What is Gender? | Philosophy Tube

Male, female, cis, trans – what is gender? What makes up your gender identity? Existentialism, Society, Genetics?

Twitter: @PhilosophyTube

Recommended Reading:
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble
Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter
Julia Serano, Whipping Girl
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

The overlapping Bell curves were drawn by Matt Ley, AKA The LaserBearGuy, because I suck at photoshop – thanks Matt!

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[rayflyers]

It can't be a coincidence that YouTube recommended this to me just now after Abigail came out.

[robins]

"What's your experience with gender?" Uhh, mostly just confusion

[yuvalne]

She really did give us a lot of foreshadowing over the years, didn't she?

[hunterkelley]

As someone who is transgender, but still struggles to understand "why", I really appreciate this video being put out here. Thank you!

[lessevilnyarlathotep]

In my case, gender is an eldritch writhing, wiggling mass of pain that i can't examine for too long lest i succumb to madness.

I am so tired all the goddamn time, so if someone ever asks me what my gender is i'll respond 'idk man i just work here'.

[SnowCat-nugj]

The pause at 6:02 feels different now. So happy Abby is finally comfortable being herself. I may be an anti monarchist but I Stan the trans princess of terf island so hard

[emmanuelmaury]

Anyone else come back here after her latest video?

[negativespace]

the youtube algorithm is officially sentient

[Deantrey]

I grew up in a very masculine type environment where masculinity and being tough were highly important. I remember reading Butler's book in college and just thinking about all the little performances I do on a daily basis, the manly man actions that make me who I am. Everything from the clothes I wear, the way I sit and stand, the way I walk, talk, gesture, the media I consume, the kinds of beer I drink, the list goes on and on. So that book actually motivated me to try different things I never would have, just because I'm naturally a rebellious person and I like any opportunity to rebel against the status quo (as long as it doesn't harm other people). So I just have been trying different things out over the years and I've learned a lot about myself and feel I have much greater freedom to grow into the type of person I feel comfortable being. Don't get me wrong, my masculinity is still very important to me, and I still catch myself saying shit like "real men don't X" But, I think those little acts of rebellion, rather than change me into something else, allow me, if only a little bit, to define what it means to be a man in my own terms.

[DANGJOS]

This guy is way better than many of those Anti-SJW channels on YouTube, in my opinion. He doesn't shout some black and white "there are only two genders" crap. He actually analyzes it critically and talks about the philosophical aspects in these topics. That is more skeptical

[vanya]

I am nonbinary. People often ask me how do I know. Thr anwser is quite simple: I tried calling myself a guy and felt like shit. I tried calling myself a girl and felt a bit less like shit. Tried calling myself an enby and felt the least like shit.

[SpideyDee]

First Race, then Marx, now Gender. You're a brave man, Olly. I hope many of the affective dislikers at least watch these videos till the end.

[Xidnaf]

I'm unsure about a lot of this, but I've personally found these to be useful working definitions:
"Gendering" is the mental act of subconsciously categorizing someone as "male" or "female." It is mostly reflexive and involuntary, the same way we look at a fruit and might immediately mentally categorize it as "apple" or "orange." Importantly, this might not line up with what you consciously know to be their biological sex. We don't do it for everyone we see, and not everyone might do it, but it's definitely something some of us do for some people.
"Gender Identity" is simply how you feel about how other people gender you.
I think this can describe a lot of different behavior pretty well. There are people who unambiguously really want to be identified men and want to talk and act and dress like men, and there are also men who want to be identified as men entirely for the sake of convenience and consistency, and both of them are equally "men" with regard to their gender identity. Likewise, "agender" people are people who don't want to be gendered either way, "bigender" people want to be gendered both ways, "gender-fluid" people want to be gendered different ways under different circumstances, et cetera.

Importantly, this don't say why someone might want to be gendered one way or another. Because honestly I don't know. That's why I find this definition so useful: it's a way of thinking about gender that doesn't get into the nitty-gritty about where gender "comes from."

at ​@​ when Abigail says "gender is... hm" I felt that.

[genesisfrog]

This hits different. Hope you're having a good day.

[samwoodburn]

I'm so happy that Philosophy Tube exists.

[relearnalanguage]

Thank you Abigail-of-2016 for making this, and thank you Abigail-of-2021 for keeping all your old videos up! This is by far the best and most helpful video I've seen on this question and I'm so thankful to be seeing it 4 years into the future :)

[ThePRNCSS]

I was born female but I never felt female, but I also had no desire to become male either. It just about drove me crazy when I was younger. fortunately later in my life I realized I was agender/gender-neutral. it took me a long time to come to this realization because it's often more difficult to identify a lack of gender than an alternative one. Great video.

[OlleLindestad]

Thank you SO MUCH for including that dual bell curve graph (and the comparison to height)! This kind of statistical thinking is absolutely key to understanding sex differences. Everyone is familiar with the idea that *most* men are taller than *most* women, yet when discussion turns to sex differences that have more to do with neurology or endocrinology (i.e. hormones), people so often make the mistake of thinking not in terms of a *bimodal* distribution (overlapping bell curves) but in terms of a *binomial* distribution (all men are more aggressive than all women, etc). This problem includes people on both sides of the nature/nurture debate, so you also get a lot of people claiming that their friend who is a very aggressive woman single-handedly disproves biological sex differences.

Statistical thinking in general is so valuable for understanding the world, so unintuitive a lot of the time (or at least not the way our brains naturally like to think), and something that I think schools should emphasize a lot more.

[booksandbigideas]

“Some ways of speaking are performative”
4 years later: comes out as trans and is so glad she doesn’t have to TALK LIKE THIS anymore