″...and in any case I prefer to live in a culture with (at least) two genders.”
That specific formulation sounds appalling to me, actually. If they’ve done the self-realization thing right, each individual ought to constitute his or her own gender without needing to conform to the shallow norms of society, except where they have explicitly chosen otherwise. So in a sense, my ideal society would reflect infinite genders, filling out every available nook and cranny of human experience.
I don’t think identity is cleanly separable from culture. Each individual’s gender expression is going to be unique or at least close to it, but gender is a property of identity and defines a relation between behavior and cultural expectations.
″...and in any case I prefer to live in a culture with (at least) two genders.”
That specific formulation sounds appalling to me, actually. If they’ve done the self-realization thing right, each individual ought to constitute his or her own gender without needing to conform to the shallow norms of society, except where they have explicitly chosen otherwise. So in a sense, my ideal society would reflect infinite genders, filling out every available nook and cranny of human experience.
(Okay, now to reread The Sequences in sequence.)
Then gender is identical to identity; you’ve ruined gender’s identity.
I don’t think identity is cleanly separable from culture. Each individual’s gender expression is going to be unique or at least close to it, but gender is a property of identity and defines a relation between behavior and cultural expectations.