The Feminist Pub (continued).

[UptoapointLordCopper]

Been busy. Came back today to have a look but the Pub thread was full! Shall we continue here?

Third episode of Borgen on tonight.

Good morning!

Off to a conference thing all day. Which is exactly what you want running up to Christmas.

Zh at top totty.

I'm practising "What exactly do you mean by that" and "Do you mean to be so rude" in readiness for, well, everyday life. My new year's resolution is: spread a little trouble and strive wherever you go - why should I be the only one who is upset. Next year will be the year where there is no longer a nice me. Nice me reserved for nice people only.

Happy Christmas!

Can I just offload something because I haven't got time to deal with it at the moment and it's giving me the rage. Basically a friend of mine on FB shared an article about men under reporting DV www.portagedailygraphic.com/2013/11/25/awareness-of-men-and-domestic-violence-still-under-reported which she had got from! surprise surprise, a bloke who believes in feminist conspiracies or summat.

He is now all over the thread citing Erin Pizzey, stating the 1 in 4 DV stat is false DV on men is woefully under reported. Despite his best efforts Bristol City Council (that well known feminist organisation) is thwarting his every move to get funding because they state that DV happens more to women. He even cites Silvia Walby as proof that the stats are wrong . I thought Walby was very feminist and had a great handle on gendered violence so not sure why he is citing her (he is stating that she says that 4% of women per annun are affected by DV - I'm not disputing that, just wondering where he got it from and why he is citing it ).

He is just gaslighting and it's giving me the rage and I haven't got time to counter it. Because you know these people have all the time in the world.

I am feeling a bit sweary and a bit sad that my nice friend is going to believe the rubbish this guy is spouting.

And breathe...

I now have to write Xmas cards as they are woefully under done and need funding. Wifework

Crikey, zh, that's a bit scary.

littlebaby - sorry, but I don't really buy that. If it doesn't mean anything about gender, why does it have 'gender' in it? If someone can come up with a definition that doesn't include the concept of gender, I'll be happy.

Morning, upto, and hope the conference is an oasis of feminist and pro-feminist delights. (Er ...!).

scallops - oh, what a prat. I'm sorry, I don't have lovely cool-headed stats but people who cite Pizzey annoy me.

Well precisely LRD. If they cite Pizzey then you know exactly what side of the fence they stand and it isn't even remotely in a woman's corner.

I think I might have to de-friend this person or hide their posts because she talks about quite controversial feministy subjects and has loads of 'hard done by' men piling in who quite frankly need to 'check their privilege' and stop with the mansplaining. She can't quite jump the gap from focusing on men to focusing on women.

Oh, how depressing.

It sounds quite tough on her that she's got people piling on. I have a mate like that, and a couple of years ago I used to get quietly frustrated by her status updates - now she is much more kick-ass about calling people out and it's been fun to see. But obviously, if it's getting you down it's not worth it.

Just read your post zh. Ooh that would give me the rage. (as if I need anything else) Top fucking totty??!! Notice how all the time you have to be categorised as good or bad woman

Oh she welcomes these comments LRD as part of the debate because they are done under the guise of being gender neutral when in fact they are extremely biased male-centric views. I think she needs a bit of MN tbh and a shift in her Overton window away from 'it's all about the men'.

Before the feminism bug caught hold I'd have been in a similar frame of mind to her (although claiming women are as bad as men in terms of violence would have made me itchy but I wouldn't have been certain why).

I've definitely been there too. It's what we're socialized to do, isn't it? To think 'I must accept these nice, helpful sounding comments and be fair'.

I bet the men comment more than women and people think it's 50/50, too (because statistically, that tends to happen).

Btw, I've just remembered a minor 'grr' moment from yesterday on a similar point. I was browsing books and there was a bloke there too (FWIW I was there first). There wasn't much space and he kept picking up a book and stepping back into me. I did that British 'oh, so sorry' thing but it did occur to me he was just expected I'd take up less space than him, and that if he wanted to step backwards I'd squeeze myself up against the facing shelf to give him room.

Really minor but it narked me. And my mate said 'yes, but he could just have been a unaware, it's not necessarily a man thing'. Which is that 'gender equal' guise, isn't it?

Oh there are way way more comments from the men. About topics primarily affecting women too.

Oh and the space in public thing is so under the guise of being gender neutral and isn't. I was in town yesterday and noticed how badly, mainly men expected me to get out of the way if we were walking towards each other on the same path. I'd never noticed until I'd read a post on FB (I think) about how the woman who posted done a little personal experiment on it when she was walking to the train station every morning. The men she was walking towards were not happy when she didn't move out of the way and they were expected to.

Oh, I think I saw that post!

It's funny, isn't it? Though I must say the thing I notice most myself is couples walking arm-in-arm who expect you to step off the kerb for them.

It's armrests on trains etc. that gets to me.

Not sure of the etiquette on linking to other boards but this is an interesting thread on gender:

ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=40&threadid=98547#unread

LRD, I get where you are coming from (the feminine gender is an oppressive construct, therefore a feminist woman will not be comfortable within it, therefore would not describe herself as cis) but there is a bit more to it than that

This is an attempt to unpick exactly what that thing of gender identity is and I think a very very good one.

Put simply the experience of trans people (and perhaps others) suggests that rather than there being two "levels":

sex
gender

there are (at least, it seems, for some people) 3 (or at least 3)

1. physical sex / genitals
2. the sex of your mind / brain (a term I made up)
3. social gender (whether you "perform" masculine or feminine

or to put it another way:

1. sex (in your crotch, gonads and secondary sexual characteristics)
2. gender (in your mind, brain, but innate)
3. Performed masculinity / femininity

So I suppose you are cis if the first two match up and are also then free to do the third in the same vein as well and society will support you in that; if you don't, if your first two match up but you still reject your default behaviour for the third, some would still call you cis because at least you have the first two. trans people say their first 2 don't match and many will then try to adopt a level 1 and or a level 3 to match their level 2

IT's that middle layer in the sandwich that many rad fems say don't exist. I'd kind of like to agree, but you know what, for many reasons I don't

to be clear "nd I think a very very good one." - was about the thread I posted a link to, which I am not on, not at all a self congratulatory assessment of my own ramblings.

oh yeah and just to weigh in with my 2p on debate / division

I don't think that sitting on mn is going to get anything done or changed anyway. I think on here we have the luxury of splitting hairs (some would say) or indulging in a nourishing and creative analysis of things that are important to us, if to no one else (I would say) because it's not like the alternative is we all AGREE! and then TOMORROW! everything will be DIFFERENT! and the patriarchy will be GONE! FFS it's a pub. Sitting around nattering pointlessly is de rigeur in the pub, so might as well be sincerely, authentically.

Feminism hasn't "failed" because it is not unified enough. It is because there are not enough feminists of any stripe, relative to anyone else. There are too many men and women who just don't care about any sort of feminism, the end.

On that basis I am not remotely offended when anyone disagrees with me. But I am offended when I am aggressively told 1. I am saying something I am not saying, or 2. IT DOESN'T MATTER (so implicitly, SHUT UP). It does matter to me very much, and if it doesn't matter to you, then you are free to ignore me and enjoy your blissful state of unbotheredness.

Cisgender simply means that your biological sex and your gender match. In transgender people, they don't. Using cisgender is just a way of not assuming gender identity, aka acknowledging that some people are trans (or genderqueer or a-gender). Not really sure why shitting on trans people is considered vital to feminism, when trans women are also women and feminism needs to include them.

Performed gender isn't a necessary aspect to this - there are butch trans women, and feminine trans men. I am quite feminine but then I see that as wholly feminist, reclaiming what is seen as 'weak' and making it strong.

Sorry, I'm just quite upset that a feminist subforum is apparently not for trans people/queer people :(

little, 'gender' doesnt' seem to me to be a feminist concept. I don't buy into Judith Butler either, FWIW.

Seems to me it's like this:

Sex is something assigned to us at birth. It is the primary way our society believes people should be put into categories. You can see how damaging this is, because babies born with genitalia that do not fit some stupid idea of what genitalia should look like have been, and sometimes still are, mutilated shortly after birth. Disturbingly, doctors have sometimes decided that it is better for a child to grow up with something that looks like a vagina (but has no sexual function) than to grow up with something that looks like a very short penis and has sexual function.

Gender is also assigned at birth. It is a social construct. I can see absolutely no reason why 'gender' is necessary at all. But it is tremendously helpful for splitting people into two groups and for perpetuating misogyny.

Many people feel unhappy with the body they have and/or with the gender they were assigned. Those people try to find ways to stay sane. This is completely understandable. One of those ways is, for some people, being transgender. Those people feel it is the best and only way for them to feel like the person they know they are. That is really important.

But, I don't think that changes the fact that gender in itself is a damaging social construct we would all be better off without.

So I can't accept that it is a pleasantly harmless idea, no.

Sorry I've upset you. I find it very upsetting too. I think most people do - decent people who care about misogyny, that is. The misogynists are only too happy to see this sort of stuff.

Sorry, I meant to say: I totally don't buy the idea that gender in your mind is innate. At all.

This is, IMO, a way of discriminating against women. It's perpetuated all through the patriarchy.

Plenty of people don't have an innate sense of their 'gender'. That's fine. It's not a crime, and it's not 'cissexist'.

That is perfectly compatible with believing that another person may very well have a strong sense of what their gender is - because not everyone is the same. And if someone has a strong sense of what their gender is, so long as that doesn't mean they spend time saying to me 'oh well, I am a born genius because I am male', I think that's fine. What's not fine is telling me 'I have a strong sense of my gender, therefore, you too must buy into the idea of gender, even though it is clearly harmful to women.'

mildred - good summary on sex/gender.

Cis and trans are both prefixes that are borrowed from other academic ares.

Cis means 'staying within' and trans means 'across'. So, cis means you are born and live within the definition of female (or male), trans means you have crossed over from one to another, OR (possibly) that you live a life which crosses between M/F. There is debate on that.'

There's an article called 'The education of little cis' which goes into this in great depth. It looks at the effect on the language, and people, when the terms 'cis' and 'trans' became adopted into gender studies, and how that has changed the use and meanings of the words.

It is probably also worth noting that there have been some very unfriendly disputes online between trans and cis people, with each side using the label of the other as an insult. Depending on where the conversation is taking place, some people might call another 'cis' in a fairly derogatory and inflammatory way. (or vice versa)

I thought 'cis' meant 'on this side of', not 'staying within'? I don't know, though?

I don't mean to use that term in a derogatory way. I think if someone feels that describes them, that is entirely up to them.

But increasingly, I think it's important to recognize that some people really don't believe that there is any kind of innate gender, whether Butleresque 'performed' gender or some kind of brain 'wiring' or whatever. My hunch is that this is the key to deconstructing the patriarchy. I know very well I may be wrong, but that is how it seems to me.

Hi all. I would like to respond to anyone worried that chatting on here isn't doing anything. It is. Thanks to you all, I am now slowly getting more and more pissed off.
I lurk on your threads, ( in particular on this one), and I am constantly learning new things as well as confirming others. I've often found myself wondering about something, come on here and found the answer. I find myself nodding along most of the time and sometimes I feel or at what I read about.
It's a bit like the matrix, once you see you can't un-see.
Not everyone likes it, but hey ho, hopefully my DC will grow up understanding the way things are better than I did at their age, and maybe they can carry on what you and I are doing.

In response to what does dd wear, mine wears cast offs from her brothers as well as her own choice in tops or jumpers or whatever. Sometimes 'girly' often not. She wore (her own choice) boys school shoes today (with trousers) and said some people thought it was cool, others laughed at her. She told me that she replied that at least her feet were warm and dry. Unlike theirs in their girls school shoes. Which reminds me, I get really fucked off at the fact that clarks shoe shops sell flimsy open shoes to girls knowing that we will then go back when it's colder and wetter to buy boots. (Sales rep admitted this to me when I got the DCs measured)

Sorry to barge in on you all, have a round on me, and have a good evening.

I'm really sorry you're pissed off, if that makes sense, but me too. I keep catching this thread in my TIO and thinking 'the what?!'

Your DD sounds awesome!

Thanks for the round. Next one's on me.

(And btw it isn't barging in, not at all.)

Sales rep said that?

Damn you patriarchy!!

Thanks for the drink, Twit

I think I might have my head round the cis/trans bit and what you, LRD, were saying, but it is so far removed from my experience that while I see that is has academic/theoretical merit, I can't really as yet see a practical application.
I suppose, my white, middle-class, cisfemale, heterosexual background may be a majority in the circles I move in, but limit my horizon somewhat.
Tbh, I am currently more pissed off about trolls on bereavement threads than the patriarchy.
.
Gosh. That makes me a spectacularly bad feminist, doesn't it? Sue me.