The Genderbread Person
May 22, 2015 7:53 PM Subscribe
"Gender is one of those things everyone thinks they understand, but don’t. This tasty little guide is meant to be an appetizer for understanding. It’s okay if you’re hungry for more." (Primary link is to version 3; here is the first version and walk-through.) Creator's note: "It’s still totally uncopyrighted and yours to use however you’d like. No need to ask for permission." More on the uncopyrighting page.
This post was deleted for the following reason: Sorry for the late delete, but given the cited attribution problems, plus the fact that the site owner is also explicitly selling his book on this site, perhaps it's better to skip this -- or maybe a redo that includes the background. -- taz
Genderbread is a great coinage.
posted by jonmc at 7:58 PM on May 22, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by jonmc at 7:58 PM on May 22, 2015 [1 favorite]
It is! (I also meant to say - via the May/June issue of Walnut Creek Magazine, pg 28-30.)
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 8:01 PM on May 22, 2015
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 8:01 PM on May 22, 2015
"Biological sex" refers to all secondary sexual characteristics, right? And what about the sex-based differences that are neither primary (reproduction-based) or secondary (puberty-based), like skeletal structure, muscle mass, likelihood of color-blindness, etc? This diagram is a lot more useful than a binary "male/female" identity, but it still leaves out biological details. (I know they would overcomplicate it, given the intended audience.)
posted by Rangi at 8:02 PM on May 22, 2015
posted by Rangi at 8:02 PM on May 22, 2015
I don't like all these gender and sexuality labels. Genderfluid, pansexual, Nabiscogendered Triscuitsexual, male, female...
In case you didn't get my point, gender and sexuality are the result of multiple variables. Like South Park said, labels are only good for perfectly rational people. Have YOU ever met one?
posted by BiggerJ at 8:02 PM on May 22, 2015 [1 favorite]
In case you didn't get my point, gender and sexuality are the result of multiple variables. Like South Park said, labels are only good for perfectly rational people. Have YOU ever met one?
posted by BiggerJ at 8:02 PM on May 22, 2015 [1 favorite]
I'll bow out and let people discuss this - I think there's _plenty_ to critique, but also think it's a pretty neato approach to teaching the complexity at the children's level, and introducing new concepts that are hardly ever discussed by mainstream TV, where kids pick up a lot of their info. about sex and gender.
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 8:04 PM on May 22, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 8:04 PM on May 22, 2015 [1 favorite]
Also, while it separates the usual idea of "male/female" into gender identity, gender expression, and biological sex, it still defines sexual and romantic attraction as being towards the usual clusters of those three sub-things. Is this an accurate summary, or do many people feel attraction based on subsets of those three? (I can imagine someone being attracted to a gender expression regardless of identity/sex, or a sex regardless of identity/expression; attraction to a particular gender identity is harder to imagine, but does anyone claim to be like that?)
posted by Rangi at 8:07 PM on May 22, 2015
posted by Rangi at 8:07 PM on May 22, 2015
The Genderbread Plagiarist
Sam Killermann, the “It's Pronounced METROsexual” guy who invented the Genderbread Person, is found to have plagiarized from the work of intersectionally marginalized people while using it to paradoxically "advocate" for them in his public talks and brand new book. Here's the investigation.
More here.
posted by andoatnp at 8:07 PM on May 22, 2015 [18 favorites]
Sam Killermann, the “It's Pronounced METROsexual” guy who invented the Genderbread Person, is found to have plagiarized from the work of intersectionally marginalized people while using it to paradoxically "advocate" for them in his public talks and brand new book. Here's the investigation.
More here.
posted by andoatnp at 8:07 PM on May 22, 2015 [18 favorites]
I don't like all these gender and sexuality labels.
You don't have to like them; you do have to behave respectfully and address people the way they prefer to be addressed.
Like South Park said, labels are only good for perfectly rational people.
Well, no, and while I don't have the energy or expertise to get into the basic 101 of why not, the simple version is this: labels, whatever you may think of them, allow many of us who aren't gender- or sexuality-conforming to say "Hey, waitasec, I'm here and I'm different, stop assuming I'm just like the majority. My identity matters to me."
I really, really strongly suggest that you stop saying things like that until you've gained a greater understanding of, or at least respect for, the very simple fact that large chunks of the world aren't the dominant social model portrayed in North America, and that we're sick of being minimized and silenced by people who say stupid and disrespectful crap like "labels are only good for perfectly rational people."
The fact is, labels--identities--do matter.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:11 PM on May 22, 2015 [13 favorites]
You don't have to like them; you do have to behave respectfully and address people the way they prefer to be addressed.
Like South Park said, labels are only good for perfectly rational people.
Well, no, and while I don't have the energy or expertise to get into the basic 101 of why not, the simple version is this: labels, whatever you may think of them, allow many of us who aren't gender- or sexuality-conforming to say "Hey, waitasec, I'm here and I'm different, stop assuming I'm just like the majority. My identity matters to me."
I really, really strongly suggest that you stop saying things like that until you've gained a greater understanding of, or at least respect for, the very simple fact that large chunks of the world aren't the dominant social model portrayed in North America, and that we're sick of being minimized and silenced by people who say stupid and disrespectful crap like "labels are only good for perfectly rational people."
The fact is, labels--identities--do matter.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:11 PM on May 22, 2015 [13 favorites]
Mr. Killermann didn't mention how what he'd seen online may have been the collective working efforts of trans people and, instead of building a new brand from their work, maybe he should have been finding ways to advocate for them by boosting their voices in their name. That kind of selfless advocacy is how one earns the respect of being seen as an ally by those who experience intersectional marginalization and violence.
Argh.
Trans and gender-non-conforming people weren't asked by Mr. Killermann to take the lead to speak on any of this. None of the people who'd worked on the concept long before he tumbled onto it on Tumblr were asked whether they’d consented to his unattributed use or interpretation(s) of their work for his own self-branding/self-promotion benefit (which is more the Samuel Killermann Show than it is anything resembling community-based social justice work or advocacy).
This is a classic case of intersectional appropriation, if not outright intellectual theft.
Quadruple argh.
posted by jaguar at 8:32 PM on May 22, 2015 [5 favorites]
Argh.
Trans and gender-non-conforming people weren't asked by Mr. Killermann to take the lead to speak on any of this. None of the people who'd worked on the concept long before he tumbled onto it on Tumblr were asked whether they’d consented to his unattributed use or interpretation(s) of their work for his own self-branding/self-promotion benefit (which is more the Samuel Killermann Show than it is anything resembling community-based social justice work or advocacy).
This is a classic case of intersectional appropriation, if not outright intellectual theft.
Quadruple argh.
posted by jaguar at 8:32 PM on May 22, 2015 [5 favorites]
Well, I see they've finally updated it, I guess. Bleh. Plagiarism aside, I associate the Genderbread Person with irritating oversimplifications that give people a very sketchy idea about what the "rules" of a given identity are while seriously glossing over the complexity of what it means to be such-and-such.
For example, the little things for gender identity are pretty non-intuitive when you actually look at them, because you can see pretty clearly that the representations for "genderqueer" and "male" are really similar. And that makes sense if you happen to know that gender identity is a bit wobbly and incredibly personal and often fairly idiosyncratic, but if you're trying to use this thing to introduce complicated ideas to a confused cis straight person they're not going to know that--especially when the pdf presents this as a totally cut-and-dry term that has an easily agreed upon definition. Like, with respect to romantic attraction, I literally spent years trying to get people to give me an operational definition of romantic attraction that was not "I knows it when I feels it," and it turns out that's incredibly unproductive--it's more helpful to me to go "does it make me feel comfortable to slot my relationship with this person/the relationship I want to have into the cultural category of romantic relationships, or not?"
And what do the little bars for "maleness" and "femaleness" even mean? Biological sex actually is one of those things where it's not a case of two separate axes for 'male' and 'female,' it's a case where you have two ends of a continuum and variation in between those continuua. The structures all have analogs to each other, it's just a case of how far you are along the "masculine" organization of physical traits vs the "feminine" one (air quotes because yeah, those don't always correlate perfectly with gender or with each other, but there are associations). So saying that there's a distinction between "+5 male +5 female" and "+0 male +0 female" makes no sense because no matter who you are or how you develop, you are going to start with the same Mullerian tubules and Wolfferian ducts every other embryo does, and you're going to have the same genital mound and the only thing that changes is going to be the developmental organization of those structures. Saying otherwise is to say that some traits are inherently female--like estrogen--and others, like testosterone, are inherently male. But that's not true--everyone has estrogen, everyone has testosterone, they're just expressed at different levels and people have different levels of receptors for those hormones.
I just. The Genderbread Person is one of those things that seems very nice and clean-cut on the surface but is really, really confusing when you interrogate things at a deeper level. And I think it sets people up for failure by erasing a lot of the complexity that actually happens in the margins, where things turn out to be more complicated than they look at first glance. Simplifying things down is all well and good as a teaching tool, but you should never pretend that complexity isn't lurking below the surface of the things you say, and I think that this thing has a huge problem with that--especially as I have seen it used, which tends to be "yay let's box everything neatly into understandable categories!"
posted by sciatrix at 8:35 PM on May 22, 2015 [9 favorites]
For example, the little things for gender identity are pretty non-intuitive when you actually look at them, because you can see pretty clearly that the representations for "genderqueer" and "male" are really similar. And that makes sense if you happen to know that gender identity is a bit wobbly and incredibly personal and often fairly idiosyncratic, but if you're trying to use this thing to introduce complicated ideas to a confused cis straight person they're not going to know that--especially when the pdf presents this as a totally cut-and-dry term that has an easily agreed upon definition. Like, with respect to romantic attraction, I literally spent years trying to get people to give me an operational definition of romantic attraction that was not "I knows it when I feels it," and it turns out that's incredibly unproductive--it's more helpful to me to go "does it make me feel comfortable to slot my relationship with this person/the relationship I want to have into the cultural category of romantic relationships, or not?"
And what do the little bars for "maleness" and "femaleness" even mean? Biological sex actually is one of those things where it's not a case of two separate axes for 'male' and 'female,' it's a case where you have two ends of a continuum and variation in between those continuua. The structures all have analogs to each other, it's just a case of how far you are along the "masculine" organization of physical traits vs the "feminine" one (air quotes because yeah, those don't always correlate perfectly with gender or with each other, but there are associations). So saying that there's a distinction between "+5 male +5 female" and "+0 male +0 female" makes no sense because no matter who you are or how you develop, you are going to start with the same Mullerian tubules and Wolfferian ducts every other embryo does, and you're going to have the same genital mound and the only thing that changes is going to be the developmental organization of those structures. Saying otherwise is to say that some traits are inherently female--like estrogen--and others, like testosterone, are inherently male. But that's not true--everyone has estrogen, everyone has testosterone, they're just expressed at different levels and people have different levels of receptors for those hormones.
I just. The Genderbread Person is one of those things that seems very nice and clean-cut on the surface but is really, really confusing when you interrogate things at a deeper level. And I think it sets people up for failure by erasing a lot of the complexity that actually happens in the margins, where things turn out to be more complicated than they look at first glance. Simplifying things down is all well and good as a teaching tool, but you should never pretend that complexity isn't lurking below the surface of the things you say, and I think that this thing has a huge problem with that--especially as I have seen it used, which tends to be "yay let's box everything neatly into understandable categories!"
posted by sciatrix at 8:35 PM on May 22, 2015 [9 favorites]
andoatnp's link contains a good critique. I feel like this is a case where voices from the marginalized group should be amplified and people not from the marginalized group (i.e. Killerman) should take a back seat.
posted by desjardins at 8:56 PM on May 22, 2015 [7 favorites]
posted by desjardins at 8:56 PM on May 22, 2015 [7 favorites]
I think the problem is that it is a baked good, which suggests that specific measures of ingredients will result in a particular outcome. Maybe it should be something cooked, like a nice soup, made with whatever is handy in the kitchen, that turns out completely different every time.
posted by Kabanos at 9:12 PM on May 22, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by Kabanos at 9:12 PM on May 22, 2015 [2 favorites]
I find Killermann problematic. I think he mansplains things that don't need mansplaining. I think he has appropriated work which he has no right to appropriate. I think he's making money on the struggles of others, who have obstacles he cannot comprehend.
In other words, slapping some labels on shit and saying he's going to "tackle the balls" out of gender issues does not fill me with confidence in his understanding of the entire spectrum of gender possibility.
posted by dejah420 at 9:52 PM on May 22, 2015
In other words, slapping some labels on shit and saying he's going to "tackle the balls" out of gender issues does not fill me with confidence in his understanding of the entire spectrum of gender possibility.
posted by dejah420 at 9:52 PM on May 22, 2015
I really, really strongly suggest that you stop saying things like that until you've gained a greater understanding of, or at least respect for, the very simple fact that large chunks of the world aren't the dominant social model portrayed in North America, and that we're sick of being minimized and silenced by people who say stupid and disrespectful crap like "labels are only good for perfectly rational people."
The fact is, labels--identities--do matter.
Data point: I'm physically intersex and have been romantically and sexually intimate with men and women, and none of these "genderbread" labels represent my reality in any way, shape or form. I reject these labels as having nothing to do with my identity, and feel sorry for people who are compelled to box themselves away as a series of stereotypes to fit in with a so-called "community".
Speaking of disrespect, I've been "minimized and silenced", treated like shit, and subjected to outrageously prejudiced idiotic comments by straight men, straight women, gays, and lesbians alike. Face it, people everywhere can be awful. And at this stage in the game? FUCK everyone who expects me to conform to some imaginary standard of what "people like me" are supposed to look, be, and act like. I am who I am: a goddamned human being. If you're desperate to slap some artifical preconcieved categories on me that's your problem, not mine.
In my experience, gender labels are about forming exclusionary cliques, and heaven help anyone who dares to stick their neck out as an outsider. I really don't even care anymore. Why fixate on something I have no intention of changing when there's so much more to life than trying to "measure up" to conventionally received ideas?
So yeah, don't presume to speak for me--and count me the fuck out.
posted by Dr. Sockley McThrowaway at 10:09 PM on May 22, 2015 [3 favorites]
The fact is, labels--identities--do matter.
Data point: I'm physically intersex and have been romantically and sexually intimate with men and women, and none of these "genderbread" labels represent my reality in any way, shape or form. I reject these labels as having nothing to do with my identity, and feel sorry for people who are compelled to box themselves away as a series of stereotypes to fit in with a so-called "community".
Speaking of disrespect, I've been "minimized and silenced", treated like shit, and subjected to outrageously prejudiced idiotic comments by straight men, straight women, gays, and lesbians alike. Face it, people everywhere can be awful. And at this stage in the game? FUCK everyone who expects me to conform to some imaginary standard of what "people like me" are supposed to look, be, and act like. I am who I am: a goddamned human being. If you're desperate to slap some artifical preconcieved categories on me that's your problem, not mine.
In my experience, gender labels are about forming exclusionary cliques, and heaven help anyone who dares to stick their neck out as an outsider. I really don't even care anymore. Why fixate on something I have no intention of changing when there's so much more to life than trying to "measure up" to conventionally received ideas?
So yeah, don't presume to speak for me--and count me the fuck out.
posted by Dr. Sockley McThrowaway at 10:09 PM on May 22, 2015 [3 favorites]
I wasn't presuming to speak for you, I was addressing the general point made above. Please note that I said 'allow many of us' and that I was focusing on self-applied labels, not those externally applied by others, and that people should be addressed the way they prefer to be addressed. Not about externally-imposed categorizations at all.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:31 PM on May 22, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:31 PM on May 22, 2015 [4 favorites]
I find Killermann problematic. I think he mansplains things that don't need mansplaining. I think he has appropriated work which he has no right to appropriate. I think he's making money on the struggles of others, who have obstacles he cannot comprehend.
I thought the various criticisms of Killermann were well known, so I was surprised to see his material posted here so uncritically.
posted by andoatnp at 11:02 PM on May 22, 2015 [1 favorite]
I thought the various criticisms of Killermann were well known, so I was surprised to see his material posted here so uncritically.
posted by andoatnp at 11:02 PM on May 22, 2015 [1 favorite]
Just because something has been criticized doesn't mean it's not worth posting and discussing.
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 11:06 PM on May 22, 2015
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 11:06 PM on May 22, 2015
The critiques are really interesting. I'm all for robust fair use, and definitely on board with how good work (artistic, scientific, and activist) is created by building on what was done before. But that also relies on giving credit where it is due and stepping very carefully around the issue of speaking for people versus with.
If the critiques are accurate, it sounds like he may have overstepped on both counts, which is doubly unfortunate. I don't have the understanding to critique the infographic itself -- I like that people are working on clear visual explanations of this for people (like me!) who don't fully understand the nuances, but just from reading the comments here this particular version sounds like it is perhaps not fully actualized or informed by the best current thinking. (Or dare I say, not fully baked?)
As an aside, this is the kind of discussion here that keeps me reading, where an interesting FPP turns into an even more interesting discussion that is vibrant with ideas and perspectives.
posted by Dip Flash at 11:07 PM on May 22, 2015
If the critiques are accurate, it sounds like he may have overstepped on both counts, which is doubly unfortunate. I don't have the understanding to critique the infographic itself -- I like that people are working on clear visual explanations of this for people (like me!) who don't fully understand the nuances, but just from reading the comments here this particular version sounds like it is perhaps not fully actualized or informed by the best current thinking. (Or dare I say, not fully baked?)
As an aside, this is the kind of discussion here that keeps me reading, where an interesting FPP turns into an even more interesting discussion that is vibrant with ideas and perspectives.
posted by Dip Flash at 11:07 PM on May 22, 2015
I think the problem is that it is a baked good, which suggests that specific measures of ingredients will result in a particular outcome.
You underestimate the complexities of baking. My mother, despite decades of trying, has never been able to precisely duplicate my grandmother's cookies.
If you're desperate to slap some artifical preconcieved categories on me that's your problem, not mine.
My problem is that I'm a coffee drinker. A cup of black diner coffee with a little milk near it's expiration date and I'm in my comfort zone. For me there are only two categories of coffee: "good" coffee and "bad" coffee.
I am aware of this thing called tea. I've seen it in the shop - next to the coffee. I've seen people drinking it. I've heard people talking about it. I am aware that there are some different kinds of tea: green tea, chai tea, English Breakfast tea, but it's mostly all brown water to me.
I don't drink tea. It's completely uninteresting. I couldn't be bothered with it and the thought of it is slightly off-putting. But I have no problem with tea or with having the most intimate friendships with people who drink tea. And it helps to know, even in the most basic broad strokes, a little bit about tea preferences so I don't look like a complete idiot when asking what a friend who drinks tea would like to drink.
So putting labels on tea, even broad-brush and imprecisely applied ones, are helpful for a coffee drinker like me.
I get it that some teas are made from tree bark and aren't even teas and calling something tea which isn't actually tea raises bitter argument amongst tea drinkers, but it shouldn't drown out all other conversation about tea.
posted by three blind mice at 11:10 PM on May 22, 2015
You underestimate the complexities of baking. My mother, despite decades of trying, has never been able to precisely duplicate my grandmother's cookies.
If you're desperate to slap some artifical preconcieved categories on me that's your problem, not mine.
My problem is that I'm a coffee drinker. A cup of black diner coffee with a little milk near it's expiration date and I'm in my comfort zone. For me there are only two categories of coffee: "good" coffee and "bad" coffee.
I am aware of this thing called tea. I've seen it in the shop - next to the coffee. I've seen people drinking it. I've heard people talking about it. I am aware that there are some different kinds of tea: green tea, chai tea, English Breakfast tea, but it's mostly all brown water to me.
I don't drink tea. It's completely uninteresting. I couldn't be bothered with it and the thought of it is slightly off-putting. But I have no problem with tea or with having the most intimate friendships with people who drink tea. And it helps to know, even in the most basic broad strokes, a little bit about tea preferences so I don't look like a complete idiot when asking what a friend who drinks tea would like to drink.
So putting labels on tea, even broad-brush and imprecisely applied ones, are helpful for a coffee drinker like me.
I get it that some teas are made from tree bark and aren't even teas and calling something tea which isn't actually tea raises bitter argument amongst tea drinkers, but it shouldn't drown out all other conversation about tea.
posted by three blind mice at 11:10 PM on May 22, 2015
Just because something has been criticized doesn't mean it's not worth posting and discussing.
In the case of this particular post: is it worth posting and discussing? Why this (which is kind of old as it is) over all the other material created by people who are affected by gender and sexuality marginalization?
posted by divabat at 11:25 PM on May 22, 2015 [5 favorites]
In the case of this particular post: is it worth posting and discussing? Why this (which is kind of old as it is) over all the other material created by people who are affected by gender and sexuality marginalization?
posted by divabat at 11:25 PM on May 22, 2015 [5 favorites]
« Older “The brain is the station where every railway line... | Small Things Considered Newer »
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Also, the author /creator talks about how he saw the "Genderbread Man" on Tumblr and liked it, but wanted to improve it and make it a teaching tool, so he created a "Genderbread Person". It's all quite fascinating.
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 7:58 PM on May 22, 2015 [1 favorite]