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The original was posted on /r/transeducate by /u/Mitchem12 on 2023-07-15 01:23:28.
I want to start out by saying I live in Tennessee so I really have not been exposed to any of Gender theory in my life. After a lot of thinking I think I have a decent idea of what gender is so I want to see if other that are more educated than me on the subject agree.
Individuals are born and the vast majority develop into two natural categories, male and female. Yes there are intersex people, but that is not the natural order of things just how it would not be the natural order of things for a child to be born without arms. If all goes right people will be born into these two broad categories. The vocabulary we have for the group of these two categories is sex which refers to a physical reality of the person.
It has been said philosophy is the art of distinction. If one thinks about the usage and concepts of the words "man" and "women" enough they will realize there is a distinction to be made. Man and woman can also refer to the properties attributed to how we typically expect biological men and women to act. For example, when one says, "John acts like a real man" they don't refer to a physical reality, they refer to how people within the category of "man" are typically thought to act. In this distinction we have made, we have identified another category or thing which is not in refering to the physical reality. This category is called gender and (using a definition I have heard before) are the societal roles and expectations placed on people of a certain sex.
We also observe some individuals might not fit into the group of how society expects a biological male to act. For example, a male might FEEL they relate more with the group of how society expects biological women to act. In fact, we have already, for a long time, had words to describe this phenomenon. We find this description the words masculine and feminine. So it makes perfect sense to say, "Adam is a feminine male". While Adam is biologically male, he might act or feel more in accordance with how females are expected to act. However, some people identify with neither the male or female categories and identify as non-binary. In all honesty this confuses me a lot because I can't conceptualize what properties would be ascribed to that category nor how one would feel such that they fall into that category, I just recognize people do fell that way. Now this is where I it starts to get more interesting for me. So we can logically derive the existence of the gender categories of male and female which have their origin in biological males and females (how could we have perceptions about individuals in a category if the underlying category in which we have preception on does not exist?). Then we also have individuals falling into a category of "neither one". But then we have genders which do not fall into these 3 categories and I do have a guess about their existence. I am guessing any gender is just a way to say where exactly on the spectrum between felling male and female you fall. For example, a demiboy is someone who doesn't fully identify as male but is like half way there. I am imagining it like a finite number line between -1(-1 = fully female) and 1 (1 = fully male). A demi boy is like 0.5. But of course if we consider irrational numbers we can get things like 0.123521312. In fact we have a infinite amount of number (genders) which can occur on this number line and individuals can fall anywhere on it (they don't just fall at -1 or 1). Therefore, that is why we have so many genders, because we basically have a infinite numbers of ways people feel in reguard to their gender and it is desired we have vocabulary to describe all the ways people feel.
I am a little sussy on that last explanation because I have never had that reasoning confirmed/denied if I am getting the right idea so please let me know! The thing that has confused me in the past is the statement "gender and sex have no connection" which, if true, renders my entire explanation above void. Clearly in my current understanding they do have a connection in that gender proceeds from the biological differences between men and women. I am also confused about about the desire people feel to need to surgically transition to the other sex. Attempting to make your sex match your gender seems like a very big change considering the fact societies ideas around how men and women aught to act can change rapidly (can change substantially over a person's lifetime). What if in 50 years societal views of masculinity and femininity change such that you now identify more with your original sex at birth. Of course I am like 96% sure I am missing something because I have never talked to a trans person in my life (not have I ever had the opportunity to in real life to my knowledge). I am really excited to hear replies and I am sure I will learn a lot here.