How many genders are there?

[West_Midlander]

I can't really see how it would boil down to more than three, but some say more.

FTR, I would say that the three are male, female, and nonbinary (which encompasses anything and everything else).

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

Zero

This. Gender was invented in 1955 and like most postwar innovations was a terrible mistake.

Describing an extant phenomenon does not equate to inventing it from nothing, nor does it imply that it wasn't understood in some similar form in other cultures besides the sphere of Western academia (although some scholarly works from before then did in fact document the practice of what we might call gender non-conformity in other cultures; the bottom quote in my signature is taken from one such text on the indigenous peoples of Siberia), nor does the admittedly highly lacking and repulsive personal conduct of one person, who we've already established as my no means the "inventor" of the concept in any form discredit anything that might be remotely associated with them.

You're grasping at straws to reinforce a bubble where normative Western understandings of gender roles and societal expectations around our bodies can never be questioned, and to coercively impose that bubble on every extant culture when as many different answers to these questions exist as there are unique human cultures. If you think that entire fields of human knowledge can be discredited by virtue of having unsavory characters (who in this case aren't considered particularly innovative or influential even within their fields, which you'd know and instead know more about those who actually are/were if you cared about this area of study beyond regurgitated talking points from those who hate it on principle), then you just ought to reject the entirety of human knowledge because there are a hell of a lot more sex pests in the history of thought than just those you consider heinous enough (read: disagree with enough for entirely different reasons) to act like anything they may have any tangential relationship to is hogwash. It smacks of, dare I say it, "cancel culture"?

That's a lot to infer from a funny joke post!

Honestly though my views aren't that far from what you'd expect them to be, except that I would be willing to throw out the "contributions" of sex perverts if it seems likely that their perversity had an influence on their thought (I'm a Nietzschean in that way so not much of a "gotcha" there). But the vast majority of philosophers lived in time periods when people kept those things to themselves, so we'll never know.

Anyway, like most people I've never had a reason to question my gender role (except to ask myself whether I was performing my role well enough), so it's not my place to say whether gender-nonconforming people are valid or not. I can only remark, what I'm sure doesn't surprise you at all, how strangely it strikes me that some people's inner experience would be so different from their biological experience. I understand a mother's worship of the Great Mother, but a eunuch's? Very removed from my own understanding.

Admittedly my response was a lot to extrapolate from yours and may have seemed rather extra, but when there are people around these parts that take that sort of thought at face value one figures that one can't be too careful.

The failure to communicate these experiences so directly as an embodied idea is, I feel, the primary reason why it's (understandably) so hard for people like you to understand, if these vastly idiosyncratic experiences can be generalized into a whole, the ideas from which gender non-conformity emerges. I didn't think much at all of gender at large or my own assigned gender until I began experiencing physical gender dysphoria in my mid-teens, and my relationship to my own gender and the expressions of others is in constant flux atop the foundational principle of aspiring to a feminine ideal.

I cannot fault you for seeing my practices of identity in much the same way that Catullus did, or the experiences that lead you there. I only ask that it may be recognized, if begrudgingly as he did amidst his revulsion at one's "hatred of Venus" and fear of the Great One, without intentional offense against it. As much as I yearn at some times to have lived in a time where there was a state cult just for people like me, there's also a part of me that finds it alien and impersonal to perform oneself in a publicly-sanctioned manner; I trust those close to me with a much more intimate understanding of my identity and my faith than I care to outwardly present.

I will say this much towards your confusion: as one barred from birth from knowing the form of divinity most intimately in the most hallowed functions of body, my interpretation of divinity is itself aspirational. My yearning for an ideal of the Great Mother's image in woman emerges from the same impulse as my worship of Her original qualities embodied in creation. My devotion to that sacred principle exists "as above, so below", within my physical experiences and the broader workings of nature that are its macrocosmic implications.

(I'm not actually a eunuch–I'm currently up to my neck in the red tape that surrounds sanctioning a professional to administer one's ultimate sacrifice–but I don't mind being called one and sometimes call myself that.)

mucho texto

Anyway, how many numbers are there between 0 and 1, inclusive?

[Person Man]

The answer is three, if Latin class has taught me anything.

Even in English but who wants to be called "it"?

[Big Abraham]

The answer is three, if Latin class has taught me anything.

Even in English but who wants to be called "it"?

English doesn't really have genders. "It" is a pronoun, a different grammatical category.

I guess you could argue that pronouns are a vestigial product of grammatical gender, but tomato tomahto.

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

3. Male, Female, and a group encompassing all who don't identify as such.

[Skunk]

The answer is three, if Latin class has taught me anything.

Even in English but who wants to be called "it"?

I don't use it/its pronouns anymore but I did for a while and still have friends that do. Good for capturing a certain aesthetic.

[HillGoose]

gender doesn't exist, it was made up by the man to divide ppl all the way back in the prehistoric times

everyone is the same

[LordLarry]

Two

[KoopaDaQuick 🇵🇸]

Two

OP isn't asking for how old your girlfriend is.

[LordLarry]

Two

OP isn't asking for how old your girlfriend is.

When my opponents can only offer outlandish smears rather than actual rebuttals, I know that I'm right.

[KoopaDaQuick 🇵🇸]

Two

OP isn't asking for how old your girlfriend is.

When my opponents can only offer outlandish smears rather than actual rebuttals, I know that I'm right.

My post took just as much effort to make and is just as thought provoking as yours. Don't expect me to re-write War and Peace in response to a one-word post.

[UWS]

2

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Brings me back to the 2020 primary and Biden's legendary answer.

In a video posted by Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, an unseen woman tells the former vice president she is an Iowa college student. She then asks him how many genders there are.

"There are at least three," Biden, 76, can be heard saying. The woman then asks him to name them.

"Don't play games with me, kid," he responded...

[MarkD]

Thirty-seven.

(It's an interestingly non-descript prime number. Playwright Mart Crowley used that number a couple of times in his script for The Boys in the Band: "I just have to comb my hair for the thirty-seventh time," and "Here's something else for you: it's called 'Control.' Notice that nowhere do they ever use the term 'hair spray,' just simply 'Control.' And the words 'For men' are written about thirty-seven times all over the g*dd*mn can.")

[bagelman]

2

However it is legitimate for a human to identify as the opposite gender of the body they were born with, or to be neither (although that's rare). I don't think a human can be both at once though nor a custom gender, it would be more accurate to say they are actually neither. Being neither doesn't count as a third gender, it's just not being a gender, which is different. Like if someone is swimming in a lake instead of being on one of two boats.

Finally I'm willing to argue against all my previously stated beliefs if it annoys any tedious transphobic right wing concern troll.

[Pink Panther]

Genders? There could theoretically be an infinite number of genders, but generally it's simpler to just say male, female, and lump everyone else in the nonbinary camp.

Sexes? Generally only two, although people with intersex characteristics exist, even if extremely rarely. 

[Independents for Nihilism]

Genders? There could theoretically be an infinite number of genders, but generally it's simpler to just say male, female, and lump everyone else in the nonbinary camp.

Sexes? Generally only two, although people with intersex characteristics exist, even if extremely rarely. 

If there's an infinite number of genders, then the word is meaningless. I'm always a little wary of the "gender as personality" camp but that's taking it to its logical conclusion.

[Cokeland Saxton]

3

[nfvlmv]

"At least 3, don't play games with me kid." - Joseph Robinett Biden

[All Along The Watchtower]

Three and/in one.

Father, Son, Holy Spirit.

[Dr. MB]

There are millions, billions of genders. They abound on this planet. We find them everywhere we look. I like to think of them as the invisible genders. The genders that we rarely notice because they blend in so seamlessly with the regular genders. They show up only when it matters. They only show up when the other genders need them to. We are too quick to assume that only one gender matters. This is incorrect. The one, who we think is masculine and the one, who we think is feminine, is just the other side of the same coin. There is another coin, a whole different coin, with a whole other set of rules. Those rules are different. They are more fluid. They are less restricted. There are different ways to play. There are different games to be had. And there are many different combinations to make. And it's magical; it's enormous. It's a world of infinite possibilities. You just have to open your eyes. And your mouth. And your mind. And your heart. And your soul.

[Anzeigenhauptmeister]

Zero

OP, this is an AMERICAN forum. We speak ENGLISH here.

I am ITALIAN and I know there are two genders: masculine (like metal and regret and glasses) and feminine (like fear and gunpowder and chairs). You are invalidating my lived experiences.

I am GERMAN and I know that all children, especially them girls, are neuter!!!

[NYDem]

I keep all of them in my big gender bag and dish them out to people according to my own personal judgement. Comment below to find out your gender!

[Stranger in a strange land]

At least 3: the exact number isn't important, and of course most people will always identify as male or female. For legal purposes, three should be recognized:
- Male
- Female
- Non-Binary/Other

[FT-02 Senator A.F.E. 🇵🇸🤝🇺🇸🤝🇺🇦]

:thinking:

https://twitter.com/reshetz/status/1654106720157745155?t=nRYYoCOWspyC_OVYe8o8RA