I've been holding for myself a little feminist reading summer, because of the recent talks about so-called "SJW", university activism in the US and their (possible) ties to feminist ideology and gender studies. I would like to present some ideas as to how they relate to science and religion.

I understand the usefulness of the sex (biology) - gender (norms) distinction, and how gender norms are culturally created and enforced. This is a major contribution of Women's studies to our understanding of our social reality.

A prominent (I'd call a radical) feminist Judith Butler has claimed that the scientist's study of sex in humans, and the discovery of the existance of such and sex dimorphism is based on the presupposition of sex binarism. This then leads, some, people today to claim that they are not a "woman" or a "man", because they feel like they do not conform to gender norms. That's fine, although asking other people to call them by their invented pronouns is akin to wanting other people to address them as "your majesty". If it's such a problem, join the enlightened fenno-ugris, you germanic barbarians and remove gendered pronouns altogether. I feel that there is also a slippery slope via butlerite feminism to claiming that their sex also is not either a female or a male. I'm not sure if this is intended, but it seems to be often implied.

This brings me to the often ridiculed group called the otherkin, which I suppose all of you know, are humans that don't identify as homo sapiens, but perhaps as a tiger or a hawk. What I am wondering is, could not a similiar narrative be construed a la Judith Butler about how the human-animal distinction has been created in western culture from the Bible, to Descartes, to Kant and to modern science, and how animal ways of knowing and communicating have been brushed aside by the patriarchy, or I guess androarchy in this case And that the biological definition of species is also based on presuppositions of such existing, and as such is just a product of culture.

A usual argument for the existance of multiple genders is that in some cultures there are more than two genders, and as such the gender dicotomy is a western construct. I feel that this is an incredibly weak argument. If the mere existance of varying ideas were a proof of their viability, we as atheists would have to conclude also, that gods are true, and that our atheism is only predicated on western thinking. A similiar argument could be made about otherkin, from the hindu and buddhist points of view on reincarnation, or indigenous totemism, couldn't it? And I'm sure you could find some indigenous tribe somewhere that doesn't make a lot of fuss about the difference of humans and pigs, say.

The leading academic take on otherkin, I gather, is that it is a kind of religion, where the person is spiritually a dog or a snail. But if the mere self-identification of someone as a non-female or non-male makes such a person nonbinary, a nongender person would have to, I think, allow that an otherkin person is indeed a dragon if they so choose to identify. Atleast if they take the strong position of being sex nonbinary.

From the biological point of view both are wrong, of course. Humans like all sexually reproducing animals have two sexes. From an evolutionary point of view this is a strategy to excelerate the accomodation to surroundings, as opposed to asexual reproduction, where subsuguent generations are almost identical to their parent creature. So every human is either a man or a woman based on their sex cells, the intersex people being developmental abnormalities, akin to being born with 6 fingers. And from a biological point of view otherkin are not dogs, because they cannot produce offspring with other dogs, not even sterile ones.

So is gendernonbinarism a religion, like otherkin? It seems defy biological reality, like otherkinism. Or are otherkin really not human? Should we be campaigning for otherkin rights, of plastic surgery to add horns and tails, warning about microaggressions, such as commenting on urinating on public? Or mistakenly calling someone a "he", when the entity is in reality an "it"?

So what do you think? Are these two phenomenon at least somewhat analogic? Are not the epistemologic and ontologic commitments the same? Does any of this matter? Is it mere drivel?