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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TheCosmicKid" data-source="post: 7437329" data-attributes="member: 6683613">Sure, but the ability is less likely to come up in play if they're trans, though, isn't it? They're likely to settle on the form they're comfortable with and stick with it, just like the cis elves with the blessing.Heh. Ask a sociologist what gender is, and they'll say it's cultural. Ask a neurologist what gender is, and they'll say it's neurological. Ask a psychologist what gender is, and they'll say it's psychological. Ask an endocrinologist what gender is, and they'll say it's hormonal. Ask a linguist... okay, they'll think you're talking about something else entirely. My point is, this kind of reductive analysis has never seemed satisfying. The human brain is a big giant crazy ball of interconnectedness. Nothing is independent.This raises all sorts of questions about what gender actually is. I cracked about the linguist earlier, but grammatical gender (and grammar is where the term "gender" originally comes from) really does take forms that have nothing to do with masculinity/femininity. A language might, for example, divide its nouns between living things, artifacts, and natural objects. But if a human(oid) society did something similar with its members -- say, rich vs poor, or rural vs urban -- it would be a stretch to me to call that a "gender system". The first term to spring to mind would be "class system" or "caste system". Are those really the same thing as gender? Interesting to think about.</blockquote>

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