If every human on the planet lost all there senses and could only communicate telepathically with each other..

Question

How would a person define ones gender? You cant experience even touch so how would you know what's down there? Can someone give me a definition of gender unrelated to ones genatilia?

Answer 1

If I kept getting telepathic messages along the lines of 'I just farted hehehehe' I would know it was a male!

Answer 2

Without a sense of touch, who would be interested?You could think, " are you  a container or provider" I'm sure there are enough signals given off that there would be few surprises. Society would develope new ways to exist or we would all perish.

Answer 3

With the two senses they have left probably....

But gender has little to do with genitalia (s*x). They are often associated, but gender and biological s*x are two different things.  Gender is actually quite complicated and has more to do with your self concept and the relation of it to femininity and masculinity in society.

Answer 4

The term gender was coined to indicate a separation between the ideas of biological s*x and self-perceived sense of masculinity or femininity, so there is no reason it requires a biological explanation.

A few ways to look at it though are - Gender identity - how 'masculine' or 'feminine' we actually feel inside, which may or may not correlate with our biological s*x, as in 'gender identity disorder'.  Also gender expectations, which are social ideas about how perceived male and female people should / will act and gender roles, which are common divergences of roles between men and women, and are strongly connected to gender expectations about how males and females should behave.

So, if we could all communicate telepathically, we would first have to say whether we would have an idea or notion of our gender identity and then secondly, whether there would be any residual ideas about gender expectations in this new telepathic world - ie, would 'feminine' feeling people be expected to talk more or less, be more diplomatic, etc.

So gender, as a thing, doesn't really exist outside of subjective ideas about it - ie, gender is whatever we think it is - But the only reason we think of it that way is because of the differences of biological s*x.  It would be interesting to know what notions of gender a society would have if it had never known a difference between the sexes :-)

Answer 5

ppl probly wudent be alive very long to worry bout such things...  theyd be to busy falling off buldings when they cudent see... here... or feel where there going...  or starving to death when they cudent feed themselfs anymore...