/:) My strength is as the strength of ten....

[aureantes]

...because my love is pure?

What is your sexual orientation?

You are pansexual.
Take this quiz!


 


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Hmm. I was kinda wavering between bi and pan, I think, just 'cause I really do prefer that I have a fairly clear idea of what a person wants to be called, genderwise, regardless of how they look or present themselves in demeanour. I don't care about whether they're in the middle or shifting over or switching with the situation, but I need to know what they want me to call them, and I have a hard time remembering the declensions of current/preferred gender-neutral pronouns....personally, I think English suffers a lot subculturally by not having a personal+neutral case already, but I really don't feel like wrapping myself around everyone's pet alternativity without having a decent linguistic model for it.....

But bodywise?--not a problem. The most important thing, afterall, is neither sex, gender, or eschewment thereof, but whether a person's actually personally appealing.


NOTE TO WHOMEVER WROTE THIS QUIZ, AND ALL OTHERS AS WELL:

Sex is the biological/physical category, gender is the psychological/socially-enacted category. They are NOT the exact same thing. They should not be restricted as the exact same thing when they are not. Biological sex (and the changing thereof) is not as important as gender, and yet the law still rules distinctions of "gender" on the basis of physical-sexual determinants, instead of by psychological and socially-enacted identity. This is stupid, particularly at a time when all the reason to segregate people by "sex" are really falling apart -- they aren't even necessary for procreation and parenting anymore, much less as reliable class-standards for labour and occupational skills.

So, to people who write quizzes and questionaires, if you are examining social behaviours of any type and wish to establish some kind of M-F comparison (M-F-A, really), that really ought to be termed "gender" ONLY and understood as such by those responding. And I believe it really ought to be the prime distinction in all social and sociolegal situations (social address, employment, marriage, active passports and identification papers), rather than requiring the physicalities of nakedly-apparent "sex" to be satisfied.

The only reason to use biological sex as a prime determinant is if you're assembling medical and/or actuarial evidence, and eventually I foresee that those will have to be supplemented with "gender" as well in order to maintain any relevant accuracy to the total population, which has notably more persons that are transgendered than are full-operatively transsexual. It's a hazy world that we are granted to dwell in, and clinging to the confusions of terminology does no good in clarifying what needs the clarification.

Comments

[lurkitty.livejournal.com]

I was a bit annoyed about the use of the term "sex" to mean gender in this quiz as well (I came out pansexual, too). But the quiz got me thinking. We don't have terms for gender ambiguity, and and gender ambiguous births are ocurring more frequently or are being reported more frequently. I don't know. We force choices on people who are gender ambiguous as children under the Victorian psychological model that children have no memory or concept of sexuality and it often goes badly. Parents do it because some doctor tells them that the kid will be teased in gym class. If we teach acceptance, funny thing, that doesn't happen. When I rule the world, I shall find a gender neutral term to cover everybody and pass laws to make it child abuse to change a child's gender without their consent. (/rant)

Playing with linguistics...>:)

[aureantes.livejournal.com]

Actually, I do consider it of great importance to have a gender-neutral pronoun set -- I just don't particularly think the ones out there are much good at avoiding phonetic/connotative confusion (they tend to skew very heavily towards the feminine case, with "si" and "hir/hirself" being the main terms, and those are of no use in spoken conversation)
-- not to mention that in order to have universal usage they'd also have to replace the general singular case (one/one's/oneself) in everyday parlance & writing, something that is already being done unofficially with "they/their/themself" (I do it myself, and see nothing 'wrong' about it grammatically) because of the felt & true lack of "correct" and consistent pronouns that do not imply/impose gender.

I have a country/people that I made up for some stories...the country is called Larrachia, and it's pretty much Balkan/Central European in location and cultural influence. As with Romanian, there is a lot of Latin influence in the Larrachian language, but one thing that I was intent on establishing and maintaining within the linguistic structure was a lack of assumption as to gender unless specified, whether in noun endings or in personal pronouns. I haven't got notes on hand at the moment, but I have the endings for personal nouns done with different vowels/pronunciation marks -- taking the word-root "person" (as meaning an individual/individuality, spoken accent on the second syllable), it'd be prounounced "personuh" (cf. unstressed terminal "-e" in German and French, and I write it using a tail as with the "c" in "facade" to indicate it as soft/unstressed) in the live-neutral case, "personay" in the masculine case ("-e" with an accent), "personah" in the feminine case ("-a"), and "personu" in the inanimate-neutral case, if you happen to be talking about character and identity in the abstract. The plural is achieved, as in most Greek forms, by adding "i" ("ee") onto the end -- persone~i, persone'i, personai, personui. If you use it as a verb-root (i.e., to project/manifest oneself), then it'd more-or-less follow Latin declension -- persono, personas, personat; persone~mus, personatis, personant.

Actually, I just decided on that on the spot. But I like the way it works. There's also a live-neutral case that is used in their dialect of English, which mainly involves elision of gender distinguishers -- I think it was something like "s'hi" (or "s'he" would work for typical American/English usage, as being more familiar to that phonetic coding), "hrim", "hris/hrimself", etc. Must dig up my notes and actually get this into practice with the stories themselves.

I just wish that there were more people willing to do the linguistic legwork (like I am) of figuring out how to meld & distinguish "new" cases of pronouns, instead of just imposing them in an academic-PC sense. If you want to change the way people think and talk, you have to take into account how they already think and talk by habit and custom, and bear in mind that what looks clear enough on paper may not have any real usefulness/comprehensability among the general populace who really need the exposure.

[athenaltena.livejournal.com]

Lurkitty: Hey, I know you from my mom's journal. ^_^

I definately agree with the confusion people often get about sex and gender, since the two do not always go hand in hand. I was actually extremely annoyed with an episode of 60 minutes because they kept referring to transexuality and homesexuality as the same thing, while I kept shaking my head because the two are completely different concepts.

I followed you from otherkin, by the way. I definately agree with you on the troll problem.

[aureantes.livejournal.com]

I thought you were in there...funny, 'cause all the alerts were coming in for comments on that thread, and I figured yours was on the same page when it popped up. Then it wasn't, and I was slightly confused as to what you were responding to.....but hey, well met.

Silly Americans don't respect the subtleties of their own language, nor their physiologies. Funny how every external argument about the physical basis of homosexuality always becomes one about transsexual traits and features, while the homosexual communities themselves know fairly well that the two are totally independent things. And as for being transgender...well, that gets no legal respect in this country until one becomes transsexual, which makes very little sense for anything in terms of social or legal questions. And some people still don't believe that it really exists atall, that biological determinism is totally cut and dried and dualistic and anyone who doubts or resists it must have something wrong in their haid.

Which does segue neatly back towards gerbilsage....:-?

I don't often say too much on otherkin groups unless I'm really trying to make a point that I feel others are missing in discussion...also, because my theories and views tend to get shot at automatically (TFI--Too Fucking Intellectual). I think that otherkin are both real (though I admit there are some species I'll take with a grain of salt) and are part of a general metacluster of related "othernesses" that have a lot to do with human evolution and the shape of things to come. And sexual orientation and gender identity are also part of that metacluster, even though I know some people resist drawing any comparisons there for the sake of minority-identity delineation. Part of what pisses me off about gerbilsage is that he's probably against almost everything that I term as "other", no matter how well it's been proven that "there are such things." And, seeing as I have a whole lot of othernesses going with me, well, that's the "I can't possibly exist" line right there.

I really don't see why trolls and skeptics are given more leeway within that community than serious 'kin, unless it really is that they just take it and no one wants to bother presenting their views candidly just to have them attacked. It frustrates me a lot to see otherkin defending the presence of people who are not only attacking their validity but not even doing a good job at making their case. Plus, it automatically makes it not safe space for the newly-awakened or questioning to speak up in, because they'll get half a dozen differing-and-unassertive explanations, plus outright (attempted) undermining of what they're trying to find a firmer foundation for. If I'm speaking up gratuitously for anyone, it's for those that really do want and need to talk intelligently with others like them, because the rest of the world doesn't exactly make it easy to be honest.

But then, I got my own groups started for that, too, so far as being there and trying to build community that isn't dependent on always holding one's tongue or accepting a single party line or lack thereof. And I have an LJ community called anderen_faq, where I've started to put together some theories and views for general view, as a basic introduction to some of my other online groups/projects.

[athenaltena.livejournal.com]

Cool. I might take a look at some of the ones you've started. It does puzzle me why he's still allowed despite all this, and probably does drive some people off. There's a fine line between constructive criticism and flaming, but he's way over it.

[aureantes.livejournal.com]

People keep saying that A, he's got a lot of friends there (really?) or B, he helps keep them on their toes and honest with themselves. Which a lot of people could likely do better and less abusively. I really don't see why any group should have to adhere to the mental standards/dogma of someone who altogether disbelieves in it, and the fact that it is an approval-only group really makes me wonder what strings or lines he pulled in order to get in in the first place.

Btw, you're totally approved for the groups. The more the merrier...>:)