Why is gender a construct and not age?

I want to be awoken wrote:

Genuinely not trying to stir the pot or anything here, but I'm interested to know from posters here more woke than I am - why can a 30 year old biological male identify as a 30 year old female, but not as a 14 year old male or female?

Why is gender a construct, but age isn't? Am I missing something obvious?

There's no such thing as age dysphoria and no age reversal hormone treatments. If there was, we could all live forever. The approval/disapproval for transgender athletes is close to 50/50 but 100/0 against your scheme.

There must be a fun run somewhere where you could have the experience of winning a race in your current age group.

Flagpole wrote:

My question is, who gives a f*ck?

The whole questioning gender identity is an issue mainly with the right. Those are the same people who scream, "Freedom!"

Well, what's more free than deciding to chop off your bits and pieces and put on a dress?

As long as people are not breaking any laws, we should not give a crap how they want to live their lives. Transgender, tattoo your face, pierce everything, believe in an invisible omnipotent man in the sky...who gives a f*ck?

In answer to your blunt question - why should we care about understanding anything?

Honeslty if it weren't for all of the implications involving children/minors, I bet age identity would be a thing by now

SDSU Aztec wrote:

I want to be awoken wrote:

Genuinely not trying to stir the pot or anything here, but I'm interested to know from posters here more woke than I am - why can a 30 year old biological male identify as a 30 year old female, but not as a 14 year old male or female?

Why is gender a construct, but age isn't? Am I missing something obvious?

There's no such thing as age dysphoria and no age reversal hormone treatments. If there was, we could all live forever. The approval/disapproval for transgender athletes is close to 50/50 but 100/0 against your scheme.

There must be a fun run somewhere where you could have the experience of winning a race in your current age group.

Billions of $ are spent on TRT and plastic surgery, personal trainers and special diets all promising to "roll back the years". Age "dysphoria" is far more prevalent than gender dysphoria. As usual you are wrong, but as a 14 year old (at least in mental identity) that is to be expected.

Armstronglivs wrote:

Flagpole wrote:

My question is, who gives a f*ck?

The whole questioning gender identity is an issue mainly with the right. Those are the same people who scream, "Freedom!"

Well, what's more free than deciding to chop off your bits and pieces and put on a dress?

As long as people are not breaking any laws, we should not give a crap how they want to live their lives. Transgender, tattoo your face, pierce everything, believe in an invisible omnipotent man in the sky...who gives a f*ck?

In answer to your blunt question - why should we care about understanding anything?

Fair question, but this is a loaded topic, complete with wanting to judge harshly.

We should care about this as much as we care if someone likes ketchup or not.

One of the more interesting aspects of the current gender movement is that on one hand you have people that identify as non binary. Essentially totally rejecting the social construct of gender all together. On the other hand you have people that buy in to the gender social construct so hard they desperately want to be the opposite of the social expectations of the sex they were born.

Somehow these two groups get along just fine, even though one totally rejects the thing the other holds to such high value.

Previously most people that would fall in to these categories were ok to just be gay/lesbian/bi, be proud of it, and sit somewhere in the middle. Seems like now there is a really big push to conform to the social construct. Feels like a step backwards in some respects.

BuckleUp wrote:

SDSU Aztec wrote:

There's no such thing as age dysphoria and no age reversal hormone treatments. If there was, we could all live forever. The approval/disapproval for transgender athletes is close to 50/50 but 100/0 against your scheme.

There must be a fun run somewhere where you could have the experience of winning a race in your current age group.

Billions of $ are spent on TRT and plastic surgery, personal trainers and special diets all promising to "roll back the years". Age "dysphoria" is far more prevalent than gender dysphoria. As usual you are wrong, but as a 14 year old (at least in mental identity) that is to be expected.

Sure, but good luck trying to get a mental health professional to sign off on age dysphoria and its illegal anyway.. Without a sign-off and legal approval, OP can't do anything like change the age on his DL, attend middle school or get a discount for going to the movies.

The OP's proposal only makes sense to a moron.

dddlllwww wrote:

Honeslty if it weren't for all of the implications involving children/minors, I bet age identity would be a thing by now

You obviously have never heard of ageplay kinks, dd/lg, and "littles"

Age identity is 100% a thing.

The Unkle wrote:

I want to be awoken wrote:

Genuinely not trying to stir the pot or anything here, but I'm interested to know from posters here more woke than I am - why can a 30 year old biological male identify as a 30 year old female, but not as a 14 year old male or female?

Why is gender a construct, but age isn't? Am I missing something obvious?

Because it isn't.

You are born with a gender. It is biology. Real,

You are born with biological sex organs that don't necessarily correspond to your gender, which is different than your sex.

SDSU Aztec wrote:

BuckleUp wrote:

Billions of $ are spent on TRT and plastic surgery, personal trainers and special diets all promising to "roll back the years". Age "dysphoria" is far more prevalent than gender dysphoria. As usual you are wrong, but as a 14 year old (at least in mental identity) that is to be expected.

Sure, but good luck trying to get a mental health professional to sign off on age dysphoria and its illegal anyway.. Without a sign-off and legal approval, OP can't do anything like change the age on his DL, attend middle school or get a discount for going to the movies.

The OP's proposal only makes sense to a moron.

Just because society rejects age identity but not gender identity doesn't make them non-equivalent from a rights standpoint. I would argue that an obvious biological man competing in sports as a woman is just as ludicrous and unfair as the same man age 27 enrolling in a junior high school program.

People not understanding the delineation between sex and gender doesn't make it any less of a reality - it's not something that's a matter of opinion; we have a very good understanding of the way social norms have historically influenced gender identity.

As for your "age is a social construct" argument, it's a weird hill to die on and comparing the two is apples to oranges, but if you want to declare yourself an age other than what you are or based on a different unit of time, that seems like none of my business.

spherical wrote:

One of the more interesting aspects of the current gender movement is that on one hand you have people that identify as non binary. Essentially totally rejecting the social construct of gender all together. On the other hand you have people that buy in to the gender social construct so hard they desperately want to be the opposite of the social expectations of the sex they were born.

Somehow these two groups get along just fine, even though one totally rejects the thing the other holds to such high value.

Previously most people that would fall in to these categories were ok to just be gay/lesbian/bi, be proud of it, and sit somewhere in the middle. Seems like now there is a really big push to conform to the social construct. Feels like a step backwards in some respects.

I think this just shows how varied individual responses are to a restrictive gender binary, with either route being a valid reaction based on someone's unique experience. Maybe with time, as standard expectations for gendered expression relax a little, these responses will change in scope.

Flagpole wrote:

My question is, who gives a f*ck?

The whole questioning gender identity is an issue mainly with the right. Those are the same people who scream, "Freedom!"

Well, what's more free than deciding to chop off your bits and pieces and put on a dress?

As long as people are not breaking any laws, we should not give a crap how they want to live their lives. Transgender, tattoo your face, pierce everything, believe in an invisible omnipotent man in the sky...who gives a f*ck?

I don't think many people truly do care. Lots of people think it's stupid, illogical, ridiculous, and vain, but I don't see a ton of people telling grown men they actually shouldn't be allowed to wear dresses or chop their wangs off if that's what they want.

A few limited exceptions exist:

1. Sports. A man pretending to be a women still has the physical advantages of maleness.

2. Where it concerns children, particularly irreversible surgical/biological interventions on minor children.

3. Public funding/insurance funding for these operations, which many consider a medically unnecessary cosmetic choice. My insurance doesn't subsidize your boob job, nor should it subsidize your sex change.

unwoke unwashed wrote:

The answer would probably be that sex is a scientific biological classification and gender is a social construct. Years are a scientific chronological classification. I'm not aware of a corresponding chronological social construct, though one would seem to be implied in the phrases "act your age" "don't be so childish" and "you're as old as you feel."

The only issue with this is that sex and gender are viewed as the same. In other words, many states allow parents to mark gender neutral on the birth certificate in lieu of sex.

Following that logic, there is no scientific classification for gender and as such a scientific classification for age is not required.

I think we will eventually get to a point where age is viewed as a social construct. There is a growing academic community who consider pedophilia (that is, intense sexual attraction to children) a mental disorder and as such, they argue, it should not be a crime. If we reach a point where a 40 year old having sex with an 11 year old is not a crime, then it will be very easy to accept that age is merely a social construct.

STEVE THE ADDICT^^^^^^"""""""" wrote:

Did you just assume my gender? I actually identify as a salmon.

So close! That's an animal. Neopronouns are your chance to bring that level of creativity :)

Flagpole wrote:

The whole questioning gender identity is an issue mainly with the right. Those are the same people who scream, "Freedom!"

Well, what's more free than deciding to chop off your bits and pieces and put on a dress?

Yup. Conservatives want their freedoms, except when "others" want the same freedom to live their life as they see fit.

I like this discussion. I’ll add,

“Age is only a number.”

“You’re only as old as you think you are.”

We absolutely have social constructs around age and as was referenced, the childhood/adulthood binary is both rooted in biology & fraught with exceptions/ interpretations, and of course can be classified in ways other than binary.

Let’s take a running example: most of us have heard of the fast twitch/slow twitch binary classification for skeletal muscle? Ah, many also know there’s a split of the FT fibers, so ST: Type I and FT: Type IIa, and Type IIb. This is the correct & complete classification, yes? Some of you know better:

[quote]Muscle fiber types can be described using histochemical, biochemical, morphological, or physiologic characteristics; however, classifications of muscle fibers by different techniques do not always agree. Therefore, muscle fibers that may be grouped together by one classification technique may be placed in different categories using a different classification technique. [\quote]

There is an underlying reality. We will all die someday; we are all born with some set of biological features. We can classify them, and then create conventions around them (men used to wear pink and high-heels, women didn’t), but reality is much more varied than the simplifications we invent.

This doesn’t make the simplifications inherently “wrong” either, they are helpful for navigating everyday life. It’s when we assert our simple model is the complete representation of reality that we get ourselves in trouble.

Hope everyone is having a good day on this wildly complex 🌎.

I want to be awoken wrote:

Genuinely not trying to stir the pot or anything here, but I'm interested to know from posters here more woke than I am - why can a 30 year old biological male identify as a 30 year old female, but not as a 14 year old male or female?

Why is gender a construct, but age isn't? Am I missing something obvious?

If you want to be ‘woke’ you’ll need to slam your head in every door you walk through for at least a fortnight, possible a year depending on the level you wish to reach.

Respectfully, you haven't shared much "logic" to follow. We definitely measure time based on units and a calendar that humans constructed, but there are underlying physical forces to it - earth's rotation around the sun, for example. Our understanding of gender is being de-constructed because it no longer has the same utility it once did, but we still have plenty of great reasons to measure age as a metric of the passage of time. That said, if there are any non-harmful social constructs surrounding age that you wish to reject, go ahead!

As an aside about your last point, things can be criminal and symptoms of a mental disorder at the same time. Most people engaged in criminal activity could benefit from mental health services; that doesn't mean that anyone is saying their behavior is permissable.