Plants have Transcended the Gender Barrier

"The human model is intended to represent a Human Being," Notch continued. "Not a male Human Being or a female Human Being, but simply a Human Being. The blocky shape gives it a bit of a traditional masculine look, but adding a separate female mesh would just make it worse by having one specific model for female Human Beings and male ones. That would force players to make a decisions about gender in a game where gender doesn't even exist."

Genders don't exist in Minecraft? Let's take a closer look, as that statement is easy to miss.



Minecraft makes sure that all of its animals have male and female parts and that they can mate with each other, not dependent on gender. This hermaphrodite nature of Minecraft's farm animals could be a programming plus as it allows for one version of each animal instead of two. But it also silently speaks in support of the pansexual crowd.

For example, Minecraft's chickens have the rooster chin and can lay eggs, while the cows both have udders and horns. The interesting part to me was when I wondered to myself, do plants in Minecraft have the same trait? And in fact, they do, in real life as well.



Here is a picture of what I believe to be wheat.

Florets are small flowers, and flowers receive pollen in order to become fertilized and then generate seeds, fruit or the like. Florets have the female property.

The stamen, on the other hand, is the male organ of the flower. It comes with a stalk and a section that produces pollen. Note that this setup means that the wheat plant could potentially mate with itself, although it could also expand the gene pool by mating with others in the wheat field. It all depends on how the pollen falls, really.

My point is that just like in Minecraft, philosophy can be devised from nature. When you look at a plant you notice two things - it does have male and female parts, suggesting that the male and female are, in fact, distinct, inseparable characteristics.

So what is a hermaphrodite? It is something with both male and female characteristics, not something with neither. It might be an interesting train of thought to wonder how plants think. Maybe they have a philosophy of their own - and part of that philosophy is that any one of their brethren can have male and female traits.

Isn't it limiting in society to force people to be a certain way based on gender? Simple examples include girls learning to knit and not boys, and boys playing sports that girls cannot play. In reality, we should be mature enough to realize that each of us is an individual not limited by gender, yet we are not.

This only limits the possibilities for an individual. Why can't men learn to have a conversation and women learn to fix a car? It is silly to force people to limit themselves to fit into a societal paradigm. Yet here we have plants, that sit and watch silently, basking in the sunlight, serene and knowing. What is it like to be a plant? One thing is for sure, they don't have to search for the other half of themselves because they have it right there with them, always.

a reply to: darkbake

Isn't it limiting in society to force people to be a certain way based on gender?

I'm not sure that it fits in with your topic, sorry if it doesn't, but one of the things that I'm disturbed by in the current generation/society is the obsessive need to identify oneself by their gender or, more appropriately, their sexuality. Facebook has 51 Gender "options" to choose from. Frankly, I find it ridiculous, pandering and narcissistic. Sure, maybe a person might be a male, but who thinks that they're a female, but that isn't who they are.

I know a woman who insists that no one use a personal pronoun when talking about her -- when you are talking about her, you have to use her name where you might otherwise use "she" or "her", because she doesn't "identify with those words". And what kills me is that people actually do that. They re-order their speech and their brains to accommodate what, to me, seems a ridiculous demand.

It is probably not surprising that, in a society steeped in sex, we would allow that to be what defines us as people, but it just doesn't seem right to me.

Again, sorry if that's off topic, DB. I just needed to rant a little, lol.

Here's some more examples of dual sexuality in nature:

Sex Changes In Nature: Yes, It Does Happen!

In some species of fish and amphibians, females can change into males if males are in short supply and vice-versa.

Before 'polled' cows became to be the norm, male and female bovines both had horns, in some parts of the world they still do!

Having 51 types of gender seems unnecessary to me, it's like screaming all your business with an introduction. I like the 3 genders myself.

I wonder if I'd feel this way if I didn't identify with one of the two traditional genders.

a reply to: Iamthatbish

I like the pansexual take myself, where you don't classify people by genders when talking to them. I also like being asexual because I like to think I'm motivated by more than sex. I think these are gender identities, although they don't seem that controversial.

There are neurological differences between male and females, and it is actually fairly common for someone born a girl or boy to have the opposing neurological make-up.

a reply to: adjensen

I think it's good you expressed your opinion, although I disagree a bit based on my life experience and the people I've met, my take is that it isn't that hard to accommodate someone asking for a specific pronoun usage. People all over the world are so different, I'm sure there are worse things someone could ask for.

I had a female friend in college who later became a male and got a job as a cop in Seattle, I wasn't upset about it, she wasn't forcing me to have a sex change after all. I do want to laugh about it, though - it is kind of funny.

In college you could forget she was a girl, she had red hair, a deep voice and was skinny with a manly build.

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My post, on the other hand, was supposed to be focused more about gender roles - one of the main things I have issue with is that I want more platonic relationships between guys, girls, and guys and guys and girls and girls. I think that there are a lot of limits on those put on us by society.

Thanks for participating everyone.

a reply to: darkbake

Pansexual means sexual attraction to all genders binary and non binary. It doesn't have a philosophy behind it. Its not a romanticism of sexuality like some people make it out to be by defining it incorrectly. Pan (meaning all) sexual Its just a label that falls under bisexual with an addition of extra gender concepts thrown in there. Also asexual is just lack of sexual attraction to any gender that cant be ruled out by lack of libido as far as i know. It does not necessarily mean that someone non asexual can not have a drive for more than sex and does not necessarily mean that an asexual can not enjoy sex, although of course would be more difficult with the lack of desire toward someone. None of those are gender identities they are sexualities.

Also you seem to be mixing up sex and gender in how people in this sort of topic use them. The concept of gender roles is based not off of body parts but of societal unwritten rules for sexes that constantly change. Gender itself when separated from sexes IS a gender role. Only sexes are tangible although they are defined differently by species so its complicated how the division works. Hermaphrodite orgasms is not a great example as this has nothing to do with a social construct but a biological one so you completely miss your own point.

The very concept of bigender, transgender, gender queer, gender fluid and cisgender: These are all just labels that further strengthen gender roles by saying that gender is a real thing. All it does is increase the number labels. Gender does not exist because it is only a social concept and going outside of some of the social concepts is only creating new social concepts while affirming the old. Its trying to break out of a cage by building more cages.

I do think people should be able to not be expected to have sex in every relationship. It seems people place too much confusion on what a relationship is and do not focus on the love enough. The expectations of relationships is not related to gender roles that is more just society in general in how it views relationships. There are more types of relationships out there than there are labels for them.

But still your subject matter seems to be all over the place jumping from sexuality to gender identities to gender roles to relationships.

There is a lot you can learn from plants, people need to listen to their wisdom and stop holding onto archaic ideas.