Talk:Xenogender/Archive1

What are the standards here?
So... what exactly are the standards here? Look, the map is not the territory on these matters. Someone claiming something about their identity is not definitive proof of that identity. If the identity pattern is radically divergent from that indicated by the vast majority of all human beings, the rational response is skepticism. Per Occam's Razor, it is far simpler and more probable that the individual is suffering from either a more conventional gender dysphoria associated with emergent transgender identity; or, alternatively, is suffering from some other identity issue or psychological disorder, and is co-opting the psychiatric narrative of gender dysphoria.

In general, any maladjustment or malady that might make them *believe* that they are something extremely unlikely is more likely than the extremely unlikely thing itself.

Quoting a site with an obvious POV isn't proof of validity, though. We'd need to see serious research into these groups, and that requires being able to ontologically distinguish them from other identities. That's why the "snowflake" accusation is relevant: you cannot (quantitatively) research people who demonstrate no consistent salient patterns.

Shy of there being some revelation here of xenogendered/non-binary/agendered people who turn out to fit salient identity patterns in statistically meaningful ways, my best guess is that these are people who actually fit in some other identity category but, for a variety of reasons, do not identify by that category. The only likely exception I can see is for an individual with significant neurological and/or endocrine aberrations.

TL;DR When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.


 * Thanks. This entire concept seems like a bunch of nonsense to me. I've nominated it for deletion. Carpetsmoker (talk) 13:10, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

Questioning overlap with Otherkin
This one might be me, but the arguments that are used here are very similar to those made by Otherkin. Specifically, the overlap with claiming detractors as being transphobic/abelists, using overinclusivity to justify their existence and the complete lack of scientific consensus with "you have to respect them" being the only argument made in favor of it. If I at least understand the basics properly, both Otherkin and Xenogender as concepts also come from the fringes of the "MOGAI" community. Should we put a link to Otherkin (as well as Therian which seems to deal with a specific subsection) on this page? 13:42, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Quotation question
Is 'Things exist without being prove.' thus written in the source?

If so does the 'bad grammar = probable bad logic' rule apply? Anna Livia (talk) 12:40, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

Unnecessary detail?
"Created on 13 June 2020, one carrd in widespread circulation identifies itself as having been created by Twitter user [...], who (without updating the carrd) changed their username to [...] a few days later, and again a few days after that to [...], and then just went ahead and deleted their account."

- article text at the time of writing, slightly redacted

Is there actually a need to track whatever they change their account name to and repeatedly link it? IMO, that's intrusive and creepy (possibly even inviting personal attacks), especially noting that at least one of the people the said carrd lists is a minor, according to their profile info.

RIFF WAVEfmt (talk) 10:55, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

This article is incredibly bad
First of all, this page links twice to MOGAIpedia, which is clearly a transmedicalist source, as shown by what this page links to (which promotes pro-transmedicalist talking points, such as how "demedicalisation" will result in health insurance no longer covering transition (which is a strawman), needing gender dysphoria to be trans, mocking there being a large number of genders, etc.) Other such wonderful sources that are being used include random forum posts and tweets/blogs from irrelevant people. The scientific studies being used are being taken out of context, promoting another common transmedicalist talking point that trans people are valid because their brains are of the opposite gender. There are many problems with this: 1, this is an average, and there is no way to definitively tell a male brain from a female brain (similarly to how you can't tell someone's sex from their height even though they have different averages), 2, gay men have similarly been found to have brains structured like the other sex but not all gay men are trans, 3, as sex is not a binary, many brains do not fit in with a "feminine vs masculine" model, 4, most of the people who promote this point have not had their brain scans. The article is promoting other transmedicalist viewpoints, like gender not being a social construct, which is easily debunked if you look at how masculinity and femininity have varied over time or between cultures or how many cultures have more than two genders in their societies. It's similar to the problems that got Intuitive eating deleted: The subject may be missional, but when an article promotes pseudoscience (in this case, transmedicalism), then it is unsalvageable in its current state and anyone who wants to create an article on the subject would be better off starting from scratch. Basically, I think this article should be deleted, but the one time I tried to remove some of the problematic content I got quickly reverted, so what do I know. Plutocow (talk) 03:31, 27 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't know why the AfD was a "keep" to be honest. Can anyone explain what is different between "xenogender" and the more typical terms for what this seems to be, "non-binary gender identity"? ("Genderqueer" as well but the former is what you will see more in scholarly papers.) As far as I can gather, "xenogender" and a whole bunch of related categories is a Tumblr neologism of this concept, a word of little importance outside that specific social media or certain non-binary communities. If you replace "xenogender" with "non-binary" in the article, you realize what a shitty article this becomes, because non-binary gender identity is at this point documented phenomenon and part of the gender dysphoria spectrum, making some of the "there is not a shred of evidence" statements seem bunk. Admittedly, xenogender encompasses some more "out there" concepts (the whole "my gender cannot be understood by human understandings of gender" you sometimes see with this category is pompous posturing), but first impression is that a lot of it is more social media constructs, categorization, and role playing instead of being true woo. PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 14:38, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
 * It is woo though. Specifically it's unfalsifiable nature and its adherence to the far more out there concepts. As far as "little importance" goes, it has been semi-mainstreamed when the majority of the community moved from Tumblr to Twitter, where the 280 character limit has proved to be a useful vehicle for mainstreaming the concept (because disagreeing with any concept on Twitter, no matter how obvious bullshit it is tends to get you Godwin'ed since people have to infer your complete opinion from those 280 characters). There is a difference between non-binary (aka merely identifying as "neither male or female") and xenogender (which is a far more abstract concept in terms of identification and often takes the shape of things that just don't even attempt to make logical sense). To some extent, gender is something we define based on the expectations we place on someone (hence "gender is a social construct") as well as personal identification.
 * The various entries under the xenogender umbrella meanwhile don't really carry any sort of sensible expectations on someone: even if you identify yourself as a "catgender" or an "angelgender" or whatever other silly concept you decide to be a "gender", it doesn't carry any expectations. That is without even getting into the "genders that can't be comprehended by humans" crud which veers straight into the realm of unfalsifiability. Furthermore, the personal identification is often never really given or is considered to be undefinable by the person; ask someone who is trans why they know they are trans: you often get an answer that amounts to "I enjoy being called the other gender more" and "I have always had a history of liking girly/boyish things" and all the other interviews the media loves to show off when someone comes out as trans.
 * The same often fits for non-binary people (can be as simple as "I thought about it for a while, and I just don't think I'm either a boy or a girl"/"I experienced dysphoria but I don't feel comfortable as the opposite sex"). Ask someone why they know they are identifying as a particular brand of xenogender and you usually either get told "you just don't understand it" (which... isn't exactly an argument and dodging the question) or it's a vague thing about "gender is a social construct, I can make a gender be whatever I want" (which is bad reasoning, gender as a social construct is still a spectrum of two general extremes which we broadly categorize as male and female). The current article isn't that great, being written quite clearly by someone who has transmedicalist beliefs (although it does not appear to be enbyphobic), but it's fairly fixable.
 * As to whether we should cover it; it bears missionality because Xenogender woo is a case of nutpicking for far right individuals to hate on transgender and non-binary people which fits it in the coverage about authoritarianism and the media covering it. With that in mind however, we need to take care to not step in the fallacy of "because far righties use it to be a bigot, it must actually be a good thing", that I've occasionally seen on the internet. Rather we should give it it's fair assesment on it's own, recognize that it is often used to nutpick and base our article around that. Based on my own assesment (as outlined in the comment), I would consider it to be at least woo, even if it is mostly harmless woo (kinda like how audiophiles tend to sink to audio woo, which hey we have an article about!). That doesn't make it "evil", but it does make it notable to cover. 15:23, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Also to answer the "what makes it different from non-binary gender identities" (sorry I missed that one!), the difference is mostly that xenogenders are just the most extreme version of those kinds of gender identities. Being non-binary is a thing (check our article~), but there is a core difference between two. As you can see with our article on non-binary genders, most of those relate to specific social classes and expectations. Furthermore, even if we look at what I'll just call the "modern" kind of non-binary, that one is far more concerned with throwing away the concept of having those expectations in the first place. Xenogenders tend to differ in the last one; they don't want them thrown away, they want their (oft bizarre and poorly defined, see previous comment) chosen new "identity" (often tied into aesthetics more than anything else) to carry the same expectations we put on someone who identifies as male or female, yet don't have the definition as to what that means.
 * There is a reason that this community tends to swing overwhelmingly young: Teens going through puberty tend to feel unsure and uncertain about everything, and depending on an overactive imagination, that can even include their gender identity (I want to stress however for full clarity: no, not all teenagers who are questioning their gender identity are doing so because of an overactive imagination, I'm purely talking about those who choose to resort to xenogender-esque material). Nearly all of these teenagers to my understanding grow out of the xenogender stuff and either revert to their assigned at birth gender, recognize that they're non-binary instead (basically realizing that what they were really looking for was non-binary) or identify as the opposite gender. To me this suggests that "Xenogenders" are more the product of teenagers not fully understanding certain concepts as well as the desire for teenagers to find a group/identity to belong with. 15:39, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Stop reverting all my edits
You're seriously getting on my nerves. What's gotten into you? MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 11:35, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I’ve reverted two of your edits that I thought made the article worse, it’s not some personal vendetta. This discussion should be on Talk:Xenogender. Christopher (talk) 11:38, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I can place the banner at the bottom of the page, but I'm not taking it to the talk page, otherwise, it will never get solved. Nobody reads the talk page since clearly, it has many issues, but no one bothered to ever fix them. The page has already been merged into another article a long time ago because it was pretty bad already. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 11:41, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I mean the discussion we’re currently having on my talk page should be on Talk:Xenogender, I’ll move it now. Christopher (talk) 11:43, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
 * It will never be fixed if nobody ever sees that there are problems with this article. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 11:45, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Sticking a massive, ugly messagebox at the top of a page listing your problems with it isn’t how things are done here. The rated template at the top of the talk page already says it’s significantly problematic, community consensus is clearly that this article isn’t terrible enough to warrant unique treatment. List your objections on the talk page, and if you feel the issues still aren’t being resolved then fix them yourself. You could stick the article in a few Category:Articles requiring attention subcategories if you want an indication on the article itself. Christopher (talk) 11:49, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Here is the messagebox that sparked the edit war, both as a record of Mario’s problems with the article (there’s some overlap with the problems people have already mentioned) and so that people see what I meant by “massive and ugly”.

Christopher (talk) 12:02, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Sure, it is tall since I did not know how to condense it any further, but that's not the problem. The issue here is that it is impossible to let people know that there is a problem with the article if it's not right on their face and this message box was perfect for that. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 12:12, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
 * As I’ve already said, most people don’t think the article is as bad as you do. There’s no justification for special treatment. Letting that template stay would be like letting this edit from yesterday go unreverted. Christopher (talk) 12:22, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
 * False equivalence. This edit was a clear-cut example of whitewashing. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 12:29, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
 * You’re throwing fallacies at one offhand comment I made but ignoring my main points. This isn’t how things are usually done, and you definitely don’t have a mandate to treat this article differently based on the AfD. Christopher (talk) 12:42, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Depending on transphobic sources is problematic and such sources should be critiqued where appropriate, but there's no rule that articles can't refer to "sketchy" sources if they're relevant, just as there's no ban on linking to social media like Twitter and Tumblr. With a topic like this, there isn't much in the way of peer-reviewed high-status content to use. Certainly if you have any better sources, post them here or put them in the article. --Annanoon (talk) 12:27, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
 * A quick review here to see what is wrong, both in the eyes of the notice poster and in my own, and how it can be improved:
 * MOGAIpedia reference. Both of these reference the same page. This is easily cleanable because much of it has been deemed to be bunk ("Though almost universally hated, many now-mainstream LGBTQ tenents originate therein, including the idea that one doesn't need to experience gender dysphoria in order to be transgender and opposition to transmedicalism.[14]" is a line that does not add a lot to the paragraph it's in). Meanwhile, the other reference to MOGAIpedia is a double reference so to my opinion it is mostly irrelevant to keep or remove, but given transmedicalism is kind of a bad think, we can probably remove it safely. (Think of it like not linking to InfoWars when they have a stopped clock moment when we have a better source).
 * Removal of social media links. Don't really see this as an issue? A lot of our articles rely on direct sources. We aren't Wikipedia, this is fine. Would recommend a greater emphasis on archiving these though. We have archive templates, use them I say. As a whole, the article could perhaps do with a little less reliance on "naming and shaming". I do concur that most of this is being espoused by dumb teenagers/young adults, and given they're not of note, we can easily reference it in more general terms.
 * Finally, there's the current Argument from Autism: Only the P1 for the first bit concerns me, because it is textbook transmedicalism. Fortunately, for this logical fallacy to work, it is not required for P1 to be faulty. I would therefore propose scrapping this element and focusing more on how P2 is faulty, which it very blatantly is. Autistic/neurodivergent people don't perceive social constructs "differently". They simply have a more difficult time understanding them and have a habit of being a bit more literal in how they understand them once they do. I am speaking on that one from both the experience of myself (although this comes with the giant asterisk that I don't have a diagnosis because of the simple fact that an actual diagnosis would be more debilitating for me than it would help me, I have my own life sorted together in a way that makes sense for me and I don't need that sympathy card from people or a shrink telling me how to live my own life) and of friends. To put this very clearly: I do get social constructs, I do get how to behave socially, but for me from what I understand moreso than others, that understanding is a very learned one. On my own I don't have a social drive, social interactions exhaust me but I do understand them. None of this suggests that I perceive social construct or social interactions in a "different" way any more than someone who is neurotypical. This is the core flaw with the argument from autism.
 * None of these fixes need a lot of work to the page itself, and none really warrant an AfD. So please by the gods... just do some of these changes. And make them changes. Not pre-emptive purges. While I don't object to being bold and fixing things, all the fixes that have currently been done are removing outright sections. Use a scalpel, not a shotgun. 13:01, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I took out the second of the two MOGAIpedia references. This shit isn't difficult, you just need something to put there instead. 13:13, 1 March 2021 (UTC)


 * It wouldn't make sense to let a faulty P1 stay without mentioning it's faultiness. If both P1 and P2 are faulty, both should be mentioned as such. Immiscible (talk) 23:14, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
 * (Regarding P2:) Speaking from my own experience (I am autistic), some neurodivergent folk perceive some social constructs differently. I know that this is true because there are some social constructs that I perceive differently, even when fully explained to me. I'll be able to understand and interact with how others perceive the social construct, but it's not necessarily the case that I will perceive it that way. Sometimes I have an already formed way of perceiving the particular social construct that works much better (for me) than the way others perceive it. Sometimes I don't have any already formed way of perceiving the particular social construct, but the way others perceive it continues to be, in some way that I may or may not be able to immediately articulate, "wrong" (for me). Immiscible (talk) 23:14, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Not to mention the problems with P1: the article says that gender isn't a social construct, then admits that gender is a social construct? This article has not improved and I'm just tempted to AfD it again. Especially since it was just a redirect to a section of the Nonbinary article until one person decided to use this to soapbox their transmedicalist views. Plutocow (talk) 23:55, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

Contesting Techpriest's paragraph removal
Specifically, "those Xenogenders are mainly used by people in the autism spectrum as they believe their gender to be much more specific" as Techpriest stated that "reflect autism debunking later in the article". I think we can all agree that Xenogender is somewhat made-up as I previously reflected by stating that there was not a shred of evidence within Psychology, the science that studies social constructs, that it is real, but let's not overthrow the fact that although it is made-up autistic people have observably been using Xenogenders for a while and that should be noted in some form or another. Granted, due to the already scarce presense of citations on the subject as a whole, I can't conceivably find a reliable source on this particular statement, but that doesn't make it false, it would take some digging on Twitter and Tumblr alone just to find some examples of autistic people who refer to themselves as a Xenogender. One example that comes to mind was the person that claimed to be a "Catgender", they are autistic. I am certain Baaphomet, who is mentioned in the article, is also diagnosed autistic. I shall reiterate that I do not disagree with the fact that Xenogender are anything, but bullshit, however the article should at least present all the facts and this is one of them. 21:18, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
 * It's a bit of a double-up. We already mention the autism thing later down the line in our introduction ("Xenogenders became quasi-mainstream in around June 2020, losing their MOGAI connotations and becoming associated with neurodiversity and autistic people's supposed "unique relationship to gender"."), so mentioning it that early is duplicative and it made the sentence flow weirdly so I removed that. -- Techpriest (talk) 21:30, 17 September 2021 (UTC)