Friends suggesting transphobia and misogyny both rooted in policing gender roles

You think they were born liking lacey things?

You understand how a society works, I'm sure - you'll agree that most of our values and manners are learned, rather than innate, and that a child brought up by wolves probably won't find and use a knife and fork for themselves?

If you don't believe that girls are taught to be 'feminine', just look at the amount of pink frilly stuff in the childrenswear dept.

And any fool can deduce that, in a system in which power is severely conscribed for a particular group, members of that group will will be forced to use whatever currency or power they are allowed to survive and, within the limits placed upon them, prosper.

It doesn't mean that gender exists, or that femininity inheres in femaleness. It just shows that women lack power.

Average wealth and equality are two different measures. Both can affect the ability of an individual to reach her full genetic potential.

The idea a more prosperous society is more equal is clearly false - just look at UAE.

The review paper linked upthread is interesting but unsurprising.

Men and women are different genetically and physiologically, and have different reproductive roles. It would be astonishing if there were no population-level psychological, behavioural or cognitive differences, operating independently (insofar as such a thing is possible in a social animal) of environment.

When a society becomes more prosperous or egalitarian, environmental levers may press more lightly than genetic ones, pushing the latter into prominence.

For example, the height difference between the sexes may be greater in a rich than a poor society because both sexes can achieve their maximum genetic potential in the former, but not the latter.

I was saddened by this:

When it comes to cognitive abilities, females benefit more than males from improvements in living conditions. The performance gap increases in domains where females have an advantage and closes in domains where males are ahead.

This must mean that men are being trained up to their full genetic potential but women are not. When conditions improve, women catch up with men (in areas of natural male dominance) and pull even further ahead of them (in areas of natural female dominance).

This is analagous to finding out that the height differential has shrunk as conditions improved - it means men were previously getting optimum nutrition at the expense of women.

Some women are tall, some women are short. On average women are shorter than men, but we do not classify people into male and female based on height. The different height distribution is a consequence of the sex difference not a defining feature of it.

Some women like unframed spectacles, some like normal frames, some like chunky frames. It may be in current fashions unframed are more popular with women than with men. It may be in 50 years time that fashion reverses. In any case we do not classify people into male and female based on fashion preferences.

Some women are interested in caring professions, some prefer construction or IT. It may be that a higher proportion of women stably choose caring professions. Hard to tell how culturally influenced this is as nobody is brought up outside culture, but it wouldn't be surprising if our brains had evolved to be more interested in hanging onto those infants while our bodies were evolving to feed them. We do not classify people into male and female based on degree of interest in caring professions.

Baileyonice · Today 06:42

Research shows that males and females share the vast majority of cognitive abilities, leadership traits, and personality dimensions.

Baileyonice · Today 07:17

Males & females sharing cognitive abilities & personality dimensions more common to one particular sex is scientifically uncontroversial.

Can you explain your apparently self-contradictory position @Baileyonice?

Of course they do, but they are still men.

Yes. I don't think our current iteration of word salad waiter is trans himself though, he just shares the MRA joy in telling women who we are really and that our own views on the matter don't matter.

MRA/TRA mantra: "The people who care don't matter, because the people who matter don't care"

Whatever the case......a man can play around with feminine streotypes and presentations all he likes but it still doesn't make him a woman. A woman can play around with feminine stereotypes and presentations all she likes, but that is not what makes her a woman.

Sex is a matter of biology; of the chromosomal hard drive.....which may well, and probably does have direct influence on certain traits and behaviours at a population level.......mostly linked to the sex drive and its operation and to the facts of reproduction and childbirth. No amount of sympathy, fellow feeling or 'identity' makes a male into a female, though.

And as Judith Butler ( the queen of gender) suggested - 'gender identity' is not a fixed state of being, it is a repeated series of actions and not something with demonstrable existence. Feeling something does not change your sex.

'Discrimination' is simply being able to tell one thing apart from another. It is not necessarily a pejorative. We need to use our ability to discriminate all of the time.

An incel-to-trans pipeline has been noted previously. I believe that this is who people refer to when they use the term 'transcel'.

It is hilarious isn't it. Such backwards construction. Start from what they want the end to be and work backwards to justify it.

"I understand all sorts of things that are currently socially attached to sex don't have to be. Also, because I am progressive I don't think we should be classifying people by sex at all because that is reducing people to their biology or limiting their sexuality. Logically, I should therefore be agitating to drop the idea of men and women altogther and just have "people" and "things people do/feel/enjoy".

However, I still like the idea of women, so much in fact that I want to be one. So obviously we still have have to have the idea of men and women, it just can't be linked to sex or biology any more. But yes obviously we still need separate toilets, that's really important otherwise what is the point of being a woman and not a man anyway?

So, rather than following my own thought process to the logical conclusion of getting rid of the division between men and women altogether all and putting all the non-biological social construct stuff currently linked to sex back on the pile for everyone to play with, I'm going to decide that "women" and "men" still exist but it's actually all the psychological/social construct stuff that makes a person a "man" or a "woman".

Yeah, that feels good to me, that's what I'm going to go with."

I love this.

It's like the consumer price index.

This year in the what makes me a woman basket, we have glasses, psychological associations, and because I said so.

Last year it was a constellation of data points, my mum's assertion, and because I said so.

The year before, it was my new, enormous boobs, sundresses, and because I said so.

As a PP has said, I'm detecting a theme.

It's the rage that gets me.

Why the fuck is he, and men like him so bloody angry with women. It has to be all connected to the incel environment.

Excellent work, Rhino
I remember in the olden days when it was just a gold lame purse.

Sticking it to women seems to be the dominant goal. That and gaining their attention.

For this one, yes, undoubably. It's not a coincidence how close many of his "arguments" are to classic MRA tropes.

The decree about frameless glasses does make me chuckle though.

I'm imagining Genderists getting a weekly update of the latest items classifed as Feminine or Masculine, like the latest Abominations Unto Nuggan that turn up at the back of the Borogrovian Books or Laws every week or so, the incoherent ramblings of a senile god.

"From this week on, the following shall be considered inviolately feminine:

• Frameless Glasses
• Beets
• The Colour Ochre
• Senior Accountancy Quaifications
• Any Music Composed by a Latvian
• The Programming Language Rust

And the following shall be considered inviolately masculine:

• Pine Furniture
• Lasagne
• Gravel Paths
• Small Hatchback Cars
• Holidays in France
• String

The following have been removed from gender cataegory and may now be considered entirely gender neutral:

• Ankle socks
• Dicken's Novels
• Taylor Swift (the music)
• Taylor Swift (the person)
• Pingpong

Glory unto Butler"

Answer not a fool according to his folly, and all that....

Really, I like composing the responses as they help me to sort out my own thoughts.

Hilarious! A sex class is, by definition, biological. It can be nothing else.

The beliefs in people’s heads are another matter entirely, and not something we can sensibly organise single sex spaces around.

I have to say, we've seen quite a few men argue like Bailey. Probably are Bailey, in fact. But there have been others too.

They do seem to spend a disproportionate amount of time trying to find a premise for being accepted as women that they can claim is logical and infallible.

Biology, reproductive function, anatomy, all obviously a complete no go. So we've got data points, miasma, constellations, and now a psychological sex class.

It's as stupid as the original claims that well I've got long hair and I wear a dress.

What really quite profound psychological issue do these men have, that this is how they spend their time?

Judging by Bailey's thinly concealed fury with women, I'm guessing he doesn't believe it himself, either.

Sticking it to women seems to be the dominant goal. That and gaining their attention.

The troubling part is quite how many of them there are.

Biology is absolutely being used to prevent trans people from being included in their associated psychological sex class.

That's fucking hilarious. Damn that bigoted biology, not allowing badly dressed, pouting men in fishnets to actually BE women.

I wouldn't mind, and I can't work out if he believes it from Bailey's posts, because let's face it, he's not the best communicator in the world, but even if there was such a thing as a psychological sex class, trans identified men remain firmly shackled to the male one.

Disregarding women's consent and threatening them with rape for non-compliance is not exactly 'Women's Psychology 101', is it? 😄

Of course non masculine men exist but surely in your world if they choose rimless glasses (to allow the 'glam') they magically become women? Or are you contradicting yourself by claiming men who choose feminine coded (in your strange opinion) items are actually still men after all and not so almost women that they should be regarded as women.

I have a meeting about to start but I look forward to finding out later how liking feminine stuff makes men women but also absolutely doesn't.

Straws, grasp.

Effeminate men 'suddenly' don't exist now? Wasn't that a GC talking point that they do & shouldn't be 'erased'?

Bailey's entire premise is a nonsense. I admire the many articulate and patient posters who are engaging with him.

Self determination is not and has never been the basis of feminism. Material reality isn't something feminism seeks to wave away as irrelevant. Our sex and what that means is at the very core of feminism.

You mean we don't have the Sorting Knickers?

I am disappoint.