User:Timothy Perper/Sandbox

Revision of Gender

Here's the start of a proposed revision of this short article. (From Gender.)

Please do NOT edit the section below. It will cause chaos -- I speak from experience! Instead, put suggestions, comments, questions and so on below the draft revision. Timothy Perper 13:08, 26 September 2008 (CDT)

Gender

When sexologists and scholars talk about gender, they typiically mean:

(1) the internal psychological experience of being female or male (or neither) in one's own society and one's own personal history or biography;

(2) socially and culturally defined and shared roles, rules, norms, and scripts for how to be male or female in a specified society at a specifed time in its history.

An idea closely related to gender is "gender identity," which is the experienced conviction that one is female or male (or neither). Likewise, gender is related to what sociologists and social critics call "sex roles," which are the normative activities assigned socially to women and to men in a given society and time. Gender needs to be distinguished from sex, which refers to one's biological endowments anatomically, physiologically, and reproductively. Gender has other meanings as well, for example, in linguistics to denote the "gender" of a noun, but this article deals with the word's sexual and social meanings. Gender raises the question, "What does it mean psychologically and socially to be a woman or a man, a girl or a boy -- or maybe neither?"

See also

Sex

Feminism

Suggestions and Comments

Here, or possibly in linked articles, there should be the case of the normal XY and XX genotypes, but then situations such as XY chromosomes coupled with one of the prenatal, genetic androgen receptor disorder, resulting in a female phenotype. Howard C. Berkowitz 12:41, 26 September 2008 (CDT)

An excellent point to make here too is that the Olympics do allow XY individuals to compete as women if they have a severe form of AIS. Chris Day 12:47, 26 September 2008 (CDT)

Yes, yes, yes! Absolutely! But I'm starting at the beginning. BTW, can we continue to discuss this on User:Timothy_Perper/Sandbox = here? I have found that taking a draft article off the talk page of the main article is much more convenient when making changes and collating suggestions. Timothy Perper 12:47, 26 September 2008 (CDT)

Tim, from what I am seeing, the gender article is in its infancy and I think it would be better to begin these discussions on the article's talk page so that others that come along later can see how your decisions were made. If things get complicated, then consider moving parts of it here. Certainly working on changes to the article in a sandbox and linking them to the article talk page is likely a good idea, I think holding discussions in a sandbox (especially those that are likely to be asked again and again) could get complicated for those that are not directly involved. D. Matt Innis 14:57, 26 September 2008 (CDT)

Creation of Sandboxes

Tim, here's a sandbox I made for you, Notice that you can make one any time you like just by going to your user page and typing in the address bar above it - "/Sandbox" (or whatever you want) after your name. It would look like this http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/User:Timothy_Perper/Sandbox. Have fun! D. Matt Innis 07:38, 25 September 2008 (CDT)

Customs

One of the first practical considerations is clicking on the history tab, and see who has been working on it and how frequently. If the entry is quite old, and apparently from an inactive contributor, you probably should go ahead, possibly moving questioned text onto the talk page of the article.

If there appears to be a reasonably active contributor, it's best to put a few paragraphs on the talk page on what you propose to do. If there's no response in a few days, go and do them. I've been making, for example, some quite major improvents to Vietnam War, although the person with whom I disagreed (some of the disagreements are on the talk page) is generally believed to have left the project. Howard C. Berkowitz 12:51, 26 September 2008 (CDT)

Question

I also put some notes on the talk page, but they might be even more appropriate here. Whether in the gender article or one linked to it, you can start with basic consistent genotype and phenotype of XX and XY chromosomes, without any gender dysphoria. One of the next informative and challenging things, however, would be a person with an XY genotype, who also has the genetic coding for one of the forms of androgen insensitivity disorder, being born apparently female. I have yet to understand what is done when -- and this has happened -- someone is considered female by family and pediatrician, marries a man in good faith, and the couple, frustrated on not having children, does a genetic analysis and diagnoses the actual genetics. Howard C. Berkowitz 12:51, 26 September 2008 (CDT)

This resource from HHMI might be useful for some ideas re gender and sport. http://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/gendertest/gendertest.swf Chris Day 12:53, 26 September 2008 (CDT)

I think a detailed discussion of these syndromes deserves its own article. I'd like to keep to focus of the gender article on the psychological, social, and cultural characteristics of gender, that is, on "what it means" to be a man or woman in a given time and place. There's a large, serious literature on the subject, and it's sufficiently different from the disorders, especially the genetic disorders like AID, to make them separate articles. Timothy Perper 13:08, 26 September 2008 (CDT)

I agree that separate articles make sense, but I do think the gender article needs just enough about these edge cases to explain why there is a link to them. Howard C. Berkowitz 13:19, 26 September 2008 (CDT)

I agree with Howard here. Yes, we need to mention and describe those syndromes, and then refer to reader to other, more detailed sources. We should not omit them, IMO. Timothy Perper 13:39, 26 September 2008 (CDT)