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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Feminism and the idea of a man or woman trapped in the wrong body are contradictory ideas

631 replies

EatsBrainsAndLeaves · 07/05/2012 19:25

This post is in response to another thread where posters wanted to discuss this, but didn't want to derail the thread. So I said I would start the thread here.

A basic element of feminism is that women and men are born as that sex - biologically men/women, but society socialises us to behave as our alloted gender. Gender is the idea that women and men behave in certain ways. And we are all socialised in this even if we reject it or try to as adults.

For example, research shows that people treat the same babies differently depending on whether they are told they are boys or girls. The media pumps images to our DCs about what a girl or a boy should be interested in, play with and wear. Teachers are more likely to allow boys to speak out to the whole class than girls - well researched.

Feminism challenges these gender constructs and says that girls and boys can enjoy doing the same things, etc. Transexuals talk about being born in the wrong body e.g. born in a male body, but feeling like they are really a girl/woman.

But this is obviously at odds with feminism. Sex is a biological fact. You are born in a male or female body. Behaving or feeling like a man/woman is supposed to feel, is an artificial construct. Because what does a man or woman feel like? We only feel like ourselves as individuals. So any idea of feeling a man or a woman or a boy or a girl is based on an artifacial idea of how a boy/girl is supposed to feel.

So the basic idea of being born in the wrong body, is contradictory to the basic ideas of feminism.

OP posts:
WhiteShores · 09/05/2012 14:02

Ooh, let me make something clear...

I do feel that my body is part of me.

When I say I do not feel that attached to my body, I do not mean that I have no fondness for it, or see it as part of my current identity (it is, my sex identity).

I mean I am not attached as in permanently fixed. I feel that my mind/soul/spirit (whatever you want to call it, the I inside me) is currently housed in my body, but is not my body.

Maybe it helps that if I believed in any afterlife (I'm not sure if I do), I would believe in reincarnation... mostly because I can easily imagine having different bodies (even other species, yes).

Right now though, I am housed in this body... and as such I do care for it, and it comprises part of my current identity as a whole (my biological/sexual identity), but does not match my gender-identity (I do not feel like a woman, I feel like an individual entity).

larrygrylls · 09/05/2012 14:02

Sea,

I get painfully confused when people try to overly distinguish between sex and gender (except for grammar) and I suspect a lot of people outside a narrow area of study use them fairly interchangeably. I think that, for example, when Nyac says that trans people believe in sex rather than gender, that is not a universal statement of truth. The way they would put it is that they were born in "the wrong body" and always felt that they were the opposite sex than they were born. So, I suppose, in a literal sense, they are talking about sex. But, if sex is determined by chromosomes, then they would not be able to change sex, so they are thinking in terms of biological and behavioural expressions of their chromosomal sex (although I guess some feminists would argue that there is such thing as a behavioural expression of sex). I.E they want society to assume that they were born the other sex and to demonstrate that by changing their sexual organs (for some) and their behaviour.

Is that biology or gender?

MayaAngelCool · 09/05/2012 13:58

Just before I leave, White, I find your gender id statement fascinating. If I were a scientist I'd want to scan your brain to see what's going on inside! Grin

WhiteShores · 09/05/2012 13:57

Nyac

I think thats why the definitions of biological sex and gender-identity do need to be carefully laid out in order to have a decent discussion.

They are not the same thing (as you seem to agree).

We've been using the definitions:

biological sex (XX, XY, intersex), usually with associated other biology
gender/gender identity (what you feel and self-identify as)
gender role (what society expects of your behaviours)

Woman/man seems to have been used mostly for gender-identity
Male/female is more useful for biology (but people do seem to flip back and forth).

Bottom line is: we need words to describe what we specifically mean, and somewhere along the line the majority consensus is going to have to agree on which words we use for which category.

Nyac · 09/05/2012 13:56

That's interesting that you don't see your body as part of you, but rather as a container, whiteshores.

I definitely don't feel like that. My body is intrinsic to who I am, we cannot be separated.

Feeling like a woman feels like being me. Same as feeling like a human does.

Would you have the same feeling about your species, that you could just swap it and it wouldn't make a difference. Or how about height - maybe if you were put into a healthy body a foot smaller or taller.

MayaAngelCool · 09/05/2012 13:56

Oops, White, just missed that you said 'neutral' earlier. As you were. Grin

I'm off now, will come back to this convo later. It's been fascinating, though!

SeaHouses · 09/05/2012 13:55

Larry, most trans people are not confused and distressed by being in a body that is the opposite sex to their internal gender identity. So a MTF trans person is not distressed by their penis. They just it as a female penis.

White shore. I think your feelings about it are interesting. It shows that even among people who identify by biological sex rather than gender, their different ways in which they relate to their bodies.

WhiteShores · 09/05/2012 13:53

MayaAngelCool

I do not gender-identify as man, woman, or intersex.
I do not identify as all of them.

Whether someone wants to call that absent or neutral gender-identity doesn't really bother me. :)

Nyac · 09/05/2012 13:53

Similarly why they talk about being born in the "wrong" body, as mentioned so many times upthread.

If sex only finally resides in someone's "gender identity" then why would anybody feel they were ever in the wrong body. Apparently you can be a man and a woman just based on a feeling and nothing else. And if feelings are all it takes, bodies can be left alone. Which is happening in many MTF cases. They just want to be called women without having to change anything about their bodies.

WhiteShores · 09/05/2012 13:51

Nyac

You'd have to tell me what an adult human female feels like.

I do know that I don't have any strong feelings of attachment to my body (I too see it as just a vehicle, or container for me), and if we could swap bodies at will I would swap biological sexes back and forth without sex being my main or even significant consideration (fitness and health would come first).

SeaHouses · 09/05/2012 13:51

Larry, I didn't mention my gender at all. I simply talked about experiences of a specific biological body.

Nyac · 09/05/2012 13:51

Trans don't believe in gender anyway. They believe in sex.

That's why the acronyms are femaletomale and maletofemale. They aren't saying femininetomasculine and masculinetofeminine, they are talking about actual sex.

A lot of the terminology is designed to obscure and confuse. That's because it's not logical and not based in reality.

larrygrylls · 09/05/2012 13:50

Sea,

But I guess that is the point. As a man, I merely act as an individual and don't focus on my gender at all. On the other hand I think that is probably because I feel normal and natural as a man. If I woke up as a woman, I like to think it might be fun but I suspect the reality would be I would be quite confused and distressed. Is that not what is happening in trans people?

SeaHouses · 09/05/2012 13:49

I think it is very confusing to start using gender identity in a way that neither feminists nor trans people themselves use it.

Feminists generally talk about gender roles, not gender identity.

Trans people talk about their internal gender identity, which is about the feelings of the mind and does not include their body.

MayaAngelCool · 09/05/2012 13:48

Perhaps we're talking about different things when we write about having no gender identity. I think your using the word 'neutral' probably makes it clearer - i.e. do you mean your identity falls across both genders? As opposed to 'no' identity, meaning it's totally absent?

Nyac · 09/05/2012 13:47

When did the definition of woman change?

Because that's very scary. Especially given that it's supposed to now mean something pretty obscure and convoluted.

Basically as someone else has said before there is a group formerly known as women now. We've had our human identity removed from us. It's not good.

If woman did still mean adult human female, would you say you felt like one?

SeaHouses · 09/05/2012 13:46

I can't know how I would feel if I woke up in a man's body. I see it as an important part of my way of being in the world that I try and live through my body; I try not to create a distinction between the two.

I know this is not the case for everybody; Hully talked on a previous thread about for her, her body is just a container for her brain. Clearly many anorexics experience a complete divorce between their brains and their bodies.

So I would like to hope that if I did wake up a man, I would make the most of what that different bodily experience had to offer. But I can't know that. But that is how I approach different physical experiences as a woman. I have a very different body now from the one I used to have, and I am having to accept that different body and its changes, as I move into a body in a few years that will never be able to get pregnant or breastfeed again.

WhiteShores · 09/05/2012 13:45

Those things might be components of gender identity Maya or even heavily influence it in some way. I would agree to influence. :)

But which has the final say (if not all components match, which they often don't)?

When it comes to gender-identity, I say mind.

WhiteShores · 09/05/2012 13:44

I never said lots of people don't have a gender identity. I said people get to be whatever gender identity they say they are.

Obviously some don't.

I don't.

I would have no problem with having a male body, except for the same problem I have with having a female body (which is that society makes assumptions about me).

I can't tell you what having a neutral gender identity feels like because presumably you don't share the same identity, and thus don't know what it feels like, but I know I have it.

MayaAngelCool · 09/05/2012 13:43

I think we totally agree, White! The problem I think is that we're all bandying around lots of different terms and missing each others meaning. That's why I wrote "mind (thinking brain)" in my last post, and distinguished it from biological brain. Grin

I haven't seen those post of yours, SeaHouses. But why don't you go ahead and make a list?! Wink

My statement about what makes up a person's gender identity (and I use that term to cover our WHOLE gender identity, body and mind and brain together) was based on my earlier stated theoretical structure. To which we've since added the mind.

So we have:

Body
Brain
Socilalisation
Mind

Where Brain + Socialisation heavily influence Mind, but I guess Mind also brings its own stuff to the table.

Good grief, it's complicated!

SeaHouses · 09/05/2012 13:41

Maya, I think people saying it is not possible to not have an internal gender identity is similar to saying it is not possible not to believe in God.

I respect other people's feelings but I do not have those feelings myself.

I don't think cis and trans gendered people should keep on assuming that everyone else is cis or trans gendered. Most people have never suggested they are either.

WhiteShores · 09/05/2012 13:40

Oops sorry Maya,

I just spotted the bit about having no (or neutral) gender identity not existing.

Sorry, it does. Anyone who tells me otherwise is invalidating my gender identity.

larrygrylls · 09/05/2012 13:39

Seahouses and White,

On what basis do you make the statement that lots of people don't have a gender identity? I think that is a big statement to make. White, you say you don't feel like a woman. In what way do you not feel like a woman? I think it is far more likely that your gender identity matches your chromosomes so it is just not an issue you bother to think about. Or am I wrong? If you both woke up with mens' bodies tomorrow, how sure are you that would not have a conflict between your "gender identity" and your new body?

JugglingWithTangentialOranges · 09/05/2012 13:39

I would think a transgendered person wouldn't necessarily have to feel that they had been born in the "wrong body" Just that, living in our society, they felt a strong preference/ desire to represent themselves as members of the other gender (to the one they had been brought up as)

WhiteShores · 09/05/2012 13:38

Nyac

In this discussion (for the purpose of this discussion), I am using the following definitions:

woman = a gender-identity, something you feel in your mind
female = biological sex (XX)

I'm not arguing those are the definite definitions, but they seem to be used by many and understood as having the meanings I mean, therefore for the purposes of communication, I use them. :)

Using those definitions, I am female. I don't think I am in the wrong body. My body is what it is and I accept it. But I do not have a gender-identity of 'woman' because I do not feel like a woman. I feel like an individual human being.

I have no gender-identity (or you could say I have a neutral one).

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