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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

So ... Does this indicate that you CAN be 'born the wrong gender'?

587 replies

Garrick · 31/08/2015 00:28

www.mirror.co.uk/news/real-life-stories/im-girl-meet-twin-boy-6348318?

Summary: Twins Alfie and Logan, 4yo, are both boys. Logan has insisted on wearing girly clothes, doing girly things, and that he is a girl since the age of two. His mother, who sounds brilliant, reports him wishing his willy would fall off.

I'm somewhat flummoxed. When I were a lass, little boys like this were described as camp (behind their fathers' backs) and, as far as I know, mostly grew up to be camp and fulfilled their rightful destinies. Rather like Ugly Betty's brother.

But this is what some transwomen say they felt like as children, isn't it? And I have rubbished it because I find it hard to believe in gender as an innate feeling. I'm not sure whether I think little Logan proves me wrong Confused

OP posts:
Garrick · 01/09/2015 20:07

Sexual identity generally means sexuality, doesn't it? Though that might have changed in the past 18 months; I can't keep up ...

OP posts:
WhirlpoolGalaxyM51 · 01/09/2015 20:21

If gender identity means the gender that you identify with then surely sexual identity would mean the sex that you identify with? Logically? Although that's not how it's being used on this thread, from the context.

What's wrong with saying sexuality?

I'm confused again.

Part of the problem with this conversation is that in society generally people have started saying "gender" when they mean "sex" and I think this is because the word sex is a bit naughty isn't it.

WhirlpoolGalaxyM51 · 01/09/2015 20:27

Sexual identity, I was just reading the wiki definition Grin so it's been around for years it's just me who's not heard it before!

jennyorangeberry · 01/09/2015 21:05

Sexuality is just a general term for all a person's sexual thoughts and feelings, isn't it? So if you enjoyed having sex very frequently and like having sex in the kitchen, that would all be part of your sexuality.

While sexual orientation is what usually goes on equal opps tick boxes, is protected under the equality act, and means whether you are gay, straight, bisexual, asexual or pansexual.

I don't think people use the phrase sexual identity very much, so don't think it has a clear meaning to most people.

Kryten2X4B523P · 01/09/2015 21:06

WRT sexual preference, we (royal we) are keen to define ourselves aren't we? We're happy with the idea of homosexuality now, but it's still an one or the other situation - whether someone is gay or straight, they have one preference. Bisexuality seems more 'taboo', perhaps because we find it easier to accept that people prefer either men or women. I think this is related to gender identity, as again it's an either/or situation. We can accept a man feeling like a woman, or a woman feeling like a man, but we struggle with the idea that someone could feel like both, or neither.

If sexual preference was more fluid, in that two (or more!) people could choose to have sex without biological sex having anything to do with it, maybe gender identity would also be more fluid. I think gender and sexual preference are linked, but because of society.

It's all really interesting, btw. Very thought provoking.

Kryten2X4B523P · 01/09/2015 21:06

Sexual orientation! That's the phrase I was looking for, not preference. Preference would refer to the sex in the kitchen.

WhenSheWasBadSheWasHorrid · 01/09/2015 21:09

I always thought it was

Gender identity = do you feel like you are a man or a woman (or non confirming etc)

Sexual identity = who you are attracted to women/men/both

Sex = is your body female or male (according to that article I posted incase Holly was interested) this is actually way more complicated than you would think.

Garrick · 01/09/2015 21:11

So, right ... Confused

A gay man who hasn't come out, say Ben Mitchell in Eastenders, might have
Sexual orientation - bi
Sexuality - gay
Sexual identity - straight

And his biological sex, sex identity and gender are aligned as male.

Or is it? Please can some of FWR's social scientists come here and sort me out?!

OP posts:
Garrick · 01/09/2015 21:13

Preference would refer to the sex in the kitchen.

Grin
OP posts:
jennyorangeberry · 01/09/2015 21:20

To go back to the earlier post about how gender identity is subjective, and then someone else saying pain is also subjective...

I disagree that what pain means is subjective. What pain is, what we mean when we tell each other that we are experiencing pain, when we set out to inflict pain, what that means has an explicit meaning that is not subjective. We all mean the same thing. It is universal. Describing the level of pain you are in is subjective, but what the word pain means is not.

The issue with gender identity and so the word woman isn't that we are subjectively reporting our own levels of womanhood. The problem is that what a woman is no longer has an explicit meaning.

If I say, well I am a woman, and I am very nurturing, like Star Wars, like chewing gum and don't like tennis so that is what a woman is then that is hugely subjective, but it is also very explicit.

We can now debate whether that is what a woman is, run empirical tests to decide how many women there are based on how many people are those things I listed, and each of us can now, based on our own subjective internal experience, decide if we are a woman according to that explicit understanding of the word.

But people who believe in gender identity refuse to explicitly say what a woman is. I can think of no other category people are expected to put themselves into which has no definition. I don't care how subjective people are in saying what a woman is as a gender identity, but I think they should have the decency to be explicit as to what they mean.

Because while they're not, I'm going to assume it just means the old version of what women are meant to feel internally - bit stupid, subservient, not too good with numbers, very emotional, bit silly. Because the idea of woman, now it doesn't mean a person with a female body, can't just have been plucked from thin air. You must be referring to something you expect us all to understand.

Kryten2X4B523P · 01/09/2015 21:24

Where do things like being 'camp' and 'butch' come into this? They are things that blur the lines between sex, gender and sexual preference, but are again part of a binary view on all of the above.

jennyorangeberry · 01/09/2015 21:26

I have never heard sexual identity said in the UK, and as under UK law we routinely use sexual orientation as the workplace and school based equal ops term, protected in law, to mean gay, straight etc, I think it is just confusing to say sexual identity.

I resent the use of the term identity attached to me in general. The whole 'I identify as...' makes whatever the person say next sound dishonest.

WhenSheWasBadSheWasHorrid · 01/09/2015 21:29

This, however, is not what transwomen are asking us to agree upon. They're telling us they feel like a woman, then describing that in terms which relate only to gender - not sex

Sorry just re reading the thread and saw this from Garrick.

I'm just trying to imagine this from a transitioning MTFs point of view.

You want to transition from MTF and want to pass as a female. So you do your best to feminise your appearance so that you "pass" , But this reinforces gender stereotypes about what a woman looks like, so some people don't like it.

I'm just wondering if there is a feminist approved way for a male to transition to female?

Garrick · 01/09/2015 21:46

Well, I'm only one feminist, When, but I don't really care how that person looks. I understand that it matters to her - just as most of my friends care more about their appearance than I do. I happen to be quite good at that shit so, if asked, I'll advise how to achieve the required style of gender performance.

It's no different from another bio woman wanting to 'pass' as feminine in certain ways.

It's window dressing. It's got fuck all to do with who you are physically or spiritually, in my opinion. And this is where transwomanhood offends me - many transwomen seem to be saying, even insisting, that tits, hair, clothes & makeup form the core meaning of my sex.
No they bloody don't.

OP posts:
BertieBotts · 01/09/2015 21:50

Sorry Garrick, you've totally lost me with Ben Mitchell.

WhenShe, you know, I don't think there is.

Because if it means for a biological male to transition to biologically female, then that's impossible. But if it means for a person of the male gender to transition to the female gender, and the radfem in question doesn't believe gender is something that you get to decide yourself, then that would also seem impossible (or arbitrary, perhaps)

If it means for a person socialised into male gender roles to change their behaviour and appearance so that they fit into traditionally female gender roles, then that is just a person changing their behaviour and appearance. Why does it have to have anything to do with gender, except for the fact that we live in a gendered world, which radfems want to fight. Hence (you would think) - on the same side.

If it means any of the above but also to be referred to and considered as and genuinely to be female in every sense of the word then radfems are going to get upset about that because as Whirlpool says, biological males and biological females are not treated equally and we haven't finished fighting for that yet, so we can't afford to have the waters muddied with biological males insisting that they are, in fact, biological females and insisting that we include MTFs every time we talk about problems which affect biological women. If everything were equal then perhaps it wouldn't matter, but it's not and it does.

BertieBotts · 01/09/2015 21:54

Perhaps I haven't put that across very well - I think that the RadFem perspective is more that yes, please, dress however you like and we don't mind if you want to dress like a typical man or a typical woman or a butch woman, camp man, absolutely anywhere in between, whatever. Pronouns, I don't mind, it doesn't affect me, so why should it bother me.

Where it affects me as a woman is when somebody who is not a biological woman wants to be classified as such because it muddies the waters. Does that make sense? It's really just in a sense that we haven't finished fighting this fight yet and this is quite hugely getting in the way, and if nothing else, it just seems a bit self centred and rude.

slugseatlettuce · 01/09/2015 22:02

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slugseatlettuce · 01/09/2015 22:08

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WhenSheWasBadSheWasHorrid · 01/09/2015 22:22

Glad you liked it slug I couldn't help but wonder if there will be a legal third biological sex in the future.

garrik
And this is where transwomanhood offends me - many transwomen seem to be saying, even insisting, that tits, hair, clothes & makeup form the core meaning of my sex

I guess the reason this doesn't bother me is that I view gender identity (not gender stereotype stuff, just the feeling of being a particular sex) as an entirely personal and internal matter.

So for one woman she might find having large breasts as essential to her womanhood. But it doesn't mean it applies to me.
I think how you feel as a woman or a man is entirely an individual thing.

FloraFox · 01/09/2015 22:29

Sex determination is not complicated in the vast majority of people. Billions of people throughout history who could not read or write have known what to look for if they want to reproduce. We don't read of ancient Greeks puzzling why two men might have sex but neither gets pregnant.

YonicScrewdriver · 01/09/2015 22:42

"So for one woman she might find having large breasts as essential to her womanhood. But it doesn't mean it applies to me. "

Err, what? So if that XX woman happens to have small breasts, then what? She doesn't perceive herself to have womanhood?0

WhenSheWasBadSheWasHorrid · 01/09/2015 22:47

Sorry Yonic I was just trying to express that gender identity is very much personal to the individual (clearly not very well).

A less superficial version could be that one woman feels that being a mother is important to how she feels as a woman.
I think that is fine and it shouldn't make a woman who has not had kids feel like "less of a woman"

YonicScrewdriver · 01/09/2015 22:53

See, I just don't recognise any of those things. I can see how it's a personal goal to be a parent and a disappointment if not. I can see how someone wanting to be pregnant might be angry at their body if they couldn't be. But if they feel "less of a woman" for that, what do they feel instead? Surely not "more of a man"?

jennyorangeberry · 01/09/2015 23:01

Both of those examples are gender stereotypes - large breasted mother.

Can you explain what a woman is without relying on gender stereotypes?

WhenSheWasBadSheWasHorrid · 01/09/2015 23:09

If we are going to include giving birth as a gender stereotype, then no.

yonic I thought of the mother one because of an odd thing my own mum said when she had her hysterectomy.
She said it was odd to think that her baby making days were definitely behind her. And she did feel like she had lost of part of her womanhood, or words to that effect.

I remember being somewhat baffled as she was 54 at the time and my dad had had a vasectomy years ago but it was odd she really did feel a loss.
I couldn't get my head round it at all at the time but it did have quite an impact on her.

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