Gender abolition

[Damsili]

On another thread a few posters have enthused about the abolition of gender. I wonder how many people see this as the ultimate goal of feminism?

Also, is there room for people who are broadly content with the idea of femininity and masculinity being separate things, but want better treatment of women? Do the abolitionists accept this point of view?

Your Op wasn't about current clothes and make up and fashion now.

On any given day in Brent Cross, there will be women who are taller than some of the men, there will be flat chested women wearing trousers and no make-up, there will be men with long hair. No-one is trying to crucify you but you made a statement as if it were the simplest matter of objective fact but actually it isn't.

DS, I think these are the parts of your posts you are trying to get at - but they are framed in a context of a thread on which the abolition of gender is being discussed, so of course people are answering through that lens:

If we accept that there will always be an element of identity associated with sex, it seems reasonable that people's behaviour will always differ slightly in the way they react to the sexes. For example, if an element of femininity is the increased decorative aspects to appearance, can we expect there not to be a different reaction to women's appearance than to men's?

Decorative may not be the best word to have used - I'm
Just trying to convey the extra bits of fashion and so on.

--

I am no expert, but I'm relatively sure that there are distinct chemical and hormonal differences that affect behaviour (character) and there are differences in the brain's structure and processes. Now the thing is, that - and I tried to make this point before - even if these things are caused by the different social development of men and women, the bell curves of masculinity and femininity may overlap considerably, but do remain distinct. Those distinctions are what drive most of class analysis as far as I can see. However, I'm struggling to get around to my question here!!! grin

Most of us do define ourselves by our sexuality to a degree. We identify as men or as women and, amongst other behaviours, dress differently. Many of the posters on FWR freely admit that they enjoy dressing as women - heels, make up etc etc. The question was, that if part of the identity of femininity is this increased focus on appearance, is it reasonable to expect there not to be a different reaction to that?

I'm not suggesting that there isn't a limit to that or that objectification isn't a thing btw!

Not inherrently, as in 'naturally' - but we have made it so.

At a football match on a rainy January night somewhere up north but not Newcastle - say, Hull - if this alien was to cast their eyes (if they had eyes) along any given row in the stands they would see people of different sizes all bundled up against the cold (hence the 'not Newcastle condition because there they wear T shirts to matches even in the coldest weather) in warm coats/jackets with not much face showing, most would be wearing scarves and some would be wearing woolly hats. The alien would not be able to tell the difference between men and women. When a goal was scored they'd all jump up and down like lunatics, when the ref made a bad decision they would probably all swear to a greater or lesser extent (determined by upbringing not sex organs).

At the recent Kate Bush concerts, if your alien had visited (lucky old alien getting a ticket) it would have probably assumed that every single person on the planet has a standard uniform of a 'before the dawn' T shirt. And cries a lot.

I'm not going to specifically address point-scoring posts that are deliberately obtuse or indicate a rather hasty interpretation of my posts. I don't see the value in that - 'never argue with a pig; you both get dirty and the pig enjoys it' as they say.

No-one is trying to crucify you

You really think Flora that I'm not going to get the impression from the last few pages that several posters are taking the opportunity to wade in and care little whether they're being fair or not? This seems a typical internet chatroom lynch mob to me. Whatever. I made a statement that could easily have been interpreted as referring to observations about style and it's plainly bloody obvious that we can all largely recognise the sex of the people around us.

Can I just repeat yet again that, in the context of discussing gender, I asked a relatively off-the-cuff question that people are now taking great delight in blowing up into a illogical insult. Well, sorry but I'm calling bullshit on that.

That question - which concerned the current fashions of our current society - had very little to do with the OP. It had nothing to do with the other conversation that was ongoing about the relative development of male and female brains.

I really don't know how I can be more clear about that. So, you'll understand if I start to suspect that some people are wilfully ignoring what I'm actually saying and carrying on as if I had said something like:

There's no such thing as social influence. All women obsess over their appearance because they are biologically programmed to make themselves sexually attractive to men so they can fulfil their primary purposes of having babies.

Yonic Thanks; I hope to sift out the sensible responses at some point and come back to them. Same too Bella and Garlic as I was enjoying our conversation before it got derailed.

DS - I think it's a bit unfair to say they weren't sensible responses - you said yourself in post 1 that you didn't think you'd been really clear and honestly I'm still not 100% clear even after checking back on your posts! But won't say anything more till you've had time to review.

Damsili -

"There's no such thing as social influence. All women obsess over their appearance because they are biologically programmed to make themselves sexually attractive to men so they can fulfil their primary purposes of having babies."

REALLY?

All women obsess over their appearance?

All women are biologically programmed to make themselves sexually attractive to men?

The primary purpose of being a woman is to have babies?

TBF to DS, he prefaced that with:

"and carrying on as if I had said something like:"

I had to read it twice to spot it!

But nobody said that

Damsili - are you a man?

I know - he's implying that the reaction was as bad as if he'd said that. I think he's wrong, as seen by your response!

it's plainly bloody obvious that we can all largely recognise the sex of the people around us - we can but you specifically asked us to consider we are aliens. If that is not suggesting that there is some more universal obviousness to the categorisation of the sexes, I can't imagine what else you meant. It seemed like you were appealing to this as an incontrovertible fact. Were you not?

If I was an alien, how would I recognise the sex of an individual. I'm not a komodo dragon, I can't recognise the sex of them, I'm not a whale, I can't recognise the sex of them, and tbh I struggle with recognising the sex of a cat.

The first things I'd notice about any of those animals would be size and colour. Number of limbs. Mode of propulsion. All sorts of other things. But. Not sex.

"There's no such thing as social influence. All women obsess over their appearance because they are biologically programmed to make themselves sexually attractive to men so they can fulfil their primary purposes of having babies."

TBF, Damsilli says that is NOT what s/he said. There's so much interesting debate on this thread but so many posts that don't even make a homeopathic amount of sense.

And that's within the context of an overall biology that HAS the concept of sexual reproduction.

An alien may well not have any knowledge or understanding of sexual reproduction at all.

FrauHelga:

REALLY?

All women obsess over their appearance?

All women are biologically programmed to make themselves sexually attractive to men?

The primary purpose of being a woman is to have babies?

Please excuse the cheap trick, but I think I've rather proved my point here. Some people didn't even read it once Yonic. Can you really expect me not be a bit about people like this?

But what I was saying - no one here said that. And no one said you said it. So I was confused as to where you were extrapolating that from.

What point have you proved?

I may start a thread later about the fashion issue, but I'm going to go back to the general thrust of the OP on here now. I'll try and plough through the derail to see where we got to Bella

I'm sorry Damsili, I thought we were having a debate and a discussion. I didn't realise it was all about point proving and implying (quite clearly in a previous post) that I'm a pig.

DS, the way you laid out your post, you buried the 'disclaimer' in a long preceding sentence and put this in a separate paragraph. A lot of people are reading on phones etc, easy to miss.

And you've said "Please excuse the cheap trick" - were you thinking someone might misread?!

What's the supposed derailing? What actually is this thread "properly" about?

I think people pointing out that Damsili is making all sorts of assumptions about sex and gender is completely germane to the thread.

Suppose the imaginary aliens could immediately identify the differences between human sexes (I don't see why we should assume this, but still). It still doesn't stop us imagining a different world, without gender, where the social / sartorial / behavioural markers made this harder or impossible. So what point do these aliens prove, even if they are docile enough to have exactly the percpetions that you want them to have?

And, Damsili, you are a man, right?

I am pretending to be an alien who detects gender by social and verbal markers and I am using Damsili as my first candidate. It is what this thread is all about, after all

This thread is quite odd - Damsili I can't make much sense of your posts I'm afraid.

On the subject of ladybrains - surely in feminist discourse (between feminists who are engaging with each other and trying to further the struggle for women's liberation) whether and why ladybrains exist or not is a bit of a moot point.

Surely the real point is that the ladybrain exists as a patriarchal concept and is used to underpin gender. (Hence why some feminists have done useful work in showing this concept to be sexist and patriarchal.)

Gender is a sex based hierarchy. It is a system of social organisation. Gender is a socially constructed hierarchy which awards higher status and value to male sexed humans and lower status and value to female sexed humans. Gender is a power structure, it is a means of control and a political edifice. Gender is a mechanism which is used to present and explain the oppression of human females by human males, as the natural order. And the concrete tools of this mechanism are socialized gender roles; otherwise known as masculinity and femininity.

Femininity is used to attest to the existence of ladybrain and gender is used to award ladybrain low status. Note that in patriarchy ladybrain is always a bit crap and manlybrain is awesome.

Gender is patriarchy. So of course feminists (or at least radical ones) want rid of it.