If Tumblr Made A Programming Language...

because -1 is not bigger than 1

edit: of course this also happens in the image, the float is there so you get NaN if y is 0.

Why not just return x > y? By the way, why do you even need this function?

Don't give them any ideas!

Inb4 trigger warnings as #pragma

I don't think that will be enough for some people. We're going to need a preprocessor macro.

Well, that's ableism

I do believe that was my heartiest laugh today. Thanks!

YOU'RE A FFFFFF MALE

this is actually a thing for comparing floating points.

5/7*

It's so well done I can't tell if anything linked in there is a continuation of the satire or real.

http://i.imgur.com/FmbHp6X.gif

But some people seem to think that if they aren't the absolute epitome of their gender then they are not that gender - eg a girl isn't very "girly" so she calls herself some made up shit like a "demigirl". This reinforces gender stereotypes by saying every person must either be the epitome of their gender or they are not that gender. Gender is not a 'personality type'. It is a gender.

I do not know of anyone saying that from a feminist perspective. The most popular feminist critique of gender/sex is to say that gender roles are socially constructed - i.e. there is nothing about the biology of a woman that means that she should be treated in a certain way, act in a certain way, do certain things, etc.

Then in the last few decades people began to take that question deeper and go "Well, what makes a woman supposedly a woman?". If you're up for a very dense read, Judith Butler forwards this critique in an incredibly detailed (and perhaps overly verbose - bloody poststructuralists, ey?) work titled Gender Trouble. I'm not going to be able to do the book full justice here, but, in short, she questions the very basis of the things that make us call a body male or female, and what that means in regards to how those bodies are treated.

She goes far enough to say that these categories are vacuous and socially constructed, taking it from the angle of questioning the notion of identity:

To what extent do regulatory practices of gender formation and division constitute identity, the internal coherence of the subject, indeed, the self-identical status of the person? To what extent is "identity" a normative ideal rather than a descriptive feature of experience? And how do the regulatory practices that govern gender also govern culturally intelligible notions of identity? In other words, the "coherence" and "continuity" of "the person" are not logical or analytic features of personhood, but, rather, socially instituted and maintained norms of intelligibility. Inasmuch as "identity" is assured through the stabilizing concepts of sex, gender, and sexuality, the very notion of "the person" is called into question by the cultural emergence of those "incoherent" or "discontinuous" gendered beings who appear to be persons but who fail to conform to the gendered norms of cultural intelligibility by which persons are defined. (Quoted from my version of the book: Butler, 2007: p.23, Routledge)

Key to her argument are coherent and incoherent representations of gender. A coherent representation might be when you look at someone like Kate Upton and how she presents herself. She has most of the signifiers of being a woman that we have as a society: long hair, long eyelashes, breasts, if you see a picture of her in her underwear you make the assumption upon looking at her crotch that she doesn't have a dick and balls, and thus make the assumption that she has a vulva, which thus signifies her as a woman. Or imagine a "masculine" guy, I dunno, Brad Pitt or some shit.

There's not much to rock the boat here because these representations don't challenge the categories of gender/sex identity. But where Butler advances her critique is in a look at "incoherent" bodies that don't fit this binary. And if one looks at the medical literature, these sorts of bodies pop up more often than you'd perhaps at first assume. People born with breasts and testicles. Underdeveloped genitals sitting alongside another set of genitals. And more subtle examples, like hormone imbalances.

I can't for the life of me find it now (I just had a search) but I saw the most fascinating lecture by a PhD student in Wales last year where she had gone through a bunch of medieval medical literature and had found examples of such "incoherent" bodies which did not conform to the gender binary and how it was perceived (which, by the way, back then wasn't exactly the same as we see it now, but that's another argument for social construction that I won't pursue here). In these cases the medical professionals of the time more often than not decided they needed to "correct" the body. This very often meant making a choice of which way to gender the person. Do you leave that under-developed penis and call then a boy, or do you cut it off and claim they're a girl?

It's in these sorts of examples where Butler shows us that gender/sex is socially constructed. It's arbitrary. We're so embedded in our assumptions around the binary that its very often obfuscated, but at these ambiguous, border examples we see the logic break down. If sex and gender are so obvious, then why can't we fit these bodies easily into our categories? There are numerous examples of people who have been put into the category of one gender when they could have just as easily be put into the other.

So this begs questions about our fundamental understandings of identity, gender, sex, etc. And people like Butler and the sorts of people that you and others mock ask the simple question: Then why do we need a rigid conception of sex/gender? Why not let people call themselves what they want and that's that. It's their fucking body. Don't let society and centuries of assumptions about identity and what the presence or lack of certain wobbly bits has been said to mean determine what you feel you can or cannot do; what you are are are not named; how you do or do not view yourself. Fuck that. If someone wants to say they're a girl then let them. If someone denies they they're either binaried gender then let them. Maybe they feel like they're on an ever shifting spectrum where sometimes they identify with one and sometimes more with another since, like any human on this planet, they are a dynamic being that doesn't remain static in time/space.

And, if we take this critique to its most radical and utopian place: why not dispense with the notions of gender/sex altogether and let people articulate themselves freely - outside of the baggage of socially constructed identities over which no single person is sovereign. I think that is a beautiful way of thinking. That is democracy taken down to the most fundamental level, imagining a world where people can present themselves how they want, as what they want, for the benefit of who they desire, even if that's just themselves. And, perhaps you're making assumptions about me if you're still reading this, but I'll take this chance to say: even as a heterosexual male (who was assigned male at birth) I find this philosophy liberating. Even in really mundane shit like sitting with my legs crossed tight in a "feminine" way, or dancing at a rave in a way that would have my grandad insult me for looking acting like a girl. This radical critique of gender lets us view its categories as vacuous and dispensible, and allows us to move towards opening up space for us to just be who we want to be, without worrying about what anyone else calls it.

So, to get back to the original post: I snort laughed when I saw it, it's pretty funny for it's novelty. But I feel uncomfortable with the sort of trend it represents, of people brushing aside the critique of gender so backhanded. Sure, you might feel comfortable with fitting in the gender binary. But you what? Not everyone does. So let people call themselves what they want to call themselves. Let them do with their body what they want. That's the simplest axiom it comes down to.

And no, feminism is not needed in the western world. Women have all the rights men do plus a few more for good measure.

I've written a lot already and so cba to get too deep into that. Mainly because it's so plainly obvious to so many people. But, in short: Learn to Google because there is so much fucking research out there on various biases towards women, even in the West. From oversexualisation in the media, to under-representation in executive positions, to women not being taken as seriously when they make the same arguments as men, to - Jesus Christ - have you ever been a woman in a nightclub? I don't know where you live, but in the UK it's just a regular, everyday part of most women's night out that they will get harassed, groped, threatened, etc. And a tonne of other things.

plus a few more for good measure

There are certain cases where women are favoured over men (e.g. child custody cases) but, sorry, they are just vastly outnumbered by the biases against women.

Actually, what you're probably thinking of isn't called gender but (biological) sex. See this handy diagram and a short article for more information on the topic.

While we may argue that there are only two sexes based on the presence of the Y chromosome (which is already a controversial notion because sex also depends e.g. on hormones produced in your body, hence there are people e.g. low on testosterone but having the Y chromosome; or born without male genitalia but having the Y chromosome), there definitely aren't just two genders, i.e. the social expression and identity related to (but not identical to) biological sex. As with all things social, it's highly culture-dependent and dynamic.

Furthermore... Gender is essentially just the sex of your brain. Sure for some people this isn't congruent with the sex of their body but it is impossible for a brain to develop in a way that isn't male or female.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28582-scans-prove-theres-no-such-thing-as-a-male-or-female-brain/

People who claim to be outside the 'gender binary' are actually harming real trans people by marginalising their condition and essentially making it seem like a big joke or even a choice, as well as delaying them the treatment they need to deal with their gender dysphoria. And it's not ok to do that just because you want some attention. And whilst there are some "legitimate" non binary people with dysphoria, but they're basically just questioning or their dysphoria comes and goes.

You're just discussing different manifestations of gender dysphoria. Some people get it to the extent that they want to physically alter their bodies, some don't. Some feel they identify more as the gender they weren't assigned at birth, some feel the binary doesn't speak to how they feel at all. You're trying to push stuff into the binary mould, but things aren't that simple. People are people, in many beautiful ways!

Yes I think it is satire, still makes a solid point