Female by Andrea Long Chu

[JustTurtlesAllTheWayDown]

So, it looks like we finally have a definition of what it is to be female

Not sure where to start with this one because it's so incredibly wtaf but does appear to be genuine.

Not only is everyone the female apparently, but female means sacrificing the self for the desires of another.

I've read the sample on Amazon (not spending money on this nonsense) and the actual book appears to make the article seem enlightened by contrast.

newrepublic.com/amp/article/155614/female-now

The navel gazing might be novel for being self aware, but Chu is still part of a movement which wants to use this regressive shit to dismantle all our rights and protections, so while I see your point of view there FWRlurker, I don't share it.

I don't understand why anyone would use she/her pronouns for someone who knows they are not a woman.

From what I've read about Chu, I think you're right in that it may be a consciously provocative bit of performance art.
However, imo that makes it worse. That makes it the equivalent of the type of person who makes racist or sexist comments just to get a rise, except with an 'art' label to make it okay.
If Chu really wanted to choose a subject to be provocative or make us think, they could have picked Brexit or Trump or any other of a myriad of subjects.
A trans man would never have been able to publish a book called Male which then received so much unquestioning and uncritical media space and we all know why.
If this is just about performance art, then its simply Chu punching down to get a rise and I have zero respect for that.

"for our puposes here, I'll define as female any psychic operation in which the self is sacrificed to make room for the desires of another".

By that definition I've yet to hear of a single transwoman who'd qualify as female.

I have come across such transwomen...well 1 . Always open about her nature and never wanting to force her way into other peoples spaces. As I have mentioned before, our work created some unisex loos , but kept most single sex and she was grateful , nor aggressive or upset

That's not self sacrifice, that's basic human decency. Another bar that many fail to clear.

Yuck

The whole thing is total surrender to themalegaze and actually incredibly offensive if you are 1) female and 2) don't like how society treats you as a result

"femaleness” is the urge to be a vessel for another’s desire

It’s not just: “Oh my boyfriend wants me to wear this dress.” It’s: “I want to wear this dress because I want to perform my boyfriend’s desire for me to wear this dress.”

I'm so angry. Not only is it taking away a biological description from women, it's also turning it into something that is or should be genuinely offensive to many women.

Femaleness is being a vessel for others desires. Ugh.

I actually find this person interesting, I'd assumed most of this movement was based on a hatred of women, but this person seems to hate males and by rallying against that ends up female by default.

I don't like, or agree with them, but this kind of honesty about their thoughts is refreshing. Most trans people I know have memorised the same script.

I’ve just realised I’m a bloke, because I don’t surrender myself to anyone or indeed dress to please others. checks trousers for hairy bollocks Oh sorry, I’m looking in the wrong place. What a load of creepy sexist bollocks.

Why is any organisation publishing this sexist clap trap? Tell me that the book is vanity published, please

for our puposes here, I'll define as female any psychic operation in which the self is sacrificed to make room for the desires of another"

.By that definition I've yet to hear of a single transwoman who'd qualify as female.

it reminds me of a male who came to visit here, and after much persuading , finally explained why they felt they were a woman. They later had the posts deleted (presumably because they read back and realised how bad the optics were), so I can't quote verbatim, but they went something like

1. I like to put on comfortable pants when I get home from work
2. I share a mutual eye roll with women when a man does something douchy

It seems to me that individual was wanting to abdicate any responsibility for the poor behaviour of men (which I wouldn't apportion to them anyway, no-one should be held responsible for the behaviour of others), while ironically behaving badly in a very male way by using sexist attitudes to define women

much like Andrea apparently.

Redefining female as meaning self-sacrifice for other’s desires rather than the sex that bears young is as woman-hating as you can get. This person is literally writing women out of existence.

No wonder it is getting fawning reviews in men’s publications.

Men will always retain the knowledge that only women can have children when it comes to relationship purposes. If they can persuade us that this fact is insignificant so much the better, it makes it much easier to control us.

I enjoy Chu’s writing style but think the content is a load of bollocks.

Chu’s theory of gender (not sex!) being an expression of someone else’s sexuality perhaps makes sense in terms of pleasing the male gaze, but AGPs who pursue lesbians don’t give a fuck about anyone sexual desires but their own.

And the gender as sexuality thing in transwomen is essentially the Blanchard HSTS theory, so deffo nothing new, and certainly not the radical idea that Chu presents it to be. it’s Rod Fleming’s take, only coming from a trans person, rather than a trans attracted person.

rodfleming.com/2018/05/01/sogie/

I think the concept Chu is reaching for is "feminised," a handy concept which has been covered over by the third wave / gender ideology conflation of sex with gender.

Nobody enjoys being feminised (unless, of course, they are autogynephiliac fetishists). Feminisation is achieved through brutality and oppression.

Chu conflates femaleness - a biological reality for over half the species - with the sociological phenomenon of feminisation, i.e. gaslighting and bullying females until they collapse into passivity, self-objectification and chronic male-appeasement in the hope compliance will help them survive in a sexist society steeped in male violence.

I'm female. I marvel at what my woman-born body can do. Females are nobody's fetish, nobody's territory to colonise. We've fought for centuries to stand on our own ground, and to escape male projections and weaponised demands for us to perform a merely 'complementary' role. Only a certain kind of tourist would conceive of female reality in terms of a sexual fetish. Hmm, wonder which innate characteristic such tourists might have in common...

The choice of title is a deliberate provocation, promoting the idea that the female sex is some kind of opt-in category, an ontological bucket filled with all the things men don't like. Where have I come across that nonsense before? Oh, only in every misogynistic tract authored in the last five millennia...Patriarchy has always situated women as clay to be moulded according to male prerogatives, with no inherent Being of our own. Chu is just continuing that tedious tradition.

Not content with claiming the name 'woman,' gender ideologues then came for the term 'female.' I don't accept it. It's nonsense. Material reality - our bodies, our experiences - give the lie to these laughably flimsy theories. I won't read the book, and I won't engage save to post this comment.

I'm encouraged to see Chu's offering get a pasting. For five minutes, I considered signing up for a Women's Writing course, but when I looked into the texts the course leader planned to explore, they included the work of this author. I thought, really? This person has anything to teach me about writing about life 'as a woman'? When they can't even get a firm handle on the difference between sex and gender? I decided I would probably be wasting my time learning from anyone who hasn't mastered the basics, and gave it a miss.

@BernardBlacksWineIceLolly

1) I like to put on comfortable pants when I get home from work
2) I share a mutual eye roll with women when a man does something douchy
It seems to me that individual was wanting to abdicate any responsibility for the poor behaviour of men (which I wouldn't apportion to them anyway, no-one should be held responsible for the behaviour of others), while ironically behaving badly in a very male way by using sexist attitudes to define women

I find this very interesting.....bear with me please, as I am trying to articulate something that I haven't fully thought through.

We know that women who grow up in a patriarchal society, may identify with and promote misogynistic points of view- the "identifying with the oppresser for safety" stance.

Is (and I am asking, not stating) it possible that men who identify as being female, do so as either
a. a way of rejecting oppressive masculine gender stereotypes ("boys don't cry", men take and occupy)
or
b. as a way of managing disordered attachment to a female primary caregiver

I have put that very well...but I had been mulling on this over the weekend, and your post brought it to the front of my mind again.

haven't

No, not a fetish.

Absolutely nothing to do with anything fetishy.

At all.

I think Chu's writing here is extremely useful. Because it unmasks the whole game. If being female is unhitched from reality, from being a kind of living human being with agency who can be many things, then being female can only be an idea. And if being female/woman is an idea, then it is either a socially coherent idea or it is completely meaningless. If the word woman means anything from a mayonnaise jar to a dog's bark, that's just silly. But if it means anything that people can agree on, then it can only be the disembodied ideas and stereotypes that surround actual women historically and culturally. And those idea disadvantage women, because we live in a sexist world. So "females" in Chu's world get tarred with being the ultimate passive vessels because that is the ultimate stereotype of what those in power don't want to be, what they want to other. And this is not only Chu's idea, but ultimately the underlying idea that connects anyone who wants to assume a sex that he or she is notl They want the ideas around that body, because they are denying that there is reality to the lived experience of the people who actually have those bodies.

I know I'm going on a bit, but I want to be clear that it is because of the misogyny of the world that the trans agenda puts a terrible burden on women. It denies us agency in setting our own boundaries, tries to punish us for reclaiming those boundaries, and those who try to appropriate our identities do so on the basis of negative stereotypes about who we are, which they then use the power of their membership in the status of the male sex, the most powerful class, to amplify and exaggerate--via drag and other such performances, and by hideously misogynistic writing such as Chu's.

Everything I've read from Chu is nails on a chalkboard offensive. It feels like a slap in the face. It feels like blackface. Sorry, I know everyone hates that comparison. Chu makes me feel rage.