I found yesterday's article by Fin Mackay very confusing
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/19/gender-ideology-tories-ministers-schools-conservative
For those who don't want to read it, my synopsis is this:
-Gender and gendered expectations are bad and limiting and should be dismantled
-The government's draft guidelines for schools seek to uphold highly gendered roles - which she says is the real 'gender ideology'
-They are attacking trans people in order to conserve gendered expectations and norms
-We should abandon gendered expectations.
I can get behind the first and last point but the middle bits are completely misconstrued. Whilst that might reflect very conservative views and motivations, the guidance aligns with the views of very liberal people too, who are not in any way trying to uphold gendered expectations.
I think that FM is making these arguments in good faith, but I wonder what kind of steel-force psychological defence mechanisms are at play to enable her to ignore or misconstrue simple/accessible arguments showing how trans ideology is dependent on highly gendered norms.
I think that last point is such a significant battle field for bringing sanity back. I guess people like FM could flip this and say that enlightening people like me as to how transgenderism undermines gender norms is a key battle field - I would really welcome this. Even if I have psychological defence mechanisms of steel, I am really open to supporting others to break them. I want them ti come at me with sound, well reasoned arguments and to dismantle my own. I think this article provides a good starting point.
Feminism: Sex and gender discussions
Guardian Article - Close but no cigar
Brainworm · 21/01/2024 10:06
Xoxoxoxoxoxox · 21/01/2024 11:18
Finn Mackay is the author of Female Masculinities and the Gender Wars, and a senior lecturer in sociology at the University of the West of England in Bristol.
It's no surprise that it is an academic that has issued this misrepresentation of what the Conservative government is trying to do.
Yet another Trans Grifter writing books and academic papers about Trans- a failing currency at the moment - and the defence of their position seems to get more and more desperate and foolish. They just write off all their opponants as ultra Conservative 1950's throwbacks who hate all gender non-conformity and hope to return to a world of sex based steriotypes of male and female.
It is actually trans activism that is based on steryotypes of male and female- the GC position is to let boys play with girl toys and girls play with boy toys and don't medically or socially intervene.
It reminds me of Hilary Clinton when she called all Trump supporters a 'basket of deplorables' and I think that may have cost her the election.
Brainworm · 21/01/2024 12:22
@negeme
I think it's a good starting point as some of my views overlap with hers.
I didn't read the article as being indicative of her being a sex denialist, but rather she failed to disclosed what sex is. She misinterpreted/misrepresented concerns about social transition by ridiculing ideas that non sentient objects have a sex, but didn't pick up on anything about sex in humans being or not being binary and immutable.
She did say,
The real gender ideology is the binary sex and gender system that requires all of us to be either male-masculine-heterosexual or female-feminine-heterosexual; and which attaches harsh penalties to those who deviate from this script.
When I was growing up there really weren't harsh penalties when deviating from the gender script, sadly, there was for the sexuality script. I think gains have been made in the sexuality script but we have regressed with the gender script BECAUSE of transgederism.
I would like her to explain how transgenderism is benign - or progressive, if this is what she thinks, in relation to the problems she outlines in relation to gender
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IwantToRetire · 25/01/2024 17:30
This is the one letter in reply that the Guardian saw fit to publish. It's so nonsensical it's hard to refute
Or just possible that they go so many letters saying what nonsense the article was that they had to use the only one that was in any way supportive.
Even though its claim about what is feminism does as always ignore the basic fact that discrimination is because of their sex class1
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