Talk:Xenogender

Hostility
While I'm not too sure about my opinion on xenogenders, this article definitely feels incredibly hostile towards the concept, and consequently, people who have xenogenders. Sentences like "Criticism of Xenogenders has typically come from its complete lack of psychological evidence" feel a bit mean (especially the emphatical italics) and need revision in my opinion. Being skeptical of the concept is fine, but the way this article talks about it could be mistaken as contempt for those that have xenogenders. I'm going to assume it was written in good faith and that it's just an issue with tone, but I still think it should be changed to make it more clear where the skepticism is targeted. armed_roomba (she/her)What am I doing wrong this time? 21:37, 6 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Coming back to this as my edits were (understandably) rolled back. I assumed that I could go ahead with edits in this vein since nobody brought up objections, but just bumping this so people can interject with their own ideas. armed_roomba (she/her)What am I doing wrong this time? 17:50, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't have much detailed input, but I think it makes sense that there's still a problem with the tone of the article. After all, the article used to contain "truscum" bias, and while explicit parts of that were removed, implicit ones may remain. Anyway, I restored your changes, since they were just typo fixes, etc., and so shouldn't have been undone. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 18:17, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I would go farther than implicit bias, see my comments on the italics around "complete lack of psychological evidence". The article just feels mean and unsympathetic. I think a major rewrite is in order. armed_roomba (she/her)What am I doing wrong this time? 18:31, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
 * It's not sympathetic because well... it's pseudoscience/woo. Generally harmless pseudoscience and woo, but it's still pseudoscience/woo. -- Techpriest (talk) 20:18, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
 * No yeah I totally agree with you after reading this article. Along with other reasons it's bad (terrible citations or none). BumblingBuffoon (talk) 19:32, 20 October 2021 (UTC)


 * I found a thesis arguing another justification from 2014, the author argues from a point of "finding your own box in a cisheteronormative world",Link, I'll try to add this to possibly provide some balance. There's this article too cited by wikipedia for its xenogender definition, haven't read it yet though. Added some stats I found on the fandom page too, hopefully these will curb the lack of citations. -- WrappedEyeCandy (talk) 03:11, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

Is Xenogender capitalized?
We need to come to a consensus on this one, the inconsistency bothers me. armed_roomba (she/her)What am I doing wrong this time? 18:05, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
 * It seemed so from the start of the article, so I (also) went with it being so, but if others think that's wrong, I don't mind it being changed throughout the article. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 18:17, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Some searching on the web finds both capitalized and non-capitalized uses, but non-capitalized are more common. So it may be best to pick that instead. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 18:24, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Uncapitalized works, all my capitalization makes it look weird on a reread. armed_roomba (she/her)What am I doing wrong this time? 18:31, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
 * And done. Page looks better now, definitely the correct choice. armed_roomba (she/her)What am I doing wrong this time? 18:41, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Non-capitalized seems better yeah. -- Techpriest (talk) 20:17, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

According to who?
"Most common research in the late 2010s and early 2020s has been focusing more and more on gender and how we understand it, meaning it enters the pop culture understanding." What does it mean by common research? Does it mean research on gender, gender identity, non-binary? What? This line is confusing and non-specific. Also the title quote is a strawman and probably needs a source quote. "According to some person on tumblr". BumblingBuffoon (talk) 19:28, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Quote removed. Good catch on that, didn't think to edit it but definitely has no place in the article. I think the line you refer to is talking about how more and more research into gender and gender identities causes more fringe ideas surrounding gender to enter the mainstream, but you are correct that it is incredibly confusing and does not really fit. armed_roomba (she/her)What am I doing wrong this time? 19:31, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Done. Hopefully looks better now. There are still massive issues with uncited conclusions in this article that need attention ASAP. armed_roomba (she/her)What am I doing wrong this time? 19:40, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah I inserted that part (as well as the conclusion in general, which is basically an admittance/reminder to the reader that we're talking about arguments made mostly by teenagers). Sorry that was an embellishment. Unfortunately most of my evidence for this can be filed away as anecdotal; kind of an annoying thing for something where we don't have a lot of conclusive studies for. To me the most damning thing is just how exceptionally young Xenogenders swings; when you look at say, the LGBTQ+ coming out rate or gender identity rate, we see that stuff kinda happen across age groups; I can list some people who only realized they were gay at 50, people who only realized they were transgender at 45 and non-binary people at 48 (for privacy's sake, not actual ages listed). Meanwhile I've yet to see any example of someone above 40 being a Xenogender; it seems extremely concentrated in youth, with a lot of anecdotal examples fizzling out over the years. -- Techpriest (talk) 20:17, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

One of the main problems of those claims is that they mirror transphobic talking points, if you replace xenogender with transgender, the arguments are indistinguishable. See links: [| 1] [2] I'd be careful making those kinds of points, because they tend not to age well. This topic is a hazard. BumblingBuffoon (talk) 20:47, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
 * While this is definitely a hazardous topic, ignoring it isn't a solution. This article is on mission and has some good parts that should be saved. Your second point definitely reminds me of the "replace that with women" meme (I hate sandwiches. Now replace sandwiches with women. Not so funny now, is it?). I agree with you here, but imo that's not the best point to justify it. I'm still not quite sure where specifically I stand on the issue, but it's definitely at least a little more sympathetic to people with xenogenders than this article. armed_roomba (she/her)What am I doing wrong this time? 20:53, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
 * The problem is that from an attacker's side, who hates both trans people and xenogenders, they want to get you to hate both trans people and xenogenders. Since xenogenders are the easier target, admitting this throws a potentially vulnerable person under the bus. I don't think it is a wise idea to be bullying people for the crime of exploring their own identity, especially when that doesn't seem to be harming anyone. I think the better approach would be to hold the attackers of trans people, i.e transphobes, to the fact they are just engaging in a balance fallacy "comparing apples to oranges" rather than joining in on them on a hate bandwagon on some random person you think is silly, especially given that that person is likely a child, and trying to avoid a much more robust area of debate scientific reality that has sources behind it and way more activism. If someone identifies as a goat I literally don't care, this is a completely irrelevant point to bring up about someone and focuses on meaningless qualities, something that racists, sexists, transphobes, and other types of asshole have done for ages. I'm not here to engage in that. BumblingBuffoon (talk) 21:11, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
 * To be clear the flawed argument used by transphobes is a case of Motte and bailey, not balance fallacy. That aside, we refute xenogenders because it is flat out woo. It's kids with a partial understanding of the concept that "gender is a social construct" applying it in the silliest way possible, likely in an attempt to be unique. Car woo is largely harmless and we refute that because it still is woo. Just because it's kids doesn't mean we shouldn't refute the bad reasoning that is used to justify the woo. It means we however do need to add that as a partial "softener" of sorts to make it clear we're not writing articles to dunk on dumb teenagers/young adults. As for BB - your second link 404s for me. That said, I do not quite see the value in simple wordswapping here. Xenogender != Transgender. One has almost a century of visible research behind it (more if you remember the Nazis burned a lot of it too), the other is a bunch of New Age woo with zero academical backing. -- Techpriest (talk) 22:17, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I used balance fallacy solely because on this wiki it is lumped in as an alternative form of the false equivalence fallacy (comparing two distinct things as if they are the same or apples and oranges), clearly transgenders (apples) are not oranges (xenogender). Fixed second link, mostly it goes on to also repeat that sources used in the first one have been criticized for flaws. BumblingBuffoon (talk) 23:11, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

Roomba Edits the Xenogenders Page Part XVIII: The Criticism Section
"Criticism of xenogenders has typically come from a lack of psychological evidence supporting their existence, as unlike more common gender identities, they rely on validating themselves[citation needed] (while research into non-binary identities is still sparse, binary transgender identities are typically well understood)". Does any gender have "psychological evidence supporting their existence"? I tried rephrasing the sentence to remove that section (as I get what this portion is trying to say and it does make sense), but nothing really avoided the problem. I could just be wrong, and there is psychological evidence of male and female identities (saying that they are "typically well understood" isn't really sufficient in my opinion, especially as it invalidates the existence of non-binary people in that same sentence if you operate under that assumption), but I'd like to either source that claim or get rid of it while adding something that doesn't bring up questions rather than answer them. armed_roomba(she/her)What am I doing wrong this time? 18:51, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

the article needs a big rewrite
Attempts to argue for the need to "empirically prove a gender" for it to be valid is borderline transmedicalism, as gender is a social construct, has very little connection to biological sex, is connected to a social identity, which can be understood as more abstract concepts, such as objects or animals. I'd say that this page needs a big rewrite, less focus on MOGAI (apart from a history point of view) and on supposedly "debunking xenogender arguments". If anyone wants to rewrite the page, it'd be welcome.


 * Whether or not you personally believe that transgender identities have a biological cause, the human concept of gender, in all its diverse glory, is ultimately rooted in sex differentiation — just like our extremely diverse culinary culture developed from our basic sense of hunger. And while I'm not against unconventional identities per se, "xenogender" seems to me to be stretching the word "gender" way beyond its original context and to the point that it loses all meaning. - Linneris (talk) 09:50, 11 April 2023 (UTC)