Obsession with transwomen fetishises sex difference

[spannablue]

Just read on Twitter:

'The problem with patriarchy is not due to men having penises, it's due to the lie that this random feature of birth confers & signifies rank, power & domination. We must not collude in that by fetishising sex difference & aggrandizing genitals that happen to be on the outside.'

What do you think?

Gotten. See.

I'm just a provincial solicitor but hasn't feminism being acknowledging the bodily experience of being a woman since about forever?

Give it two or three generations and the postmodern/poststructoral feminists might start to wonder, whether male violence might have anything to do with enforcing patriarchy.
In the meantime, we can enjoy such gems as the suggestion of a German postmodern feminist, Mithu Sanyal, who suggested to call rape survivors neither survivors nor victims but experiencers, without any value judgement about the rape. For who does really know, how the rape was experienced...

'postmodernist feminist' seems to be an oxymoron

I use terms like AFAB just to be clear in these discussions.

But there’s nothing clear about that at all. The word you’re looking for is ‘woman.’

I’m all good with jargon, by the way. And buggering about with words. And semiotics. Hell, I was re reading ‘the name of the rose’ with the accompanying clarification notes last night at three am feeding the baby.

I can do both science AND pretentious wank if I have to.

But on a serious note: no one is assigned a sex at birth. You’re assigned a name. Your sex is observed.

On another serious note: do you know what the difference is between science jargon and postmodernist wank? Science jargon makes shit easier. It’s clear. It’s defined. It means something real. It means that two scientists who don’t even share a primary language can communicate. It’s good jargon.

As for postmodernism - im in the ‘anyone who thinks they don’t exist is buying their own beer’ camp.

Anyway. Tell me about the scientific discussion you had.

Must not value judge rape. It is a Zen thing. A rape is neither a bad thing, nor a good thing. It just is. I think someone should cross stitch that into a frame and hang it up in a rape crisis centre.

(Actually, please don't do that. It's fucking ridiculously offensive)

Yes, the current use of 'fetishize' is an interesting one. One the one hand, anyone with a sexual fetish of any weird kind must be celebrated, or they are being 'kink shamed'.
On the other, anyone expressing concern about something like a man raping a woman more easily, or a particular innate orientation like being a lesbian, is accused of fetishizing a particular body part. So fetishes are both good and praiseworthy, and also bad and exclusionary. (Is this another paradox to add to the list Turph?)

It's going on the list, FloralBunting thanks

I’m all good with jargon, by the way. And buggering about with words. And semiotics. Hell, I was re reading ‘the name of the rose’ with the accompanying clarification notes last night at three am feeding the baby.

bowl - at the risk of outing myself as a pretentious wanker, can I recommend Foucault's Pendulum as an even funnier romp through the self-parody that is post-modernism (as well as being a brilliant if inadvertent spoof of The Da Vinci Code - inadvertent because it predates it, because Eco was actually spoofing Holy Blood, Holy Grail the supposedly "factual book" Dan Brown was taken to court for allegedly plagiarising... there's a whole thesis on self-referential circularity and up-its-own-arseness just in that thought alone!)

I don't want to derail, but is there a discussion of Mithu Sanyal in English, because the few accounts I have been able to decipher haven't really clearly said that she said rape was an experience and I'm aware that there are massive problems translating from German to English.

Must not value judge rape. It is a Zen thing. A rape is neither a bad thing, nor a good thing. It just is.

Imagine being so woke that you say what (e.g.) drunken, raping soldiers have been saying for millennia.

My favorite part is how apparently gaining a sexual thrill from wearing items of clothing normally associated with women is no longer a fetish (you bigot) but an identity, but having a sexual orientation and therefore an interest in one type of genitalia but not the other is a "fetish", despite "fetish" literally meaning a sexual fixation on non-sexual objects.

Fox and owl are a straight couple, yes? Or perhaps a queer couple.
A transmasc and transfeminine pairing?

One is capable of impregnation of women.
One is capable of becoming pregnant.

I'm all for Monique wittiging the crap out of society but when she theorized that lesbians would change society and what gender means she didn't mean the xx and xy lesbian couples.

My DH calls The Da Vinci Code Indiana Jones and the Keys to Enlightenment.

But like most of us postmodern feminists I'm concerned that we must acknowledge bodily experience as part of that. This isn't easy

Funny, most of us find acknowledging bodily experience extremely easy. I guess the view is clearer when one's head is removed from one's bum.

Lots of decent feminist women put a lot of energy into helping the woman quoted in the op to gain an understanding of feminism and to get through her PhD.

It's a shame it all gets twisted into this patriarchal reversal.

The fetish happening in this social phenomenon is a fetish that we aren't meant to talk about on these boards.

Spartacus, this is the original article, where she proposed it:

www.taz.de/Beschreibung-sexualisierter-Gewalt/!5379541/

Here she suggests to say 'Erlebende' (instead of victim/Opfer, survivor/Überlebende):

'Man muss dafür keine Neologismen bilden wie beispielsweise Refpo (Opfer rückwärts) oder andere kruden Konstruktionen, sondern sie ist bereits in unserer Sprache angelegt: Da das Substantiv „Opfer“ aus dem Verb „opfern“ gebildet wurde, ist es nur naheliegend, aus dem Verb „erleben“ das Substantiv „Erlebende“ zu bilden. Denn das Einzige, was Menschen, die sexualisierte Gewalt erlebt haben, teilen, ist ja eben dieses Erlebnis.'

'You don't have to construct neologisms like refpo (opfer=victim) backwards, or other crude constructs, but [the solution] is already built into the language: Just as the word 'victim (opfer)' was built from the word 'victimize (opfern)', it is plausible to build from the word 'experience (erleben)' the word 'experiencer (Erlebende)'. For the only thing that people who have experienced sexual violence share, is said experience.'

The second wave journal Emma (Alice Schwarzer) as well as some mainstream media reacted strongly and tore down the suggestion.

much appreciated kesstrel thank you

Pombear! I am so sorry! I really put my foot in it!

Cross dressing is one of the most boringly British sexual fetishes.

Maybe I should use that argument in the consultation resonse I'm working on now!

I get that... but wasn't she asked to try to consider rape as being about more than 'victimhood'? I do get this (on some levels). There is a binary. Women can either be victims or survivors but some women prefer simply to say 'I was raped' without the implied context of either? I've heard this before, even before PM had crawled out of France, as in women very much thought that what had happened to them was violent and criminal, but did not want to be either passive victims or heroic survivors and all that these terms implied? They wanted something else - a more neutral statement.

Lass

hasn't feminism being acknowledging the bodily experience of being a woman since about forever?

But a bunch of French male philosophers told us that it shouldn't be, so of course we had to listen to them!

It was written by someone who thinks and writes a lot about this stuff (PhD, TED talk, etc)

Sorry but this back on page 1 properly made me roar.

It ain't just an opinion, it's an opinion from someone who thinks a lot.

Some people (post-modernists, cough) really spend far too much time thinking, it seems. And writing word salad. We are probably never going to arrive in a place where sex doesn't matter op. I'm betting it matters to every abuse victim here, every mother who had a bad childbirth, everyone who has ever been hit by a man or intimidated verbally, not to mention everyone who has had breast cancer or terrible periods or a miscarriage. It matters to me.

And 'heteronormative.' Ugh. Most people are straight. Most people will always be straight. Yes society needs to do a lot of work on how it treats gay and lesbian and bisexual people. Yes society needs to be more compassionate and thoughtful. No society should not make drastic and negative adaptations to suit any minority, particularly when they are piggy backing on the LGB struggle because it's very convenient for them.

It's one of the most common fetishes in general, and about as unique or special as having a thing for "sexy" nurses, or for feet.

Please tell me that "if you won't show randoms your feet on demand and let them suck your toes you're a bigot" isn't the next absurdity that the woke crowd intend to foist on us.

Just because someone thinks a lot doesn't mean they're necessarily good at it...

'So wie vorher der Begriff „Überlebende“, nimmt „Erlebende“ eine Verschiebung vom Passiven zum Aktiven vor, allerdings ohne die damit einhergehende Wertung. Schließlich wird Erlebnis erst durch ein beigefügtes Adjektiv (wunderbares Erlebnis, grauenhaftes Erlebnis, langweiliges Erlebnis) näher bestimmt und lässt sogar Raum für Ambivalenzen (ein schreckliches, aber auch banales Erlebnis). '

Just like the term 'survivor' the term 'experiencer' shifts from passivity to activity, but without value judgement. After all, every experience is only determined (in value) by the added adjective (beautiful experience, gruesome experience, boring experience) and even leaves room for ambivalence (a gruesome but banal experience).'

The consequence with this thinking, if society adopts it, is, of course, that each rape victim will have to individually convince people that this was, indeed, not a good esperience, and they might even be questioned, why they cannot accept it as something banal and inconsequential. After all the Rape of the Sabines is part of our cultural heritage. (Yes, I have once read a pomp person argue that we make too much of rape, and former generations were hunkey dorey with it, like the Rape of the Sabines exemplifies. That rape might only have been deeemed okay by society, because women had no voice back then, never occurred to her.)

gendercritter

It was written by someone who thinks and writes a lot about this stuff

Of course. And this is the problem. Too much time spent thinking in one tiny constricted field, not enough time spent reading and learning about other perspectives (like science, or analytical philosophy) and looking for actual evidence, as opposed to just endlessly circular article-citation.