it is believed that these words have outlived their usefulness to make way for the present-day evolution towards a non-gendered idea of humanity. Gender diversity seeks mutuality, and true love accommodates multiplicity; hence, the interacting and intra-acting of gender and love inevitably come face-to-face with cultural, legal, social, religious and moral milieus that hamper or even contradict the concept of mutual conditioning. This article seeks to trace the evolution of gender within diverse cultural constructions created by new liberal living conditions, but which have not yet infiltrated the diverse cultural domains where gender remains an entity without cultural freedom and therefore undermines the process of mutual conditioning of gender and love. The idea of gender as transcending bodily sex forms part of an old theological and philosophical debate; it, however, resurfaces here while revisiting Aristotle’s idea of a non-gendered society or humanity. A degendered society implies a society that is free from dependence on gender, whereas a non-gendered humanity transcends gender divisions and associations, with its aspirations linked to the transcendence or consciousness of human nature. Love, in this sense, transcends all human dissections, and this article ascertains its capacity to mutually condition the diversity of gender and love.

scholarly journals Can evolutionary thinking shed light on gender diversity?

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (6) ◽  
pp. 351-362 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernadette Wren ◽  
John Launer ◽  
Michael J. Reiss ◽  
Annie Swanepoel ◽  
Graham Music
Keyword(s):  
Gender Identity ◽  
Gender Diversity ◽  
Medical Intervention ◽  
List Type ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Medical Interventions ◽  
The Core ◽  
Causal Pathways ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Shed Light

SUMMARYIssues of sexual reproduction lie at the core of evolutionary thinking, which often places an emphasis on how individuals attempt to maximise the number of successful offspring that they can produce. At first sight, it may therefore appear that individuals who opt for gender-affirming medical interventions are acting in ways that are evolutionarily disadvantageous. However, there are persuasive hypotheses that might make sense of such choices in evolutionary terms and we explore these here. It is premature to claim knowledge of the extent to which evolutionary arguments can usefully be applied to issues of gender identity, although worth reflecting on the extent to which nature tends towards diversity in matters of sex and gender. The importance of acknowledging and respecting different views in this domain, as well as recognising both the uncertainty and likely multiplicity of causal pathways, has implications for clinicians. We make some suggestions about how clinicians might best respond when faced with requests from patients in this area.LEARNING OBJECTIVESAfter reading this article you will be able to:•understand evolutionary arguments about diversity in human gender identity•identify strengths and weaknesses in evolutionary arguments applied to transgender issues•appreciate the range and diversity of gender experience and gender expression among people who present to specialist gender services, as well as the likely complexities of their reasons for requesting medical intervention.

scholarly journals Transmuting Gender Binaries: The Theoretical Challenge

2007 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Surya Monro
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Orientation ◽  
Gender Diversity ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Transgender Studies ◽  
Poststructuralist Theory ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Empirical Material

This paper provides a cross-cultural account of gender diversity which explores the territory that is opened up when sex, gender, and sexual orientation, binaries are disrupted or displaced. Whilst many people who identify as trans or intersex see themselves as male or female, others identify in ways which destabilize sex/gender and sexual orientation binaries. The paper provides a typology of ways in which sex/gender diversity can be conceptualized, and draws out the implications for theorizing gender. It discusses the contributions made by the new wave of authors working in the field of transgender studies; authors who draw on and inform the sociology of sex and gender, feminisms, and poststructuralist theory. It based on empirical material from research carried out in India and the UK.

Epistemic Injustice and Judicial Discourse on Transgender Rights in India: Uncovering Temporal Pluralism

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-49
Author(s):  
Dipika Jain ◽  
Kimberly M. Rhoten
Keyword(s):  
Gender Diversity ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Epistemic Injustice ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Gender Binary ◽  
Gender Diverse ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Judicial Discourse ◽  
And Gender

This article examines how efforts at legal legibility acquisition by gender diverse litigants result in problematic (e.g., narratives counter to self-identity) and, at times, erroneous discourses on sex and gender that homogenize the litigants themselves. When gender diverse persons approach the court with a rights claim, the narrative they present must necessarily limit itself to a normative discourse that the court may understand and, therefore, engage with. Consequently, the everyday lived experiences of gender diverse persons are often deliberately erased from the narrative as litigants mould themselves into the pre-existing normative legal categories of gender and sex. As a result of such mechanisms, the article finds that gender diverse litigants face epistemic injustice in the courts as their legal legibility is constructed within a constraining gender binary paradigm of judicial discourse. The article explores the trajectory of transgender rights in India, through an analysis of case law prior to and post the landmark NALSA decision, to understand how the approach to transgender rights and identities has been shaped by and shapes, in turn, normative conceptions of gender. The article argues for the incorporation of temporal pluralism into the law that would allow courts to hear gender diverse litigant accounts premised on contemporary gender diversity beyond the binary (rather than incontestable prior understandings based in past precedent), which would better account for such social injustices.

scholarly journals Science Runs and the Debate Brakes: Somatic Gene-Editing as a New Tool for Gender-Specific Medicine in Alzheimer’s Disease

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 421 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pamela Tozzo ◽  
Silvia Zullo ◽  
Luciana Caenazzo
Keyword(s):  
Alzheimer’S Disease ◽  
Alzheimer's Disease ◽  
Gender Equity ◽  
Gene Editing ◽  
Gender Diversity ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Treatment And Prevention ◽  
Genetic Level ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Gender Specific

Gender-specific medicine is a discipline that studies the influence of sex and gender on physiology, pathophysiology, and diseases. One example in light of how a genetic-based disease among other diseases, that impact on sex, can be represented by the risk of developing dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. The question that comes into focus is whether gene-editing can represent a new line of investigation to be explored in the development of personalized, gender-specific medicine that guarantees gender equity in health policies. This article aims to discuss the relevance of adopting a gender-specific focus on gene-editing research, considered as a way of contributing to the advance of medicine’s understanding, treatment, and prevention of dementia, particularly Alzheimer’s disease. The development or improvement of cures could take advantage of the knowledge of the gender diversity in order to ascertain and develop differential interventions also at the genetic level between women and men, and this deserves special attention and deep ethical reflection.

scholarly journals RESPONSE: SEX & GENDER DIVERSITY, AND THE LIMITATIONS OF LEGAL IDENTIFICATION

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theodore Bennett
Keyword(s):  
Gender Diversity ◽  
Legal Regulation ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Transgender People ◽  
Fine Detail ◽  
Gender Diverse ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Legal Identification ◽  
Insight Into

This comment expands on three key issues raised by the argument put forward in on the article by Ashleigh Bagshaw in this volume entitled ‘Exploring the Implications of Gender Identification for Transgender People under Australian Law’. It points out that sex and gender diversity goes beyond transsexualism and explores the need to factor this insight into any future legal developments. It notes that the implications of any change to marriage law could be profound for sex and gender diverse people, and considers how change should best proceed. It concludes that the debates about the fine detail of legal regulation in this area beg the question of whether law should even be in the business of identifying and recording people’s sex/gender in the first place.

Intersex

Sociology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morgan Carpenter
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Disorders Of Sex Development ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
Sex Characteristics ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Sex Development ◽  
High Commissioner ◽  
Values And Beliefs ◽  
And Gender

Intersex people are described by United Nations institutions as born with variations of sex characteristics that differ from medical and social norms for female or male bodies (see, for example, the 2019 report “Human Rights Violations against Intersex People,” by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights). These variations are diverse and innate. Intersex human rights defenders and human rights institutions challenge the stigma and discrimination that intersex people face because of their physical variations, but few jurisdictions so far have tackled the human rights violations that intersex people suffer. There are multiple additional, contested, and incommensurate lenses through which intersex people are viewed. These express different values and beliefs about the same people, including their meaning, treatment, concerns, and demands. Medical lenses view intersex traits as “disorders of sex development” (DSD), and people with those traits are viewed as female or male and subjects for treatment. Anthropology and queer and gender studies have viewed intersex as an illustration of fallacies that underpin subjective cultural norms for sex and gender. Law increasingly views intersex people as members of a third sex. Historical research shows that intersex people, often termed hermaphrodites, have always existed, and often been accommodated.

Categorical and gradational: alternative survey measures of sex and gender

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aliya Saperstein ◽  
Laurel Westbrook
Keyword(s):  
Gender Diversity ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Categorical Approach ◽  
Transgender People ◽  
Binary Approach ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Single Question ◽  
Representative Samples ◽  
Fluid Characteristics

Demands for recognition of gender diversity and transgender people are growing. We tested non-binary sex and gender measures using nationally representative samples of US adults to assess feasibility for general population surveys. We find more support for a two-step categorical approach, with separate questions about natal sex and gender identity, than for a single question assessing transgender status as the latter was less reliable within our online surveys and over time. We also consider the challenge of determining measurement reliability for fluid characteristics and argue that using categorical and gradational gender measures in combination should become standard practice.<br /><br />Key messages<br /><ul><li>Gender measurement must expand beyond a categorical binary to better reflect gender diversity.</li><br /><li>We demonstrate the utility of a two-step, non-binary approach on representative samples of US adults.</li><br /><li>Our results do not support using a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question to ask if respondents are transgender.</li></ul>

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