A couple of years ago, I happened to take a very interesting grad-level anthropology course entitled simply “Masculinity” at the same time that I was having some perfectly normal doubts about my sexuality. Most of my time in the course was spent butting heads with the professor who felt that most of evolutionary psychology consisted of a way to roll us back to the dark ages on issues of sexual equality, but long story short, I came out the other end doubting whether not just gender (the cultural aspect), but sex (the biological aspect) was just a made up social construct. During the semester, we studied many cases of non-dichotomous sex and gender, such as the Bugis tribe in Indonesia for instance, recognize three sexes, and five genders, including an androgynous priestly class. I realized that even defining gender in a strictly biologic sense is somewhat problematic, given the unexpectedly high proportion of people with three sex chromosomes (XXX, XXY, or XYY), or ambiguous or dual genitalia. I only wish I had thought of linking zombies to the arguments back then like you did. The whole topic is ripe for discussion, and I would love to see more.
A couple of years ago, I happened to take a very interesting grad-level anthropology course entitled simply “Masculinity” at the same time that I was having some perfectly normal doubts about my sexuality. Most of my time in the course was spent butting heads with the professor who felt that most of evolutionary psychology consisted of a way to roll us back to the dark ages on issues of sexual equality, but long story short, I came out the other end doubting whether not just gender (the cultural aspect), but sex (the biological aspect) was just a made up social construct. During the semester, we studied many cases of non-dichotomous sex and gender, such as the Bugis tribe in Indonesia for instance, recognize three sexes, and five genders, including an androgynous priestly class. I realized that even defining gender in a strictly biologic sense is somewhat problematic, given the unexpectedly high proportion of people with three sex chromosomes (XXX, XXY, or XYY), or ambiguous or dual genitalia. I only wish I had thought of linking zombies to the arguments back then like you did. The whole topic is ripe for discussion, and I would love to see more.