Open discussion: do "men" and "woman" really exist?

[Ive]

Hello everyone,

I am sorry of flooding the Forum in the last days.
This time I would like to set an open discussion, where everyone can say hez thought, with the objective of being constructive about what is discussed.

The topic comes from a doubt of mine.
Every time I start thinking at manhood and womanhood, I get lost. There is something that I am not able to get.
Let me do an example.
I feel a woman, but my body is male. Watching around in the society, I am can define as a transgender MTF (or MbF - Male-bodied Female).
Now take away the society. Take a first group of persons (independently from the bodies they have) says to me that they feel female, or "X-es". I feel female too, so I belong to this group too. Then, a second group of persons says to me: we feel man, or "Y-es". I don't feel like them. The genitalia (for reproduction and pleasure purposes) of the two groups are mixed: some of the first groups have penises, vaginas, both, none, and the same is for the second group.
My first question is: on what they can say they are X-es or Y-es?
A new person arriving, with random genitalia, can feel to belong the both groups.
Another one arrives, and says to not belong to any of the two groups, making a Z-es group.
Down to the (appearance of the) world we live in, there seems to be only two poles (X and Y), that I would not call manhood and female hood, but T and P, which are defined by progesterone and testosterone. In this sense, does even make sense to talk about men and women? Are we only beings which brain wants more P or T, or both, or none?
The proof of this seems to be the concept of masculine and feminine, which changes over different societies and time. There is just no real definition there.
Taking the Genderbread person (http://itspronouncedmetrosexual.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Genderbread-Person-3.3.jpg), the two "poles" man/woman are too variant to me. I think that this is making me uncomfortable, as X-es/Female and Y-male can be mixed-genitalia, with identificative expressions changing over time and space.
Maybe it would be less blurry to use P and T as "poles", if a pole should exist. But poles "seem" to exist, at least apparently, in the (appearance of the) world we experience every day.
Maybe if a third hormone would exist, K, the poles would be three.

What do you think about this?
The discussion is open.

I am sorry if this may be stupid, or may offend someone. If so, please accept my deepest apologies.

Kisses,
Iv.

[Ive]

And, oh, yes, this post of mine can make no sense at all, in which case it can be also removed with no problem

[Michelle_P]

The male/female binary for defining gender is a Western European cultural concept fried into the brains of most of the world's population as 'natural law'.  Sex, as applied to sexual reproduction in biology, is binary, but not necessarily fixed.  (See clownfish and many types of worms, for example.)

Gender, not so much.

There are many dimensions to gender, as we see here every day, and individuals are not necessarily even locked in place on many of these dimensions.  It's just the deviation from the culturally specified acceptible genders that causes problems. 

There are the intersex variations that your post seems to hint at.

There's gender identity, that drives those of us transitioning to align our identity and body.

There's gender presentation, that drives our appearance in social gender roles.

There are gender roles, that drives our behaviors in social gender interactions.

Those are just crude categorizations.  We see here every day folks whose position in all these categories varies from matching the gender state assigned at birth.  The variations are due to everything imaginable that can influence the growth of an organism, but the end result is someone whose current state somehow doesn't match the stereotypical state and associated social expectations for their gender state assigned at birth.

That nonconformity is what causes our discomfort and need for change.

[SadieBlake]

There are some real difficulties in defining gender or even biological sex. For a long time(60s-80s) research into differences between male and female brain operation was unpopular to the extent it couldn't be studied (See book "Brain Sex" 1989 isbn 0385311834.

Of course understanding of transexuals today principally depends on that research but it's still far from clear. What we believe is that M vs F brain can be influenced by hormone levels in-utero.

What seems clear today is that cis men and women are measurably different in how we think - there's absolutely overlap but the differences are sufficient that from a standpoint of biology to say yes, male and female exist.

I prefer the older terminology that places sex and division into male/female as biology and gender as a division between masculine and feminine traits as more of a social construct. And there also I think there are differences that aren't hard to say exist and for me are hard to say don't exist.

What's most clear and important to me is that the most masculine - thinking cis female can be less feminine minded than the most feminine - thinking cis male. Some neurophysiology things are also measurably different between cis genders, e.g. orgasm. And then the variations in experience within male and female populations seem at least as broad as the difference between the biological sexes.

Lastly, knowing this topic from a lot of different directions, I can also say I know I don't understand it. How feel about your questions is you might want to read what others have already had to say on the subject. For my part I like Julia Serano's book Whipping Girl.

[Ive]

Michelle_P and SadieBlack,

you were very kind (and brave) to reply to this post. Maybe I am thinking I wrote something intelligent, and this is not. But I think that it is important, at least for me, to discuss about this.

Maybe I am going too far here. I don't know if I have a point or something.
To say the truth, all this male/female thing makes me confused, also for the fact that a female can be an individual with vagina and progesterone-modelled body and/or a with a penis and testosterone-modelled body. As this is possible... I cannot define female as an individual having a vagina and progesterone-modelled body... can I?
(In this case, transitioning would be the pure feeling of what fits you best, independently from society)

Down to your replies, I would like to discuss more on the fact that gender identity is related to something at the "feel" level, and and "identity" level (which is, I am like you), which seems having two poles. Then any individual may feel to belong to one of the two, or both, or no one of the two.
So, what is a man, and what a women, maybe they are a feeling, related somehow to something created by Testosterone or Progesterone, or maybe some kind of "soul". The source can also be unknown. What is interesting is that one feels something, which has two and only two poles.
At least, to the best of my knowledge, there is no third pole, that is neither male nor female, but Z. Or maybe there is. And feeling is the key to identity.

Maybe the concept of "gender" makes sense only for expressing/describing the feeling of being/belonging/feeling like male (undefined), female (undefined), Z, etc., which are just "poles" and do not define what they are. It a feeling.
Consequently, "gender expression" it should be called only "expression", so to detach totally expression of one's self from gender, which, again, has two poles. The same for "gender role".

What do you think about it?
You can also send me to hell

Kisses,
Iv.

[Ive]

Uhm... reading better your replies, maybe I am saying the same as you: nobody knows what gender is.