Gender vs Sex

Normally I call myself transgender (normally I call myself female, because I don't want to be seen as trans I want to be seen as female), but since I'm going into Gender vs Sex, I want to be more accurate and clear.

So the Gender acceptance movement is an interesting one, rife with conflict with many people disagreeing over it. At first glance, it looks like there are two sides: those who believe in alternate genders to Male and Female, and those who don't believe in made up genders. What I think both parties lack is the understanding of what gender actually is. Gender is defined as:

"either of the two sexes (male and female), especially when considered with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones. The term is also used more broadly to denote a range of identities that do not correspond to established ideas of male and female."

Most people consider gender and sex the same, when they ask your gender they want to know what's in your pants, a penis or vagina. Maybe this is because the word sex is uncomfortable, especially in America where the act of coitus is considered taboo. However others consider gender to be a social construct, the line between femininity and masculinity. The latter is what I personally believe in, however I'll often use the former definition simply to make communication with people easier.

So given that definition, gender would indeed be a spectrum. I believe the original movement behind gender acceptance wasn't exactly to help trans people be more accepted, but to destroy the stigmas when your gender doesn't equal your sex, ie masculine females or feminine males.

Then, somewhere as this picked up traction, people on tumblr or twitter mistook gender for sex and started creating their own genders, or sexes, and started giving themselves different pronouns to be demanded as. They/them, xi/xer, etc. They were also hostile towards anyone who didn't believe in their beliefs, but that's a conversation for some other time.

So with these people running around with their made-up genders, you have a lot of people disagreeing with the ability to do that. They see it as childish, mentally ill, pointless, but most importantly, they see it as the gender acceptance movement. This means that the idea that men can be feminine is totally lost, and the movement is now all about making up your own pronouns and sex which you refer to as gender.

So as a trans person, I sit here looking at them with disdain, because now whenever someone learns I am transgender, I'm met with hostility because they assume I'm one of those tumblr/twitter users who has a baseless demand for different pronouns or has a made up sex, when in fact I have a diagnosed condition called gender dysphoria and wish to remain in the two biological sexes/genders, just as the opposite I was born with. As for the tumblr users, I see what they're doing as not just harmful for the previous effect of their actions, but also offensive because it's appropriating and appearing to make a mockery of my condition.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk. If you reply to this I'll likely reply from a different account for reasons.