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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Defining a woman by her sex is not reducing her to her biology

86 replies

MagnificentDelurker · 04/02/2018 22:26

Hi mumsnet
Long term lurker here. First started reading mumsnet for education boards and then got addicted. I always avoided feminist boards. The reasons need another thread. Then I came across trans threads and I clicked on them as I did not have strong views on trans rights and it seemed a safe topic to explore feminist chats. I was off course supportive of said rights in an inactive let live way. IN fact I had to avoid these threads as well because I found the anti trans opinions too strong. But a seed of discomfort stayed with me and I braved the boards every once in a while and then I got hooked. I joked to my DP that I am being radicalised.

I finally registered today to comment because of the thread telling women here that defining a woman by biology is reductionist. This phrase really gets to me. Biology is the only way to define women that can accommodate all women regardless of personality or particular experience. This is the starting point of telling women that they can be anything. The other option is defining by degree of femininity or just expanding the term. So unless we make the term woman meaningless we are reducing women to feminist. I can understand many people meaning this when they say transwomen are women. But experting feminists to do so is beyond pale.

I have nothing new to add as everything I have said has been said thousands of times but needed to rant.

OP posts:
chickendrizzlecake · 05/02/2018 12:48

BTW Altered Carbon is a load of male-centric, violent tripe - I really don't recommend it!

stoneagefertilitydoll · 05/02/2018 12:49

My sense of being a girl developed before I really understood that there were physical differences between girls and boys (no brothers)

This is interesting - I don't think I ever developed a sense of being a girl or a woman - in fact, I spent most of my lift feeling that I didn't deserve to be a woman (even embarrassed to use the word to describe myself).

Whatever it is that made me that way, I passed some of it onto my sons (who at least aren't embarrassed) because neither of them make a big deal about being a boy, it doesn't seem to be something they think about much - DS1 didn't know the difference until he was about 5 (because he didn't care enough to retain the knowledge, not because I kept him ignorant).

jellyfrizz · 05/02/2018 12:53

A female body alone does not make a woman.

Huh? Even if a body is dead and has been dead for hundreds of years it is still possible to correctly identify whether that person was a man or woman.

YetAnotherSpartacus · 05/02/2018 12:59

This is such a fascinating thread

I agree, and I can't help thinking that answers are very circumscribed by the need to maintain a particular 'definition' of woman in a way that circumscribes more interesting ontological debate.

That's something else that irritates me about this trans rubbish - we are being pushed into a corner and being forced to argue defensively instead of engaging in more creative projects.

AngryAttackKittens · 05/02/2018 13:04

I agree, and I can't help thinking that answers are very circumscribed by the need to maintain a particular 'definition' of woman in a way that circumscribes more interesting ontological debate.

Nope, I really do think that "woman" means "adult human female" and don't believe in any of the metaphysical stuff.

YetAnotherSpartacus · 05/02/2018 13:10

Nope, I really do think that "woman" means "adult human female" and don't believe in any of the metaphysical stuff

I guess I come at this from a different angle, which is as someone who was involved in the second wave and has a bookshelf full of feminist theory and was used to more open debate and less polarised positions in a different era.

MissMoneyPlant · 05/02/2018 13:10

Woman/female is litetally a shorthand description of your anatomy and physiology.

Exactly. Someone told me that to define "woman" according to biology meant I must see all women as walking vaginas. Hmm

I know humans are vertebrates but it doesn't mean I see everyone as a walking spine...

OP I believe many people experience God in a very real manner. I am very interested in these experiences as they expand my view of the world we live in and I get angry when people ridicule these experiences. But I draw the line at using them to legislate our daily life.

I've been having one of those "I wish I said" moments... debate a while ago with brainwashed previously critical-thinking (male) friend ended up at basically asserting transwomen were women because he believed so. Wish I'd calmly said "that's fine to believe that, I'm glad you're aware you are taking an entirely faith-based position"... might have been the one thing to hit home. Sigh.

YetAnotherSpartacus · 05/02/2018 13:12

Also, it does not have to be 'metaphysical'. De Beauvoir wasn't metaphysical when she discussed the becoming of woman and nor were a lot of other second-wavers.

chickendrizzlecake · 05/02/2018 13:14

Agreed about being forced to argue defensively.

There was another interesting thread either yesterday or the day before where people had started talking about the current trend for thinking of the identity as fixed and the body as malleable - and the implications of that on ideas about gender. Before I even had chance to formulate my thinking and post on it it had got swamped by yet another load of goadiness where people have to explain for the gazillioneth time that they are not vile, bigoted or full of hatred, just because they question an ideology.

And it is a shame, because these things are interesting to me and part of feminist thought and discourse and it feels like no-one has time to talk about them because their all off fire-fighting the latest assault or accusation.

BloodyMarie · 05/02/2018 13:16

'Metaphysical'....just quit with the faux-interlectual stuff. Its not complicated, its secondary school level biology

Its your personality which leads you to enjoy femininity

LeCroissant · 05/02/2018 13:16

I get what you're saying Outy and I think you've articulated it remarkably well. Interestingly I think your feelings may offer some insight into how trans people feel. This is entirely my interpretation of what you've said, so if it's all bunkum, feel free to tell me that!

From what you're saying it seems that you have a very contained, defined sense of being a girl/woman, that over the last few years, through adverse events (?) or trauma (?) become very separated in your mind from your body. Looking back you feel that that sense of being a girl/woman was always there, before you ever had conscious knowledge of it, and now that sense hasn't changed, even though your body has. So your feeling is that your body is actually superfluous to the sense of being a woman.

I think that your body once did very strongly represent your femininity to you, an outer expression of an inner feeling. But now it no longer express it, because it doesn't fit with how you feel inside, so you've rejected it from your sense of being a woman.

Why doesn't your body reflect how you feel? Is it because you have expectations of how a female/feminine body should be? Where did those expectations come from? If you are feminine, why would your body not be feminine, given that it's yours?

I'm curious to hear what you think.

AngryAttackKittens · 05/02/2018 13:18

I'm also steeped in the second wave and its literature. What does that have to do with the person arguing that she had a sense of metaphysical womanhood that predated the consciousness of boys and girls being different physically?

AngryAttackKittens · 05/02/2018 13:25

Also, a thing that bothers me about how this conversation plays out is that, although I can understand how trauma or disability may lead to a person feeling disconnected from their body and that it's not really "them", the flip side of that is that misogyny relentlessly pushes the idea that female bodies are weird, disgusting, shameful, and in that context referring to female bodies as "corpses" and arguing that they're somehow not-us, and actually-us is a sort of spiritual something not tied into our bodies, play right into the female bodies as weird and disgusting and shameful narrative. Which can be hurtful and upsetting for women. But somehow it's OK for the my body is nothing to do with me I'm actually a metaphysical essence group to say they find the opposing perspective hurtful and offensive and other people should be sensitive to that, but apparently there's no need for the metaphysical essence, female bodies are corpses/not us group to take the other group's feelings into account at all.

That doesn't sit right with me.

YetAnotherSpartacus · 05/02/2018 13:39

I'm also steeped in the second wave and its literature. What does that have to do with the person arguing that she had a sense of metaphysical womanhood that predated the consciousness of boys and girls being different physically

Fuck all. Because that's not all this thread is about.

Also, to be honest I think the OP is getting a raw deal when she is doing her utmost to flesh out (boom, boom) a position and it does seem she is struggling for the right language at times.

Jesus Christ - are we now going to burn heretics like the authoritarian left?

AngryAttackKittens · 05/02/2018 13:52

There's a difference between burning heretics and disagreeing with the idea that women have an innate female essence that's not tied to our bodies, or objecting to female bodies being described as corpses. If you want a discussion then people will disagree. That's how discussions work.

I'm not sure why you think that women who say that they don't feel a sense of womanhood that's separate from and not associated with their bodies are not telling the truth, or are modifying their arguments in a defensive ways. Some people just aren't very spiritual by inclination, some are allergic to all forms of woo, some are just super practical in how they see the world. There are multiple Marxist-adjacent people here, you can't possibly think that they won't apply a materialist analysis to this stuff too?

AngryAttackKittens · 05/02/2018 14:07

Speaking of getting a raw deal, what about those of us who don't appreciate seeing female bodies described as corpses? We're not allowed to find that horrifying because that's being mean to the person who wrote it?

My body is not a corpse. It's my body, it's me, it's not a chunk of dead meat that I'm just awkwardly dragging around with me.

YetAnotherSpartacus · 05/02/2018 14:15

Oh for goodness sake. The OP or whoever was was not being literal in the sense that you took it.

AngryAttackKittens · 05/02/2018 14:21

Yes, it was a metaphor. A disturbing one that dovetails nicely with a lot of unpleasant misogynist views of women's bodies.

But fine, apparently saying that is unacceptable in this particular feminist space.

(Not the OP who said it, btw.)

Ereshkigal · 05/02/2018 14:24

I think anyone is allowed to have a view on anything, right? So you can say a body is a corpse, but you should probably expect challenge from people who don't agree.

AngryAttackKittens · 05/02/2018 14:26

Apparently not.

DonkeySkin · 05/02/2018 14:45

Your intellect creates a world through which you experience the physical world. Your body is the bridge between the two providing sensory feedback through your brain to your mind and making your intentions into physical actions. My mind informs my physical experiences, not the other way around.

To my mind you have this exactly backwards. It's actually your physical experience of the world that informs how your spirit/intellect develops. There is no way to experience the world except through the body you have. For that reason, I do agree with the next part of your paragraph:

Obviously my body is female but my intellectual self is also female. I'm not a person inside a woman's body I am a woman inside a woman's body.

I agree and I think that some radical feminists do a disservice to women when they insist that our 'personhood' must be separate from our womanhood (which they see as something imposed on us).

However, we might be coming at this from different perspectives, Outy, because you seem to think (if I've understood correctly) that there is an extra-corporeal essence of femaleness (and presumably maleness) that has nothing to do with the body, and what I'm arguing is that it is through experiencing the world in a sexed body that our sense of ourselves as women (or men) arises.

This is why I disagree with the radical feminists who argue for 'gender abolition'. To me that's an impossible and indeed anti-human project, because the physical differences between the sexes will always be relevant to how we experience the world. We are a sexed species - there is no unsexed experience of 'personhood' separate from our male or female bodies. My embodiment as female is not incidental or irrelevant to who I am.

When I've stated this in a radical feminist circles, I've been accused of believing in 'lady brain'. But my argument has nothing to do with brain structures, and I actually find the modern obsession with locating all sense/feeling in the seat of the brain to be reductive and a faith-based belief, akin to the Ancient Greeks' notion of the four humours. Yes the brain generates consciousness, but our sense of our whole self is experienced through the body: through having limbs, a nervous system, a digestive system, etc.

Men's and women's experience of the world can never be the same, because our bodies are so different in so many crucial respects: not just reproductive organs, but hormones, bones, muscles - medicine is just starting to realise, for instance, that you can't treat men's and women's bodies as interchangeable for the purpose of diagnosing heart disease, or prescribing drugs.

This doesn't mean that I'm not for interrogating the cultural basis of femininity and masculinity - these phenomena arise, I believe, mainly from power relations between the sexes - they are not natural, except in the fact that the power relations themselves arise from biological differences in the first place. It's been stated here before that if women were as strong as men and had the same capacity for inflicting violence, patriarchy wouldn't exist. I believe it, and I also believe that what we understand as 'feminine' behaviours wouldn't exist either. However, given that these differences can't be abolished without getting rid of sexed bodies themselves, does that mean that the power relations will always exist to some degree, no matter what social structures we come up with to mitigate them? Yes, I'd say, as depressing as that is.

This is an excellent article that deals in part with this question:

Gender is socially constructed (upon material reality)

NaturalWoman · 05/02/2018 16:52

Blimey. So much introspection!

Outy woman is an adult female human. It's a biological signifier that is all. It describes the body.

How a person feels within that body is down to all sorts of things. Some people embrace gender stereotypes and expectations; some intentionally reject it; it just doesn't speak to others; some assume it is intrinsic.

It is just a biological signifier. It means this person has the potenial to reproduce with a man (adult human male) and anything else is personality, characteristics, personal preferences.

Gender is socially constructed.

Datun · 05/02/2018 17:15

It is just a biological signifier. It means this person has the potenial to reproduce with a man (adult human male) and anything else is personality, characteristics, personal preferences.

Exactly. Otherwise we would categorise male and female on something other than the body.

Which, obviously, some people are attempting to do. But since there is no shared, universal characteristic under which you can divide those people, good luck with that!

AngryAttackKittens · 05/02/2018 17:44

Exactly! Being a woman isn't, like, the deep metaphysical essence of my being, partly because as an atheist I don't think I have one. It means that I'm a member of the sex that can in theory get pregnant and bear children. From that initial fact flows a lot of societal stuff, some of which has had an impact on how I see myself and the personality and characteristics that I've ended up with as an adult. I'm aware of which group (can get pregnant, can get other people pregnant) other humans fall into, and can empathize with a lot of experiences that other women have because they're common and shared by most of us (the social part as well as the could get pregnant part and all the other biological stuff that goes along with it). I'm wary of people in the can get other people pregnant group (aka men), because they're physically larger and stronger than me/us and a lifetime of experience has taught me that they can be a threat. The size/strength differential is innate, but the way they're socialized makes them even more of a potential danger than they would innately be, and at a certain point I became aware of that too and started taking note of how strong that socialization seemed to be in individual men and what that meant for me if I had to deal with them.

None of this makes me feel "reduced" to my sex any more than the fact that I can't fly makes me feel reduced to being a human and not a bird. It's just reality, and forms the backdrop against which my life is lived. Pretending it doesn't wouldn't make that backdrop go away. Framing acknowledgement of my sex as being "reduced" to it seems like misogynistic nonsense, particularly given that the same framing doesn't seem to get applied to men. If being female isn't a bad thing (and it's not) then it's not something to be "reduced" to.

NaturalWoman · 05/02/2018 18:25

Framing acknowledgement of my sex as being "reduced" to it seems like misogynistic nonsense, particularly given that the same framing doesn't seem to get applied to men. If being female isn't a bad thing (and it's not) then it's not something to be "reduced" to.

What she said.

We don't say that defining a man by his biology - penis, testicles, testosterone, semen production, muscle mass is 'reductive' do we? No of course not because men are proud of all these things. They are not seen as shameful by anyone.