The medieval / ancient 'one sex' model

Agree, to many activist tack on buzz words without understanding what they mean. The “sex binary is a western patriarchal construction” is a perfect example if this because it is just plain wrong. It’s not a construct. It’s not western. And it’s not inherently patriarchal to recognise that there are two sexes (a binary).

What was the article OP? Was it an academic one, or explained for a general audience?

When people say things like 'the sex binary is a western patriarchal construction' (usually on social media in support of trans rights) they are picking up on this theory, and the idea that there was a subsequent development (invention?) of a two sex model, and that our way of comprehending sex is a result if that. This is shy Prof hines said on twitter that there was no such thing as a female skeleton before the enlightenment.

It's an interesting area of research but the theory is much more contested & controversial in history than it seems to be in other humanities disciplines.

As evidenced by the panicked and muddled approach of various sporting bodies in deciding that women are just men with a bit less testosterone ie Laurel Hubbard.

It's really no different to how women were treated in the middle ages or by the Catholic church

Again, it is actually very different. The only similarity is that both are bad for women’s rights. Although I would argue the Middle Ages were much much worse than now because women were literally property then.

Yes I don't think the female body was ever generally seen as a "construct or fiction" but often as a lesser, "non-male" version of the default. However in a lot of cultures the female body has also been worshipped, and clearly represented, for its fertility and creative powers, with female gods of fertility, motherhood, childbirth etc and detailed representations of female biology. I'm not saying that precludes sexism, misogyny etc, it doesn't at all but it does suggest people have generally recognised physical femaleness and what it entails as a thing.

problem is the resurgence of a mindset that the male biological experience is based in fact and unproblematic while female bodies are a biological construct or fiction.

But it’s not a “resurgence” because this mindset never existed before. You are drawing parallels that are not there. You need to research history a bit more I think. The female body was never before viewed as a construct or fiction. It was viewed as a biological reality that made us inferior to men in every way.

I think one issue is that there are always parallels through history in how sexism and oppression of women asserts itself, and likewise with other kids of oppression too. But often the most forceful genderwoo pushers have very little understanding or awareness of history and societal structures. They seem to genuinely think that by just loudly washing their hands of evil colonialism, whiteness and the non-existent "gender binary" and equating all these things with each other, they can get rid of all society's ills. They can't analyse what they are saying enough to see how it involves more oppression, or how their idolisation of the gender systems of the colonised is patronising western superiority in itself.

the problem is the resurgence of a mindset that the male biological experience is based in fact and unproblematic while female bodies are a biological construct or fiction. Trans activism denies women the right to speak about our own bodies, just as Catholic theology used to. It problematizes female biology and turns it back into a taboo.

Excellent point.

I'm not sure re the TRA parallel to Medieval theology. There's the whole of the Renaissance & the Enlightenment & the 19th C in between.

But the common thread across millennia is the idea of the default human = male/man.

I agree - it is racist to have white as default. That was the point of my comparison.

Yes, I was just agreeing that it's a term loaded with assumptions and superiority just like "non-male" - and I don't use it for that reason, especially as I am white. Your comparison suggested that people think non-white is acceptable - while I do see it widely used, I wanted to say not everyone is fine with it.

Is the enlightenment / colonialism supposed to have invented or imposed other biological realities as well? Eating, sleeping, death maybe? Do genderists believe these things didn't exist until the colonial west forced them on poeple?

They do realise there are places that were never colonised? That nonetheless function on the basis of sexual dimorphism - reproductively, and also socially (and not in some miraculously lovely, fair, noble savage way either)?

I just read an article about the medieval / ancient approach to sex and gender. The writer termed it the 'one sex' model, with 'male' being the normal definitive sex and 'female' being a deficient, broken male.

Yes - Eve made from Adam's rib and all that. In (crude) summary, the Medieval belief in the 'great chain of being' had God, the angels, Man, woman, in a hierarchy of that order (and I sometimes think dogs and horses come in between Man and Woman).

It's essentially a hierarchical model, rather than a binary model.

In the Renaissance, with increasingly science/rationality driven research into the human body, that hierarchical model moves to a model of binary opposition or difference. Although that incorporates hierarchy, so it's a binary model of hierarchical difference (ach, jargon, apologies).

It's where some po-mo theory (eg Butler) offers a useful observation: that there are socially-constructed views about sex and biology - but that observation has been misread twisted into "sex is socially constructed." And Sally Hines' ridiculous tweet about sex being "invented" by the Enlightenment.

Umm no, conceptions of sex have changed historically over time. Which one might expect, as ideas/concepts about many things do change over time.

I don't like non-whites either and don't use it.

Interesting concept and a revealing parallel! I have a strong disinclination to being defined by what I haven't got; I expect most people would feel the same.

At least medieval thinking has the defence of anatomical ignorance. The absence of a penis and regular bleeding from roughly the same site could read like a symbolic mutilation, I suppose, if you had no idea of the beautiful complexity of female internal sexual anatomy. But surely babies showed the world that something miraculous was capable of happening in there?

I am if the opinion that an awful lot of male suspicion and denigration of women and windbaggery about sex differences is and always has been a deep-rooted envy of women's reproductive function. After all, nobody can brush babies under the carpet. They're overwhelmingly real!

Interesting. I would argue that the medieval church saw men as the 'complete' sex and women as the 'broken' sex.

And, yes, @NotGCTUR, your posts never contribute anything to the discussion, whether they be about Stephen King, Graham Lineham or this topic.

Interesting parallel. The general view now seems to be that "woman" is reduced to a costume or set of stereotypes that is defined by men, and men can put on and take off the disembodied pieces.

I remember it going;

'God I love the guardian, it just keeps giving'

I think that wording is funnier, note to NotGCTUR

It was quite funny back then.

Non males
Non whites?

So what are you doing here?

This board is a place for analysis, debate, and discussion.

Flippant, ill-thought remarks like yours just don't cut it here.

Yes exactly gender identity ideology turns female biology into a taboo. Apologies ChoosandChipsandSealingWax I didn’t see your post before I posted. I think in some ways the taboo is worse now than in my grandmother’s day (admittedly she wasn’t from mediaeval times). In the past there was at least a whispered acknowledgment of ‘women’s problems’ we don’t even have that much now. Women’s biology essentially does not exist any longer. If this continues then in a generation the level of ignorance among women and girls about our bodies will lead to dreadful health and psychological consequences.

I find the Catholic Church of the modern day far less scary/oppressive than gender identity/queer theory. For a start the Catholic Church accepts and supports, even respects women who don’t want to be sex objects, porn stars, cam girls, prostituted, sexually available to all men all of the time. It is also fine not to want to get married. Of course celibacy is expected in that case but given the porn addled brains and disturbing sexual tastes of large numbers of men nowadays being single and ‘chaste’ begins to look like a more desirable and even liberating option. Better perhaps than escaping being sexualised by claiming to be a man and suffering the life long consequences of testosterone and surgery.

I think it is worse than that, it sweeps female biology under the carpet entirely, don’t speak of it, don’t acknowledge it, it doesn’t exist or if it does it is of no consequence, there is no biological difference between men and women, nothing to see here. There are men and then there are submissive sex objects. If we don’t ’identify’ as men then we clearly embrace the submissive sex object role. It is hideous.

As for the mediaeval Christianity link, not sure about that, I am no expert in mediaeval theology.

“Trans activism denies women the right to speak about our own bodies, just as Catholic theology used to. It problematizes female biology and turns it back into a taboo.”

This.