Is it normal that people are so ignorant about gender?

This post is lovely, lovely, lovely. ♥

What about hermaphrodites? It is not proper to assign a gender to them, but it is not polite to refer to them as an "it".
It is true that we do intercept most of these people at birth, and use corrective surgery (usually removing male parts) and hormone therapy.
Genetically though, they still retain male (or rarely female) attributes.

What a load a bullshit. Why are you overcomplicating such a simple thing? You're either born a male or you're born a female. There's nothing more to it! Fucking hell.

I agree so so so much with this. People like to believe things are concrete and simple, but nothing is ever simple, even gender. The sooner people realised that the better time they'll have dealing with it.

I like the gingerbread man (or woman really, depending) picture too. It's a good visual representation :)

I think part of the problem is that people often think that male/female is the same as masculine/ feminine. The concept of man/woman is vague. It doesn't tell you if you are defining someones sex organs, or if you are defining masculine traits.

But sometimes people just want a reason to be upset. I have a transgendered friend who makes it an issue in everything "they" do. I'm not allowed to assign a prononun to this person because they are offended by both terms he and she. The preferred term is a description of the scientific process. Really. Every conversation turns into a debate about gender identity. And I just wanted to know if "what's his face" was going to be at the bar later.

Not all are like this. But I do think this issue starts to cross the political correctness line. I am not trying to take away your identity.

In the vast majority of cases, gender is obvious. However, there are those people born intersex. And there are those born of one gender, but want to express themselves as the other. If you happen to be one of those, please don't get angry if I refer to you by the wrong pronoun. I'm not trying to be mean. Sometimes I honestly don't know. And I really don't care what gender you want to be. Sorry if that sounds unsympathetic, but it's your issue, not mine.

I'll say what I said in chat.

I think gender is pretty simple. I see you, you look like description of (e.g.) woman, I call you woman. Only time it's anyone else's business is at the doctor and in the bedroom.

There we are, everyone's happy.

I'm glad I wasn't the only one bothered by that. I actually abstained from commenting just because I didn't trust my feelings about what was said to get in the way of my comment. People are woefully ignorant when it comes to gender issues, but this could easily be fixed with better education. I didn't learn a lot of those terms and things I already kind of understood until college when I electively took a women's studies class.

I feel like there should be requirements, preferrably way back in high school to teach kids about things like this. Gender issues, multiculturalism, things like that. Or that it should at least be worked into the curriculum more so (talk about gender in health, world cultures, things like that) because a lot of primary schools don't have that.

Hell, a lot of primary schools won't even give you sex education XD

You can't complain when I put a TLDR

I have three penises and seven vaginas. What am I?