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?

I have discovered that DS2's old kit fits me. As does his waistcoat and jacket. So I need a shirt. And a pair of boots for evenings. When the men wear their Arans and big boots with warm socks.

*kilt not kit.

But how can you be invested in something NOT being 'for you'? Because that's what you are saying - you're invested in butterflies not being for boys. Butterflies can still be for girls in a gender neutral society. The whole point is anything can be for anyone. Imposing gendered 'rules' is about shutting things, opportunities, experiences OFF, not opening them up.

I think genderisation (is that a word?) reinforces sexism. It's the vernacular of sexism, symbolic of sexism and inextricably linked to it.

Using a very trivial example of butterflies vs trains:

Girls & boys are equal in value.
No, they're not. Girls like butterflies! Boys like trains, and trains are more important.
Nah, you just think that coz you're a boy. Girls know butterflies are more important.

This argument:

• Confirms that boys & girls have different interests,
• thus confirming they have fundamentally different capacities;
• Implies it is likely that one interest matters more than the other,
• therefore one gender has more important capacities.

• In a sexist world, the boys' interest in trains will be valued more than girls' interest in butterflies;
• thus confirming that boys' capacities are more valuable than girls'.
• This results in boys being more valuable than girls.

Whereas girls & boys who are completely free to choose either trains or butterflies - in a gender-free world, where no preference by gender is exerted or implied - cannot possibly have this argument. Any dispute about the relative worth of boys vs girls would have to be reduced to "penises are more important than vaginas", which nobody can win as one's fairly useless without the other.

I know I've done this clumsily, but hope it's got my point across to some degree.

Imposing gendered 'rules' is about shutting things, opportunities, experiences OFF, not opening them up.

Yes, this! :)

I'm going to catch up on some DIY now.

I bloody love trains, I do.

I want to be the fat controller now

Garlic - exactly. It's so 'women know your place' and 'mind only capable of thinking about fluffy kittens and knitting' isn't it. :(

almondcakes I understand what you are saying about culture and identity and emotional investment.

I just wish it wasn't all so sexist/based on stereotype/hierarchical/prescriptive/etc

Customs and traditions and culture can be very rich and things to bond over and they form part of social interaction and relationships.

However, I'm struggling to think of gendered custom/ritual/practice/etc that I don't think bolsters male dominance and therefore is in some (possibly very small but insidious) way, harmful to girls and women. Or at least limiting to them.

I think you are right that a great many people want to hang onto them though. As you say, people are emotionally invested in them and they make us feel safe and secure. Of course lots of people no doubt enjoy them although it's anybody's guess how much of that is socialized.

That's the conundrum though; a lot of people do emotionally invest in aspects of themselves and add those aspects to their identity. BUT a lot of the things that identify women are, in actual fact, part of the system of constraints that deny opportunity. This could equally apply to race or religion. Less so to, say, height or red hair, perhaps - although Chris Evans springs to mind with regard to the latter.

Garlic, but that argument can equally apply to all sorts of groups who have different cultural interests.

Do we have to get rid of all cultural groupings to have equality?

And I think that is why people then say they feel judged by feminism. It feels very similar to being told I wouldn't experience certain kinds of discrimination if I didn't have a particular accent and we all spoke the same way (which usually means their way). But then try to reassure me that it isn't my fault I have this accent, because it is the fault of society/my parents for bringing me up to believe in the stereotype that having this accent is something done mostly by people like me.

Frequently feminists say that X should not be associated with either boys or girls. But what happens in reality is the all being the same is really all being interested in the masculine things. So people who have daughters who wear a football Kit are feminists and can announce they are proud of their daughters, but people who are proud of their daughter's dancing are possibly caught up in a stereotype.

And then we're very near to the situation where the science teacher or admissions tutor or employer believing that there is some causation of wearing a butterfly motif leading to being bad at science, and starts on some level discriminating against feminine girls and women. Because remember it is the little inequalities like being associated with butterflies that some feminists claim cause the big equalities like being bad at science!

And we're also very near to the whole, well I'm as good as a man, but those other women aren't because they wear butterfly motifs and I am not like them, and don't associate with them because butterfly motifs are not a feminist choice and I want to mix with like minded people. Although of course that isn't their fault, society made them have that accent/butterfly motif that I think is indicative of a person who appears stupid and/or girly.

And I think that is what women mean when they say they feel as judged by feminism as by men. And how do you get to gender abolition without having that happen, because it certainly does happen.

I'm sure it is socialised Beachcomber. I'm sure if I'd grown up with different parents I would enjoy different things.

I also think a lot of this depends on perspective. I grew up in a house that was very gender neutral, even by the more gender neutral standards of the seventies.

I might feel very differently about this if I'd grown up in a house with strict gender roles which I felt constrained by and disliked. So it depends on what experiences you have had perhaps.

Chris Evans springs to mind with regard to the latter. And Mick Hucknall!

I think you'll find it's antifeminists who suggest that people who are proud of their daughter's dancing are possibly caught up in a stereotype. In an attempt to scare people. My kids are all arty types, they do music drama and dance, the girls and the boy (well, he doesn't dance but some of his (male) mates do and they are the fittest most athletic people I have ever known). I completely agree that all interests/specialisms should be given parity of esteem and I have no interest in making girls/women be interested in/good at things that they aren't interested in or good at. I often rail (on the education boards) against the soulless orthodoxy that holds up 'being good at science' as the ne plus ultra of the educated child. I am active in campaigning for better access to arts ed for all. I firmly believe that arts ed would get a better shake if being 'arty' wasn't (if even unconsciously) associated with being feminine rather than masculine.

You do realise that lepidoptery is more of a pure science than engineering, right?

And Mick Hucknall!

Exactly. Simply Red sprang from his nickname of Red. Well, according to Wiki anyhows.

I understand what you are saying about football/dancing almondcakes.

For me it is about the value/status of practices that are considered masculine or feminine, and the politics behind that.

For example, I live in a small village and I am involved in the local council. In the village we have a "sports ground". The sports ground is only really ever used as a football pitch though (it is set up as a pitch) for the local (all male) football teams. The teams are terrible and they mostly only play each other/practice. They do play the odd match against another village - about three/four times a year.

The sports ground costs the village quite a lot of money - it has to be maintained, the changing rooms are cleaned and heated, there is floodlighting which costs a fortune to have on, pesticides need to be used to keep the grass in good condition, etc, etc.

There is an ongoing debate about the situation and whether the money is justified for what is basically the local men to have a kick around twice a week. We need the money to do important things like modernize the village lighting in order to be in line with new regulations and to fix the school roof.

I (and some of the other women on the council) suspect that the only reason this situation has been going on for so long is because we are talking about a male dominated practice/custom. I don't believe for a second that similar council money would be spent for girls or women to do dancing.

I'd disagree that being 'arty' is associated with being feminine.
I think more parents see it as a difficult area to make a living

Yy beach / happens a lot in uk school playgrounds, a football match played by boys monopolises the space.

King, that's true, but as a hobby, is arty stuff gendered?

I this wasn't the point of your post, Beachcomber - and the situation sounds exactly as your describe it, but are there really no female teams coming through? That's a real shame. I've been involved with all-female teams for both rugby and football (in different countries, but not so dissimilar) and found great enthusiasm for them. Again, it's good to see female role models being promoted in these areas and I note the BBC sports pages now reports on the Women's football a great deal.

Getting side-tracked now, but England Women's first match at Wembley will get a bigger crowd than the men got in their last game :)

Yonic, I don't believe so on the whole. There are some areas that are more popular for one gender than another but that balances out in the arty sector

I believe that both arts (by which I mean visual and performing arts, not things like English Lit) and Science, are in different ways being diminished in education. I did mention both in my earlier post as being very important for all children.

It perhaps comes back to the Robert Jensen statement that you can choose to act like a man, or act like a human being, but you cannot do both. he then later said that we then have to go on to ask what it means to be a human being. I think that is pretty important for anyone advocating gender abolition.

I am now going to go into a huge digression about sport. Certain sports, which are the ones that often leap to mind, are not just associated with masculinity but with a certain type of masculinity. There are very many boys (and this is even more the case in the US) who would feel very at odds with the culture surrounding a lot of ball games, regardless of the actual enjoyment possibly found in playing the game, and so avoid them. And there is perhaps a particular issue with the status of those sports.

There are very other sporting activities that don't have such a strong association which perhaps a wider range of people find more comfortable with. I remember feeling quite sad/disappointed/miserable or similar on picking up a catalogue when with DD in a climbing centre, from a company which sold climbing Kit to both men and women. The pictures in it were of a man wearing climbing kit in a public toilet looking at a woman some distance from him in the toilets who was stood in a sexy pose in a revealing dress, heels and make up.

I don't know what this has to do with anything, other than example of perhaps what gender abolitionists are working towards (climbing felt quite neutral to me), and how it feels when not just gender but objectification stomp all over it. He's the climber; you're the decorative object and inexplicably in a toilet.

In DDs school, as I've said, the girls are so much better at a particular sport that they can't do boys v girls because the boys get hammered every time

No, there isn't a single female.

I keep meaning to put this link somewhere on the section, and this thread seems as good a place as any:

rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/show/rs30-cordelia-fine-on-delusions-of-gender.html

I don't know if this has already been linked to. Unfortunately, the sound quality is not as good as others in the series, but I could still clearly hear what she was saying.

There are some other feminist topics on the podcast list, but I haven't listened to them yet.