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CommentAuthorCat Vincent
- CommentTimeJan 12th 2011
I'd love to see TOP---SWITCH---BOTTOM and
MONOGAMOUS---POLYAMOROUS-IN-GROUP---POLYAMOROUS GENERALLY as options
There's also null-sex as a factor in gender spectrum. -
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Late to the party but here's my 2 cents...Wouldn't Extroversion/Introversion be a handy substitute for what you are calling Vulnerable/Invulnerable? I totally get what you are saying but I find a word like "invulnerable" to be a little too fraught with distracting connotations. Just sayin'.
And perhaps a (theoretically) asexual person would not fit on that particular graph...since we would not want to confuse someone who wants to fuck everything with someone who is happy to have their bits in a jar on the shelf, if you'll excuse my flippancy. =p -
@Joe.Distort A lot of people do that, and that's what a lot of us are set out to change. We just want people to realize that the two are different, because it's currently the norm to use them interchangeably. Not close-minded so much as just ignorant to that fact.
@cat I like the idea of top/bottom/switch being in there too. Don't know if the monogamous/poly dynamic would work as I'm not sure it can be graphed linearly, but it'd certainly be neat to be able to toss that into the identity sphere/cube/three dimensional shape as well. Maybe poly people could add an infinity sign somewhere on the graph? -
I'm going to go through all the posts here and try to re-present the idea incorporating your thinking, but regarding the sphere notion, I just want to clarify: I was thinking of it as a sphere because there could be, it seems to me, any number of axes. They would all cross at their centerpoints and radiate out to their poles, making a kind of magnificent gender koosh-ball:
So, one of those axes could absolutely be TOP-SWITCH-BOTTOM. There are many, many behaviors, many of which aren't even really associated with sexual activity in any way, which are seen as gender indicative. I think you could put any of them in the koosh.
Defining the axes is almost the same as defining a culture. So you'd have the gendersphere for Urban West Coast United States, and the gendersphere for Rural Post-Soviet Tuva, and those two genderspheres might have some like axes, but many of the axes will be unique to each culture.
So, you'd have a coordinate on all the axes relevant to your culture, and if you connected them you'd get a kind of wavy sheet folded around in the sphere - and if you plotted the shifting position on all the axes over time, you wouldn't have a line moving, you'd have something that looked like an aurora:
Anyway, that's the thinking behind the sphere. I'll try to draw a sample graph this weekend. -
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CommentAuthorBen Klumaster
- CommentTimeJan 13th 2011
@oddbill Ah, kind of like those things you fill in near the end of school that tell you never to become a manager or a carer (or whatever)? Except in 3D and pointier? I suppose you'd need to sort the axes so that things traditionally assumed to be related (say, male/dominant) are near each other, so that the smoothness of the shape would give you an idea of how you compare to cultural assumptions. -
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GenderKoosh.
I like that it's rainbow colored, haha. Is it a queer GenderKoosh? -
How would the sphere deal with multiply-held identities? If you examine masculine/feminine as socio-cultural constructs and therefore as performative behaviours then you can perform behaviours coded as various degrees of masculine or feminine in quick succession or even simultaneously - especially if you view the socio-cultural part of the process as ongoing/constant (ie that different viewers of the behaviour will code it's masculine/feminine-ness differently).
Does that make any sense?
This is really interesting but the maths is making me feel a bit giddy - please excuse me if I've missed something that answers the question! -
Cassandra, I honestly dont think it can. Because the gendersphere reduces aspects of identity to single line spectrums, it becomes an incredibly oversimplified and highly limited system. It's a fun idea and definitely that I think can be useful in breaking the binary by way of introducing the idea of limitless complex identities to those who still live within the binary, but realistically the sphere isnt capable of accurately mapping every identity that exists.
But imagine if, on a census or other questionnaires, you were asked to plot your approximate place on the sphere rather than simply being asked your age and sex. How cool would that be? Complicated, yes, but it would show how much more colorful humans really are beyond the simple battle of the sexes.
Edited to correct autocorrect -
@oddbill -
This is something I've actually thought quite a lot about, and I've gotten through my phase where "all identities must be rejected." But I'm still not comfortable with the meat-grinder aspects of inspecting one's identity to determine what's what.
Part of the problem, as far as I'm concerned, is this interrogation of identities. As some background, let me say that I'm the custodial parent of a 16-year old girl. This subject has come up multiple times in casual conversation - the kids are way ahead of us on this issue, let me tell ya.
That interrogation has not gotten more productive, as far as I can see. The Kids (tm) are still pretty interested in who is "gay" and who is "straight". "Bisexual", "polysexual" and the "whatever" category seem to be recognized as existing, though. But the amount of time my kid seems to put in to figuring out "who is what" is ...totally exhausting.
When I talk to the kid, I try to follow what I learned from attending a talk by Suzie Bright. To wit, she said: "I identify as as lesbian because at a protest rally, I can't fit my whole sexual history on a sign."
I respect that. That's pretty much it. I've come to respect whatever it is that folks need to call themselves, for whatever reason. Why? It really is just to tiring to suss it all out, otherwise, unless one has intentions of going to bed with and/or having a life with said person. -
I think the reason why kids spend so much time trying to compartmentalize is because they're not yet to the point where they can get the fluidity of sexuality. Maybe it's a maturity thing.
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CommentAuthorJohn Skylar
- CommentTimeJan 13th 2011 edited
I'm fascinated by how people try to categorize themselves and others, but I wish we lived in a society where could all be who we are without needing fanciful means of explaining ourselves.
Despite that wish, this is a pretty fascinating discussion, all. -
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I think labels are a bit of a necessary evil--especially now, where they're needed to show that there isn't just straight and binary.
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Thought this might be relevant: Professor Robert Jensen describes the process he uses to propel college students to examine their beliefs about gender.
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@John Skylar My old apt mate has made that same argument. Why need all these categories at all? My answer: Some people really like them. Some people, be they male, female, or other (biologically), really enjoy being feminine and playing it up in the way they dress, behave, etc, and want to show it off. For others, the same with masculinity. Others really enjoy gender bending, which you can't really do if the labels didn't exist. I think it's more of a matter of accepting that some people have heteronormative identities, others have strange and convoluted identities, and others just are and want to leave it at that.
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There's also the fact that having a name for what you are makes it easier to find people who are like you. Which is sometimes desirable.
The problems seem to occur when the labels stop being just descriptive and become prescriptive. -
The problems seem to occur when the labels stop being just descriptive and become prescriptive.
That might be the most succinct way of putting it I've heard (or said, rather). I always get so caught up in the issue that my explanations get all convoluted. -
- CommentAuthorTheDownwardChucky
- CommentTimeJan 15th 2011
To Oddbill and every one else who has had a hand in this, I tip my hat to you all. The idea of having a 3D map of ways that people might explain them selves that is inclusive as the Gendersphere is great. I can see my self using it as a way of explaining to people who do not yet have the language to describe the many types of persons in our world.
I think this tool has much use, as it is easy to understand with one or two cravats like sex and gender are different. After that you can plot a simple set of points that simply describe something. To me it feels like Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs in that it is a simple visual tool that is a starting point for some serious ideas and theory.
And like Maslow's Hierarchy there could be some criticism leveled against it in that it does not cover enough of the bases in regards to relationship choice like Poly as raised before or that it might not cover some non-western ideas of gender such as the Fa'afafine of Samoa or the Hijra of India. But I think that those ideas are beyond the scope of a tool such as the Gendersphere and that is ok. To turn a phrase the Gendersphere could be the gateway drug to gender studies. Or not. -
@Argos Ah, thank you! My lack of mathmatical knowledge raises most of it to the status of Magick in what it might be able to achieve.
I love the idea of it on a census form almost as much as the idea of it as "a gateway drug to genderstudies"! On the subject of which @Oddbill, if you do turn this idea into graphic form would you mind if it was used for the teaching of exactly that? -
One thing I have learned in my brief career of scientific data interpretation* and subsequent fooling around with creative dataviz**, is that it's always a good idea to get your data first, then decide how to render it best. To do otherwise is putting the cart before the horse.
With that in mind, does anyone have, or have leads on, a large relevant dataset? I imagine you'd need a specialist survey for the full gendersphere approach, but maybe there's a good enough national census or something that could be used to trial the idea? I'd be very interested to play about with the data myself.
* "Why isn't it a straight line? It's supposed to be a straight line! Oh, fuck it, we'll just say it's a straight line."
** "Interesting, but not pretty enough. Make it prettier." -
As I mentioned already, peruse genderfork. You'll fin all kinds of different gender identities (and sexual preferences, etc) on there, especially when the profiles pop up.
This discussion has been inactive for longer than 5 days, and doesn't want to be resurrected.