A world without gender

[dyslek]

Great article in the Weekly Worker;

www.weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1330/a-world-without-gender/

Thanks for posting OP. I'll have a good read later as it deserves a bit of time.

Excellent article. Nice to have something well researched instead of the Edinburgh notice, a start difference in quality

Thanks for the article. It articulated something for me - the problem with 'femininity'. I read a book by TRA Julia Serano who argued that feminism should be campaigning for feminine rather than female people. But that struck me as odd because what IS feminine? In Serano's mind it's probably about being pretty and flirty, but it has overtones of submissiveness, self-sacrifice, supporting and nurturing etc, none of which are helpful to a movement seeking equality.

To quote the article:

The global hallmarks of masculinity and femininity would be recognised in any other primate species as the unmistakable signs of social dominance and social subordination. Socially dominant primates (and other mammals, plus many other vertebrates) make themselves large, take up space, monopolise resources. These are the core components of masculine behaviour. Subordinate animals drop or avert the gaze, make themselves small, move out of the way, and surrender resources. These are typical feminine behaviours.

Very thorough and well written. It still amazes me how many (usually men) think patriarchy doesn't exist or that it doesn't play a massive part in how men and women are treated.

That's a real shocker, NotTerfNorCis. And adds to my suspicions that AGP is essentially being about subordination, sissifying and so on. Indicates that too many trans people and their allies have fixed sexist ideas and no sense of the realilty for a great many women.

I just dipped back into Serano's 'Whipping Girl' to try to understand what Serano means by femininity. There's a lot of words but I'm still no clearer what femininity is, except that it's independent of sex. Serano says it doesn't mean man-pleasing, helplessness, delicacy, nurturing etc... so what DOES it mean?

There is a chapter in the book called 'Submissive Streak' where Serano talks about forced feminisation fantasies. Serano writes 'to most people I probably seem quite self-confident, but that's only because they can't see my submissive streak'. But Serano attributes it to interalised misogyny, which Serano believes all transwomen have.

Really excellent read dyslek. Nicely laid out, logical argument that expresses where we are and how we got here. We lose our sanity if we submit to this bloody nonsense, not sure the idiots promoting the QT really understand this. Too much at stake for us to quietly go along & accept our subordination.

Excellent article. It sets out quite clearly what this fight is about.

How could any liberatory movement adopt a position that posits an innate, inescapable hierarchical system at the heart of human nature, with close to 50% of humanity born inescapably into a submissive role?

But in today’s gender debate, the position of queer theory-inspired trans activists is exactly that. For them, to be a ‘woman’ is not to be female, but to be ‘feminine’- in other words, to be a ‘woman’ is to be submissive. It is here that we begin to see the true social regressiveness of this supposedly liberatory movement. For, while it is understood that biology does not determine the gender of trans people, the flipside of that argument is that most people’s gender is indeed innate, as social conservatives have always thought. Why? Because, according to trans activism, most people are ‘cis’ - they ‘identify’ as the gender they were born into. If 1% are trans, then 99% are cis; perhaps being trans is more common, especially if it includes the non-binary category, but still the vast majority of people are cis. So, since most people born with female reproductive systems are ‘cis’ women, they are supposedly innately feminine, which is to say, innately submissive, subordinate, and servile. Meanwhile a similar proportion of people born with male reproductive systems are considered to be ‘cis’ men: innately masculine, and therefore born into a socially dominant role. It is likely that many activists and well-meaning people on the sidelines of this debate have not thought it through far enough to understand that this is the logical and necessary conclusion of their arguments.