It’s confusing and problematical to see folks claiming to know ‘what’s going on’ in various ways that are as diverse as they are absurd.

Unless the scope of one’s concern is extremely mundane, i.e.: is the door open? It is formally impossible to ‘know what’s going on’.

Some very confused person was spouting dogma in a post yesterday. The post showed images of glass art; casts of vaginas and their near interiors. As each was unique, she declared ‘Nature isn’t binary!’

Personally, I don’t much care what others think, but as regards categories such as gender, nature is quite obviously both binary and not merely explicitly binary.

There are actual males. There are actual females. There are also cases where the explicit nature of the male/female binary is uniquely instanced.

There are cases in nature, in organisms, where it’s blurry. There are also exactly zero human males who can become pregnant. None of them have menstruation. Zero. Not one.

No one has to cling to any gender stereotype: in point of fact, every relational exchange is an instance of the unique expression of the possibility space of gender, the common cultural stereotypes, and the terrains outside of or beyond them.

This is human nature.

I’ve seen posts where supposed biologists try to provide evidence that ‘nature isn’t binary’. Memes. One in particular. Not only was it unconvincing, it was like a bird with one wing.

Nature is both generally binary and incompletely explicitly binary.

You need both wings to have anything resembling understanding.

In language, gender is tricky. Categories in general are tricky, because they are imposed on subjects of experience by minds. We do not know what minds are. They are not merely brains.

No one knows ‘what’s going on’. What we have is purposes in perspective and declaration. That has less to do with what’s going on that it does with our purposes in evaluating it.

Abject declarations about features of nature are not the result of clear evaluations of the natural world. Rather, they are the result of the agendas and perspectives of those proposing them. Sometimes, these are not even people.

Sometimes, they are machines.

Or people intending to psychologically manipulate a population.

Nature is infinite.

Human arguments and our categories… are malleable.

But not entirely, either.