What is Gender? | Philosophy Tube
Male, female, cis, trans – what is gender? What makes up your gender identity? Existentialism, Society, Genetics?
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Recommended Reading:
MarinaShutup – What’s the Difference Between Sex and Gender? http://tinyurl.com/oorvwla
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble
Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter
Gender as Performance: An Interview with Judith Butler, Interview by Peter Osborne and Lynne Segal – http://tinyurl.com/z7s2g7f
Julia Serano, Whipping Girl
A free lecture by philosopher Talia Bettcher, who would disagree with Serano’s approach and the emphasis she places on neurology: http://tinyurl.com/gnp38ms
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex
The overlapping Bell curves were drawn by Matt Ley, AKA The LaserBearGuy, because I suck at photoshop – thanks Matt!
Glow shine animation by AAVFX: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNAaC4qXVyQ
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@aliharris9728
October 25, 2025 at 5:40 pm
this isn't aging well
@jonathanhuerta7715
October 25, 2025 at 5:40 pm
so gender like masculinity and femininity in a way like masculine and feminine
@MultiLeandrini
October 25, 2025 at 5:40 pm
Subconscious sex sounds an awful lot similar to transmedicalism
@CapoOmerta
October 25, 2025 at 5:40 pm
I believe gender IDENITY 🪪 🆔 🧬 IS a social construct, NOT biological gender.. That is male or female is fixed. A man can NOT get pregnant , what you identify as should be accepted. Whatever it may be. Ying yang ☯️ is female and male energy inside EVERYONE. If someone wants to identify as a Christian why should that be scrutinized. If someone wants to identify not as their assigned gender. What is the difference. Whatever makes you sure of yourself and live your best life, imo .. is the best answer. Same people that have problems with trans 🏳️⚧️ 🧔♀️. Are the same ones secretly getting fckd by them. 💯. Live YOUR life. Stop worrying what other PEOPLE do with theirs. Period
@Iloveicecream_
October 25, 2025 at 5:40 pm
The world needs to hear this.
@marcelouhlig3475
October 25, 2025 at 5:40 pm
People come up with so much shit these days. It's like modern art. They randomly throw paint in a piece of canvas and try to make something out of it
@willvanzwanenberg6313
October 25, 2025 at 5:40 pm
What exactly is it that is being performed?
@randomfreak6078
October 25, 2025 at 5:40 pm
To be completely honest, I don’t understand gender that much at all. I identify as female and blue staric but I can’t really give a reason why. It just feels right at this point but if anyone actually asked why I’m not sure I could explain. I used to think it was just pronouns before because I have no clue what I am until someone refers to me using some random pronoun and it immediately feels wrong or right.
@UnicornClone
October 25, 2025 at 5:40 pm
Is it me or do her eyes roll when saying the word "penis" around the 6:40 point? And, yes, I said her because Abigail transitioned a few years after this video was made.
@napahengli
October 25, 2025 at 5:40 pm
This is all "according to Butler", but what is the reason for thinking Butler is correct?
Anonymous
October 25, 2025 at 5:40 pm
Inborn, innate, biological gender determines our subjective adaptation to cultural gender norms and expectations. It comes from the inside not the outside. Gender is just as biological as sex since your brain is at least as biological as your genitals.💙
@juniper26
October 25, 2025 at 5:40 pm
If gender is a performance I'm underperforming 🤩
@123followtheleader
October 25, 2025 at 5:40 pm
gender is a word created to describe something that isnt real. people use gender often to replace 'sex' because it feels vulgar. an abusive man created the word 'gender' AND and its meaning, you dont want to know that. feeling like something youre not and attributing those feelings to things you can BUY to cement those feelings is the lowest of the low. maybelline doesnt make me feel like a woman, it never will– my anatomy does. you dont love wisdom, you have none, you hate wisdom. i crush everything you say daily and i just found out about you. your ideas of WORDS are wrong. youre incorrect to the core
@ernstthalmann4306
October 25, 2025 at 5:40 pm
This is just a prequel film at this point.
@AmakiGraC
October 25, 2025 at 5:40 pm
It’s kinda funny getting this recommended when the new video about Butler just drop on Nebula and it’s going to be out here on YouTube very soon, I’m so happy for Abigail ❤️
@kaihoyen945
October 25, 2025 at 5:40 pm
We should have know
"Cis white man who talk about gender" it should have been obvious
@riccardoolivieri1159
October 25, 2025 at 5:40 pm
Thank you for making this video: it has been a very fun and informative watch!
@bon3tynormy
October 25, 2025 at 5:40 pm
It took me a Minute to realize that it was her. 😶
@devonhenegar9014
October 25, 2025 at 5:40 pm
I would love a part two of this one. I've watched it, I don't even know how many times, but it doesn't answer the question of what does gender feel like. I've long struggled to understand this part of gender and feel like if anyone can teach it in a way I understand, Philosophy Tube can.
@Lizardkitmin
October 25, 2025 at 5:40 pm
Is this foreshadowing?
@seventheaven
October 25, 2025 at 5:40 pm
Hi I'm here to spread knowledge.
How to know your own gender (very easy even a monkey can do it):
1. Check inside your pants
2. Penis and balls –> congrats you're a boy/man/male
3. Vagina –> congrats you're a girl/woman/female
@S4ns_Serif
October 25, 2025 at 5:40 pm
back when i was a kid newly discovering that i Did Not Like my assigned gender and trying to explore that, there was a question i found which stuck with me. it went something along the lines of "if you were stranded on a deserted island, hundreds of miles away from society, would you still be transgender?"
and i think the question, while thought provoking, maybe miswords things a little- gender is a lot more than just personal relation to your body versus how you feel like others perceive you/your body, i'm not sure if someone would "stop" being transgender when they aren't perceived because they no longer feel uncomfortable or mismatched with their body
(or rather, i don't think EVERYONE would "stop", i know there are some gender identities based specifically on how that person's gender changes when they're perceived versus alone)
but i also think it does express…. a feeling i have
because yeah, i don't know, if i was on a deserted island maybe i kinda wouldn't be trans? because "trans" as a label, gender as a performance, that's what i put on for other people. that's what i do because i want them to see me in the way i am comfortable being seen by them.
i don't identify with my assigned gender, but neither do i particularly feel in conflict with it when i'm alone. it, and all other labels, simply don't exist for me.
my gender- as in, my internal sense of self, my "subconscious sex"- doesn't change when i'm being perceived, but the way i perform it and the way i am aware of it does, the labels that i give myself do
in front of people i'm generally a "boy", i dress masculinely, i use he/him, partially because that is the only way i will be perceived as anything besides a "girl". i'm constantly aware of how i look and act in relation to the gendered norms of society.
alone, i'm just… me. just Danny. no labels, no performance separate from any other action i do. i wear what i feel like wearing, i do what i feel like doing.
if i was on a deserted island, if no one was around for hundreds of miles and i knew it could be months or years before my gender would be perceived by another person again… it would barely cross my mind.
am i still "trans"?
(obviously this is a personal musing on how i define/experience gender, whatever you believe the answer to that question is (whether for me or for yourself, the reader), it doesn't invalidate mine)
@JosephEribo-j3r
October 25, 2025 at 5:40 pm
I laughed immediately I heard marrinashutup😂
@ermetetrismegisto5341
October 25, 2025 at 5:40 pm
Nope sex is what you performe, gender is what you are. Lying is not going to work.
@sourwitch2340
October 25, 2025 at 5:40 pm
I think the intrinsic inclination model makes the most sense to me. Specifically, the way I understand it, gender is purely a social construct, it is a frame, or rather in our society two large frames with a subset of many smaller frames that often act like they are definitely one and the same. And your gender identity, as I see and experience it, is based in which gender frame aligns most with your intrinsic inclination. What term feels most accurate to the things that intuitively feel like "you".
@kellabdjfoo
October 25, 2025 at 5:40 pm
its so different now
@mr.trickystudio
October 25, 2025 at 5:40 pm
trash
@dogomage9003
October 25, 2025 at 5:40 pm
I keep forgetting she's trans
@LizinLouie
October 25, 2025 at 5:40 pm
I have met Julia Serrano, and for my money, and in my experience; she gives the most complete and accurate explanation of what Gender is. (BTW; great video, Thank you!)
@disaster4550
October 25, 2025 at 5:40 pm
people are so funny saying we can't just get rid of the idea of "gender" because it is so imbedded in our society and has always existed …well no it has only existed since 1955 and personally I only found out it was even a thing since like 16, you can live your whole life never hearing of it
@Livv_it_is
October 25, 2025 at 5:40 pm
Thank you so much for this episode! I absolutely love your chanel! I'd love to dive deeper into butlers and seranos theories. Thanks for introducing me to seranos work!
@raven-cat-lover
October 25, 2025 at 5:40 pm
a potentially interesting angle here: I have dissociative identity disorder. other people share the same physical body as me and sometimes we are concious at the same time, and i share some of their memories. this means i know what it feels like in no small way to literally be someone else, to have someone else's experience of gender. I, the person who most identifies the body as 'theirs' and with the name the body was given, am transgender and when anyone else makes themselves know to us or is concious for the 1st time, they have to work out their gender. so i have done so myself and witnessed 10+ people look inside themselves and go "i feel… masculine/feminine/nothing/somewhere in between" and i have come to the conclusion that genders are just categories of common traits and behavoirs shared that society lables "male" "female" "neither" "uhhhh some kinda gender going on here but we don't know what" and we want other people to correctly see which category we are so they can know us better. so they don't expect or ascribe behavoir and traits onto us from the wrong category. when you learn certains things about someone, a less complex and imperfect example is say they are a cat person, you learn more than just that they like cats, it "explains a lot", connects other things you know about them and allows you to make predictions about them, you understand them more fully, even though not all cat people act the same way. I think gender is like that. it so happens that most people fall into the gender category that matches up with their sex. we've gotten so used to being able to tell if someone is a cat person by their tail we've forgotten to ask.
@weirdnerdygoat
October 25, 2025 at 5:40 pm
Gender performativism is really interesting to me because of how that idea could apply to alterhumans. I'm an otherlinker- I identify as a goat (in a weird way), but at least part of is voluntary and I intentionally reinforce my identity. So would me calling myself a goat be performativism in this case?
@someonesomeone25
October 25, 2025 at 5:40 pm
It's cool that these days I can, to at least some degree, be an open genderqueer bisexual objectum. The future will be even better and more free.
@spdzodzo
October 25, 2025 at 5:40 pm
how does language cope with this many genders? in english it might be easier but for example in my language there is inflection based on who is speaking (currently he/she/it), i can't imagine the language having to inflex based on 200 genders, that would be a grammar nightmare
@rauldjvp3053
October 25, 2025 at 5:40 pm
Interestingly, Butler has come out as non-binary since 2020.
@Ryan78336
October 25, 2025 at 5:40 pm
I grew up without the vocab or any indication subconscious or otherwise that being anything but cis was okay but with the discomfort of that dissonance you speak of. When I found the vocab and community i began to advocate for myself and this was read by my parents with confusion first and then a kind of confused but loving support. I’m not cis and growing up I never really understood why being born a girl meant that I had to like certain things or be inclined to certain roles. I never understood societies definition of woman vs that of man. Biology makes this clear for the most part and with few exceptions but being born a girl means nothing to me and crept that I have the ability to carry and gestate children. This brings me no inherent sense of joy no anticipation. My anatomy doesn’t mean anything either, some of it is deeply uncomfortable to me and some of it is irrelevant. I go to significant lengths to hide those parts I’m unconfortable with and this to others constitutes that performance of gender. But for me it’s not only that but it’s my coping mechanism. In spaces designated for women, even though I have female anatomy and deserve to be there like anyone else, I often receive double takes and scowled from other women and questioning glances from their kids simply for being no there. Because I care so little for the binary, I have been known to use both bathrooms because you can guarantee that there will be no line outside the men’s bathroom. And I’m invisible there. Nobody cares, nobody notices and I absolutely love being invisible. Love it when I pass and nobody feels the need to ask me who I am or wonder. Bit because of who I am and the way I feel I should preform my gender, this almost never happens. My very countenance tends to confuse and baffle most people and yet when I am read as a woman this might as well be a snort of derision, a scoff of reducible. When I’m read as male, and for the life of me I have no idea why this is, I feel okay. I feel like that’s more correct. Yet I don’t want to transition. I grew up being raised and socialised as a girl, yet when I became a woman I quickly found this didn’t fit. So where do I fit? Still working my on that. But as a non binary person, I hope that one day I can get top surgery and legally change my name and live in a skin that truly reflects me. And I feel like this is an experience that’s common to many trans people. And had I not been introduced to my community by some of my wonderful peers, I may never have known how to describe myself and advocate for myself. 🎉thanks!
@richaquilastokes
October 25, 2025 at 5:40 pm
I have to think of a lot of Abigail's early videos as some sort of Chekhov's gun equivalent. Chekhov's gender discussion?
@michaeldamato9466
October 25, 2025 at 5:40 pm
Isn't the whole thing about boy, girl, just as a reference and what ever comes later is up to the individual, I mean at birth you're either one or the other, sure you can throw in the bit about they don't know what they really are, all you're doing is stirring the pot, and causing alot of problems for society.
@gabiballetje
October 25, 2025 at 5:40 pm
So far this video cleared up nothing for me when it comes to this gender gobbledegook… Wonder if that will change…
Muchadoaboutnothing also sounds like it in some way ? Whatever the fuck your chromosomes are, fine, that’s what they are, however you feel, fine, how you act in this, fine, what’s it to anyone else I’d say, but then there are people that say their gender is alien or feline, and then I think you’re not right in the head for damn sure.
And somehow it may not be up to you. Sound alike those nutty parents that claim their 1 year old is not a male as it’s chromosomes would like you to think but rather female and want to start hormone treatments and maybe surgery already, riiiiight, how did this 1 year old explain that to you ? Some people claim to know the gender of their dog too. Some people then just seem to be not right in the head to me.
This video cleared up fuck all.
@mustafaonah9704
October 25, 2025 at 5:40 pm
when theories are based on lies no matter how much effort are put on them , they will just collapse and will make no sense , just read the quarn and you will find the truth about life and the real purpose.
@tinkergnomad
October 25, 2025 at 5:40 pm
Honestly, I don't want a gender. I just want the luxury of being a person.
@emilymeyerding3392
October 25, 2025 at 5:40 pm
Sex is. Sexual dimophism in humans is minimal. If you add gender, then sexual dimorphism is amplified, if one is a part to the socialized norms of that gender performance. If you want to determine the sex of the person on the next ridge, if you share socialized gender values, then the sex of that person on the next ridge will be far easier to determine. That is what and all gender is… of course it also enforces the belonging to the same social group dynamic. If you and the other person share a common socialization, then you will also share the gender performance values that will make it more likel;y for you to pass your genetic material to the next generation.
@JoseLopez-rp4rv
October 25, 2025 at 5:40 pm
Well you are a gender centric philosophy..just go with that. I respect your trans ..but honestly. Do you like man, women, or both?…that's where most people are just not even willing to adress..just to ambiguous. . Loosing me
@Coffeeisnecessarynowpepper
October 25, 2025 at 5:40 pm
5:20PM 25 May 2023
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