AIBU to think that the emphasis on "gender neutral" smacks of desperation

[Sakura]

I'm halfway through Delusions of Gender and lots of things have begun to niggle me.

I get the feeling that the need for women to prove their brains are the same as mens is just as absurd as the mad patriarchal obsession with finding differences is male and female brains.

Neuroscience, evolutionary psychology are the most recent "proofs" that the system has conjured up in order to justify oppression and subordination of women

But the idea that we now have to prove male and female brains are the same, and that if girls and boys were just raised in a neutral environment then sexism would just dissappear, doesn't make sense to me. It would rather be like a black man writing a book proving that he is not, in fact, black. And that him not being actually black means that he should't be discriminated against.

But, well... racism was only invented in order to justify slavery. The trade along the Silk Road (Europe to China) proves that for centuries many races and religions lived side by side and traded equally. There was no inherent racism until it became necessary to justify slavery. That, you could say, was the root of the concept of race.

And it's the same with female oppression. The oppression and subordination comes first, the justifications come afterwards. Dispel the brain myths and they'll only think up another reason why women should be disenfranchised in economics and politics.
MEanwhile women have to expend lots of energy proving they are "just as good as men" or "can be just like men"

The truth is, from what i have seen, there is no evidence, one way or another, about how brains work, but even if there were dramatic differences between male and female brains, on what basis would that be a justification for patriarchy? The truth is, there is no justification, and feminists should bear that in mind.

I think women giving up make-up and beauty practices en masse would do a lot for equality, and in the way women are perceived by society (but it'd have to be a mass movement, because it'd be very difficult to do alone- I am not brave enough, that's for sure)

I also think another 'solution for the revolution' would be for women to simply stop working, like the women in FInland did 50 years ago. The country ground to a halt for a day and men were forced to sit up and listen to their demands. NO cleaners, no carers, no bum-wipers, no supermarket check-outs, no Macdonalds cashiers...

Also, one of her chapters is incorrect AFAICS. SHe talks of female children who were of ambiguous sex at birth who are then raised as girls, but continue to show an interest in boys' toys. She doesn't mention the chromozomes. If the children are chromozomally male, then that could be why they are interested in boys' toys, which disproves her own hypothesis.

Either way, I personally don't think any of this matters. men are always going to find reasons to keep women down and 'brain differences' is just the latest in a long line of justifications.

Ooh have added that to my wish list

Yes, Professor LaytonI agree with your last post.
I should have phrased it differently, rather than say the facts don't matter. Fine's book is important, as you rightly point out.( everyone should read it). BUt I wanted to introduce some radfem analysis to the current obsession with concentrating on brains. As LadyBlaBlah said, it's the very real physical differences that are the root cause, and I just think that some new feminist theory on female subordination is long overdue.

I also personally get twitchy about giving patriarchal nonsense too much credence, and I think this is what spurred me to write this post.

thanks prolesworth,

"Sewell?s beautifully crafted narrative shows us what drove people to put a black man on display in a zoo, forcibly sterilize a pair of innocent teenage sisters, lock up a British girl for eighteen years for a petty theft, murder disabled people in Nazi Germany, and slam shut America?s ?Golden Door?"

I think the role of patriarchy in these crimes is being overlooked. It wasn't people who were in power all this time, it was men. So he/we should put the blame firmly at the feet of this male-dominant system

good review about the book on Darwinism, the 'Political Gene'. It shows how enthusiastically the Fabian socialists adopted Darwin's survival of the fittest ideas to push their eugenicist goals. I think if you scratch the surface, you will see that the socialists and greens haven't changed much since those days.

entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article6902581.ece

Yeah, claig, I know loads of socialists and greens who support eugenics

then you don't know many of the top ones, not your ordinary socialist voter. The sustainability crowd, the Jonathan Porrits believe that humans create a carbon footprint that harms the "planet". Some of these people say that the UK population must fall to 30million. That's an awfully big fall. I wonder how they will achieve their aim?

UK population must fall to 30m

Families should only have 2 children says green guru

This is what Fabian socialists used to say

"HG Wells complained that ?we cannot make the social life and the world peace we are determined to make, with the ill-bred, ill-trained swarms of inferior citizens?.

They don't tell you the same things now. Now they talk to you about sustainability, the environment and the planet. They have invented a new term, "carbon footprint", but it's essentially the same old message.

Jonathon Porritt is a self-righteous prophet who advises Prince Charles in his pathetic and patronising environmental outbursts. Nuff said.

I don't think he represents any socialists, never mind all socialists

Porritt is a green guru and the greens are lefties. But of course, like all lefties, they really work for the elite. It is the elite who are in favour of eugenics, and it is their leftie lackeys like HG Wells who advocated it. Most socialist voters aren't aware and weren't aware of what Fabians like HG Wells and George Bernard Shaw really believed in. Their "socialist" leaders like Blair always end up disappointing them, because they don't understand what their real aims are.

Maybe they are disappointed by their leaders because these people you quote are not actually socialists at all

Yes I agree with you. They are not socialists. Blair went to Fettes, the Eton of the North, and he came from a conservative background. The green guru, Porritt, gets on well with Prince Charles, because, as usual, Porritt is in fact one of the elite. He was educated at Eton and Magdalen College and trained as a barrister. He is a Sir and a CBE and is the son of Lord Porritt, the 11th Governor-General of New Zealand. Porritt wants to limit the population of the UK.

Fabians, like HG Wells, wanted to limit the population of the UK and the world and what he called "swarms of inferior citizens."

It's always the same, many of the leading lefties come from privileged backgrounds. George Monbiot, the Guardian environmental journalist, comes from a Conservative background. He went to Stowe school, and his family come from French aristocracy. His father, Raymond Geoffrey Monbiot, is a businessman who headed the Conservative Party's trade and industry forum and his mother was a Conservative councillor.

re brains: someone once told me that it was necessary to prove black peoples' brains were the same as white peoples in order to show they had no right to be oppressed. Ant this book reminded me of that. Exactly the same dynamic is going on here.

I mean, you'd have to be a sick fuck to justify a hypothesis along the lines of:

"Negroes/females are oppressed because their brains are different, not because white men -as a group- are a bunch of evil, power-grabbing bastards"

Agree with you Sakura. It won't change anything, because that is not the basis of the discrimination.

I agree with Professorlayton that facts are important and it is important to know whether there are differences between the sexes, because this is part of our human understanding and knowledge. I differ from ProfessorLayton because I think there are real differences. I think the drive to try and prove that there aren't differences will ultimately fail because it will eventually be shown that there are real differences. The drive to prove that there aren't differences will end up harming feminism in the end, because I think the differences will be proved, and the people who maintained that there were no differences will end up being discredited. That is why I think it is important to establish the facts.

But, I agree with you, that whether there are differences or not, does not justify any form of discrimination, and discrimination is the battleground, not differences in brains.

In fact the differences in brains is a bit of a side issue and diverts attention from the important things like fighting discrimination

Absolutely agree with your last two posts.

Old threads always catch me out I found myself reading through the first page only to find out that I had posted one of them

Oh I'm not saying bumping the thread was wrong just found it amusing that I am agreeing with myself without knowing it.

I'm looking forward to reading the answers to that debate on Friday when I have time.

Do you still agree with yourself, Saltatrix? [grins] I used to post a lot on another forum and I still look in occasionally. It's interesting to see how my thought processes have developed over the past 6 years or so.

Thanks, SGM. Will have a read with my cup of tea this afternoon.

Oh many of my views have changed I still think my post on this thread was okay though, however I am very aware how my outlook on things now is different than it was a couple of months ago.

Oh god I'm sure I would violently disagree with myself from five years ago