Have you heard of Postgenderism?

EinMuffin · 2025-06-18T08:37:42+00:00

Honeslty, I used to agree with this and if I lived in a world where I get everything I want without negative consequences I would get rid of gender in a heartbeat.

But I don't agree with that anymore since it turns out a lot of people actually like their gender identity. A lot of people derive great joy from expressing their gender identity and I think for a lot of people it is a core part of their identity. I think any kind of movement to abolish gender is bound to fail because there is very little support for it.

It is probably easier and more effective to redefine what gender means in a way that enhances and doesn't limit self expression.

SvitlanaLeo · 2025-06-18T04:38:02+00:00

The argument against postgenderism is semantic: what postgenderists want to destroy is not necessarily what most people call gender. And no matter how dismissively people treat such arguments, they ultimately turn out to be correct.

I want to say that people don't want to call discrimination against men discrimination against men.

When women are banned from wearing pants, people call it discrimination against women and a violation of women's rights.

When men are banned from wearing skirts, even those who are against such bans don't want to call it discrimination against men in relation to women. People immediately start using vague terms that are incomprehensible to villagers, such as "social expectations of masculinity." No one wants to hold accountable those who directly violate men's rights to femininity.

People in society are different. There are people who violate men's right to freedom of gender expression. There are people who do not violate such a right. The former should be held accountable as offenders. Gender policing must not be legal.

This is how I think this issue should be discussed.

redshift739 · 2025-06-18T22:38:33+00:00

It would be better if people just didn't care whether you act like your gender or not. I jave the same expectations and standards regardless and no-one deserves special rights or responsibilities

QuantumCanis · 2025-06-18T04:03:55+00:00

TL;DR: Postgenderism does nothing good.

Postgenderism tries to fix the problems of gender by getting rid of it altogether, but it still relies on the same old binary thinking. It assumes gender only exists as a set of fixed roles, so if those roles are limiting, the whole concept of gender must be the issue. That completely misses the point.

A man who stays home and takes care of the housework while his spouse works isn’t doing something inherently feminine. He’s just dividing responsibilities like any adult. I had a similar conversation with a friend the other day, who declared he didn't feel "dominant" as a gay man because he is the homemaker, when I know he, in fact, is. Working and bringing home "the bacon" doesn't make you masculine, keeping the house clean and cooking doesn't make you "feminine."

The problem isn’t gender itself. The problem is the way society assigns value and identity based on narrow expectations. We don’t need to erase gender. We need to stop treating gender roles like they define what people are allowed to do and how societal responsibility is divided. Regrettably, postgenderism relies on these same, tired, binary roles.

Local-Willingness784 · 2025-06-18T16:10:57+00:00

i dont like how often these discussions go from "liberating" men to just impose a worldview not unlike the one some tradcon would put into a man but in the other way around, they see men expressing themselves in ways they consider "feminine" and throw more slurs and insults as if they felt the need to "dad" other guys about their lives while some of you people see men expressing in ways you deem "restricting" or even "toxicaly masculine" or "Patriarchal" and think you know better about their comfort than they know about themselves.

its maddening all around.

Throwawayingaccount · 2025-06-18T05:01:59+00:00

It would be counterproductive and ultimately self-defeating if implemented.

Gender roles exist largely because people TEND to exhibit certain behaviors depending on the amount of sex dependent hormones they have.

Do some people not react the same way to said hormones? Sure.

Do some people have different amounts of said hormones than others of their sex? Sure.

There have been studies about toys being given to young chimpanzees. The female chimpanzees preferred dolls. The male chimpanzees preferred toys that rolled, such as toy carts.

The same will happen with humans.

And people will notice it happening.

And if it's not explicitly matched to gender...

Then people will recognize a pattern, and ascribe it to sex.

ZealousidealCrazy393 · 2025-06-18T19:45:08+00:00

I grew up as a progressive gay man. Democrat all the way. Totally into personal liberty and fighting oppression, fighting conservatism, you name it. I look back and realize I internalized a lot of misandry that alienated me from masculinity, but I also realize that I genuinely did not want to be held to gendered expectations. I did not want anyone else to be held to those expectations, either. So in my younger days I would've agreed with a lot of what you said here.

Today, I love gender identity very much. It's the one thing I've got in this fucked up world that makes me feel like I know who I am and where I belong. I had to do a lot of work to grapple with masculinity, to feel like it was okay for me to be masculine, and to express masculinity. I am happier and love myself because of it. Feminism, the Democrats I was tangled up with, progressives, all the other members of the LGBT gang all told me gender was fake, masculinity was toxic, and that the way forward is liberation from gender. It was exactly the opposite for me. "Liberation" was the prison and adherence to gendered expectations is freedom. Not freedom in the sense of, "Oh hey, I can do whatever I want when I want," but freedom from chaos, confusion, and alienation. I firmly believe, with good reason, that our sex determines a huge amount about how we think and act, as well as how experience ourselves and the world. What we call gender roles extend from ancient biology. One of my biggest regrets in life is not learning this sooner.

Blauwpetje · 2025-06-18T05:37:18+00:00

The umpteenth denial of biology on this sub. Always when there’s a serious discussion about it, most people agree nature does play a role. And always after some time, people come up again with the ‘gender is a social construct’-mantra, essentially stolen from a misandrist movement, not all of a sudden applicable for men’s interests, and above all: untrue.

QuantumPenguin89 · 2025-06-19T06:18:03+00:00

Gender roles are not going to be abolished for as long as women tend to choose traditionally masculine men. Since even feminists don't like to criticize women's preferences, their standards for men, I don't see it happening. Even when they do they often don't practice what they preach. It's naive to think the existence of gender roles and gender norms can be confined exclusively to the sphere of dating, romance and sex, yet some believe they can have the cake and eat it too, that they can "abolish gender" in society while still going for the outwardly confident, assertive, dominant, stoic man who is tall, broad-shouldered and with a solid jawline, and who ideally has high status or is financially well-off, when it's time to select a partner. This may be a greater factor in how gender roles are upheld than how children are socialized. Men want to be attractive to women, they emulate those they observe are attractive to women.

Baby_Arrow · 2025-06-18T12:03:39+00:00

So you come to a place to advocate for men and offer erasure instead? lol

WanderingSchola · 2025-06-19T00:12:58+00:00

I think it's an obvious conclusion to gender troubles, but that it will take centuries to fully implement, and that it shouldn't be pursued at the exclusion of gendered advocacy and liberation now. Social construct /=/ imaginary or fake, it means society built it out of culture.

Adventurous_Equal489 · 2025-06-18T05:07:12+00:00

I think this is pointless as I do believe in some ways there should be elimination of gender essentialism particularly predestination that damns us all with parents and a society that won't raise children the best PERSON they can be because boys will be boys girls will be girls.

Gender essentialism is how tradition or not we coddled most girls become entitled parasite with no ambition just because they're girls so meh it's not worth challenging to overcome passivity and become productive citizens. Boys either truly concerning aggression is ignored or a healthy energy of a growing boy is attributed to future aggression. Because they're boys so meh they're damned if they do damned if they don't it's not worth guiding them, drop the sucker in a box and hope he doesn't kill someone when he grows up,

But the thing is gender itself still means something to the vast majority of people, their identity, their experience, their achievement, what have you. Gender abolishment is pissing in the wind because good luck getting people on board with giving up what they view a piece of their soul.

I can almost understand the goal but there's gotta be more practical ways to get the benefits of these ideas. We can start by changing how we handle parenting, to create the best person than letting generations of boys and girls succumb to their worst selves just because they come a natural place.

Speedy_KQ · 2025-06-18T15:16:23+00:00

The concept is asinine. The differences between males and females are real and meaningful (though there is variance) and nothing good comes from pretending they don't exist or trying to ignore them.

ComprehensiveCar4770 · 2025-06-18T21:41:36+00:00

Sounds like a concept I wrote for a course in college. I wrote a paper explaining that once technology gets advanced enough, gender norms will deteriorate to meaninglessness because anyone can become anything they want.

purpleblossom · 2025-06-18T23:03:35+00:00

Gender roles can be harmful but only if society treats them as an immutable requirement everyone must conform to and not a framework based on commonalities based on gender that differs depending on culture. However, gender itself is not harmful at all, and while some still use the term gender identity, that's contradictory when gender itself is an aspect of one's identity. As well, gender isn't a social construct, it is absolutely inherent, and you can tell that by talking to trans kids who still haven't had gender roles firmly take root. We experience gender in a way cis people don't, and even if the mainstream trans community have been led to believe the same, the people who invented the theory "gender is a social construct" not only really meant gender roles, but some who have continued pushing that theory are the same who created postgenderism.

Because the biggest issue here is that postgenderism is a radical feminist invention, from those later identified as trans exclusionary, who created the theory as a means of female supremacy. Their logic is that since everyone begins life "female" that "male" (and the related gender of man) are a mutation and need to be eliminated or controlled. They also believe that a postgender society would no longer have trans people, which is not true because gender incongruence has nothing to do with gender roles, but the original main target for postgenderism was and still is against trans men. We are seen as damaged women or suffering internalized misogyny so badly we want to "appropriate male privilege", both of which are signs of transandrophobia.

Ultimately, postgenderism is transphobic and misandrist, and not at all something any male advocate should support.

BloomingBrains · 2025-06-19T06:38:53+00:00

If there is no gender, how does a trans person distinguish themselves from a cis person? Without gender as a concept the only thing you can use to describe yourself is your biological assigned sex at birth. How can the phrase "I was born with a penis but I identify as a woman" or an equivalency of it exist? The sheer concept as "identifying" as something can't exist without gender.

What about styles of dress? There will always be dresses and suits, but how does one linguistically describe the differences between one and the other or explain one's preferences? Without gender, you can't refer to clothing as masculine or feminine. I really doubt people will suddenly start acting like all clothes are the same and completely interchangeable, unless everyone starts wearing identically androgynous clothing or something. There will always be people who want to express themselves in what we currently think of as a more femme or butch way, regardless of their AGAB, and even if the words they would use are different.

This idea is doing much more harm than good. There's nothing wrong with gender. Discriminating against people because of their gender is the problem. What you're suggesting is akin to amputating a finger because of a hangnail.

Fair-Might-5473 · 2025-06-19T15:06:53+00:00

Society by design requires sacrifice that Postgenderism cannot deliver. If Ukraine went Postgenderism,
it wouldn´t exist. This makes a lot of assumptions that simply cannot be made, because of human selfishness.

flashliberty5467 · 2025-06-23T04:26:08+00:00

I don’t think it’s realistic because people love to categorize things

People are a product of the society they were raised in and the time they were born in

I don’t think creating some post gender society is a realistically achievable goal

That being said the government should remove the gender markers from peoples government documents because it’s honestly not necessary

And the rights of nonbinary people should be respected and protected

GNSGNY · 2025-06-18T14:22:04+00:00

getting past oppressive gender roles is good. erasing gender itself is destructive. it has transphobic implications (that being trans is no different from gender nonconformity)

AshenCursedOne · 2025-06-18T06:43:03+00:00

Good luck, considering most non binary people and transgender people make their gender their entire personality and lifestyle, they self caricature themselves to overcompensate for their personal expression, at the cost of looking like they're clowning on themselves.

The people who care the most about gender expression and freedom are going to resist such ideas the most. Most binary people wouldn't care because there's almost nothing in it for them.

Femi_gnatzee_hunter · 2025-06-18T14:05:38+00:00

Not far enough. I am a post-sexist and proudly so.

Melodic-Antelope6844 · 2025-06-18T03:43:13+00:00

Yes I totally agree. I think this sub is more for AMAB people hence 'male' in the name and their rights. I don't acknowledge man/woman distinctions in day to day life and don't think others should either

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