Reading through the comments is making me interested in the difference in transgendered people in cultures with gendering versus ones that keep it neutral.
Like if there are more trans in neutral cultures because gendering isn’t as important, and where gendering is cultural there are less due to an ingrainedness of it all?
Gender variant expression is found across all human societies (probably gender/sexual dysphoria too), but transgender identification (and third genders) seems highly culturally dependent.
Hard to know what impact language has. It’s perfectly possible that in cultures without as much linguistic gendering, there’s less trans identification because there’s less gendered language to attach to or push away from.
I don’t think there is much relation between a community using a language with no genders and its transgender population size. Take China for example. The nouns in Chinese are not gendered, and the pronouns used to be gender-neutral until about a hundred years ago when “她” (she) emerged. There are few transgender people in China, partially due to the fact that they are not officially recognized, but I don’t think there would be many transgender people in China even if the government legally allowed it.
Because transgender is a concept that started in the western part of the world. It still has a long way to go to make its way into the East Asian countries. Take Taiwan for example. They legalized same-sex marriage a couple years ago, making them one of the most open places in Asia to the concept of LGB, but there aren’t many transgender people there either.
Reading through the comments is making me interested in the difference in transgendered people in cultures with gendering versus ones that keep it neutral.
Like if there are more trans in neutral cultures because gendering isn’t as important, and where gendering is cultural there are less due to an ingrainedness of it all?
Gender variant expression is found across all human societies (probably gender/sexual dysphoria too), but transgender identification (and third genders) seems highly culturally dependent.
Hard to know what impact language has. It’s perfectly possible that in cultures without as much linguistic gendering, there’s less trans identification because there’s less gendered language to attach to or push away from.
I don’t think there is much relation between a community using a language with no genders and its transgender population size. Take China for example. The nouns in Chinese are not gendered, and the pronouns used to be gender-neutral until about a hundred years ago when “她” (she) emerged. There are few transgender people in China, partially due to the fact that they are not officially recognized, but I don’t think there would be many transgender people in China even if the government legally allowed it.
That’s a wild take. What makes you say that about China?
Because transgender is a concept that started in the western part of the world. It still has a long way to go to make its way into the East Asian countries. Take Taiwan for example. They legalized same-sex marriage a couple years ago, making them one of the most open places in Asia to the concept of LGB, but there aren’t many transgender people there either.