Jack Monroe on being non-gender binary

Gender is something imposed on you because of the body you are born with though - from the very moment a baby is born it is treated in a gendered way.

I'm not disagreeing with you Bertie, I'm just trying to make it clear different things people mean when they mention gender, because Vashta was originally answering someone who wasn't sure.

This all always gets very confusing because people use the word gender to mean completely different things.

Biological sex is your anatomy.

Gender roles are the specific social expectations and treatment of men and women in any particular society - masculinity or femininity. For example in Saudi Arabia women cannot drive.

Gender expression is the way somebody presents their appearance in terms of masculine and feminine appearance. For example stilettos used to be a masculine item of clothing but are now considered feminine.

Gender traits are psychological attributes that people associate as being either masculine (such as aggression) or feminine (such as compassion).

Gender identity is an internal sense of self that has something to do with biological sex or gender roles or gender expression or gender traits.

Radical feminists don't believe in gender identity (any more than they believe you identify as being a particular height) and most people (in my experience) don't know there is such a thing as a gender identity.

Agree with Bertie.
The idea that gender='the thing I identify with' is taken for granted by one side of the argument but I find it really uncompelling.
My perception of gender is that it is, unfortunately, far more coercive than that: something society forces on you regardless of what you want.
Things that are done to women and girls because they are women won't be stopped by the woman declaring that she doesn't identify as a woman. I can't help suspecting that the understanding of gender as identification could only have taken root in a very privileged part of society.

Vashta -

"sex is the biological difference you're born with (but even this isn't strictly binary due to intersex people) and gender is whether you define as male or female and is influenced by society's ideas of what it means to be male or female. Some people believe the two are completely different (ie "I was born with male genitalia but I am a woman") and others say it's the same thing ("I'm a woman because of my biological sex and nothing can change that")."

Sorry but you've got this one wrong, I'm afraid. The first is spot on. Some people believe the two are different and can be separated out. But then there are two alternate viewpoints, which often get mashed together. One is that gender is inextricably linked to sex, or a belief that they are the same thing (I thought this for a while, thinking it was just an alternative word because of sex being, well, sex.) But the radfem viewpoint, and the one you come across a lot on here is that gender is IRRELEVANT, and OPPRESSIVE, because it's not something that you choose or "express", it's something which is put on you by society. And hence, yep, someone with this viewpoint thinks that biological sex is all that matters, but that this shouldn't impact on anybody's identity and that anything where biological sex is irrelevant is totally unrelated to "gender" and/or that "gender" is made up bollocks anyway.

For example: one of the things that often comes up when gender is discussed is children's preferences for dolls over toy vehicles. It's clear to anybody that these things are gendered in our society - you find dolls in the pink or "girls'" aisle while cars and trucks are in the blue or "boys'" aisle. One of the things that the gender theory often pulls up is that transgender children often express a strong preference for the toys correlated with their opposite gender, rather than the toys correlated with their biological sex.

But the radfem perspective is that this is nonsense. They are toys. Having a preference for one or the other doesn't define your gender any more than having a preference for bananas would define one as more monkey than human. There is no logical reason why dolls are more suited to little girls and no logical reason why cars and trucks are more suitable for little boys, so to use this as "evidence" that a child is genuinely transgender just seems completely baffling.

I don't know if I've explained this well but this appears to be the crux. People who buy into gender theory expect that everybody else believes in gender as well, and if somebody questions the "gender spectrum" they assume that it's because they think that everybody's gender must match their biological sex when that is not the argument. I'm not arguing that gender must match. I'm saying that the idea of a spectrum with masculinity at one end and femininity on the other is totally arbitrary. I'm guessing on that spectrum, that nail varnish is on the "feminine" end, while engines are on the "masculine" end and a cup of tea is firmly in the middle. But there is NOTHING inherently feminine, or masculine, about either of these things if we are talking about sex. And fine, we are not talking about sex, we are talking about gender. But in that case, gender has NO biological or natural basis, there is NOTHING except the expectations and ideas that we as a society have built up over millennia, it's not based on anything, except perhaps old sexism. It's arbitrary. It makes no sense to keep pretending it exists as a way to somehow free ourselves from the chains of it. Eh?? That just reinforces it! Surely?

It does raise a lot of questions - about the honesty of the relationship and what is important to you in a relationship.

I agree with this. If my DH told me thinks he has been a woman all these years, I would be furious at the dishonesty. As a heterosexual woman, my sexual partner being a man is as strong a deal breaker as I can imagine.

Well, I would expect one of the things that might be important to you in a relationship is your partner being the gender that you are attracted to.

I've now read the whole thread. and very interesting views here.

i am an adult female. I also identify as female. I dress a certain way, I choose to wear skirts/dresses, high heels and do hair and make up.

the presumption that because I do this I must be a fragile princess (this has happened) really annoys me.

I get laughed at if I choose to do typical "bloke" things mostly by my dads brother for example - I decorated our house, I knocked a wall down, I tiled. I would have probably preferred someone/anyone to do it for me, but not because I'm a weak fragile woman, more because I'm lazy. DH would have done it or helped out but he was away. and we had a deadline.

If I'm being honest, I think if DH woke up one day and told me he wanted to transition, I would be shocked (as I expect Jacks partner was) and I would struggle to deal with it. i like men. so if my husband decided he wanted to become female, I would wonder what that would make me.

Firstly I'll admit I've only skim read the thread. But will come back and read it properly.

I usually avoid the threads in feminism section because I personally find them too "heavy" for want of a better word.

But. This has caught my attention.

almondpudding linked to this lecture on another thread. I think for those trying to differentiate between sex and gender (and male and female brains as that's the topic of the lecture) it's a really excellent discussion backed up by lots of examples and references

www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKeKCxPApKQ

Quite long but really helpful on the conceptual side. In particular discussing what binary/dimorphism really means and how gender really is not dimorphic at all. Thus gender - or masculinity/femininity cannot be either split into opposite poles or be described as a spectrum (with a sliding scale from manly to effeminate). Whereas primary sex characteristics are very dimorphic.

I am an adult human female, and as humans are dimorphic, I cannot be both a male and a female. I am a woman. This is the term for adult human females. This is a simple matter of biology. The clothes I choose to wear and the way I feel inside will not change these basic facts.

This is what I believe. There is no spectrum and there is not an infinite number of genders. There is biological sex, which as I have stated, is dimorphic, and there are behavioural codes, which are another matter. Behaviour does not have to be dependent on sex, preferences are just a matter of personality.

Jack Monroe sounds to me like a very confused individual, who may be suffering from a mental illness if she wishes to amputate a part of her body for non-medical reasons.

This is my stance on gender identity. I have as much right as Jack Monroe for my stance to be seen as valid. For her to demand that I refer to her using the pronoun 'they' is to demand that I reject this, it is to demand that I accept gender and that I accept that one can change from male to female and vice versa, or simply by choice become neither.

You may call this disrespectful. But in doing so, you prioritise her feelings over mine, for it is a disrespect towards me and my identity to demand it.

Tbf there might have been more to the conversation with Jack's ex but I felt sorry for her too. There's a huge difference in implication between someone having a mastectomy for health reasons and having one because breasts are feminine.

That's exactly it, Freshwater. Jack isn't resisting it so much as, er, promoting it and propping it up.

They can do what they like, and live their life however best makes them happy, but when they use their public position to actively promote attitudes that damage women and girls, then it's fair to comment.

*Shovetheholly Thu 22-Oct-15 13:49:29

(Equally Freshwater - as I said earlier, Jack makes it clear that they don't think 'ballet is for girls and martial arts are for boys' but that SOCIETY creates these pressures that need to be resisted)*

No, I think Jack also thinks this, from what's said in the article. They say in the article "I revelled in my hard, masculine body" - well, I also revel in my muscular body, because I love to lift weights, but it's just a hard, muscular (female) body, why append masculine unless you yourself firmly associate muscle with masculinity? They then elaborate on a physical training regime, and talk about "foods with high testosterone levels, or bodyweight exercises for building shoulders and arms", but why would they have chosen to talk about this in this context unless they think that this is a marker of gender non-conformity? It's not! And nor should it be. I've got massive shoulders - but I'm still a woman, still female. I'm not 100% sure where I'm going with this, they can do whatever they want, but I'm just not sure that what they're describing means rejectimg male or female to quite the extent they feel it does, because they certainly seem to be much more positive about stereotypically male attributes than stereotypically female ones.

I do take the point above about not holding one person up as having to be representative of All Things Trans, totally on board that people should be above all themselves.

I gather that there are countless types of non standard identities (that is no doubt the wrong word) out there. Including one for humans who identify with some kind of animal, eg a deer.
I wish that humans could manage, without undue suffering, to just get on with things while being called he or she. As they presumably always have done in the past.
Interestingly, in Chinese the equivalent pronoun for "he" and "she" was just the one pronoun, written and pronounced the same - ta. In the 1920s it was decided by intellectuals that Chinese should have a he and she pronoun, as in Western languages, and a new pronoun - she (though still pronounced ta) was created.

Thanks vashta. I did ask dd and she was cutting in having to explain it. God I feel old. I know and understand about transgender and about 'intersex' it's the other new ( to me) terms that are confusing. And of course even my really sick dd can roll her eyes at mums ignorance. She can barely speak so it's hard to talk but we do try all the time.

I don't know Mermaids very well but I'm not happy at Gendered Intelligence being called sexist. Their comments on the damage of patriarchy and gender as a social construct is bloody good feminism if you ask me!!

Re. sex and gender - sex is the biological difference you're born with (but even this isn't strictly binary due to intersex people) and gender is whether you define as male or female and is influenced by society's ideas of what it means to be male or female. Some people believe the two are completely different (ie "I was born with male genitalia but I am a woman") and others say it's the same thing ("I'm a woman because of my biological sex and nothing can change that"). This difference of opinion is one of the things that gets debated a lot here.

I'd agree with Almond about Mermaids not being helpful, though I don't know about the other one. Mermaids, I assume with the best of intentions, pushes that you are even more special and your parents will love you even more if you are trans - they even sell Mothers' Day cards which say this. I don't think this is a particularly supportive or helpful thing to push, and even more so for those gender-questioning teens (ie, most of them) who don't turn out to be trans, once they've worked it through.

I wouldn't go to either of those sites. They are incredibly sexist.

It matters a lot what someone defines as if some of those definitions involve being positive about extreme body modifications and damaging clothing like binders.

None of those apply to defining as a lesbian, but they do apply to many trans identities.

Thanks for this. So I am straight female ? That makes sense about sexuality and gender to me. But how is my 'sex' not my 'gender'?

If you're really worried overthemill it might be worth looking up Gendered Intelligence or Mermaids. Personally, I don't think definitions matter that much. If someone defines as a girl, a tomboy, a transboy, gender queer, gender fluid, non-binary - it doesn't actually matter! What matters is that they're safe and happy.
There's some confusion on this thread in relation to definitions. Sorry for patronising but for the uninitiated sexual orientation is who you fancy (straight / gay / bi etc) and gender identity is who you think you are (male/female/neither etc). Trans is an umbrella term for anyone who doesn't fully identify with the sex they were assigned at birth. Massive range of people under that - cross-dressers, trans people who've had surgical changes, people who don't really feel male or female etc

It's not just that lesbians have the right to only go out with women; they also have the right to only choose lesbian relationships. It's really not about breasts; it's about being in a mutually affirmative lesbian relationship.

Eh, Almondpudding if you used your mention of holiday plans for Italy to make it clear how much you didn't like Spain, a discussion might happen anyway!