Paris Lees article re: Ldn underground

[Ekphrasis]

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/14/tfl-scrapping-ladies-and-gentlemen-gender-public-toilets?CMP=fb_gu

I'm exhausted and read half asleep - can't make head nor tale if this article.

Confused sex with gender?

I knew I could rely on you lot to help me work out why my gut knew it was rubbish when my mind couldn't!

It's quite interesting how Paris has written it.
This is a huge giveaway about what trans ideology actually means:
"Do I think we are going to do away with gender completely? No. Do I think people are going to suddenly stop wearing suits and high heels and having names that are considered to be masculine or feminine and all the rest of it? No. Would I want to live in that world? No. I quite like gender."

So Paris has no inkling that women might not "quite like gender" and the constraints it puts on us. Yes, I wear heels just to signify people should treat me as lesser. I love it

It never ceases to amaze me how men do not see.

They just don't. They give themselves away time, after time.

Sometimes I think that feminism really is a higher evolved form of being!

On Twitter PL is asking for votes in the upcoming Diversity in Media awards. Don't think that article is going to help the campaign to be BEst Journalist much, being a terrible bit of writing

She also describes herself as a queer kid from a council estate, which is an interesting choice of words

Bringing a child up gender free is not the same thing as unisex toilets.

That one annoyed me.

All this just seems so utterly regressive in many ways and it's like nobody can see it. I heard an interview with Jill Soloway, the very talented and accomplished writer of the show Trans Parent, and she was saying that wearing heels, dresses and make-up made her feel so uneasy in her own skin that she stopped doing it and now identifies as gender queer. What a backwards view of women, that these objects are somehow definitive of being female. So you tell little girls who aren't stereotypically 'girly' that they don't actually have to be girls, because being a girl means pretty dresses and that's basically it? That there is no strength or positivity in actually being female?

My DH was listening to the interview too and said, jokingly, 'so my mum and all the wee grannies on Sauchiehall Street who wear slacks, don't wear make up and have short hair, are they gender queer'?

How can those on the 'right side of history' not see how women and girls get shafted and belittled again and again in this debate?

"Wearing heels, dresses and make-up made her feel so uneasy in her own skin that she stopped doing it and now identifies as gender queer."

Jesus. No, it's just called "it's so much easier and cheaper."

I'd call it being normal. I like wearing make up as I'm self conscious, thanks to airbrushed magazines. But I like it. Anyone on tv or on stage would wear makeup. I don't like heels as I'm hypermobile and they're shit for posture. I now wear dresses as my hips don't take to jeans too well these days. But I'd rather the ease of jeans.

All my mates and I wore dms, check shirts and ripped jeans as teens. Standard. We weren't 'queer.' Lumberjacks maybe, but quite clear we were girls.

I suspect there are, aside from the obvious, some innate differences between men and women, but society exaggerates these differences through strict roles and rules to the point of caricature

Datun Society does not exaggerate biological differences. It assigns a role to those differences. Gender.

I agree the article is tripe that doesn't make sense overall, but this is confusing me.

I think I'd broadly agree () with Paris' statement. "Aside from the obvious" I would assume means anatomy. But I think it's possible that there are some other differences, eg. a link with testostorone and aggression, which are massively exaggerated by society in the form of gender stereotypes. And I do believe socialisation is overwhelmingly the biggest factor in behaviour, so that dictates how any slight differences are expressed. Using the aggression example - suppose we had a truly equal society - no gender stereotypes, everyone expected to conform to the same standards of behaviour. If there was a biological difference that means men are more likely to have certain physiological (leading to emotional) responses, we might find that men show more self-soothing behaviours during conflict, or something. Rather than actually being more aggressive.

[Argh I feel like I'm mansplaining/derailing or something - I'm a woman and that's not my intention!]

None of this makes any sense with what Paris believes though. They don't appear to believe biology actually matters. Yet believe that incredibly slight (and disputed) differences in the brain somehow override "obvious" biological differences. They adhere to the strict rules of gender that they claim are problematic.

It's all so bonkers, isn't it?

It's all so bonkers, isn't it?

It is bonkers. And this is what happens. You end up analysing a single point down the rabbit hole. When really the issues are very simple.

For me, now, the main issue is no means no. And if I have to justify no to suit you, then you are already violating my boundaries.

In terms of the differences in male and female brains. This ideology makes women keen to find no single difference between men and women, apart from biology.

Whilst we all know that there are hormonal differences. And then we get involved in how the hormonal differences dictate behaviour.

But still, none of it is innate across the board. You get some men with low testosterone, some women with high testosterone. Some men with high testosterone are very gentle, some aggressive.

So although it's interesting, from a feminist point of view, it's irrelevant from a transgender point of view.

What is innate is biological function. Across the board. Of course with the exception of intersex, which Lees brings up, yet again, to disprove the binary.

In terms of boundaries, I didn't mean you personally! I meant transwomen.

what really pisses me off about stuff like this, is the comments always seem to assume its the left pushing the transgender thing

"Wearing heels, dresses and make-up made her feel so uneasy in her own skin that she stopped doing it and now identifies as gender queer

When I first started reading about all this twaddle I did wonder if 'gender queer' was the way for me. I've never bothered with heels or make-up and I don't wear skirts or girly clothes... but then I realised that it left the gender binary intact. So I identify as a woman.

Branleuse

Not just the left. I see many people under the impression it's feminists too. Presumably libfems.

Giving feminism a bad name.

The testosterone thing is annoying me recently. Why are we saying testosterone causes aggression? Could it not be that oestrogen causes caring? All these trans women who say they are gentler, maybe it isn't lack of testosterone, maybe it's addition of oestrogen.
I don't know if it makes sense. It's another thing where I think female is defined by a lack of maleness (no penis, no testosterone) rather than as a category with its own different attributes (vulva, oestrogen)

The testosterone thing is annoying me recently. Why are we saying testosterone causes aggression? Could it not be that oestrogen causes caring

Or is it a much more complex interaction of biology and culture such as was beginning to be explored in the 80s before postmodernism destroyed the university?

If testosterone causes aggression and oestrogen causes gentleness, then why do you transwomen commit violent crime at exactly the same rate as their male counterparts?

I'm not really debating the effect s of oestrogen or testosterone. More that the debate is always framed in terms of testosterone.
I don't think human nature is as simplistic as testosterone = aggression. That's why I think the biological definitions of male/female/intersex are most useful.

QuentinSummers

Ah, I see. Yes I agree.

I don't think testosterone actually does cause aggression. But could be wrong. I vaguely remember reading about the science behind the debunked theory that young boys get a 'testosterone surge'. (They don't.) I think but happy to be corrected that the research showed they could have raised testosterone when angry but not when play fighting.

Misogyny causes aggression.

"Gender is over. Dead. Kaput. Finis. Indeed, in 2017, to have a traditional gender identity – like boring old “man” or “woman” – is to mark oneself out as achingly unhip. Gender is fluid now, you see. Last year the Fawcett Society Found that 44% of British people now believe that gender is not binary but can be expressed as a range of identities – with almost half of young women holding this view. Perhaps they are looking to the plethora of gender fluid stars such as Ruby Rose, Miley Cyrus and Will Smith’s son Jaden Smith – who has been the face of Louis Vuitton’s womenswear. Gender fluidity is officially a thing."

Fashion.

Fashion, fashion, fashion. Sorry Paris, but by saying something is "now", you are kinda heralding in its "over". What is achingly unhip now will soon be retro and revered. And reverted to. Because fashions pass, as the next one is brought in. You think that you are giving transactivism momentum that will be unstoppable, but as the Comments section highlights, you are being dismissed as frivolous - as all fashions are. The Transtrenders will move on to something new (adulthood, hopefully) and you will realise your tactics were just plain wrong. Soz.

Bravo. Bingo. Nailed it!

to coin a phrase - arse about face

the material reality of inequality between men and women existed before the ideological underpinning of gender to justify it
the categorisation of people into two unequal groups.

"The theory is that gender is a social construct that places men and women in two distinct categories, which inevitably creates a power imbalance from which men benefit and women lose out. Do away with gender and you do away with the two-tier system that has oppressed women for millennia."

so, in one sense, I agree. But I very much disagree with the unspoken idea that gender just happened along so humans divided everything into two piles and then it all went to sh1t in a heirarchy

the heirarchy and power imbalance came first when men realised they could breed and control workers tp tend their flocks in the same way they could breed the flocks

Oh the comments on this are a delight.