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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Men and Non-men

146 replies

noblegiraffe · 17/04/2016 13:15

Interesting discussion here about men as default.

debuk.wordpress.com/2016/04/16/default-male/

Apart from wondering whether the Green Party tweet about non-men is an April Fools, men-as-default is something I've had to make an effort with when talking to my DD. I've noticed that unless the toy/picture in a book is specifically a girl, I'll call it 'Mr Octopus' or say 'What is the doggy doing? He's eating a bone'.

OP posts:
BuffytheReasonableFeminist · 21/04/2016 21:44

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PalmerViolet · 21/04/2016 21:47

Oh dear, was I supposed to vote Tory then?

Rather cut my hand off

PalmerViolet · 21/04/2016 21:50

Well, it's important that someone checks up us every so often. Making sure we're doing feminism right and everything.

Did we pass, d'ya think?

Radfem = radicalised muslim... whatever

scallopsrgreat · 21/04/2016 21:52

Yep radfems are just like terrorists. We bomb, kill, rape, murder children, kidnap, wage war.

Oh wait.

BombadierFritz · 21/04/2016 21:58

And muslim terrorists all vote tory, i heard

BombadierFritz · 21/04/2016 21:59

Remember - our words literally kill people

femfortheday · 21/04/2016 22:03

Our tongues are just that sharp.

Sunshowercap · 22/04/2016 07:51

Plenty of women don't 'present' as women

Because they're challenging oppressive gender roles, perhaps? ie they're feminists?

I thought I was fairly well-read (both theoretically on queer theory & more colloquially on blogs etc etc) but I do not understand the Tweet screenshot above - Simon "identifying" as a woman, but presenting as a man. Surely this is a case of a man wanting to impinge on the slim space accorded to women?

I just don't get it. But I know it's not a tenable feminist position. I don't care what you "identify" as - if s/he [Simon] "presents" as male, s/he will be treated as a man in public space. And all that that implies.

CherryPicking I mean this genuinely - can you explain the dynamics of the person Simon, at the Green Party conference?

Because from the outside, it sounds as though here's a man [sex], with all the socialisation of masculinity [gender] thinking that he can assume the speaking position of a woman [sex] to speak about female experience [gender].

Isn't that Mansplaining par excellence?

BuffytheReasonableFeminist · 22/04/2016 10:03

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SomeDyke · 22/04/2016 10:55

Thanks for that 'useful' graphic. Which makes it clear, even if we aren't getting into supposed 'brain-sex', and totally ignoring dysphoria..........that 'gender in the head' is whatever you think it is. That's it.

Presentation still seems stuck on clothes, behaviour, insert usual gender stereotypes here.

Bodily sex seems to be a combination of what you were actually born with, but let's throw intersex under the bus and under the trans umbrella to confuse matters, and pretend that someone who modifies their genitalia by surgery and hormones is now as intersexy as someone who was actually born with ambiguous genitalia, or some mix of secondary sexual characteristics.Which is frankly, just 'presentation' but a bit more permanent. And not forgetting to add that presentational, superficial bodily sex can (I presume) overrule actual functional bodily sex -- so a transman who gives birth is still as much a man as they ever were.

Seems to me that it all rests on the subjective (what you say you are), and the superficial (i.e. the surface presentation, or slightly deeper in terms of those bits of you near the surface that can be altered by surgery or hormones.) But the functional aspects of sex (which is the bit that tends to be quite important to many females) is the least of the 3. Removing breasts, or adding cosmetic plastic bags, removing a penis, or adding cosmetic bits of flesh from elsewhere, they're the same superficial effects.It's all either subjective, or superficial. And this is what trans activists want to make the determining factor!

SomeDyke · 22/04/2016 11:07

Just to add, given the current state of my hormones -- I find it deeply insulting for anyone to suggest that bags of silicone under the skin of your chest is equivalent to my breasts. I may have never lactated and used them to feed a child (functional secondary sexual characteristics), but I think they probably would be functional if I had ever needed them to be. Just as artificially altering hormone levels isn't equivalent to what my hormones do, because a male doesn't have the bodily organs that those hormones act on. So, it isn't just mood changes and irritability or whatever other actions on the brain you are hoping to achieve, a male, whatever surgery or hormones, will never have a womb that bleeds as a result of those hormones. Will never be hoping for a child, and then disappointed to discover that there isn't one.

This is what I share with those other women here on Mumsnet, in the bone and the blood, and it matters. How dare they say that it doesn't, or that a feeling in the head, or a superficial simulacrum of our bodily functions is equivalent. And to all those who claim we all just go to the loo to pee or poo -- you can tell right away that was written by an actual or wannabe male, because the bodily truth is that most of us spend an awful lot of time in the ladies dealing with the messy business of menstruation.

A womans right to bleed, and deal with it only in the presence of others who either do, have done, or always expected to do the same. Not those who never did, never will, and never expected to, because they are not functionally female in any way.

BuffytheReasonableFeminist · 22/04/2016 11:11

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almondpudding · 22/04/2016 14:01

'My confusion is with the circularity of how we can understand gender identity, if it bears no relation to sex or presentation - how can we grasp what it is? Not in an essentialist way, nor with the business of defining things as 'thing' and 'not-thing'. Just, when someone says "I am a..." what referents are they using, and do they mean the same things by those as other people do? '

Can you explain this Buffy? I think I'm trying to ask a similar question on another thread, and have done on previous threads. I don't really understand your phrasing but I'm can't seem to find phrasing that people will respond to.

My comparisons would be things like being left wing, or being a person who feels the presence of God. Those are both based on personal feelings and involve self identification, but people can describe what they mean by those things in a way that is understandable to other people, including those who don't share their feelings.

LassWiTheDelicateAir · 22/04/2016 14:26

My comparisons would be things like being left wing, or being a person who feels the presence of God. Those are both based on personal feelings and involve self identification, but people can describe what they mean by those things in a way that is understandable to other people, including those who don't share their feelings.

I don't understand what is meant by being in the presence of a god. I understand it is important to many people but I have no understanding of what it would feel like.

BertrandRussell · 22/04/2016 14:36

I think my problem is that there are always been cultural explanations for why people feel unhappy in their own skin- from possession by gods or demons to Freudian sexual fantasies. And I have a suspicion that the current cultural explanation is about gender.

LassWiTheDelicateAir · 22/04/2016 14:48

The religious analogy doesn't really work.

In a time and / or a place where one was / is expected to practice a religion and believe in a god presumably I'd be in the same situation as a person who genuinely believes they are transgender?

almondpudding · 22/04/2016 15:01

Sorry Lass, I'm not sure what you mean by this. Why would you be in the same position?

On a separate note...

There are people who practice a religion who don't believe in God.

There are people who believe in God from a philosophical perspective but have never claimed to experience the presence of God.

But people who claim to have experienced the presence of God can and have described these very abstract experiences.

So I'm not talking about belief. I'm talking about the internal experience.

BuffytheReasonableFeminist · 22/04/2016 15:02

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almondpudding · 22/04/2016 15:03

Bertrand, yes, that seems like a plausible idea.

almondpudding · 22/04/2016 15:13

Yes, that makes absolute sense.

My worry is that what you describe is really what is going on, and the genderists know it on some level, but don't want to say so.

Because unlike cats and dogs, gender is a hierarchy, and the social notion of what all the other gender groups are (male, genderqueer, neutrois etc) is created in reference to the gender identity woman, which is sexually objectified.

I feel the same way about people who dress up in a very sexualised 1950s way, despite women who lived through the fifties still being alive.

But I want to know what genderists actually claim gender is.

LassWiTheDelicateAir · 22/04/2016 15:35

Sorry Lass, I'm not sure what you mean by this. Why would you be in the same position?

The same sense of being different/ incomprehension.

I have no understanding of any religious or spiritual feeling. I have no "internal experience " of this. I literally have no idea what anyone means by this.

LassWiTheDelicateAir · 22/04/2016 15:39

What I am trying to say is perhaps those who have a strong gender identity are similar to those who have strong religious or spiritual identity.

Most of you on here say you have no gender identity and don't understand those who do. My analogy is I have no religious or spiritual identity and I don't understand those who do.

BuffytheReasonableFeminist · 22/04/2016 15:47

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almondpudding · 22/04/2016 15:47

I don't think there is a comparison between gender identity and religious identity other than they have the word identity in them. A religious identity is more than an internal abstract feeling.

If someone says they are a Christian, which is a religious identity, I understand that means that they belong to a group who believe God is a trinity, that Jesus was incarnate, that he was resurrected from the dead and so on. And if they don't believe those things they'll probably make that clear by using a more specific term such as Gnostic Christian.

I don't have experience of God, a religion, or a gender identity but I can definitely understand religion and have some understanding of experience of God.

I mean, religious identity is studied in depth by school pupils doing RE. All the aspects of it are set out in a curriculum.

almondpudding · 22/04/2016 15:54

I'm not sure I'd call Butler a genderist.

I was just using genderist as shorthand for people who come on and say the vast majority of people or all people have a gender identity and then can't describe it, or describe it in vague and entirely contradictory ways.

Or say things that a woman is a person who says they are a woman.

Like saying X is a person who says they are X.

I think if Butler was on here and was asked for examples, she would give them and try and explain. And the genderists seem to have kicked Butler out of their approved thinkers list anyway.