The medieval / ancient 'one sex' model

[HeirloomTomato]

I just read an article about the medieval / ancient approach to sex and gender. The writer termed it the 'one sex' model, with 'male' being the normal definitive sex and 'female' being a deficient, broken male. I remember encountering that attitude to women in Catholic theology but hadn't heard it referred to as the 'one sex' model before.

In any case, it occurred to me that TRAs are essentially taking us back to the middle ages by promoting the idea that gender exists on a spectrum and there is no such thing as 'female' biology. It erases the female experience and ignores the biological burden borne by women in reproduction. It silences women from speaking about the specific experience of living in a female body.

It's really no different to how women were treated in the middle ages or by the Catholic church: ignore the specific biology women have, assume 'male' is the default but - the TRA twist - allow said 'males' to define and express themselves in any way they want.

Yet we're supposed to be the ones on the wrong side of history...

No, I don’t agree that the current gender ideology is in any way similar to the Middle Ages view on male as the default sex. Both are bad, yes, but they are not alike. So it’s not regressive, but progressive just in the wrong direction.

Oh please. I mean. Seriously?!? Mumsnet is the gift that keeps giving.

Yes. The Green Party tends to lump us all together as "non males" and I've noticed the phrase being used unironically in descriptions of upcoming events being open to non-male people.

@NotGCTUR

Oh please. I mean. Seriously?!? Mumsnet is the gift that keeps giving.

Do you have anything more cogent to add?

I agree with you OP. It's a deeply regressive movement that tries to decouple biology from sex while simultaneously squeezing everyone into ever tighter gender norms.

The difference between the Middle Ages and now is that this is driven by porn.

I find it horrifying that anyone think “non-males” is some kind of progressive, woke terminology, can they even hear themselves? It’s male as default and everyone not fully and properly male can just be lumped together including supposedly “feminine” males. Fuck that.

It's a deeply regressive movement that tries to decouple biology from sex while simultaneously squeezing everyone into ever tighter gender norms.

But this never happened in the European Middle Ages. Sex was never decoupled from biology and gender was a binary. Today is nothing like the Middle Ages.

@PlanDeRaccordement

It's a deeply regressive movement that tries to decouple biology from sex while simultaneously squeezing everyone into ever tighter gender norms.

But this never happened in the European Middle Ages. Sex was never decoupled from biology and gender was a binary. Today is nothing like the Middle Ages.

It's not that 'today is like the Middle Ages': the problem is the resurgence of a mindset that the male biological experience is based in fact and unproblematic while female bodies are a biological construct or fiction. Trans activism denies women the right to speak about our own bodies, just as Catholic theology used to. It problematizes female biology and turns it back into a taboo.

“Trans activism denies women the right to speak about our own bodies, just as Catholic theology used to. It problematizes female biology and turns it back into a taboo.”

This.

I think it is worse than that, it sweeps female biology under the carpet entirely, don’t speak of it, don’t acknowledge it, it doesn’t exist or if it does it is of no consequence, there is no biological difference between men and women, nothing to see here. There are men and then there are submissive sex objects. If we don’t ’identify’ as men then we clearly embrace the submissive sex object role. It is hideous.

As for the mediaeval Christianity link, not sure about that, I am no expert in mediaeval theology.

Yes exactly gender identity ideology turns female biology into a taboo. Apologies ChoosandChipsandSealingWax I didn’t see your post before I posted. I think in some ways the taboo is worse now than in my grandmother’s day (admittedly she wasn’t from mediaeval times). In the past there was at least a whispered acknowledgment of ‘women’s problems’ we don’t even have that much now. Women’s biology essentially does not exist any longer. If this continues then in a generation the level of ignorance among women and girls about our bodies will lead to dreadful health and psychological consequences.

I find the Catholic Church of the modern day far less scary/oppressive than gender identity/queer theory. For a start the Catholic Church accepts and supports, even respects women who don’t want to be sex objects, porn stars, cam girls, prostituted, sexually available to all men all of the time. It is also fine not to want to get married. Of course celibacy is expected in that case but given the porn addled brains and disturbing sexual tastes of large numbers of men nowadays being single and ‘chaste’ begins to look like a more desirable and even liberating option. Better perhaps than escaping being sexualised by claiming to be a man and suffering the life long consequences of testosterone and surgery.

@NotGCTUR

Oh please. I mean. Seriously?!? Mumsnet is the gift that keeps giving.

So what are you doing here?

This board is a place for analysis, debate, and discussion.

Flippant, ill-thought remarks like yours just don't cut it here.

Non males
Non whites?

@NotGCTUR

Oh please. I mean. Seriously?!? Mumsnet is the gift that keeps giving.

ahahahaha, I saw this comment back in the 90s, in the Guardian, from some right wing poster.

It was quite funny back then.

I remember it going;

'God I love the guardian, it just keeps giving'

I think that wording is funnier, note to NotGCTUR

Interesting parallel. The general view now seems to be that "woman" is reduced to a costume or set of stereotypes that is defined by men, and men can put on and take off the disembodied pieces.

@Tibtom

Non males Non whites?

No.

Interesting. I would argue that the medieval church saw men as the 'complete' sex and women as the 'broken' sex.

And, yes, @NotGCTUR, your posts never contribute anything to the discussion, whether they be about Stephen King, Graham Lineham or this topic.

Interesting concept and a revealing parallel! I have a strong disinclination to being defined by what I haven't got; I expect most people would feel the same.

At least medieval thinking has the defence of anatomical ignorance. The absence of a penis and regular bleeding from roughly the same site could read like a symbolic mutilation, I suppose, if you had no idea of the beautiful complexity of female internal sexual anatomy. But surely babies showed the world that something miraculous was capable of happening in there?

I am if the opinion that an awful lot of male suspicion and denigration of women and windbaggery about sex differences is and always has been a deep-rooted envy of women's reproductive function. After all, nobody can brush babies under the carpet. They're overwhelmingly real!

I don't like non-whites either and don't use it.

I just read an article about the medieval / ancient approach to sex and gender. The writer termed it the 'one sex' model, with 'male' being the normal definitive sex and 'female' being a deficient, broken male.

Yes - Eve made from Adam's rib and all that. In (crude) summary, the Medieval belief in the 'great chain of being' had God, the angels, Man, woman, in a hierarchy of that order (and I sometimes think dogs and horses come in between Man and Woman).

It's essentially a hierarchical model, rather than a binary model.

In the Renaissance, with increasingly science/rationality driven research into the human body, that hierarchical model moves to a model of binary opposition or difference. Although that incorporates hierarchy, so it's a binary model of hierarchical difference (ach, jargon, apologies).

It's where some po-mo theory (eg Butler) offers a useful observation: that there are socially-constructed views about sex and biology - but that observation has been misread twisted into "sex is socially constructed." And Sally Hines' ridiculous tweet about sex being "invented" by the Enlightenment.

Umm no, conceptions of sex have changed historically over time. Which one might expect, as ideas/concepts about many things do change over time.

@QueenPeary

I don't like non-whites either and don't use it.

I agree - it is racist to have white as default. That was the point of my comparison.

Is the enlightenment / colonialism supposed to have invented or imposed other biological realities as well? Eating, sleeping, death maybe? Do genderists believe these things didn't exist until the colonial west forced them on poeple?

They do realise there are places that were never colonised? That nonetheless function on the basis of sexual dimorphism - reproductively, and also socially (and not in some miraculously lovely, fair, noble savage way either)?

I agree - it is racist to have white as default. That was the point of my comparison.

Yes, I was just agreeing that it's a term loaded with assumptions and superiority just like "non-male" - and I don't use it for that reason, especially as I am white. Your comparison suggested that people think non-white is acceptable - while I do see it widely used, I wanted to say not everyone is fine with it.

the problem is the resurgence of a mindset that the male biological experience is based in fact and unproblematic while female bodies are a biological construct or fiction. Trans activism denies women the right to speak about our own bodies, just as Catholic theology used to. It problematizes female biology and turns it back into a taboo.

Excellent point.

I'm not sure re the TRA parallel to Medieval theology. There's the whole of the Renaissance & the Enlightenment & the 19th C in between.

But the common thread across millennia is the idea of the default human = male/man.

I think one issue is that there are always parallels through history in how sexism and oppression of women asserts itself, and likewise with other kids of oppression too. But often the most forceful genderwoo pushers have very little understanding or awareness of history and societal structures. They seem to genuinely think that by just loudly washing their hands of evil colonialism, whiteness and the non-existent "gender binary" and equating all these things with each other, they can get rid of all society's ills. They can't analyse what they are saying enough to see how it involves more oppression, or how their idolisation of the gender systems of the colonised is patronising western superiority in itself.