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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

BBC Rupaul Drag Quiz

284 replies

GrimDamnFanjo · 03/10/2019 14:22

Online if you want to take it. You translate the drag phrase.
How nice to see that those putting it together didn't think that "fishy" meaning a very feminine drag queen may be offensive....

OP posts:
Michelleoftheresistance · 04/10/2019 19:20

Not to mention exceptionally childish and demonstrating you're not remotely interested in MN for anything other than playing games.

#usingwomen

Mac1990 · 04/10/2019 19:37

This reply has been deleted

Message deleted by MNHQ. Here's a link to our Talk Guidelines.

Datun · 04/10/2019 19:43

God save me from wanky students who fondly think their every utterance is of the slightest interest to anyone but their mum. Or possibly their gran.

RufusthebewiIderedreindeer · 04/10/2019 19:57

Oh

mac was deleted

And so quickly...

BeMoreMagdalen · 04/10/2019 20:03

Well, that's the fatal flaw in announcing repeatedly that you are just trolling for shits and giggles. Someone may well report you and the mods do like a quick win when this board is such a ball ache to moderate. What a shame. Those poor students will have to do some work instead of watching Mac trying to be cool.

Waterl00 · 04/10/2019 20:09

And to go back to the BBC using it, this is a classic example of the queer identity arrivistes being clueless about the context they are operating in.

The naive non binary employees who are working at a job level where a quiz is about the difficulty level they are safe with are so inexperienced they can't even do that without actually understanding what they are regurgitating.

I watched RuPaul on Graham Norton last week, he is an enormous ego, and that's his only attribute. Foolish followers can't carry off using his insults as they don't have the charisma.

SophoclesTheFox · 04/10/2019 20:16

Well, I stood zero chance of getting any RuPaul references, as I don’t watch it because I dislike drag. Top trolling, genius 😂

Anyway, can we agree that using “fish” is misogynistic and the bbc should give its woke head a wobble?

RufusthebewiIderedreindeer · 04/10/2019 20:34

Anyway, can we agree that using “fish” is misogynistic

Yep

Waterl00 · 04/10/2019 21:56

Yup, and creased (not creased) at the dudes that want fishy to carry on being a word they use about women and girls.

Ereshkigal · 04/10/2019 22:08

LOL like anyone here cares about the puerile second hand trolling of a few idiotic teenagers. I don't watch Drag Race, don't care what its fans think of my feminist objection to obvious misogyny. Get a life, Mac.

Ereshkigal · 04/10/2019 22:10

God save me from wanky students who fondly think their every utterance is of the slightest interest to anyone but their mum. Or possibly their gran.

I doubt their mums and grans do much more than say "yes of course dear" and change the subject Grin

TheProdigalKittensReturn · 05/10/2019 01:15

"He'll grow out of it eventually"

DancelikeEmmaGoldman · 05/10/2019 01:38

Being feminine is positive - do you disagree?

I do. Femininity is a set of social indicators as to how successful the enculturation of gender stereotypes has been in an individual and a class. Femininity, enjoyed or enforced, is highly politicised, including any “positive” aspects - I’m not sure most drag is up to the complexities.

Creepster · 05/10/2019 02:56

15th rule of misogyny: Men are better at performing femininity than women are because they invented it and it gives them a boner.

LordProfFekkoThePenguinPhD · 05/10/2019 07:31

Maybe they just need to have a lovely drag act - in the real world (pub, club, concert, on the street...). We’ve all been there...

A larger man rocks up, tries ‘the charm’ verbally, gets angry when knocked back, tried to grab, gets violent, etc. But a withering bitchy comment or bag of the eyelids doesn’t put the man back on his place. He gets angry and threatening. ‘She’ feels scared and vulnerable. ‘She’ tried to pacify angry man. ‘She’ is scared and tried to leave...

Tyrotoxicity · 05/10/2019 14:59

I'm late to the thread but this jumped out:

Being feminine is positive - do you disagree?

I do indeed disagree. As is being masculine. Because they're socially-constructed stereotypes which serve to maintain and reinforce patriarchy and the oppression and exploitation of women's bodies.

Conforming to stereotypes isn't actually a positive thing, y'know?

BeMoreMagdalen · 05/10/2019 16:27

Well yes, this is the heart of so many mis-steps. Being feminine isn't positive, it's neutral. Some are, some aren't. The apeing of femininity as though women should be flattered, because the person involved is so enamoured by cultural expressions of femininity, just betrays the hugely limited view of women that so many men have.

Tyrotoxicity · 05/10/2019 17:26

Being feminine isn't positive, it's neutral.

I'm not entirely convinced of this either. Mainly because 'feminine' isn't something that some people are; it's how some people are characterised.

Having whatever personality traits or clothing preferences or whatever is fine, obviously. But categorising them as 'feminine' - that's where the problems come in. Having your neutral human traits classed as feminine isn't neutral, it's a negative.

BeMoreMagdalen · 05/10/2019 17:54

It's only a negative when it's a standard that is enforced or scorned. It's a set of culturally encoded things. Same as masculine things are coded that way in our culture. Feminine is associated with female, and because women are deemed lower status, those cultural associations are considered lesser, which means they are scorned, or fetishized. There is a teensy bit of chicken and egg here, obviously, and there's always nuance. If we class something as 'feminine' and consider that a negative, I'd suggest there's is possibly a bit more going on, actually.

BeMoreMagdalen · 05/10/2019 17:58

Basically, if feminine = female, then obviously, that way problems lie. If feminine is just what we call frills and fluff, well, that's a cultural accretion. As long as no one is insisting you're not a real woman if you don't do that, or a man is actually more womanly than a woman if he does, then it's just a cultural artifact, like calling red, green and gold 'festive'.

Tyrotoxicity · 05/10/2019 18:22

It's only a negative when it's a standard that is enforced or scorned.

Which femininity is, and masculinity is, in every patriarchal culture. That's sort of how the whole thing works. Sociocultural context divvies up human traits etc into masculine and feminine and encourages people to conform to one or the other.

I suppose it's possible that there could be some utopia in which certain sets of character traits are associated with women and this isn't used to reinforce male dominance, but we seem to be a long way off that.

If we class something as 'feminine' and consider that a negative, I'd suggest there's is possibly a bit more going on, actually.

Doesn't matter what you class as 'feminine', it'll end up going downhill in the estimation of the general populace, unfortunately.

Being eg an excellent empathetic nurturer is a positive thing. Describing this as 'being feminine' is not. It's the label I'm objecting to, not the behaviour itself. The label means the behaviour ends up devalued by sexist society.

BeMoreMagdalen · 05/10/2019 18:44

As I said, there's a bit of chicken and egg here. Women are most often the caregivers in our society, and caregiving is low status. Is that because more often women do it, or do women do it because it's low status?

I'm not disputing that there are aspects of cultural femininity which are harmful - the most obviously to me is lingerie, all scratchy and boned and godawful uncomfortable. I don't think that these things shouldn't be examined and challenged. But I genuinely think that the cultural revolution which most feminists I know are working towards involves breaking a few of those eggs - if something is associated culturally with women, and called feminine on that basis, and either dismissed as pointless, weak or less, or lionized and turned into a fetish, then quite frankly, I am well up for the challenge of asking what assumptions are working behind that. I'm not especially feminine myself, and I don't really give a monkey's about it as a standard. But I know very feminine women and I really don't see the worth in saying they are engaging in a negative thing when they wear a dress or have long hair because they enjoy cultural femininity.

As annoying as Lass could be before she left, one thing I did agree with her about was that there can be a really dismissive attitude among some towards feminine women, as though they were letting the feminist side down.
For me, breaking free from gender means that we acknowledge the sex binary, but we do not hold each sex to specific roles and expression - either the traditional ones, or the reversal promoted by trans ideology, and we accept that anyone can express themselves as they please without needing to deny sex like the non binaries do. But trying to unhitch the meaning of specific words in our culture seems a bit too close to the MO of transactivism to me - I'd much rather say 'Yes, that man is quite feminine, why would that be a bad thing?'

Melroses · 05/10/2019 19:37

I would say that a particular behaviour was feminine or masculine rather than a person, eg someone's choice of clothes, as most people are a mix of feminine and masculine and other traits that could be anything.

Tyrotoxicity · 05/10/2019 19:42

For me, breaking free from gender means that we acknowledge the sex binary, but we do not hold each sex to specific roles and expression

Works for me. I just don't see how that's compatible with calling things feminine or masculine. If it's not in some way associated with the female rather than the male sex, then in what sense is a thing actually feminine? Thinking of long hair as an example here. Anyone can have it, but it's considered feminine because men are expected to keep theirs short. If men were just as likely to be long-haired as women then long hair wouldn't be feminine, would it? It would just be... long hair.

Melroses · 05/10/2019 20:30

Long hair can also be very masculine on men, like Thor and Game of Thrones. Keeping it all shiney and tossing it about like a silvikrin advert (does that still exist?) might be considered more feminine, but that is learned behaviour.

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