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?

"I understood that being anti gender is about being opposed to this whole identity nonsense where everyone constantly has to be situating themselves as to what their internal sense of self is and how it matches up to society's notions of gender,"

But that is what this entire thread is about, right? Hence the discussions about shoes and the question of what makes us women. So you come on a thread about the construction of identity; say that identity is nonsense and proffer a "shared experience" of motherhood in its place (which for many women is neither shared nor an experience) - how is that an improvement? And I really don't see why trans issues have to get dragged up on every single fucking thread on this board.

Discussions of gender are not self-indulgent identity politics. Women are oppressed as a biological class. Gender is a tool of that oppression, it is hegemonic, it serves to justify the political and economic underrepresentation of women, their lack of reproductive rights, access to education, unpaid labour etc etc. It prevents change by establishing the false consensus that this oppression is natural and good. If we want to make any progress, we have to dismantle the concept of gender. And that is my point -it canbe dismantled, not only because it is mainly detrimental to women, but also because gender is a lie. It is pure ideology; it doesn't exist - for all the reasons I have already gone into. And unmasking ideology is not a project to "validate any woman's sense of identity" either - what an incredibly rude attempt to close down the discussion that was.

oh shit, x-post, you've apologised. Ignore my last sentence!

There are other shared experiences of being a woman that don't relate to childbearing or the clothes we choose.

Being paid less than men for the same work - still.
Being overlooked for promotion.
Being expected to take the career break if it's decided that one of two parents needs to stay at home.

One of the few advantages of being female - cheaper car insurance - was taken away under equality legislation.

These are the issues I thank feminists for addressing.

And these are all gendered issues which is why accepting gendered assumptions about male/female bodied people is damaging, mainly to female bodied people.

You can't change that men and women are different. You can change the supposed gender-role assumptions created by society which is what feminism is addressing.

uglyswan
I wonder if you have misunderstood almond's explanation re "reproductive class" and motherhood etc.
You can't change biology. Women, not men, women will be the ones to carry a foetus for 9 months and breastfeed. This is immovable. Unchangeable.

So whether we like it or not this also makes women physically vulnerable. More than any man.

What needs to change is the patriarchal notion that being a woman is weak, inferior to being a man.

Infighting between women such as "Well I don't ever want a baby" (or whatever) gets no one anywhere.

Where have I stated that biological sex is not an immutable fact? Yes, women are oppressed as a result of their reproductive class. That's precisely what I said, please don't patronise me. But gender is a tool that has been used for centuries to persuade women to accept their oppression, to see their role in society as inevitable. It allows physical differences between the sexes to become a defining characteristic, infecting all areas of life, even the ones that have nothing to do with reproduction. And refusing to be defined by my potential reproductive role is not "infighting", it is a refusal of gender as an ideological practice.

Your flow of argument seems to loop around, that's all. Sorry it's a fairly complex topic.

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

No. However, some time ago, someone tried to convince me that sex is a social construct.

Gender is constructed. Sex, however, is real, and is ambigious only in very few cases.

It is important to not confuse the to.

I do not think it is possible to be a feminist and NOT reject gender. Except maybe if you define gender completely different from how everyone else does, though I have no idea how that could look.

I wonder if my feelings towards the 'how do you identify' crap have gone beyond the rational. Yesterday I was working on a sexual assault procedure for my university, so I was looking at examples from other universities to copy/adapt. There was a really helpful trauma centred approach document from the University of California, which I read with a lot of interest but the demographic form attached to it used the 'how do you identify' approach and it really really pissed me off. Something like 95% of victims of sexual violence are women or girls, and I think almost 100% of accused are men. Why even in a context which is about sex is gender identity considered king? And then used so badly, given that you can tick that you identify as female. Grr

Except maybe if you define gender completely different from how everyone else does

If I'm honest I'm often not sure what people mean when they say gender. Do they mean gender stereotypes, gender identity (or sometimes even biological sex).

Following from When's question when did transsexual became transgender?

Are the terms synonymous?

The reason trans is being brought up by me is because the whole notion of gender identity has come from trans politics.

Prior to that, gender meant socially constructed roles, treatment and behaviours of men and women.

I think it has become pretty much impossible to talk about any feminist issue because the word gender, which was a really important way of distinguishing between biological sex and socially constructed gender roles, behaviour, and treatment, no longer has a clear meaning.

So I don't know if this thread is about identity. I didn't think I was. I really am not interested in people's sense of identity.

It is incredibly frustrating because I suspect we are saying very, very similar things. But because of the emergence of this idea that gender is an identity I no longer understand what people mean by abolish gender.

Transvestite too.
I asked my mum when I was about 5 years old about a person on our street who was balding, was blatantly an aging man but they wore high heels and a long skirt.

She explained in a "live and let live" way they were simply a transvestite, and that makes them happy.

Now it seems we actually have to all pretend these people are actually real women.

I'm all for live and let live, but let's not all fall into a rabbit hole in the process.

(That was following Lass's post)

Explanation of what is meant by women are the reproductive class is below. It is the underlying theory of most left wing feminism:

'A separation of production and reproduction. Along with commodity production came a separation between production and reproduction. To be clear, “reproduction” does not solely refer to baby making. It also includes meeting the many various needs we have under capitalism, from cooking food and cleaning the home, to listening to a partner vent about their shitty day and holding their hand, to caring for the young, sick, elderly and disabled members of society.

As capitalism developed, generally speaking, productive (value-producing) labor corresponded to the wage, and reproductive labor was unwaged (or extremely low waged), since in appearance it produced no surplus value for the capitalist. This separation, characterized by the wage, took on a specific gendered form under capitalism. Women were largely excluded from productive sphere and therefore did not receive a wage for the reproductive work they did. This gave men a certain amount of power over women, and created antagonisms within the class based on a gendered division of labor. Silvia Federici, in Caliban and the Witch, calls this the “patriarchy of the wage” (97-100).'

Swan, you wrote this earlier:

'While you're at work, you're a worker - until you go home. While you're doing things for or with your children, you're a parent - until they're at school or otherwise out of your hair. While you're discussing women's issues, you're feminist - until you start talking about something else. But when are you a woman? All the time? Biologically yes, presumably. But what things do you do with the conscious knowledge that you are a woman? Being gendered as a woman (your given name, the way you look, dress, etc.) presents the illusion that everything you do, you do as a woman. But is that true for how you see yourself?'

That is pretty much the perfect description of what left wing people call alienated labour. Each part of living has been replaced by a specific work role, and you are then only entitled to consider yourself to be each of those things when you are carrying out those roles. Those roles then coalesce into the idea that parent, woman, worker are some form of identity that has to be performed.

A critique of identity replacing reproductive labour as a central theory in feminism is here:

libcom.org/library/i-am-woman-human-marxist-feminist-critique-intersectionality-theory-eve-mitchell

I do not think it is possible to be a feminist and NOT reject gender.

Me too, Vestal.

Why do gender roles exist though ? I get a bit prickly when people speak of it as if it's some mean trick that someone played on us, to fool us all into being oppressed by men.

I think there is no question that one gender role is valued less by a capitalist society than another, but the good news is that women are not forced to play the traditionally "female" role if they don't want to. But the thing is that many women DO want to play it, we say that there is nothing wrong with liking "feminine" things, and being "girly" - so what is wrong then ?

Young women these days (i.e. under 30) do not get paid less than men, they get paid more, so i think it'll be interesting to see whether in 20 years time this really does all amount to nothing as many on this board are telling us it absolutely will.

I am actually quite optimistic, I think the stats (and own experience) prove that if you are a young capable and ambitious woman, you can expect to earn at least the same as men. If you choose the "feminine" gender role and take a long time off work to raise children and are not available to travel at the drop of a hat because you are primary carer etc - you will not earn the same as men (or women) who are not bound this way. If men choose the historically feminine gender role then it will affect them.

So the issue would actually appear to be an assumption that you will follow the gendered female role because you are biologically female ?

Not quite. The issue is that the gendered female role can be imposed upon you whether you accept it or not. A very trivial example - I used to work in very male-dominated industries. The expected me to pour the tea at meetings. I did not oblige. Didn't stop them expecting.

The pay gap decreased by 0.2% last year, and is more extreme at more senior levels (and no significant change since 1997) with women often just completely missing at the top. I'd love to think that in 20 years time that would not be the case, but I doubt very much that things will radically change. Even women that don't have children are paid less than men so the 'it's all your fault' narrative doesn't ring true to me.

I've been lucky and had a good career (so far!) with no discrimination apart from irritating comments when I first started out. However in industry leadership meetings I am always part of a very small minority. Things are far from equal now and they aren't moving very fast.

You're also missing the full detail of that Press association pay study. Women in their 20s earn about 1k a year more than men. Women in their 30s earn 8k a year less, the authors of the study suggesting that this is because the men are being promoted and the women are not.

Sorry, that was to fine not nooka

Women in their 30s earn 8k a year less, the authors of the study suggesting that this is because the men are being promoted and the women are not

Presumably because they are taking themselves out of the market in the Fine suggests.

This year in Scotland the number of newly admitted female solicitors exceeded men. It will be interesting to see how that pans out to partner level over the next few years.

My personal experience is that if you want to "play the game" and make the appropriate noises and make yourself available, it doesn't matter whether you are male or female. Perhaps my experience is not typical, or indeed my industry is not (although without giving myself away it is one of the largest companies in the world in a "male dominated" field with a female CEO). So when i look around my office and think of the outrage often expressed on here about women being paid much less than men for the same job...I don't see it.