Does Gender Apply to Things Without Sex

Suspend me if you must, because even as I write this I know it's a bad idea, but I have to know. Is Arach saying here:

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yes. hey look, we're saying the same thing. the only thing is one of does not understand that it starts with biology, an objective reality, and is then applied at a social level; how that particular sex is treated. IT DOES NOT GO IN REVERSE.

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that gender doesn't apply to things without a biological sex?If so, how can that position possibly be consistent with the fact that we often refer to the gender of things that aren't even alive, much less have biological sex?I mean, here are two cable ends:the left-hand one being the end called "male", and the right-hand one being the end called "female", and this being called the "gender" of the cable. (Hey, I'm not making this shit up. This is accepted industry usage.) Now, obviously, they refer to one end as "male" because it has the pins that "penetrate" the sockets of the opposing connector. So maybe there's some kind of "biological" reality there. Seems to me, though, more like a case of starting with the cultural associations (of "males" being the ones who penetrate) than vice-versa.Here's something often described as "female":That's right, its accepted usage bordering on legitimate lexical practice for sailors to refer to their ship as "she", a usage that continues to this day among the crews of seagoing vessels and even air vehicles. Now, I don't see anything that's the least like a vagina in this picture; such a structure would be supremely idiotic in a watertight vessel. Even the submarine:which, as the wags in the guys' locker room remind us, is "long and round and full of seamen," is nontheless considered "female" by them that crew her. Clearly a case of gender being applied absent any kind of coherent physical sex characteristics.Moving on to other languages, like Spanish or French, every single object has a gender, and this is not simply an aspect you can discount - its gramatically incorrect to engender an object with the opposite gender. To the speakers of these languages, the gender of nouns is a very real thing.I contrast two objects from the French:"le livre""la voiture"Now, again, I don't see any characteristic of either of these objects that could possibly represent a physical reality upon which to base their gender associations. That's not "just the way they speak." Gender is a reality of their language (otherwise how would they know how to gender neologisms?) These objects have real gender, but an absence of any physical characteristics that would suggest sex.I conclude that Arach is quite off the mark; just because gender is " the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex", doesn't mean that it is invalid to apply those traits to objects that have no meaningful sex. Not even the dictionary Arach quoted made that implication. Those associations do indeed stem from biological sex, but that does not mean that they are not and cannot be applied where sex is absent; it's universal among this and other cultures, in fact, to make such applications.Gender can be, and almost always is, applied to things that have no sex; indeed, genders may be applied to organisms or persons with the opposite sex. People may even insist on such applications - transgendered individuals, pre-op transsexuals, and the like. Arach's insane opposition to this simple and self-evident fact not only displays an amazing disregard for the usage of gender in practice and language, but also displays a shameful lack of respect for those individuals who don't have the luxury of ignoring the vast gulf between their sex and their gender.

what is the gender of that specific cable you've shown both ends of? that's not a cultural assertion. the same way we can talk about the evolution of automotive transportation, or art history. these things aren't alive either. they have no genetics they can vary from generation to generation, and the selection is certainly not by natural selection.in the question of the cables above, yes, actually it does refer to something analogous to biological sex. the male end has the pointy bit, and the female end does not. no one is saying that a cable is culturally male in terms of either our society of cables. it has nothing to do with any perceived cultural roles either end of the cable is playing.and the aspect of calling one end male because it violates, impregnates, and emasculates the other end is totally absent. no one is calling the cable male because of a perceived role of what men in this society do, or the role they play. it merely has the pointy bits that "mate" with the holes on the other end. the two ends are made for each other, and hopefully takes no violence to join them. one is not raping the other. they work together to make the whole unit work. there is no bias.no one is saying "haha! look! the male penetrates the female! look at how awful men are! women should rule the world!" but that is sort of what the feminist perspective of alien is saying. they are applying faulty and imbalanced perceptions of gender to something, and then using it affirm their faulty and imbalanced perceptions of gender. that's called confirmation bias, and circular logic, among other things.now, the ship, on the other hand, is called female because of the role it plays. in the old days, sailors would leave their wives at home, and their only form of companionship was the ship they sailed on. so they gave them personalities, and genders, and names. here it is a term of endearment, not condemnation.oh. while we're on accepted lexigraphical usages:

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Main Entry: engender
Pronunciation: in-'jen-d&r, en-
Function: verb

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1 : BEGET, PROCREATE
2 : to cause to exist or to develop : PRODUCE
intransitive senses : to assume form : ORIGINATE

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so now, on to language.what aspects of le livre make it male? what aspect of la voiture make it female? are they using the genders of the objects to comment on society? is there any reason or scheme to it? for instance, are passive objects female and active objects male? (not in that example...) do women only use the female objects and men only use the male objects? where does it come from?feel free to enlighten me on this, because i don't know much french. my argument is that your assertion of gender is based on stereotypes, particularly seated in postmodern feminist interpretations. there are a lot of things i could list that very stereotypical of men, but do not apply to me even if they may to large portion of the male population. these stereotypes are your foundation of the concept of a cultural gender roles. there is a "vast gulf" between my sex and your percieved concepts of my gender.so using these stereotyped gender roles, maybe i'm culturally female. i do a lot of things that are generally percieved as feminine qualities. by your argument, i'm not respecting myself. or for that matter, anyone, because stereotypes rarely apply 100%.not fitting the male stereotype does not make me female, or even feminine. it does not make me less male.

How does any of that address my argument? Clearly not from the sex of the objects referred to, which was rather my point, now wasn't it? Oh, right. I forgot. You somehow know my own points better than I do, and we're going to have a discussion where you assert that I really meant something completely different than what I actually wrote.Here's a really fun idea - let's stick with what's on the page, shall we?

the good majority of it directly refutes it. i covered everything from where it's not gender but sex being applied, to what the word "engender" actually means. your argument was plaigarized from postmodern feminist bs. i'm well acquinted with the subject and the biases it draws from. if you're repeating those same arguments, you're subject to having it's biases analyzed. even if you yourself are not openly advocating those biases. sure. wanna address my arguments now? or at least the questions regarding romance languages?

funny note. slavic speaking peoples see ships as masculine not feminine and name them as such.i'm hunting down this why things are gendered though.

How can sex be applied to things that are not alive? Sex is the configuration of your genitals. How can things without genitals have sex?If we're applying sexual characteristics to objects, that's a use of gender, not sex. The only things that have sex are organisms. Woah. If you're going to accuse me of plagarisim, which is a pretty serious charge, then I demand - not ask - to see the proof, or that you retract that claim. From what source have I plagarised? I have no idea why the French think that books are male and that cars are female. But it obviously has nothing to do with the biological sex of those objects, because those objects are not sexed. Which is all I need to prove the point I made in the OP.This message has been edited by crashfrog, 04-09-2005 11:06 PM

it's not gender because they don't have behavioural characteristics.it's sex based on shape. does a boy have a penis? does the penis point out and not into the body (i hope so)? does that look like this plug that goes out of the "body" and into the hole in the other part? it's not an entitlement of gender so much as an analogy. if you can't figure that out, then you have far more serious problems.

and thus the application of roles based on sex is also ludicrous. and i'm arguing that in the instance of cables, the application of "male" and "female" is becuase of similarity to genitalia. or did you miss that too?

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The aliens embody masculine aggression with the ability and desire to reproduce, and they impregnate one of the crew members (a male action) through a form of rape. Ripley accepts the common wisdom of feminist assertiveness in order to destroy the alien.

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Metaphilm. See through cinema.

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And what about Kane? No essay about stereotypical femininity in Alien is complete without some discussion of Kane, because he’s the unfortunate soul who carries the alien baby. Pregnancy, heretofore an exclusively female experience, is suddenly anybody’s possibility, and what an ugly, awful possibility it is. To bear fruit is to die, spectacularly. And your offspring, which is oddly cute in its infancy, will soon grow to destroy anything that seeks to thwart it. Reproductive viability seals one’s doom.

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DualLens.com is available at DomainMarket.com. Call 888-694-6735 (note the use of the word stereotype)granted, i can't find the original essay, but i have a suspicion that it might be Judith Newton's Feminism and Anxiety in Alien.this essay argues the opposite point, and focuses mostly on the second movie. it says that the alien is a representation of feminine nature, a threat to be suprised. spot the gender biases, it's full of them. notice also how both sides make men out to be evil, even while admiting that ripley is essentially a masculine figure. it does however admit a point i forgot: genders were not designated in the original script. this is why characters are only referred to by the their last names.this essay seems to get it mostly right, but i haven't had time to read all of it. i just skimmed it. it seems to represent the alien as hypersexualized, but a demonization of BOTH genders, embodying the worst each has to offer.so a good, unbiased observation about the movie is that it is pairing two androgynous genders against one another. most feminist authors i've read look for the obvious confirmation of their set of beliefs. "this part looks male, and this thing is bad, so i'm right and men are bad," says one. "this part looks female, and it's bad, so men are saying that women are bad, which makes me right in that men are bad," say another. in this case, they're reading the same bias two different ways (see the essays above) into something where it does apply.alien is largely about sexuality, but it does not deal with gender as simply as you and the first few authors seem to want it to. that's great. not explain how this is the same as gender roles, and the biases stereotypes you were making. how are they using the genders of their livres and voitures?This message has been edited by Arachnophilia, 04-10-2005 12:42 AM

Right. "Similarity to." Not "possession of." I got that. What you don't get is that that's still gender, not sex. That's why engineers refer to the "gender" of cables, and not to the "sex" of cables. That's why the device that reverses the configuration of a cable end is called a "gender-bender", not a "sex-changer."You've also cited a large number of articles that I've supposedly "plagarized", but I don't see where I've copied and pasted anything in those articles; I don't see anything but a surface similarity to what I've written, and I don't see any evidence at all that I was even aware of those articles when I posted what I posted.So where's the evidence that I've plagerized anything? Like I said you've made a specific and quite disparaging claim against my person; please substantiate this claim or retract it. If you accept the claim of the OP - that gender may be, and often is, applied to things that have no sex or the "opposite" sex, then there's no need to go any further.

crashfrog writes:

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If we're applying sexual characteristics to objects, that's a use of gender, not sex.

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This then destroys your argument, crash.Agreed, the term to refer to the object that changes a plug from pins to sockets is a "gender bender," but that is obviously incorrect because plugs don't have a gender. They have a sex.Sex is a physical phenomenon.Gender is a behavioural phenomenon.Your sex is "male" or "female."Your gender is "masculine" or "feminine."That's why the plugs are called "male" and "female": One has physical protruberances that seat into the sockets of the other. That is a physical characteristic, therefore the correct term is "sex," not "gender."It would seem that you want to apply the generalization of "gender" to inanimate objects (and, indeed, this has already been done as can be seen linguistically with the concept of "gender" applied to words) but don't want to apply this same generalization to "sex."I guess the question then becomes, what is the difference between "sex" and "gender" to you? Is "sex" even capable of being used as a noun?

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

no. it's a quirk of language. like talking about the evolution of thought. thought doesn't have sex either, does it?

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Main Entry: 1gender
Pronunciation: 'jen-d&r
Function: noun

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2 a : SEX

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Main Entry: 1sex
Pronunciation: 'seks
Function: noun

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1 : either of the two major forms of individuals that occur in many species and that are distinguished respectively as female or male
2 : the sum of the structural, functional, and behavioral characteristics of living things that are involved in reproduction by two interacting parents and that distinguish males and females

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"gender" is a way of saying "sex" without aluding to bumping uglies.

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Main Entry: euphemism
Pronunciation: 'y-f&-"mi-z&m
Function: noun

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: the substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive expression for one that may offend or suggest something unpleasant; also : the expression so substituted

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see what rrhain said. male and female are sexes, not genders. and cables do not have society or behavioral patterns, do they? "gender-bender" sounds funnier. it's a common expression for transvestites and transexuals. they're make a joke about how the cable has the wrong anatomy.

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Main Entry: plagiarize
Pronunciation: 'plA-j&-"rIz also -jE-&-
Function: verb

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transitive senses : to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own : use (another's production) without crediting the source

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i'm fine with it. you're just using the concepts incorrectly.This message has been edited by Arachnophilia, 04-10-2005 03:40 AM

Right; specifically human behavior. And the behavior to which it applies is the human act of associating penetration with maleness; thus, the cables have no sex but have the male gender.I mean, if what you say is true, then why doesn't anyone ever refer to the sex of a cable? Why is it always the gender of a cable? I mean I'm not making this usage up; I worked in the IT industry for years and never, ever did anyone refer to the "sex" of a cable. Yes. For organisms that have genitals. Everything else? Since there are no genitals, we (humans) are applying sexual associations to objects; and you're quite correct that the word for that behavior is "gender."

Are you going to substantiate the plagarism claim, or are you going to retract it? This is the third time I've had to ask.

Crash, are you ignoring philia's posts on purpose?So far he has written a lot more on the subject without receiving any responses. I don't wish to get into the discussion because of lack of time but it seems like he has been consistently pwning you.

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Thanks for giving me the oppurtunity to leech knowledge off of all you guys.

How? By1) name-calling?
2) quoting definitions that don't support his points, and often support mine?
3) ignoring my arguments to address strawmen?I am ignoring his posts, because for the large part, he's ignoring my arguments to address the position of these feminist boogymen (boogypeople?) that he insists I've plagarized from.I don't understand how he can, on one hand, tell me "you're plagarizing these arguments", and on the other, tell me "what you wrote isn't what your argument really is." I mean, which is it? Does my argument differ from these hypothetical arch-feminists, or did I copy it from them word for word?Arach is insane. His arguments neither reflect my position, nor a grip on reality. He insists on arguing against positions I'm not taking, and insists on peppering those arguments with spurious, base charges. Why on earth would I respond to that other than to tell him to go fuck himself?This message has been edited by crashfrog, 04-10-2005 12:28 PM