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Original poster

Can we please talk about "Gender" - I seem to find myself in a muddle thinking about it

86 replies

LovelyFriend · 27/08/2015 12:21

I'm still not perfectly clear on the differing feminist ideas/theories/positions on gender. I've read many threads on here about it and they are enlightening and I have learnt a lot but my mind but still struggles to understand some concepts.

My own feelings veer towards gender being a spectrum - society wants each sex to conform/identify in particular gendered ways. I see that being a woman/man as a very broad spectrum that includes all the ways a biological born woman or man may live and be. I guess by extension then I would view a Transwoman as a biological man and part of the spectrum of "maleness" and a Transman part of the spectrum of "femaleness". (I totally accept any trans persons right to be called by the name/pro noun of their choosing).

Perhaps it is biological physicality I view as a spectrum, rather than gender?

Apologies for my clumsy descriptions!

So I was looking at a RadFem website about an upcoming event that seemed quite interesting.

The event website states:
It is a central part of radical feminist analysis that gender is a tool of women's oppression, not women's liberation. None of the organisers consider ourselves to have an innate gender - neither masculine, feminine, trans, cis, gender queer, or any other gender. We are gender abolitionists who have been raised and socialized as girls and women because of our female bodies* in the context of patriarchy.
Women who view gender differently, as a benign spectrum of self expression rather than a human created power hierarchy, will find other events where they can organise with like minded people. RadFems Resist is designed by and for women interested in radical feminism and those who want to genuinely engage with second wave theory and women's liberationist ideas.

I'd like to understand this statement better - what are gender abolitionists? How does that manifest in daily life? What is "second wave theory"?

Am I one of the "Women who view gender differently, as a benign spectrum of self expression rather than a human created power hierarchy" who they don't want to attend the event? I can't figure it out.

Can anyone provide any insight or recommend any reading on this? It is something I'd really like to be confident discussing (outside of this forum).

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Perpendiculous · 29/08/2015 23:50

YeahWellMaybe - I read this from time to time and I thought you might find some support there. Flowers

YeahWellMaybe · 29/08/2015 23:23

Sorry my post is all over the place but my point is that I obviously confused her and have made her feel that being female is shit. My counsellor said I should have honoured her femininity by buying her more pinkSad I never let her have Barbies or excessively 'girly' (what does that mean anyway?) toys/clothes. But it is a gigantic fuck-up and instead of a fab strong woman I've got someone who loathes their female body and is determined to mutilate itSad

YeahWellMaybe · 29/08/2015 23:16

I brought my daughter up to feel that she could do anything: build fairy houses and skateboard brilliantly; have long blond hair and scruffy jeans; be brilliantly clever and able to cook. I was completely burstingly proud of her up until exactly 12 months ago when she cut off her hair and told me she is a boy. Head already emailed school to demand male pronouns and uniform. I was staggered. School referred us to gender clinic, psychiatrists etc who have all said she needs testosterone, her breasts removed and one offered to sort out a donor penis for her - a tiny 5ft1 slight teenager. I am in grief and terror. I will not allow any hormones or surgery for a 16/17 year old. I'm a lifelong feminist as was my mother. That article by RCC made me cry because of it's clarity. It's like a breath of fresh air after all the names I've been called to find someone expressing so well what I feel deep inside. I would like to abolish gender. I can't bear to see my little rebel perform the most conservative caricature of 'male'. It's a nightmare as there is NO support for mothers like me at least I have not found it. I don't want to join transparents or Mermaids. I want to find parents who are prepared to be screamed at and patronised by professionals but refuse to bend to popular treatment of the absolute of trans teens. One of my DDs contemporaries who came out last year has already been on testosterone for 6 months. Irreversibly infertile nowSad
Sorry for the hijack and thanks OP for staring this thread and thanks to the PP who posted the links. Drank them in like water in the desertFlowers

femfortheday · 29/08/2015 23:10

I really like the article from the last page on 'cis' and gender. I can't separate out a feeling of gender from gender roles.

slugseatlettuce · 29/08/2015 22:13

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YonicScrewdriver · 29/08/2015 21:39

"I also think that for women menstruation and pregnancy are the root cause of oppression. So this is core to my feminist agenda I guess."

Yes, I agree. I would probably add something like "fighting sexual ownership" as well, albeit this is aligned to pregnancy, because this is linked to FGM, rape, forced marriage, different sexual standards etc.

WhenSheWasBadSheWasHorrid · 29/08/2015 20:52

Another one dipping a toe into this thread.

I personally tend to think of gender as a spectrum a bit like sexuality.

I'm finding the same as you op with regards to my 4 year old dd being obsessed with what is for girls and what is for boys. She likes blue but only because of queen Elsa.

slugseatlettuce · 29/08/2015 18:05

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slugseatlettuce · 29/08/2015 18:03

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Original poster
LovelyFriend · 29/08/2015 17:17

I feel like you described too slug.

and it's only now at 47 I can really appreciate how fear of pregnancy, birth control, BC failure etc has coloured my entire adult life and taken up so much energy, caused so much distress and anxiety.

I accept that I present as a woman, and I have certainly been raised and conditioned to present as a woman (as well as to be quiet, stay still, don't argue, shut up etc). Looking back I can see how my life would have been different if I was a man and I was subject to male gendering.

I am comfortable with being a woman but I don't think I particularly feel like any specific gender. Having said that I can accept that I must feel more like a woman than any other gender, as I am female.

I wouldn't have a clue what it is to feel like a man, or feel like a TransPerson. Which does make me wonder how male born people can say that they feel like a woman, or female born people can say they feel like a man.

I understand perfectly how a person might identify strongly as another gender and wish to express themselves as another gender. Yet I don't see how a biological man can know that they really feel like a woman, rather than feel like a man who likes traditionally "feminine" clothing and lifestyle and company.

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slugseatlettuce · 29/08/2015 16:55

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Original poster
LovelyFriend · 29/08/2015 12:09

how do you teach children that men and women are different whilst simultaneously teaching them that men and women aren't different? I have a conflict between wanting to tell my daughter that she can be anything she wants to be (an astronaut paramedic, currently smile) but also wanting to prepare her for the realities of the world.

Kryten I struggle with this too.

my 7yo DD has no concept that girls can't do anything because of their gender. I've mentioned the "girls can do anything" line to her before and she just looked puzzled - she doesn't yet see or experience the issue. She's top in the class at maths, loves science as well as art and english. She has lovely friendships with boys and girls. She's competitive and empathic.

I deal with issues as and when they arise in an age appropriate way the best I can. But I'm not going to teach my DD's that they are considered to be inferior to boys in any way at all. WHen they are older of course we will discuss things but now they are too young and I think teaching them about patriarchy/gender bias/sexism etc would negatively impact on their personal development.

OP posts:
Original poster
LovelyFriend · 29/08/2015 11:59

DD2 is 4 and since she could talk she had had very firm and hard rules about boys and girls and boy's things/colours/toys and girl's things/colours/toys.

As a baby - 2yo, she wore largely gender neutral clothes. She had some pink but no more that any other colour in her wardrobe. From age 2 onwards she started wearing dresses, refusing to wear jeans or trousers at all (boys), though leggings are OK (girls).

I don't talk about gender this way - I've always been baffled by her thoughts - where did she get this stuff? I work FT so I can only think she picked up lots of these ideas from playgroups etc she went to with her CM, from TV, and in part from her older sister who is 4 years older.

Since starting nursery a year ago, she ramped it all up considerably. A friend of hers has 4 older sisters and talks about what girls are and what boys are & DD is fascinated with her. Mind you she also rolls her eyes at this girl for always wanting to play "babies" all the time - its boring.

Of course I share with her all the time my POV that colours/toys/things aren't boys or girls, yet she is fairly entrenched and adamant about it :). However when she starts playing, her gender bias is less obvious - she can quite easily shrug it off and just do what she wants.

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Kryten2X4B523P · 29/08/2015 08:30

To bring parenting into this, I was thinking the other day about how there is no way of avoiding societal gender stereotyping. Unless you never left the house, never watched anything on TV, never read a book etc.

Which brings me to an issue I have, how do you teach children that men and women are different whilst simultaneously teaching them that men and women aren't different? I have a conflict between wanting to tell my daughter that she can be anything she wants to be (an astronaut paramedic, currently Smile) but also wanting to prepare her for the realities of the world.

Kryten2X4B523P · 29/08/2015 08:27

I don't think anybody has a truly masculine-only or feminine-only gender. Everybody has interests (or could have, if given the opportunity) that lie on various points on the social spectrum between masculine and feminine, especially considering different societies might place some interests at different points on this spectrum.

But to my mind, this proves that gender as something internal doesn't exist. I don't think anybody could say they are truly one or the other. I think that the term "genderqueer" (correct me if I'm wrong) is supposed to be the answer to this, and cover the people in my imaginary spectrum that don't consider themselves to have a male gender or a female gender. But if nobody is either masculine-only or feminine-only then that makes everybody genderqueer, so it's a bit of a useless word.

Perpendiculous · 28/08/2015 20:17

This blog post (not written by me) pretty much sums up my feelings towards gender.

BuffytheReasonableFeminist · 28/08/2015 14:45

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BuffytheReasonableFeminist · 28/08/2015 14:40

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Kryten2X4B523P · 28/08/2015 14:11

As an aside, in my latest OU course I recently came across epistemology and the awesome word which is phenomenological and I smiled and was thankful to the intelligent women here for making the concepts slightly less alien to me Smile

NiNoKuni · 28/08/2015 13:31

Well, I quite agree LovelyFriend, that is in fact what is happening in law. The people who object to it are being roundly villified. I'm not sure what anyone can really do about it, though.

I have looked up post-structuralism in an attempt to translate Buffy's sentence...now even more confused! Grin

If post-structuralism means that anything means anything anyone thinks it does...then the 'speaking embodied subject' is the person doing the, er, speaking, where speaking and what actually happens are two different things? Erm...I need a coffee!

Original poster
LovelyFriend · 28/08/2015 13:16

Which was an attempt to reconcile the linguistic perspective of the post-structuralist take on subjectivity with the phenomenological one.
Oh crikey - I need to say (cause this is the place to be able to say it) I do not understand this sentence at all Grin

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Original poster
LovelyFriend · 28/08/2015 13:15

NiNoKuni I also can't help but feel that for many the discussion of what is a "woman" will only be satisfactorily resolved by the acceptance of men as women by women.

Which feels very invasive and like the patriarchy is forcing itself into hard fought for corners.

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BuffytheReasonableFeminist · 28/08/2015 12:49

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NiNoKuni · 28/08/2015 12:46

I was brought up by my 70s hippy-ish feminist mum. I'd always considered myself a feminist but never 'done the reading'. So a couple of years ago I decided I'd go check out what feminism was doing these days and duly ordered my copy of The Second Sex to catch up (still not read it, bad feminist!). I read a lot of stuff online, got on board with the sex/gender thing, found out about liberal and radical feminism, took a look at some of it and nodded along with some bits, looked a bit askance at some others. Then I ventured onto Twitter cos, you know, I wanted to actually talk to some women.

Turns out you can't. The whole feminism thing has been taken over by the trans thing. I'm not sure you can be a feminist these days without having some kind of take on it. It feels like the battle lines have been redrawn, to the point where we now have to fight about what a woman actually is before we can get back to that whole business of advancing equality/relieving oppression/smashing the patriarchy. So IMO that is what has happened to the women's movement these days - arguing about who can be termed a woman in the first place. And I find that sad, discomfiting and weirdly annoying, whilst at the same time acknowledging it's a debate that clearly needs to be had. I don't really have any answers, and I don't think anyone else does either. The two groups stand on completely opposing grounds. The underlying philosophies don't and can't mesh. And the debates just go round and round and round, with generous helpings of insults and threats thrown in on occasion.

At the extremes, you have some people saying a woman is anyone who says she's a woman, period. And opposite them you have other people saying a woman is an adult human female, period. Where you stand will be entirely up to you!

BuffytheReasonableFeminist · 28/08/2015 12:43

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