I want better math education so we can stop describing gender as a "spectrum" and start describing it as a "multidimensional vectorspace" which is really much more accurate
@nex3 ..... i mean.
"spectrum," isn't,.... really wrong there? it's just that, like, people misunderstand what a spectrum..... /is/? 🤷
( but. meh. anyway. )
@gdkar the fact that it's misunderstood means it's a bad metaphor
@nex3 i guess? just, like, describing it as a multidimensional vector space isn't,... per se,... better?
like. that's not actually a different thing, really? so by the time people have enough awareness that you could call it that, you.... don't.... need to? idk. 🤷
@nex3 ah yes, the gender gamut...
(1) You can construct a linear mapping from ℝn to ℝ for any n.
(2) Kyriarchy will use any available mapping from gender space to ℝ to force people back into binaries
∴ we actually need to model gender as ... this is where I need to know more math actually, are non-metric spaces safe?
@nex3 @quine As genders are more vague socially-constructed regions than points, it makes the most sense to model it as a locale with a convexity (modeling bigender identities), an action of the group of positive reals (this gender, but more/less intense), some additional structure modeling genderfluidity, and some compatibility axioms
@nex3 (Also what ... is a convexity on a locale? Who knows?)
@nex3 it's a non-orientable manifold...
@nex3 I read a decent description of intersectionality once as oppression being a nonlinear function: the struggles faced by a black woman (say) are not simply the sums of the struggles of black people and women
@nex3 and there's so many dimensions. So many. It's a modeling nightmare
@amydentata plus a lot of them interact sometimes, but not all the time, in unpredictable ways
@nex3 a heterogeneously weighted n-dimensional space, because only computers are binary
@nex3 What's the zero vector? How do we add vectors? What is its scalar field? Does it have an inner product? What is its dual space?
Oh, gosh, and there has to be a Representation Theory joke in there somewhere, but it escapes me atm.
...thanks for indulging this weird trans girl's math humour. Witty responses welcome!
@kindheartedwhisper @nex3 does it have a basis? Is there a non-trivial topology? 
@nex3 I usually say "pansexual is pedantic bisexual" but I really mean "my attraction is independent (in the probabilistic sense) of and/or orthogonal to gender presentation and identity".
@nex3 I've been describing it that way (well... "multidimensional continuum") for years! https://htyp.org/gender/101
more like a math-based beef: when working with sets, each application of the intersection operator whittles the scope of the resulting set. it is, in essence, a limiting, divisive function.
The union operator, on the other hand, supports broadened perspectives and inclusion.
The math-informed discussion above makes me think I could find some appreciation for the dissonance these usages present me.
Ahh, yes, I see your point.
Staying more or less within mathematics, I'd say "intersectionality" derives more from network theory than from set theory in that an intersection (technically "vortex") is a place where lines ("edges") converge.
More practically, I think it's intended to evoke a navigational metaphor -- an "intersection" of multiple roads.
In a sense, tho, it *is* intentionally restrictive in that something is only intersectional if it has more than one path.
cc: @nex3
while colorspace is three-dimensional, the word "spectrum" is strongly associated with the visible light spectrum which is usually represented as one-dimensional