It's just I know people who still use it as a convenient shorthand for what it implies. Considering we actually work in biomedical imaging, I'm pretty sure they know better.
Delusions of Gender -- Must read for everybody, but especially genderqueers
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It's just I know people who still use it as a convenient shorthand for what it implies. Considering we actually work in biomedical imaging, I'm pretty sure they know better.
Effeminacy and hypermasculinity are both bullshit, whatever the chromosomes. I've been thinking recently about how the sub/dom things dominates even gay sexual activity: "Oh, I'm the big butch one, and I'm gonna do ya." "O, I'm the little weak one - do me, do me!" It's a fetishisation of power disparity. How is this any more a legitimate sexual activity than yiffing?
I haven't been able to find ANYONE who agrees with me on this.
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Perhaps because it's ridiculous and profoundly offensive for you to presume to dictate to everyone else whether or not how they feel/behave/manage their relationships -- and what they may or may not do in their own bedrooms -- is "legitimate"?
Who am I dictating to? What I'm saying is "We are being dictated to" by society re sex roles. No-one seems to question the fundamentals.
You said:
"Legitimate" is a powerful word. It's one thing to have a personal dislike for sexual practices, but you come across as saying that certain sexual practices (between consenting adults) are wrong and should be disallowed by everyone.
Do you see the problem?
"Legitimate" is a powerful word. It's one thing to have a personal dislike for sexual practices, but you come across as saying that certain sexual practices (between consenting adults) are wrong and should be disallowed by everyone.
Do you see the problem?
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I'm talking about general public perception, not making moral judgements on yiffing - sorry if I was unclear.
I'm still confused then.
What's wrong with fetishization of power disparity in the bedroom?
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Go back and read what you wrote, Vaulted.
What you actually said:
I'm going to suggest you walk this one WAY back, Vaulted. And maybe just apologize to the room for your inadvertent bigotry. Because that doesn't sound in any way like you were talking about societal expectations. Not when you say things like:
I don't give a crap what you do in your relationship and your bedroom -- but you're not going to sneer at anyone else the way you did a few posts ago. Not here, anyway.
What you actually said:
Effeminacy and hypermasculinity are both bullshit, whatever the chromosomes. I've been thinking recently about how the sub/dom things dominates even gay sexual activity: "Oh, I'm the big butch one, and I'm gonna do ya." "O, I'm the little weak one - do me, do me!" It's a fetishisation of power disparity. How is this any more a legitimate sexual activity than yiffing?
I haven't been able to find ANYONE who agrees with me on this.
I'm going to suggest you walk this one WAY back, Vaulted. And maybe just apologize to the room for your inadvertent bigotry. Because that doesn't sound in any way like you were talking about societal expectations. Not when you say things like:
I don't give a crap what you do in your relationship and your bedroom -- but you're not going to sneer at anyone else the way you did a few posts ago. Not here, anyway.
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I admit there was a needless mocking tone in my post, but it was the result of acute frustration. It's not as if I'm picking on an oppressed minority - as I said, the butch/femme diode seems to be the universal sexual model, and as far as I can tell I am in a minority of one in finding these expectations personally oppressive, and borderline fascistic in connotation.
Is this not the thread in which to question the dominant sexual paradigm?
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Meh. Mostly, I think no one in this room needs to be subjected to Vaulted's narrow-minded bullshit. And Vaulted certainly doesn't get to dictate to anyone here what is or is not "legitimate" sexual identity, politics, or behavior.
So Vaulted is now excused from the conversation here.
This room, and this thread, are NOT an appropriate place for anyone to swagger in and announce that their personal gender/sexuality/behavioral standards are the only appropriate measure for everyone else in the conversation.
Jebus pleezus.
So Vaulted is now excused from the conversation here.
This room, and this thread, are NOT an appropriate place for anyone to swagger in and announce that their personal gender/sexuality/behavioral standards are the only appropriate measure for everyone else in the conversation.
Jebus pleezus.
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... people have the right to define who they are and that should be the end of the matter on an individual level. Theories are fine and all and beneficial, I suppose. But in everyday life they can be wearying, e.g. if you're a guy you must act this way and if you're a gal, that way. If some want to play by those rules that's fine. Many choose to do just that. But if others don't fit neatly into those categories then let them be by golly. Get off that high horse and quit trying to pigeon hole them. (In response to the OP, way, way back on page 1.)
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Re the right brain and left brain stuff, that's all it should be now, as the idea was based on some early studies done on split brain patients that have been well refuted. The idea that someone is "either" naturally creative/intuitive or naturally analytical/logical (and that these qualities are diametrically opposed) is still an entrenched social meme.
You're talking about sex not gender.
And one of the reasons that this kind of thing makes me go
And it does it in particularly cruel ways, while the people doing it are safely oblivious.
Sex is not gender.
Gender is a social construct. Sex is biological, and for a number of very complex, often confusing reasons, gender may be closely associated with sex, but (especially in a QUILTBAG context) gender is emphatically not the same as sex.
My bad. I was being sloppy in my usage. Honestly, with regards to humans, I really think biological sex dictates very little, if anything, that is absolute. We're just too darned complex.
I can't get past the feeling sometimes that when the media selectively announces the result of a "biological differences" study (often out of context as well), they are sort of trying to chastise people who don't fit the mold in one way or another (which is an awfully large number of people) by implying they're either in some state of denial, or biologically abnormal. This ticks me off. I hope I didn't give the impression I was dissing or dismissing people who are transgender.
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Medievalist,
You're right in that I sought a black-and-white answer.
I brought up Fine and the numerous studies she used in her argument because they asserted what I believed. As an empiricist, having data to back up your opinions is important. It also means that answers are strictly concrete, because an answer that cannot demonstrably connect the how and the why is not an answer at all.
That said, I do not think we will agree until our (that's a Royal We) means of measuring human behaviour become more precise. I continue to be dubious of the "hormones directly control behaviour" assertion because it has not been adequately tested to differentiate between correlation and causation. I hope that explains why I have reacted the way I have.
We can probably agree at this point that we are free to define who we are. This is problematic when it comes to debating facts, like whether estrogen causes mood swings. We can both sling literature back and forth refuting and supporting that assertion, but it'll just end poorly as long as the questions like "what constitutes a mood swing?" remain in the air.
And that was my issue. Not that some people identify as clearly male or female. Of course that happens--it's the assumed response! What I should have focused on, and what I thought I focused on, is what constitutes maleness or femaleness. Is it one's genitalia? One's brain patterns? One's hormonal levels? More importantly, if we believe any of those categories to be indicative of gender, can we adequately separate correlation and causation?
With the freedom to choose our identities, does that not render the whole question moot?
You asked for my agenda. Well, whether or not it was adequately communicated in my previous posts, here it is:
If gender means what we want it to mean, does it mean anything at all? Do they (man/woman) meet the minimum requirements to even be words?
You have very strong feelings about the separation of sex and gender, which likely means that you agree on the topic of gender being a construct. It's not like gravity. Gravity can be described by someone who's not even aware of it ("I throw spear. Spear hit ground eventually.")
If someone tries to tell me that I could not possibly imagine what it's like to be a woman, they're implying it's because I'm a man. Yet I don't identify as a man (in any cultural sense that I'm aware of), I simply identify as me. I can acknowledge the subjective existence of Western Men and Women, but on whether they can be adequately explained by physical phenomena--as Fine says they currently cannot--I remain suspicious.
You're right in that I sought a black-and-white answer.
I brought up Fine and the numerous studies she used in her argument because they asserted what I believed. As an empiricist, having data to back up your opinions is important. It also means that answers are strictly concrete, because an answer that cannot demonstrably connect the how and the why is not an answer at all.
That said, I do not think we will agree until our (that's a Royal We) means of measuring human behaviour become more precise. I continue to be dubious of the "hormones directly control behaviour" assertion because it has not been adequately tested to differentiate between correlation and causation. I hope that explains why I have reacted the way I have.
We can probably agree at this point that we are free to define who we are. This is problematic when it comes to debating facts, like whether estrogen causes mood swings. We can both sling literature back and forth refuting and supporting that assertion, but it'll just end poorly as long as the questions like "what constitutes a mood swing?" remain in the air.
And that was my issue. Not that some people identify as clearly male or female. Of course that happens--it's the assumed response! What I should have focused on, and what I thought I focused on, is what constitutes maleness or femaleness. Is it one's genitalia? One's brain patterns? One's hormonal levels? More importantly, if we believe any of those categories to be indicative of gender, can we adequately separate correlation and causation?
With the freedom to choose our identities, does that not render the whole question moot?
You asked for my agenda. Well, whether or not it was adequately communicated in my previous posts, here it is:
If gender means what we want it to mean, does it mean anything at all? Do they (man/woman) meet the minimum requirements to even be words?
You have very strong feelings about the separation of sex and gender, which likely means that you agree on the topic of gender being a construct. It's not like gravity. Gravity can be described by someone who's not even aware of it ("I throw spear. Spear hit ground eventually.")
If someone tries to tell me that I could not possibly imagine what it's like to be a woman, they're implying it's because I'm a man. Yet I don't identify as a man (in any cultural sense that I'm aware of), I simply identify as me. I can acknowledge the subjective existence of Western Men and Women, but on whether they can be adequately explained by physical phenomena--as Fine says they currently cannot--I remain suspicious.
You're missing the point, still.
I don't care what you believe, or how you identify—but you will not dictate how other members feel, identify, or experience life for themselves.
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DISCLAIMER: I am a software developer with a molecular biology degree. I am probably unqualified to make judgments about gender and gender roles. Imma do it anyway, because this is the internet, yo. Plus, I lived with an Anthropology major for three years, and sometimes I believe this qualifies me to participate in these sorts of discussions.
****
I think somewhere in here, people are getting that gender is a cultural construct, and that its not the same thing everywhere, but forgetting that cultural constructs as widespread and fundamental as assigning a societal role based on biological sex usually exist for a very good reason. These reasons probably have a lot less to do with brain waves and a lot more to do with muscle mass and uteruses.
ON AVERAGE, men are taller and stronger than women. It is the woman who has to carry the child and then nurse the child. Even if those were the *only* things that biologically separated male humans and from female humans, those two things would be real reasons to construct the institution we call gender.
And we can say things like "but now we understand better, and the notion gender is antiquated! We should throw the whole damn thing out!" But I can think of a bunch of ways that would be bad for people born biologically female--in a totally modern context.
For example:
I played high school sports. When you're little, its easy to say "everyone play together!" because the differences in athleticism between little boys and little girls are pretty much nil. The little-kid soccer league I played for was coed until the under 10 age group, and probably could have been until under 12.
Once you hit high school, if we eliminated gender altogether, 90% of the people who got to play sports would be the ones who were born with penises instead of vaginas. Because they are going to be the ones who are, on average, bigger, faster, taller, and stronger.
Say you decide that's okay, and we should just have the really athletic people (who will mostly, but not exclusively, be male) play competitive sports, but not the other people. Okay. The other people will go do other things, like school plays or yearbook club. But then you're still ordering people--you're just doing it in a less intuitive way.
And like it or not, human brains are hardwired to make snap assumptions about people and situations, and gender is a visible, real way to start the foundation of your impression of someone. That's not a bad thing--as long as you follow up that immediate impression with your slow brain checks on whether or not your assumptions were true.
I think its a red herring to discuss the value of gender based institutions in terms of brain function. Of course girls can do math. Women can learn computer programming. Of course boys experience empathy. Men can learn to sew. When you say "but these stereotypes exist because of gender! Let's get rid of them", I think you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It's better to teach kids that some--or even lots of--boys like Barbies and girls like Matchbox Cars than it is to aspire to tear down the whole institution and say that the words "man" and "woman" don't qualify as words. Because you're never going get people to stop making snap judgements based on biological sex. Fast brain/slow brain. It's always going to happen. We just have to remember not to discount the slow brain part.
****
I think somewhere in here, people are getting that gender is a cultural construct, and that its not the same thing everywhere, but forgetting that cultural constructs as widespread and fundamental as assigning a societal role based on biological sex usually exist for a very good reason. These reasons probably have a lot less to do with brain waves and a lot more to do with muscle mass and uteruses.
ON AVERAGE, men are taller and stronger than women. It is the woman who has to carry the child and then nurse the child. Even if those were the *only* things that biologically separated male humans and from female humans, those two things would be real reasons to construct the institution we call gender.
And we can say things like "but now we understand better, and the notion gender is antiquated! We should throw the whole damn thing out!" But I can think of a bunch of ways that would be bad for people born biologically female--in a totally modern context.
For example:
I played high school sports. When you're little, its easy to say "everyone play together!" because the differences in athleticism between little boys and little girls are pretty much nil. The little-kid soccer league I played for was coed until the under 10 age group, and probably could have been until under 12.
Once you hit high school, if we eliminated gender altogether, 90% of the people who got to play sports would be the ones who were born with penises instead of vaginas. Because they are going to be the ones who are, on average, bigger, faster, taller, and stronger.
Say you decide that's okay, and we should just have the really athletic people (who will mostly, but not exclusively, be male) play competitive sports, but not the other people. Okay. The other people will go do other things, like school plays or yearbook club. But then you're still ordering people--you're just doing it in a less intuitive way.
And like it or not, human brains are hardwired to make snap assumptions about people and situations, and gender is a visible, real way to start the foundation of your impression of someone. That's not a bad thing--as long as you follow up that immediate impression with your slow brain checks on whether or not your assumptions were true.
I think its a red herring to discuss the value of gender based institutions in terms of brain function. Of course girls can do math. Women can learn computer programming. Of course boys experience empathy. Men can learn to sew. When you say "but these stereotypes exist because of gender! Let's get rid of them", I think you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It's better to teach kids that some--or even lots of--boys like Barbies and girls like Matchbox Cars than it is to aspire to tear down the whole institution and say that the words "man" and "woman" don't qualify as words. Because you're never going get people to stop making snap judgements based on biological sex. Fast brain/slow brain. It's always going to happen. We just have to remember not to discount the slow brain part.
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FYI, this is where I should have stopped reading. Insensitive opening for this part of the forums.
Prove it. Why is there a need to categorize people based on normative concepts of sex? Will the world implode if people don't assume Billy should play football because of his massive man bits? You've made an assumption that it's important. What are the consequences of not conforming to your qualitative claim?
People are perfectly capable of figuring out for themselves whether they feel comfortable conforming to normative gender roles without being fascist about other people's choices.
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