If gender is culturally constructed, why "man" and "woman", and only "man" and "woman", are present in every culture? Because, unlike other genders, which are only cultural constructs, "man" and "woman" are also natural features, scientifically verifiable, i.e. objective.
@freemo I wasn't talking about grammatical genders but about gender identity in human beings. I didn't say that "man" and "woman" are the only choices. I said that only "man" and "woman" are universal, while all other possibilities are culturally determined as they exist in some cultures but not in others.
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@angelobottone gender identity and gramatical gender arent seperate things. Gramatical gender is the use of terms like "he, she, they" which are ways of describing someones gender identity. If a person dresses and presents as masculine then by definition then masculine grammar is what we use.
@angelobottone they also arent universal. Many languages have no concept of gender at all.
@freemo In Italian, the polite way to address a man is using feminine pronouns. In any case, as I said, I wasn't talking about language, but about gender identity.
@angelobottone and i am saying how you identify someone is a fubdementally linguistic question. Remove language from the discussion then what are you even discussing? Soubds like your trying to force gender (a linguistic thing) i to meaning sex, which is not gender (though does have meaning beyond language).
And what about AI bots. Gender is often assigned to them, but they don't have genitalia.
@freemo @angelobottone This is incorrect. Grammatical gender, gender as a social construct, and see are distinct but inextricable concepts in the sense that one cannot be understood without understanding its relationship to the other, however at the same time neither is equivalent to the others or can be understood entirely through the others. Additionally, identifying someone is not a purely linguistic thing unless all thought is purely linguistic although addressing someone may be. Grammatical gender describes how someone is addressed while gender as a social construct describes how they are identified. To be even more clear, how someone is addressed is what words you use to refer to them while how they are identified is the collection of concepts and perceptions that allow you to understand them in relation to other objects.
@freemo @angelobottone you have to be very careful while discussing these things as the terms are defined and used maliciously to confuse the matter.
@angelobottone You are confusing gender identity (the set of one’s personal feelings about their gender) and gender roles (the cultural expectation about how a person of a given gender should behave). But that’s a minor point, more importantly while most (see below as to why I’m not writing all) cultures have gender roles based on and named after the two most popular sexes, these roles are definitely not “the same”. What a man means in Heian era Japan is massively different than what it means in modern France.
Not to mention that even within cultures there often isn’t a single gender role for a given sex. What would be expected from a gentleman in medieval England has very little to do with what would be expected from a peasant man, even if only restricted to gender expression. Which of these is the role of “man” in that culture? @freemo
@angelobottone Man and woman arent the only choices in other cultures... Most cultures have three genders, masculine, feminine, and neuter. Keep in mind gender does not mean the same thing as sex of course.
At least 13 languages around the world have more than 3 genders
Several languages have gender systems that dont relate to sex at all as well, for example animate vs inanimate or common vs neuter type languages.