Biological Determinism?

[talkingdeadscot]

I'm GC, my H is TWAW, this isn't about our relationship, I'm already leaving him.

We had another discussion last night which started out about TW in women's prison. Several times he told me I'm just being a biological determinist.

For me I understand that my biology determines that I am female and that, in turn, determines my role in reproduction. It also means that certain stereotypes and expectations are 'given' to me because of my biology. It doesn't mean that I have to fulfil those expectations or act according to those stereotypes.

So what do TRA's mean the way they use this phrase? He clearly sees it as a way to tell me I'm a shit person in some way, like a gotcha but tbh I don't really understand. I know some of you will be able to help by explaining it to me. Thanks

@Ereshkigalangcleg

They seem to believe that our position is that girls should behave like 'girls' and boys should behave like 'boys'. They can't seem to get their head around the fact that we want everyone to be free of gendered expectations.

This is it. They confuse feminism with being socially conservative.

Gender critical feminism is socially conservative. Look at who your allies are - the right wing press, Tories, Republicans, Trump supporters, Daily Mail readers, fundamentalist Christians, and those are just the nicer ones. It doesn't matter if you're left wing in other respects, on this issue you're absolutely conservative.

Your STBXH isn't the only person who misunderstands GC feminism and grossly misrepresents it, unfortunately OP.

Gender critical feminism is socially conservative. Look at who your allies are - the right wing press, Tories, Republicans, Trump supporters, Daily Mail readers, fundamentalist Christians, and those are just the nicer ones. It doesn't matter if you're left wing in other respects, on this issue you're absolutely conservative.

I hear Hitler also thought water was wet. TRAs appear to be fine with the Tories and the right wing press when they benefit.

As it is the genderist position that is based on biological determinism

It is. My lady brain defines my personality. I can't possibly be a male person who doesn't relate to male stereotypes. I must be the opposite sex.

Gender critical feminism is socially conservative. Look at who your allies are - the right wing press, Tories, Republicans, Trump supporters, Daily Mail readers, fundamentalist Christians, and those are just the nicer ones. It doesn't matter if you're left wing in other respects, on this issue you're absolutely conservative.

Funnily enough my H did tell me my position was tainted by others who hold my views. I mentioned a certain person high up in another forum and he decided not to pursue that point.

It doesn't matter if you're left wing in other respects, on this issue you're absolutely conservative.
Lol. Telling gender non-conforming LGB children that there's something wrong with them and they need to transition so they fit the 'right' gender is about as conservative as it gets.
Telling women that they have no right to safe spaces from men is conservative.
Defunding refuges, rape crisis centres, shutting down feminist meetings and speakers, and invalidating hard-fought-for women's rights legislation because it hurts male people's feelings? Yeah. Really not progressive.

Basically what happened here is someone wittered something clever sounding at DH and he used it to patronise you without understanding it.

The fact female chickens lay eggs and males don't is biology. The fact female day old chicks are raised and males are killed is biological determinism.

One is unavoidable fact, one is a human choice based on the fact.

If someone did this to me I'd either play incredibly dumb or say something equally wanky back about Marxism or summat

Apparently Feminism IS identity politics and worldwide socialism is the only answer.

He really is raving, on all counts.

Feminism is a mass movement for women’s rights, which is the opposite of me-me-me Identity politics. Gender identity is the perfect example of identity politics. It is a form of solipsism, in which an individual’s belief about herself/himself is the only definite reality.

The very basis of socialism is mass ownership of the means of production, underpinning a system that’s intended for the good of all. Not everyone favours this, but it’s what socialists aspire to. Again, the polar opposite of the gender identity movement, which is based on extreme individualism.

Good thing you’re escaping this, OP — it must be doing your head in.

Gender critical feminism is socially conservative. Look at who your allies are - the right wing press, Tories, Republicans, Trump supporters, Daily Mail readers, fundamentalist Christians, and those are just the nicer ones. It doesn't matter if you're left wing in other respects, on this issue you're absolutely conservative.

lol

This reads like the bingo card to be marked off.

Shall we start with a list of people aligned with the genderists and their mantras?

Let's see, there is a person who goes into schools to discuss gender identity who cannot see any problem at all with intergenerational sex acts (I will leave it at that, I cannot risk deletion today). In fact, look up the French person widely attributed to Queer Theory and his actual sex habits. But enough about sex habits.

Let's look at the quotes of the those claiming womanliness in these quotes

twitter.com/gnarlycharz/status/1368703619684589569?s=21

Do you align with these people?

And of course, there are the actions of ANTIFA this past weekend. Apparently far left (maybe, but they really seem to not understand fascism), do you align with these people to? Beating people up and intimidating them?

Do you align with the group that let of smoke grenades in Grenfell when a group of women met to discuss the implications of policies?

Do you align with the people who have threatened so many women on line, including Joanne Rowling? Do you align yourself with the people who call for women wishing open and honest discussion to be deplatformed and called hateful?

I really do laugh at the almost sanctimoniousness of people referring to those who believe that there are times when sex actually matters as being 'aligned' to any political side.

Because they totally fail to understand that this is an issue that is recognised as across all political sides. It is the majority of people who understand that there are times when sex matters and they understand why.

Watch out that the purity spirals don't get to you.

Social conservatism these days means thinking small girls shouldn't be confronted with cocks.

I'm not weeping into my left-wing-LGB-GNC-gay-adoption-loving,-free-contraception-and-destigmatized-abortion-access coffee about being called socially conservative if socially liberal means noncery.

Tell me again how safeguarding and homosexuality and single sex are dog whistles for bigots again, do. I genuinely appreciate you doing the leg work. People always start by thinking it's too outlandish when I tell them, they always change their minds when you lot say it for me.

In this context, biological determinism is the idea that being female necessarily means being paid less, taking on caring duties etc.

TRAs think this is wrong because although women of course do these things, there's no link between being female and being a woman. Of course they congratulate themselves on their wokeness for this "insight".

It doesn't seem to occur to them that it's the next link in this chain of causality that is the real problem.

Developing this...

So GC people believe there is no 'something' attached to sex, whereas non-gc people are assuming there is only the 'something' so when we say sex is what makes a woman, they automatically assume we're talking about gluing that something to sex instead of it not existing at all.

I'd say GC people acknowledge that there is (at the moment) "something" correlated with sex, but would rather that something were unglued and got rid of!

One might call "something" gender, or gender stereotypes. And be critical of it.

Time to post this again.

I'm not sure how being opposed to gender stereotypes is socially conservative, but hey ho.

He’s talking out of his arse! Biological determinism is the view that your sex determines your gender role (how you should act). That’s the complete opposite of the GC view!

Biological essentialism is the (erroneous) linkage between biology and personality. I often see GC feminists being accused of it by people who don't understand the term. They seem to think it means reducing people to just biology. 'You think women are just vaginas, you biological essentialist TERF!'

Biological essentialism is the basic tenet of gender ideology. It states that men are in fact women if they identify with those things deemed feminine. GC feminists also get accused of wanting to enforce masculine and feminine stereotypes. 'Why do you have a problem with men wearing skirts, TERF?' They (wilfully) don't see that the argument isn't, 'Men shouldn't wear skirts,' but is, 'Wearing a skirt doesn't make anyone, male or female, into a woman.' I could add that all the arguments about dress, make-up, hair and jewellery are centred in contemporary European and North American culture. If a man went to some cultures and said, 'I want to wear a skirt and a necklace and to paint my cheeks pink,' he'd fit right in with the blokes. Then there's the argument that real boys don't play with dolls. Boys do play with dolls, it's just the dolls that get marketed at boys are labelled as action figures. It's all rubbish, and it's what GC feminists are fighting against.

Feminism is the opposite of biological essentialism.

biological essentialism

QUICK REFERENCE

The belief that ‘human nature’, an individual's personality, or some specific quality (such as intelligence, creativity, homosexuality, masculinity, femininity, or a male propensity to aggression) is an innate and natural ‘essence’ (rather than a product of circumstances, upbringing, and culture). The concept is typically invoked where there is a focus on difference, as where females are seen as essentially different from males:seegender essentialism. The term has often been used pejoratively by constructionists; it is also often used synonymously with biological determinism.See also essentialism; comparestrategic essentialism.

www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095507973

Feminists have always said that sex-stereotyped behaviour had a cultural element and that, for example, women didn't innately prefer pink over blue.

The genderists are in fact the biological essentialists, and they take it to such extremes that when they are confronted with data disproving their hypothesis, such as men and women who do not conform to sex-stereotypes, they claim those men and women must really have been born in the wrong body!

one way to make sense of the biological determinism argument is to distinguish between the body and the mind/brain, and to ask 'what is being determined by biology?'

Trad conservatives think that biology determines your body (female body) and your brain (emotional / I want to have babies)

GC think that biology determines your body but NOT your brain because brains have no sex or gender

TRAs think that gender is in the brain (lady-brain etc) and the body doesn't matter. [At least I think that is the TRA position, not so sure]

But I think the argument is about the mind/brain part of the equation - GC reject the idea that either sex or gender are fixed properties of the mind/brain, while accepting that sex is a fixed property of the body.

Given that words like 'female' and 'woman' are now claimed to mean pretty much the opposite of what most people still know they mean; should we be surprised that 'biological determinism' is treated similarly?

I think I've seen it crop up a few times in other social media - I guess it's on the latest hymnsheet that's been handed around.

My understanding is that biological determinism boils down to 'Your Biology Determines Your Innate Behaviour'. So, all females behave a particular way because they're female and for no other reason; not because they've been socialised to, not because society is organised to allow only that, not because they are punished if they behave differently - it's because they're female.

A quick google to check I'm not talking out my arse (again) threw up this little gem at www.encyclopedia.com/science-and-technology/biology-and-genetics/biology-general/biological-determinism

"Biological determinism refers to the idea that all human behavior is innate, determined by genes, brain size, or other biological attributes. This theory stands in contrast to the notion that human behavior is determined by culture or other social forces. Inherent to biological determinism is the denial of free will: individuals have no internal control over their behavior and dispositions, and thus are devoid of responsibility for their actions. " (my bolding)

So when you said - "He agrees men are violent but says women are violent too and says it's society's issue to solve cleverly absolving men of any responsibility for their actions " (my bolding again) - does that mean that HE'S the biological determinist in the house?

Your XH can gigle himself around in to whatever absurd philosophical positions he likes to try to deny your humanity. He's old news.

"Biological determinist"

Dfk?

The ability of some people to come up with new obfusticating waffly bollocks.

I'd be curious to know how 'biologically deterministic' he'd be locked in a cell with someone ten times his strength, who had a real think for raping men.

@talkingdeadscot

It's just such a head mash. I thought he was intelligent, he's certainly highly educated but I've seen him in a different light.

He agrees men are violent but says women are violent too and says it's society's issue to solve cleverly absolving men of any responsibility for their actions.

how does he explain the huge disparity?

98% vs2%, (some figures are 99%) I mean, thats quite a gap isen't it.

As someone pointed out recently the classic example of belief in biological determinism is the use of 'cis'. To belief that 'cisgender' is a thing is to believe in biological determinism.

When transactivists /genderists say this they mean that you think biology determines whether you're a man or a woman – and that this is regressive (and sometimes an "imperialist western construct" )

However when it comes to race they trend to agree that biology determines your ethnicity and that doing a Dolezal is bad and racist – even though ethnicity is far more nuanced than sex, and is an actual spectrum unlike sex.

So they are actual biological determinists even in the sense they're using it in –they'll just use it as an impressive-sounding arguing tactic when it comes to erasing women, in the hope that you'll just fall for it and go 'Oh no, I wouldn't want to be guilty of horrible, un-woke biological determinism how dreadful!" and quickly be "educated" and change your views. Without them needing an actual argument.

If they had an actual convincing argument I'd be happy to hear it, and if it made sense I'd be happy to change my view. But so far it hasn't.

You soon to be ex husband is stupid: no matter his on-paper qualifications.

Take time out, and when you are ready; go and have amazing adventures, and sex, and experiences with people who are not him.