A Friend on Torum asked: "Do you prefer to use the terms sex or gender when referring to men and women and everything in between?

Or in which situations do you use which term and why is that?

Do other animals have genders too? Maybe they don't because I haven't seen gender studies for lions, pandas, hyenas or mammals so far."

In my view (setting my personal bias against pseudoscience aside for a moment), these are synonyms and depend entirely on personal choice/style and circumstance. I believe that the word "gender" is more formal/scientific-sounding, while the word "sex" is more colloquial, as it infers an alternative (functional) meaning, while the word "gender" is pretty dry (no pun intended). I guess, when alluding to physical attributes/features of the anatomy, we would more commonly infer to male/female pair as "sex", but the overarching term, which is apt for everything from filling out an application form, to studying chromosomes is "gender". I believe that both terms may be used to describe the binary nature of animals. In the end, language is but a tool of communication--visual, tactile and/or verbal telepathy, if you will.  As long as we all agree on what is a "car", "man", "tree", "smile"... or even what defines more abstract concepts like "happiness", "love", "envy", etc. we're good. We understand one another. There is no need to overthink well-worn words.

Now for my personal view: for the record, I am not against anyone. However, I will go toe-to-toe with anyone who tries to control, contain or otherwise curb my rights to think for myself. I believe in a live-and-let-live world. We're all different and we must ALL respect that. I am informed and guided by my principles and past experiences, as are you and everyone else. I am impervious to attack, but dialogue works.

From where I stand, life becomes unnecessarily surreal and confusing when attention-seeking people, who've got too much time on their hands, begin to wonder publicly: "what is a woman?" We could also make an argument that a "dog" is an "ocean" or the "moon" equals "wind", but it does not make it so. Everyone's unique, so why doesn't everyone have a personal language and invent words every day? Because language is a communal utility and its only function is to communicate with others, so as to transfer ideas from our minds into theirs (even if "they" are our future selves). Ambiguity and confusion are the enemies of clear, coherent, clean thought transfer.   Relabelling a jar of pickles does not turn the contents into cherries. We're not wizards and witches, so saying something does not magically rearrange the framework of reality and make it so.  Sure, anyone could create a new language, where the SOUND "moon" stands for the CONCEPT of "wind", but the concept of Earth's BFF in the sky will never MEAN the concept of "wind"--unless it can be proven that the planetoid somehow influences the gusts of air, as it does the tide... still these are different concepts and conflating them would result in confusion. Yes, we can question and redefine everything... but why reinvent the wheel, when the basic parts of our reality are already sufficiently understood and appropriately labelled??    Is chasing our imaginary tails really the best investment of the time allotted to our civilisation? Shouldn't we strive to unlock the secrets of the Universe and, at least, spread throughout our tiny galaxy?  

Many words have been hijacked and bastardised by various political and social movements. Think: "socialism", "populism", "gay", "pride", "fascist"... Many memes have suffered the same fate. For example, a concerted attempt was made to hijack PEPE the Frog by some White Power groups and, ultimately, the stigma drove the creator to KILL the character...
"On May 6, 2017, on Free Comic Book Day, it was announced that Furie had killed Pepe off in response to the character's continued use as a hate symbol."  WTH, right?! Even he could not resist the tide of social consensus. But WHO decides what is and isn't a 'hate symbol'? That's quite a power of social control, right?

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-thursday-edition-1.3784062/pepe-the-frog-is-not-a-hate-symbol-says-creator-matt-furie-1.3784068
Indeed. This is what happens when the majority remains silent, while an insidious and toxic 'woke' minority rampages around, censors the voices of sanity and reason, and all the while ravages the core of our culture. A tipping point into idiocracy is, inevitably, reached and reality-denial sets in like a massive toothache.   "Communist!" "Populist!" "Capitalist!" "Liberal!" "Fascist!" Most people who throw these terms around have no idea what their true meaning is... and worse still, they don't care. What they really want is a big stick to beat and demonise their opponents with. As long as everyone around them agrees that [fill in the blank] is bad, they will agree to join in attacking whoever's accused of being [blank], usually without even confirming the veracity of the claim. Think witch hunts and inquisition in the Medieval Ages... Think Antisemitism or White Supremacy and other toxic labels today. Those throwing them around, like the Anti Defamation League (ADL), tend to revel in the power it gives them and, ironically, they're guilty of double standards and defamation of character themselves. However, they've become so brazen that they even blackmail people and companies with arbitrary slander which could implode stellar careers, cause crippling reputational damage and lead to cancellation, boycotts and, ultimately, bankruptcy. They openly say that it matters not whether there are grounds for the accusation, i.e., whether or not it's true. What matters is how they desire to shape public perception in order to achieve their political, funding and socio-engineering objectives.

For example, questioning anything that Israel does becomes "anti-Semitic", thus, this threat alone suffices to silence most of Israel's critics. Anyone unwise enough to speak their mind too loudly, is labelled as an anti-Semite and suffers the full brunt of the cancel culture. Just look at Corbyn, whom we discussed a few days back. I am glad to learn that Elon Musk is on the verge of suing ADL. Maybe he can make a difference where the world has rolled over and failed.

https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1699853431765192828?s=20  

A bit more background on the mafia-like corrupt ADL: 
https://x.com/stclairashley/status/1702126809310003710?s=20

I posted on Twitter a year ago about this being the same ADL that categorises expressions like "White Lives Matter" and "It's OK to be White" as hate-on-display speech, while supporting BLM. Either we have freedom of expression or we don't. White people should NEVER be made to feel ashamed of their ethnicity. Neither should the black people, people of Hispanic or Asian origin or anyone else. It's the 21st century for St. Pete's sakes!

How is this kind of stigma EVER OK?! Everyone deserves to be happy in their skin and content about the circumstances of their birth. I am not sure I'd go as far as saying they should be "proud"... semantics, I know, but to me, personally... I see pride as a sense of accomplishment or achievement. I am not "proud" that I am 2 metres tall or was born male or like the dark blue colour. You understand, I had nothing to do with these facts and being lucky enough to have been blessed with excellent genes is something I am grateful for, not proud of. Alas! The problem is education and when people's brains have been addled by pseudoscience like 'the critical race theory' and 'gender reassignment', they simply lack the tools to think critically and make what used to be common sense deductions. This is why so many people also believe that reparations are a good idea. Most people are out for instant gratification. They seldom look at the big picture and think long term to extrapolate the logical consequences of their choices.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eNkT1T8jl4    

Another prime example is confusion by dilution, adding and adding extra meanings and nuances to a word until it loses all meaning e.g., tacking the suffix "phobia" to anything we support and using the new word to bash those who don't agree with us.  "islamophobia"... "homophobia"... "Russo-phobia", "xenophobia", etc., etc. Yes, yes, I get it the premise here is to say that all hatred stems from fear and an acute sense of personal inadequacy. However, "fear" has a broad spectrum, this tends to conflate revolution with terror. I may be afraid to soil my shirt when eating ice cream, but it would be incorrect to say that I am terrified of that possibility. Perhaps I don't like the colour purple or don't like the taste of Brussels sprouts, but that does not mean that I am scared of them. On the other side of the spectrum, I am terrified (within reason) of snakes, but I do not hate them... while I am not terrified of parasites like ticks, I DO despise them enough to want to kill them on sight. Claustrophobia and Arachnophobia, Agoraphobia, etc., are all genuine mental disorders, while racism, while a serious and disgusting problem, does not make the cut to qualify as a phobia, in my book.

Yes, I get it that the low octane thinkers who believe that the pigmentation of their skin or geolocation of their birth, or even the passport/nationality they hold somehow magically makes them exceptional and 'more special' than any given person from elsewhere. These people, with the room temperature IQs of Underpants Gnomes engage in magical thinking and are hateful, uncultured and pitiful in the extreme, but hardly phobic. They may think that the immigrants are here for their jobs, but deep down they know that it's the government and big business that "took 'ar jerbs". Ooops, does that make me a xenophobe-phobe?

Do I think these people are unhinged, ergo dangerous? Yes. I would not let my guard down with racists of any skin colour in the room (a common misconception is that all racists are white. This is a childish claptrap and reverse racism, which is a misnomer imo, is very prevalent these days among people who love to virtue signal and flex the victim's mindset, while demanding the right to victimise others through processes like reparations).
A lot of black people really don't think that they can be racist apparently, while spewing incredibly bigoted nonsense here's just one example: https://x.com/locdinwithzaza_/status/1702721229747097644?s=20

Remember this from just a month ago in South Africa? [facepalm]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xr-MKtxI4Mc

Do racists have a right to be that way? Also yes. Do I have the right to look down on them. Yes. Do they have a right to look down on me? Yes. Freedoms of thought and speech are immutable. So if our paths don't cross, all remains serene in my world... and theirs. Everyone's entitled to their world view. But things go awry in a hurry, and troubles begin, when people and nation states try to aggressively supplant/overwrite the thoughts and impose their views/policies/ideologies on others.

True racists tend to play the victim by taking offence on behalf of others and often try to project their stupidity onto you. Watch out, Friends!

Gender in this, gender in that... Who's afraid of the big, striped cat?

Again... to be clear: in my book, anyone is free to identify as whatever they want, to eat what they like, dress how they like, listen to any music and, in short, to live however they see fit. But... they have ZERO right to tell ME or you what to think or how to live. Their friends and family may indulge their delusions and be supportive, but as strangers, we have neither the cause, nor the patience, nor the compulsion to compromise our sanity by doing so. I call a man a man, a woman a woman and a spade a spade. The only in-betweens that I recognise are children, a.k.a., boys and girls. I have absolutely zero interest in LARPing with strangers to indulge their flights of fantasy that they're suddenly a wizard or some magical creature. Reality is complex enough without adding superstition to it. I am of the Christian faith, and reject mythology and cryptozoology. I find the contemporary 'assigned-at-birth' pseudoscience is more hare-brained than creationism and more hellbent than the unholy 'Holy' crusades. I see the indoctrination and mutilation of children as perverse, sadistic and even satanic--the worst form of child abuse and I want no part of it. Which is my right.  Gender is not a revolving door, stretchy, fluid or optional. Castration does not turn a man into a woman, any more than cutting off an appendage changes the taxonomic rank of a human. That's a simple fact of nature, like time or gravity. Throwing tantrums about it won't change reality. Have you seen the Human Centipede or Tusk? Grotesque experiments in the depths of depraved insanity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ipHRgnhMjo

In fact, I believe that this mass-castration fad is driven by the esG agenda of the WEF, which wishes to depopulate the planet. Without a doubt, this 'gender affirmation' will have an impact on population growth some 30 years from now. I guess the plastics and toxic chemicals aren't working fast enough to push humanity off the fertility cliff, so they brought out their steely knives. That's my opinion. You can have yours, which is perfectly fine. Discussing these topics is a healthy way of coping with our new normal. Alas! These days, the majority has capitulated and submitted to a tiny, albeit extremely virulent minority and people are attacking one another for 'wrong-think' without even pausing to consider what it is that they're defending. It's like the 5 monkeys experiment (hence the title of this article): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4vJ8l2NfIM

Noam Chomsky explains the self-censoring culture very well:

"I am sure that you believe everything that you're saying." He says to the interviewer, "And I am sure that if you believed something different, you wouldn't be sitting here with me today."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RPKH6BVcoM Here's a great video on his concept of manufacturing consent through social engineering and grooming from an early age: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34LGPIXvU5M   But it's naïve to think that these self-appointed censors, propagandists and arbiters of social moral justice are out to do good. Unfortunately, this has nothing to do with protecting minorities or defending the rights of others, and everything to do with virtue signalling and attention whoring, screaming like Mojo Jojo "Help, help, I'm being repressed!!!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtYU87QNjPw

So yeah, I believe in live-and-let-live, until someone treads on me or the freedom of others. Everyone is welcome to harbour any number of dreams, hopes, fantasies, fetishes and delusions. Their head = their thoughts = their business. That's all cool. But NOONE is welcome to tell ME what to think.  I am always happy to discuss and if they make a good point, I might even change my mind, but never due to peer pressure or coercion. The only trading pair for my ideas is facts and good faith.  I am very much against people attempting to infect the minds of others, especially the gullible minds of children, with their demented schizophrenia and reality-dysphoria. Trying to redefine the reality of others and break consensus norms, while contradicting monolithic axioms and empirical evidence accrued over the millennia of our entire evolution, just demonstrates a chronic lack of intelligence and creates unnecessary rifts in the fabric of our civilisation. That's how we'll end up living in an idiocracy.

Why return to the Dark Ages of pseudoscience and quackery, when we should aim to forge a bright future among the stars?!