Spreading the idea that everyone has a gender identity

And re law it is ridiculous to claim it is not an incredibly sexist profession. It doesn’t just depend on being a ‘very good lawyer’ there is also many elements re women’s social roles and perceptions of being ‘the right kind of woman’ (that don’t always favour expression of feminity btw) that affect opportunity for women

Do you have any practical experience or is this something someone once posted on a feminist forum?

As for SarahCarer who needs men to put women down or belittle their achievements when there are feminists like you so ready to step up to the mark. Your comments about high heels and nails are laughable- yeah we really want to hire an incompetent woman just because she looks good.

Pratchet- you keep asking if I am against self ID? Why? I rarely post on trans threads. I think MN FWR is obsessed with trans issues to the exclusion almost of talking about anything else. I think the push to normalise prostitution and pornography is far more dangerous for women and society than trans rights.

Performing femininity might include, for example, wearing high heels or makeup, styling your hair, getting your nails done. All of these things are performing femininity. If you are truly GNC in the legal services sector then hats off to you. Not an easy thing to do. But still if you were a mediocre lawyer instead of a bloody good one you may have found a lot more sex related barriers. Whereas there are plenty of older mediocre male lawyers about. Thankfully the world is changing. Do you agree Lass? Or do you think women have always just been letting themselves down as individuals. Would you have turned up at the ballot box in 1901 and insisted they allow you the vote? I bet you're confident you could have persuaded them that in your case they might just as well.

Lass, you are likely to be underestimating the usefulness of your gender performance and your appearance to your career.

I was shit hot at my job, but I don't doubt my own success in a very competitive field was heavily influenced by my class, my race, my schooling and on being a very attractive young woman. I had it all going for me, though had I been plain things would likely have been different.

My brothers, who had the same package plus male privilege, did that much better financially.

(And no, that doesn’t mean I think individual skills and character are unimportant/irrelevant.)

IMO you do women and girls a massive disservice when you tell them the key to success is simply a matter of individual skill and character. This simply means when they experience sexism they attribute it to a lack of skills or character rather than as a structural societal problem which unfairly limits their success. This is career and life limiting. It is one of the reasons women do not assert themselves re pay rises or promotion, because they have been told not getting those things is always down to them not being good enough.

And re law it is ridiculous to claim it is not an incredibly sexist profession. It doesn’t just depend on being a ‘very good lawyer’ there is also many elements re women’s social roles and perceptions of being ‘the right kind of woman’ (that don’t always favour expression of feminity btw) that affect opportunity for women.

No, and I think you know that.

My point is that how easy or hard it is to succeed is still affected by the degree to which you conform to feminity for women. You feel that your success is entirely attributable to your skills and character. I think this is a type of blindness and cherry picking.

Your experience of being a girl and then a woman was not marked with difficulty because you are comfortable with feminity. That was the point you made on this thread.

For my DDs who are not feminine and not comfortable with feminity you have little to offer TBH.

You have an ideology, as I interpret it, that says individual character and skills are the only thing that matters and all this fussing about structural oppression is just whiny victimhood. I think that is reasonably easy to believe if you are, as an individual, comfortable with feminity because you will not identify the application of standards of feminity to you throughout your life as sexist because you do not find them to be restrictive and you do not experience social sanctions for breaking them as often due to breaking them less often.

As throughout history, there are many women who could have been ‘very good’ at many things but were never given the chance to be because of structural oppression. Being ‘very good’ at something depends on being given the opportunity to do it in the first place at the most basic level. For women that still depends on ‘being allowed’.

Lass, are you against Self ID?

Actually Offred I'm successful because I'm a bloody good lawyer . I have never bought into the limitations imposed on women- whether real or the ones which certain feminists go to extraordinary lengths to tell their daughters exist whilst achieving little other than installing fear and undermining confidence.

Do tell me what "performing femininty" I've done?

I've certainly never taken on all the "wife work" burden for starters. Nor given up my name or my career. I've never been frightened of speaking my mind or putting forward my case. I applied for promotions and partnership and got it. Never been daft enough at a meeting to assume I would be one dealing with tea and coffee. Happy to take on speaking invitations and get involved in roles within the Law Society.

Or are you hinting that my it was all down to some sort of womanly wiles? Do you think I fluttered my eye-lashes at the interview panels?

I think lass it is notable that you conform to many social expectations regarding feminity. I would not particularly want you to talk to my daughters TBH as ‘an example’ of a successful woman. I think this would reinforce the idea that conforming to expectations of feminity is highly associated with ability to achieve success as a woman TBH. I know you don’t conform to all of them but nobody actually does. Given my two daughters are not feminine and do not want to be feminine and have experienced sexism already for not being feminine (my 8 year old is crying and not wanting to go to school at least twice a week because she’s being told she ‘can’t’ play catch due to being a girl etc by the children in her class) I don’t think you’d be someone they could look up to TBH. They’d want to see a woman who was successful despite not performing feminity, someone like them, who wasn’t feminine.

Sex sells

I rest my case

Sarahcarer - women choose to present themselves for objectification and don't realise that their personalities and the way they view themselves have been significantly influenced by the way others see them and encourage them to be. When they make these choices they are being loaned power by men for male purposes and they feel powerful. They think they are taking power but men could have it back any time they wanted. They think it is power over men but actually it is only the power to please men

More infantilising.

I very much doubt those women think they are "taking power from men". They do it because sex sells. If they just wanted to play football they could do so without taking their clothes off.

Thanks SarahCarer. I realize it wasn't your intention. No worries.

Sorry Beachcomber that wasn't my intention.

SarahCarer could you not put words in my mouth please. I wasn't on the thread about American football. Your above post looks like you are quoting me except it's not something I said nor is it something I would be likely to say.

Here's how I see it:

Lass - women choose to present themselves for objectification

Beachcomber - women are coerced into presenting themselves for objectification

Sarahcarer - women choose to present themselves for objectification and don't realise that their personalities and the way they view themselves have been significantly influenced by the way others see them and encourage them to be. When they make these choices they are being loaned power by men for male purposes and they feel powerful. They think they are taking power but men could have it back any time they wanted. They think it is power over men but actually it is only the power to please men.

I am much closer to Beachcomber's position than Lass's but I emphasise the personal experience of gender because it feels internal.

By gender denial I mean refusing to believe that anyone has a gender or that gender is an observable phenomenon in social science. It is observable in people's detailed description of themselves and each other and in their outward presentation and can be used to predict behaviour to a certain extent.

There are plenty of different opinions on that thread, there is not one hive mind response representing "the voice of feminism".

Here is an example of women colluding with sexism. But such is the skewed logic of feminism that it translates to their being poor oppressed woman who have to do this to be able to play a sport rather than collusion. (There is a perfectly normal American football league which does not require these costumes)

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3283417-what-the

Socially constructed sexist hierarchy

(sorry)

Perhaps we are not far apart.

I'm not sure though because I don't know what you mean when you talk about gender or gender denial.

As I said before, I am using gender to mean the system of social control via which humans are given a sociopolitical classification according to their reproductive sex which categorizes them as inferior (females) or superior (males). Gender is used to socialize us into complying with and internalizing these sex roles and into believing them and the social constructed sexist hierarchy otherwise known as male supremacism to be the natural order.

I would appreciate it if you could explain how you are using the word gender. And also what gender denial is.

@beachcomber we aren't far apart at all. I guess I am just saying I totally understand why people feel that gender is innate even though it isn't. Also I cannot hold with gender denial at all although I fully accept that not everyone internalised gender.

Autism and narcissism are in no way linked. They are far apart. Autism causes people to be less responsive to social cues in early development than neurotypical people. Narcissism I understand less to be honest but I am wondering if it plays a role in being more responsive/reactive to social cues due to the continual urge to see yourself through the eyes of others. I am less confident about this assertion and much less well read around narcissism.

Why are autism and narcissism being linked?

I'm not aware of narcissism being a causal factor in distress linked to gender.

Culture and society offer us all opportunities and simultaneously limit us. The issue is whether we are getting a reasonable deal, not whether we “should” be totally free to pursue any path we desire at any time.

But culture is also socialized and anything else is simply our personalities which are also much socialized.

Of course we are all individuals but we are individuals that spend our entire lives in a totalitarian system of sex class politics.

And anyway none of the above regardless of semantics changes the material reality of one's reproductive sex.