Hi sylviategan. I don't feel like writing a post, so I'll just write a quick long comment :) I myself, I'm sure like many others, thought the word "gender" and "sex" meant pretty much the same thing. Including you, I'm not sure if you even know the difference because all you had to do was define it, but you didn't. Instead you wrote a lengthy post defending your ideas. Thank YOU for helping me realize they don't mean the same thing. I'm not trying to slam you or anything, or anybody else for that matter, so I hope it doesn't come across that way. I feel people SHOULD be free to be themselves. I also feel like People should be informed of what the difference between sex and gender really is. Sex means the two sexes, male/female or some combination of the two. Gender kind of means whatever you want it to mean. So, in that case, of course there can be a gender spectrum. Humans could probably come up with maybe a million gender labels if we really wanted to. Maybe an infinite amount. By the way, most of your gender labels mean pretty much the same thing if you look them up.
Because most people associate sex and gender to mean pretty much the same thing, I feel it's kind of deceptive to use the word gender without letting everybody know what it really means, which is, it means whatever you want it to mean. Gender can be anything to anybody, you can even say a boat or a car or a word has a gender. When talking about humans though, It just feels like a slippery slope were going down, especially for women, and in fact might be to there detriment. For example, look at the women's weightlifting competition in New Zealand where a person who was born a male, won, because they were allowed to compete against women, based on gender (how they felt about themselves) instead of sex (what they actually were). Look at the high school woman's wrestling championship where a person born a female, but identified as a male, was not asked to compete as a male, instead was allowed to take male hormones (Testosterone, which is basically steroids) and compete, and of course won, the female championship. Testosterone increases muscle mass and makes you more aggressive. Definitely not fair to the other ladies who were not allowed to take testosterone, and very hypocritical when compared to the last example. One more and I'm done. Look at the recent MMA fight between a female and a transsexual born a man. The transsexual went through the operation, but still has all the muscle, bone structure and aggression of a man. No female hormones were taken and needless to say the transsexual destroyed their female opponent in the first round with a TKO (Technical Knock Out). Broke her eye socket, and gave her a concussion. The lady said in an interview afterwards "I've never felt so overpowered ever in my life". I'm just saying in fairness to everybody on this planet, I think we should take a step back to look at reality, and define the terms we're using so we can all be on the same page for this discussion.
Good job on your post by the way. I don't necessarily agree, and I find it a bit misleading, but that's not really your fault, It's more the words that we're using. Again, great job on your post and keep up the great work Sylvia! :)
Thank you for your great comment and feedback! My apologies for not giving definitions or explaining the difference between gender and sex. You are right, that would have been very helpful to include. I am glad you feel that people should be free to be themselves. And, it is nice to know that you now understand what I meant when I said "Gender is a Spectrum"....Follow up question: Given the information I included about intersex and such, do you now believe that "sex" is a spectrum as well? Thank you also for including all those examples of situations in sports and competition where things can get tricky and very possibly not fair. It can be quite confusing to consider all the various possible situations and therefore what rules/guidelines should be in place for sport-type things. I certainly do not have any answers, but I am glad you brought those types of issues into the conversation. Thank you!