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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

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Original poster

Q&A published on the definition of sex and gender

43 replies

Trousering · 21/02/2019 17:33

futureoflegalgender.kcl.ac.uk/q-a/

This project has published some answers to the questions raised about their definitions and intentions. They have also published a number of public events on their website.
I've booked a ticket for the one in London in March.

OP posts:
Original poster
Trousering · 21/02/2019 17:35

futureoflegalgender.kcl.ac.uk/q-a/

OP posts:
MillytantForceit · 21/02/2019 17:39

"Views differ on the meaning of sex...."

Views differ on the creation of the universe, but the fact is it happened around 13.8 billion years ago, and not on 22 October 4004 BC at six in the evening.

Original poster
Trousering · 21/02/2019 17:43

The only other meaning I know of is the abbreviation of sexual intercourse.

OP posts:
SpartacusAutisticusAHF · 21/02/2019 17:45

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

AncientLights · 21/02/2019 17:59

Is this the bunch of people who produced that ridiculous consultation a few months back?

Knicknackpaddyflak · 21/02/2019 18:01

Well the beginning is waffly but it actually does lay out: we have two general groups here. One sees sex as a fixed, unchanging biological fact, and gender as sex stereotypes which are problematic for women, and the other group (insert ideology here).

It is acknowledging: group one are not going to be convinced, or go away, or shut up, they have valid reasons for those views, and these are two incompatible sets of beliefs. That to me is a step in the right direction.

sackrifice · 21/02/2019 18:02

And we want to avoid reducing the terms of sex or gender to a single understanding

Erm...why would that be then?

Original poster
Trousering · 21/02/2019 18:08

Cos they have a lot of money pouring in on the assumption that they could waffle sex and gender out of legal existence altogether.

OP posts:
Original poster
Trousering · 21/02/2019 18:11

It's interesting how they repeatedly say some think this and others think that. No sense of proportion given. The miniscule amount of people that think sex means a feeling are over represented in this every time.

OP posts:
jellyfrizz · 21/02/2019 18:15

"For some, sex is a scientific fact of bodily difference on which gender is imposed. For others, gender provides the framework within which bodies are given meaning as being either one sex or another, and sometimes not comfortably either."

Can anyone explain the second sentence to me please?

FermatsTheorem · 21/02/2019 18:18

"Views differ on the meaning of sex...."

Views differ on the creation of the universe, but the fact is it happened around 13.8 billion years ago, and not on 22 October 4004 BC at six in the evening.

Spot on, Millytant. And it doesn't really matter most of the time what people believe "on their own time" - if your conceptual framework helps you to make sense of a chaotic universe and live your day-to-day life, crack on. I may not share it, but I respect your right to hold to it.

Where it does matter is if the rest of us are coerced into it or somehow forced to abide by its implications - for instance by having creationism taught to our children in school, or when a company in the US makes use of its (Gorsutch-sanctioned) right to refuse to provide its employees with birth control on the company healthcare scheme because the CE is Catholic.

And that ultimately is the problem with transgenderism - it all comes down to the practical consequences. Do we force women to share prisons with male-bodied sex offenders? Do we remove women's rights to ask for a female HCP, or get changed in open plan changing rooms that are free of penises? Or compete in sports with other female athletes rather than being placed at a massive systematic disadvantage?

jellyfrizz · 21/02/2019 18:19

"We should start by emphasising that FLaG is not an advocacy project. Its aim is to explore the complex issues surrounding how legal personhood is gendered, including through the terms of sex."

What benefits are there to gendering legal personhood in any other way than sex? If you don't 'gender' by sex then why bother at all?

DoctoressPlague · 21/02/2019 18:30

"One controversy raised by this question is whether a pre-existing sex is merely recorded, or whether sex is assigned, or something in between. This project explores the different ways people understand these issues. For some, sex is a scientific fact of bodily difference on which gender is imposed. For others, gender provides the framework within which bodies are given meaning as being either one sex or another, and sometimes not comfortably either."

In the context of a "three-year critical law reform project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council", I would expect the questions to be based on facts, not individuals' perceptions.
I remember the survey now, it was incredibly badly designed.

BiologyIsReal · 21/02/2019 18:33

I'm struggling to think if there is a more unnecessary word in the English language than gender.

jellyfrizz · 21/02/2019 18:40

it all comes down to the practical consequences

^^This. Much of the time sex does not matter and nor should it but there are circumstances where the differences in male and female bodies really, really does matter (whether you call the differences 'sex' or something else).

jellyfrizz · 21/02/2019 18:44

Oooh, survey findings: futureoflegalgender.kcl.ac.uk/findings/

jellyfrizz · 21/02/2019 18:47

Sorry not v. exciting. It's only the demographics of the respondents.

ClaraMatilda · 21/02/2019 18:51

I remember their really badly-designed survey.

Gender was also a more hopeful term since, as a social process, it suggested that gender could be abolished or radically changed (in ways that sex could not be).

Other activists and policy-makers focus on gender, arguing that it is one’s lived gender status (or identity) which should prevail as a legal category, and that sex has become redundant or misleading in this context.

The feminist hope of abolishing sex role stereotypes has been replaced with the reification of them. It's really depressing.

Others may identify as female or male but do so far more ambivalently, recognising their gender as an externally imposed category towards which they have minimal or no positive attachment.

Case in point. Female and male are not genders. I do not identify as female, ambivalently or otherwise. I just am female. My degree of femininity or masculinity has got nothing to do with it.

Original poster
Trousering · 21/02/2019 19:51

I remember the survey now, it was incredibly badly designed.

Sorry, I couldn't post much before as I was on the train. There have been other threads started by the brunning and stave Pencils in Space on this climactic disaster of a project.

Prof. Cooper is admirably advised by Prof Alex Sharpe on the board of this project. So yanno, we are being watched.

And yes, many of us wrote to them telling them to sort out their sex and gender waffle and conflation in their data gathering exercise, I am glad to see they have had a stab at it, I bet that was a bit of a downer for them and clearly they have had to provide balance for their paymasters by saying some this and others that......

More links to follow:

futureoflegalgender.kcl.ac.uk/findings/

Take a look. Well done for making our voices heard, its the BEST thing we can do right now. Someone smarter than me can interpret those piecharts.

OP posts:
Original poster
Trousering · 21/02/2019 19:56

Here is Davina saying "the changing form gender might take in conditions where state law withdraws its allocative function." and so leaves it all to fight it out in the courts every single time...money for lawyers huh? No shits for the women unable to do that...

kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/if-the-state-decertified-gender-what-might-happen-to-its-meaning-and-value(18db3300-1881-4739-829e-9274979a2a52).html

OP posts:
Original poster
Trousering · 21/02/2019 19:57

Here are the events.

futureoflegalgender.kcl.ac.uk/events-and-public-and-policy-engagements/

OP posts:
ItsAllGoingToBeFine · 21/02/2019 20:00

I was going to say that it is quite hopeful that so many of the respondents were women, then I remembered they actually meant men who identify as women and women

FamilyOfAliens · 21/02/2019 20:03

these are two incompatible sets of beliefs

Knowing and understanding something to be the case, based on rigorous scientific evidence, isn’t a belief.

Original poster
Trousering · 21/02/2019 20:05

Making Up a World: Prefiguration, Play and the Enactment of New Facts. King’s College London. 13 March 2019.

Inaugural lecture by Davina Cooper. 6.30-8.30pm (including drinks reception). Safra Lecture Theatre. For further details and free registration visit Eventbrite.

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/davina-coopers-inaugural-lecture-making-up-a-world-prefiguration-play-and-the-enactment-of-new-facts-tickets-53851071003

OP posts:
howdoyoukeepawaveuponthesand · 21/02/2019 20:08

BiologyIsReal

“I'm struggling to think if there is a more unnecessary word in the English language than gender.”

When I was at school it was only ever heard in French and German lessons. To coin a phrase - words have gender, people have sex.

There were always three genders too - masculine, feminine and neuter.

Whoever started using “female” and “male” in reference to gender really fucked things up.