can we reject gender and still be pro female?

[Flingingmelon]

Anyone else have an irrational dislike of all this 'gender is a false construct' talk?

It's been really bothering me recently. Not so much the discussions themselves, rather why I get so irritated in the first place?

I wonder if it's because rejecting gender in some way feels like rejecting the concept of femininity, by that I mean feeling like a woman in the 'traditional' sense of the word.

I'm struggling not to associate it with the idea that we are letting the side down somehow, fighting for women's equality and then turning around and distancing ourselves from what makes us women.

I absolutely believe and agree that how an individual chooses to identify themselves is no ones business except themselves, but it feels like we are throwing the baby out with the bath water somewhat.

Can we be female, be women, be proud of what makes us women and still reject the concept of gender?

I'd love it if someone could help me make peace with this, although I accept that as usual I'm writing far too late in the evening and this is after all, only my problem, no one else's.

Does anyone else feel the same?

You don't have to treat them as superior, you just have to not treat them as an aberration

I was going to say exactly the same thing sleepy

This article is quite interesting.

The problem isn't with pink in and of itself, it's with those things that are designated "female" and therefore coloured pink.

It's got so ubiquitous now that in order to get people to buy less female gender role specific toys for girls, manufacturers have had to start making even unisex toys into a variety of colours for boys version and a sickly pink for girls version.

The pinkified marketing of the last 10 years has succeeded in stopping people from seeing pink as just a colour and made them see it as a girl's colour, with all the negative societal connotations that involves. Not only that pink is somehow a girl's colour, but is the only colour that should be available for girls.

That uniformity just doesn't exist for boys.

If you're trying to raise children in as non gendered a way as possible, there is little choice but to buy clothing for boys. Simply due to the better choice of colours available to boys. However, you have to really look for female gender role specific toys for boys that aren't a violent shade of pink, and you do have to look, because, if you don't, they get teased by arseholes who think that pink toys will make boys gay or something. (like being gay or effeminate or female is the worst thing ever).

But, yes, it is still possible to be anti gender and all the baggage that comes from gender roles and society's need to box people up in them and to be pro-woman. Necessary in fact, especially now, at a time when gender roles are being enforced ever more strictly.

There's a big difference between it being okay to be a masculine woman and abolishing gender though, isn't there?

Why would anyone want to be a masculine woman or a feminine woman?

Why put yourself into little boxes?

Gender is a bloody cancer on society.

It isn't about an individual choice though, is it?

One woman may choose to have an interest in caring for children, knitting, careers in education, wearing pink, putting on make up and so on. In itself it is meaningless and certainly not a cancer on society. It is just one individual woman liking things.

What makes it feminine is when huge numbers of women all like the same things and all do the same thing, and vastly outnumber the number of men liking those things.

There doesn't seem to be a great number of people wanting to be the ones who change that.

If it were just the things you describe, I'd agree almond, but it isn't.

It's girls being told they shouldn't do X because they're girls, or boys being told they can't do X because they're boys. Gender limits people. It holds society back and makes things harder for those who don't want or need to be placed into restrictive roles they don't feel comfortable with.

It's part of a system that has consistently held women back from playing a full part in society, and while that's being eroded, it's still a problem.

A man made concept that holds huge numbers of people back from who they might have been is, to my mind, a cancer on that society.

I agree that gender covers all the non biological differences between men and women as a group, and that some of those differences need to be abolished.

Most women presumably agree with that?

But it seems, and the posts on this thread kind of illustrate that, that when we talk about gender it is often things like girls wearing pink that they're talking about.

As for Caitlyn Jenner and the like, if they were saying that long hair, makeup & dresses were as valid a choice for men as for women I'd be right behind them cheering. But they're doing the opposite and reinforcing stereotypes.

But it seems, and the posts on this thread kind of illustrate that, that when we talk about gender it is often things like girls wearing pink that they're talking about

Yes I think gender can mean a variety of different things.

For my part, I used the example of pinkification for simplicity.

There are better and more insidious examples of how gender helps to keep women oppressed, I'll grant you. Although, looked at as part of the bigger picture, I'd argue pinkification of things that are viewed as for girls is making gender role identification stronger and easier to enforce.

So, I suppose that, while it's the most common example of it, it could also be seen as being merely the tip of the iceberg.

Absolutely Empress. And not just reinforcing them, but claiming them as their own, so even if women wanted to settle into their appointed roles, they can't.

If gender is all the differences between men and women, then some aspects of gender are, in themselves, oppressive.

FGM is oppressive and gendered.

The gendered nature of poverty is oppressive.

The gendered nature of access to education is oppressive.

Those are intrinsically oppressive things. Wearing a different colour isn't.

So there must at least be two categories - a. things that are oppressive and b. things that put people into different categories which may or may not make the oppressive things more likely to happen, with some grey areas in between the two.

People are more likely to agree with getting rid of a than b.

"FGM is oppressive and gendered."

No. FGM has nothing to do with gender, it has to do with biological sex.

I'm not sure that getting rid of b is what I'm aiming for.

I think I'd be happy to know that people understood that both a and b are fabrications and that while a is more obviously oppressive, b is linked to and increasingly seems to lead to some of a. It would be a start at least, don't you think?

Access to education (in developing countries) is again based on sex - a girl who likes knitting and a girl who likes climbing trees will be equally excluded from school if they are on their periods (biology) and there are no sanitation facilities or their parents have chosen to spend limited resources sending a son to school.

Good points both Woman.

I don't find gender a problem, but attributing stereotypes to a gender is the problem.

And, for the hat trick, global poverty impacts women more because pregnancy, birth and child rearing, along with aforementioned sexism in educational provision AND employer sexism, decreases opportunity for economic mobility.

Coupled with women being the majority of the world's farmers and often tied to land.

Agree that it's the rigid expectations of behaviour in gender that is so damaging to men and women. I don't think it's possible to be a feminist if you buy into those stereotypes that have absolutely no basis in fact, for example: "female" brains (women inherently aren't good at science, maths, map reading etc, born to be nurturing and caring), ladylike behaviour, expectation you'll like certain things.

It's not a stereotype to say that women give birth and breastfeed, and that has consequences for us (mostly negative). If we want to use the talents of half our population, we need to find a way to overcome both the gender stereotypes and the biological barriers (for example, in many countries lacking access to sanitary protection, girls miss school during their period or stop attending altogether when they start menstruating) that stop women and girls participating fully.

There is no way to be a woman other than the biological, lived reality.

I think I'd be happy to know that people understood that both a and b are fabrications and that while a is more obviously oppressive, b is linked to and increasingly seems to lead to some of a. It would be a start at least, don't you think

But surely it's an easier arguement to tackle the a issues (eg girls being told some careers are not for them)
Rather than highlighting the b issues (liking makeup etc)

I'm not really sure what is to be gained from highlighting a possible link between type a and type b stuff rather than just challenging the type astuff.

As I already said...

'I agree that gender covers all the non biological differences between men and women as a group, and that some of those differences need to be abolished.'

I don't mean choicy postmodern gender identity nonsense when I say gender or gendered. I mean socially constructed differences between men and women.

FGM is gendered. Of course lots of gendered treatment of women is done in ways that involve their biological sex, and is done because they are women (a biological sex!) but the name of that social construction is gender.

Gendered nature of poverty means that because of social constructions, most of the poor are female, a biological sex.

Whenshewas, yes, I think I agree with you.

I'd disagree there.

Rigid enforcement of certain imaginative playthings as being for girls, when none of those things are anything other than stifling roles that keep women poor seems to me to be more than merely highlighting a possible link.

I may be explaining it badly.

"FGM is gendered"

I disagree. You and I clearly have very different interpretations of the word gender.