Something of a companion thread to Feminist Blogs/Communities I Have Known... but less focused on blogs.
Also a space where we can have multi-gendered dialogue from the outset, so we don't have any confusion.
― emil.y, Sunday, 12 February 2012 22:56 (1 year ago) Permalink
I'm v v confused about gender and what it all means but that's p inherent in the discussion I guess?
― White Chocolate Cheesecake, Sunday, 12 February 2012 23:03 (1 year ago) Permalink
Well, yeah - I purposefully phrased the title in a way that allows for those whose identity is not always recognised. I was initially going to include queer theory in the thread concept, as I've recently found myself with groups where feminism and queer politics are completely intertwined, but I don't feel that I should be the person to say whether or not this is a good place to discuss that.
― emil.y, Sunday, 12 February 2012 23:09 (1 year ago) Permalink
Actually, "completely" is not true. I think that would be impossible. But they work closely together, a lot.
Ha ha no, I understood what you meant in naming the title that, I like the inclusivity of it. I'm mostly confused by mine own gender and ~what it means~ and always have been so I was just pointing out that confusion is inherent in the process for some ppl. (as recognised by the title)
― White Chocolate Cheesecake, Sunday, 12 February 2012 23:12 (1 year ago) Permalink
Yes. I've never felt like "I'm really a boy" but performatively I often feel more akin to males. But then, that's based around the socially constructed sides of gender, so it's less confusion, more rejection. I didn't always understand that, mind you.
― emil.y, Sunday, 12 February 2012 23:20 (1 year ago) Permalink
not to get all graduate seminar on this thread but: do we have a good definition of "gender" that isn't culturally essentialist? I'm sure it's out there but my reading in Feminist/Queer/etc theory is lacking. I don't necessarily have a problem with a culturally essentialist reading of gender, but i'd be interested in alternatives. For instance, where and when does the cultural proscribed notions of gender we have run up against actually being attached to, say, a penis? And how do you talk about this intersection without bogus and lame biological essentialism?
― ryan, Sunday, 12 February 2012 23:46 (1 year ago) Permalink
I really want to look at this question, because not having a satisfying answer to it is one reason why I'm really unhappy defining groups of people as 'men' and 'women' and setting policy accordingly.
― Also unknown as Zora (Surfing At Work), Sunday, 12 February 2012 23:48 (1 year ago) Permalink
I certainly know that most working definitions of gender are crude and essentialist and problematic. I get that. But when talking about many of the blunt force issues I have to confront, I know the people who are perpetuating this shit on me are male bodied ppl who identify as male and a huge part of the reason they were doing it to me was because they perceived me as female and had a specific set of assumptions about what that meant, so it's really hard not tp talk about this stuff without using the shorthand no matter how clumsy it is. Otherwise you end up mumbling vague shut about kierarchy (lord knows how my iPhone will render that) and no one outside a graduate program knows what you're on about.
― White Chocolate Cheesecake, Sunday, 12 February 2012 23:58 (1 year ago) Permalink
yeah that's a great point. I think one of the challenges in getting people to accept something like cultural determination of gender is that their first line of defense is a reductio ad absurdum like "is my penis [or whatever] culturally constructed?!?"
it's similar to the "well I know my grandpa wasn't a monkey" defense against evolution.
I think, at bottom, there's an enormous amount of anxiety that goes into gender identity (one might even say this is the entire purpose of gender) that's gonna always leads to exactly the kind of hysteria you see in homophobia and the like. so defusing that anxiety remains, i think, a big part of the goal.
― ryan, Monday, 13 February 2012 00:09 (1 year ago) Permalink
Like Deborah Cameron said in a debate I saw, utterly demolishing that Baron-Cohen "male brain" prick with her magnificent logic "The fact that women give birth is not in any way a Societal Construct. But what it ~MEANS~ that women give birth is completely a Societal Construct"
<3 D-Camz so hard, she cuts through so much of that Mars/Venus guff so effectively.
But um yeah, anxiety around gender is so damaging.
― White Chocolate Cheesecake, Monday, 13 February 2012 00:16 (1 year ago) Permalink
I can see that a lot of the time the shorthand is unavoidable, but what I'm afraid of - in myself and others - is letting the shorthand frame the debate. I see so many people embracing these powerful narratives about what it means to be male or female, that exclude people's real experiences in horrible, damaging ways. In a space like this, where we can afford to be nuanced perhaps more than elsewhere, it would be cool if we could approach it with that in mind - and WCC I'd love to hear some of that grad school stuff if you can explain it to a psych graduate with little to no study of sociology under her belt.
I'm too tired to talk properly now, but anyway let it be known that I am very much looking forward to getting into this stuff with ILX0rs and I'm *grateful* for the clusterfuck.
― Also unknown as Zora (Surfing At Work), Monday, 13 February 2012 00:18 (1 year ago) Permalink
Hey just remember I didn't go to grad school, I'm an art school dropout I picked up much of this stuff in the library and on the web and from a friend who is doing a PhD in feminist linguistics or sociolinguistics or whatever it's called. I sm not an expert.
I get tongue tied up in this bcuz so much of my *need* for feminism comes from not conforming to trad expectations of "woman" and wanting to widen up the definitions of "woman" when maybe I should be getting rid of gender entirely? But back when I was 20 queer theorists didn't want to talk to me (bcuz bisexuality or pansexuality didnt ~exist~ back then as far as those individuals were concerned) but feminist theorists did so that's where I ended up.
I always want to widen the idea of "woman" not narrow it but that has a tension with the desire for a safe space bcuz who defines or owns the idea of woman? It's a recognized tension, we have to work to resolve.
― White Chocolate Cheesecake, Monday, 13 February 2012 00:26 (1 year ago) Permalink
Sorry to go off topic, but I'm so tempted to take this out of context: <3 D-Camz so hard. You love David Cameron! You love David Cameron!
Back on topic, yes, grad-school discussion is more than welcome from my perspective: I know bits and pieces, from A Level Sociology, lit theory, and philosophy, but I could definitely do with more thinkers to pursue and avenues to contemplate.
― emil.y, Monday, 13 February 2012 00:29 (1 year ago) Permalink
"A Level Sociology" is one clause there, I progressed some way beyond that in the latter two disciplines, ha. (Not braggin', just sayin')
Deborah Cameron. Don't get over excited.
― White Chocolate Cheesecake, Monday, 13 February 2012 00:30 (1 year ago) Permalink
what I like about that Deborah Cameron quote (i should look her up) is that it nicely points out that yes there is biology and whatnot but that we can't TALK or THINK about this stuff except within the parameters of MEANING...you'd dont get to crawl outside of cultural meaning using a ladder called "biology" or whatever.
― ryan, Monday, 13 February 2012 00:37 (1 year ago) Permalink
so yes there is an "outside" or limit to culture/meaning but we only have access to it as a kind of negative capability.
― ryan, Monday, 13 February 2012 00:38 (1 year ago) Permalink
gender's odd. it's clearly a cultural construct, both in a hazy, general sense that exists outside any specific individual and in the various ways we all individually (re)construct & perceive it. but that's not all it is. unlike "race", there's a substantial biological component to gender. of course, as others itt have pointed out, we can only understand what this might mean at several levels of remove, as filtered through a thicket of complex constructions from which we can't even sensibly hope to extricate our perspectives.
i'm biologically male. for better or worse, i find that my subjective experience of gendered-ness squares pretty well with what my culture seems to describe as generic masculinity. i deviate from what i take to be the "masculine norm" in all sorts of ways, some trivial, some quite dramatic, but i assume that this is true of most everyone (everyone worth knowing, anyway), and i'm pretty happy with the space i've carved out between cultural expectations and the seemingly gendered aspects of my own internal landscape.
unfashionable as it may be to say, it seems to me that biological gender drives a great deal of human behavior and that these drivings do sometimes reciprocate those "dubious" cultural constructs we've inherited. men, for example, seem in general to be more openly and aggressive than women, to the extent that male violence is a serious problem the world over. would say the same with varying degrees of confidence about things like female nurturance and consensus-building, male vs female approaches to competition and "mating behavior", masculine self-sufficiency, etc.
while biological gender is generally self-evident, gender identification can only by known when it is communicated. we know that someone identifies as female when they tell us so. we also know that that the things people say aren't always true. perhaps for this reason, i suspect that many of us would have trouble accepting the presence of an apparently straight-normative biological male in a women's bathroom or domestic violence shelter simply on the basis of her reassurance that it's ok because she "identifies as female". much as we might like to reduce all gender to pliable constructs, it can be very hard to let go of the last shreds of biological essentialism.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Monday, 13 February 2012 09:26 (1 year ago) Permalink
i am glad this thread is here.
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Monday, 13 February 2012 09:44 (1 year ago) Permalink
agreed
― tmi but (Z S), Monday, 13 February 2012 10:18 (1 year ago) Permalink
Any time that anyone starts going on about the "substantial biological component to gender" I just want to refer them to Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine and Pink Brain Blue Brain by Lise Elliott (sp?) and just carry on repeating - outside the obvious physical documented secondary sexual characteristics (the girl/boy lego) the actual measurable differences in cognition, in brain function, in all that stuff that matters are TINY. Not only that, but even with the DOCUMENTED and measurable differences (for example, height) - the variation WITHIN each gender is often FAR GREATER than the "difference" between genders.
This isn't just one or two outlier studies suggesting this. There are HUGE bodies of work on this. Analysis. Meta-analysis. Meta analysis of meta analysis. The OUTLIER studies which suggest men's and women's brains are from different planets are the ones that get all the attention BECAUSE THEY ARE OUTLIERS. And they are often NOT replicable. Which is your guaranteed sign of being NOT SCIENCE.
I'm not just "deferring to a authority" here. I am saying, there is shitloads of evidence on this one if you even scratch the surface of doing research on it. There is, like, "Climate change is a real thing" levels of evidence on this one. And I'm just saying, in advance, that if anyone is going to continue to insist that gender is a ~biological~ thing, I'm going to treat them like a climate change denier, and just not engage with nonsense.
Gender is a construct. Just because something is a construct does not mean it is not *meaningful* or that it does not have real world consequences. (Money is also a construct, but try doing without that one in western society.) But construct means "we made up the rules" and it also means "other societies or other possible societies can put the rules in different places and in different orders." (Try walking into a shop in England and buying something with an American dollar. Money is a construct that means different things in different places.)
― White Chocolate Cheesecake, Monday, 13 February 2012 12:55 (1 year ago) Permalink
that seems very otm. people who talk about aspects of humanity that are "outside of culture" shd probably point to some examples of humans that exist outside of culture. good luck with that.
― dayove cool (Noodle Vague), Monday, 13 February 2012 13:12 (1 year ago) Permalink
I had to get off line to compose the next bit so this is a continuation of the previous bit, rather than a response to you, NV, but here goes:
i find that my subjective experience of gendered-ness squares pretty well with what my culture seems to describe as generic masculinity. i deviate from what i take to be the "masculine norm" in all sorts of ways, some trivial, some quite dramatic, but i assume that this is true of most everyone
This is the problematic bit with the whole "biological" conception of gender. It's not biological at all, it's what your culture says is "masculine."
And if you, as a Western (I think you're North American?) man who conforms fairly well to your culture's expectations of masculinity were suddenly dropped into, e.g. Ancient Sparta, you would be thought of as an effeminate wimp or e.g. 18th Century French Court you would be thought of as a rude uncultured boer (bore? boar?) who needed to sort out a more masculine wig immediately.
For *me* (specific, personal) the problem is not whether someone identifies with their visible biological gender (though I recognise for many, many people this is a completely valid problem and source of oppression) it's how arbitrary the divisions into "masculine" and "feminine" are - how *brutally* they are policed - and policed in the service or protection of *whom*?
But those are conversations you can't really have without the entry of that nebulous concept of kierarchy (which spell check tells me isn't even a word.)
― White Chocolate Cheesecake, Monday, 13 February 2012 13:28 (1 year ago) Permalink
idk i'm kindof with that and not with it.
i know trans guys who have talked about the really visceral physico-psychological feelings of taking testosterone for the first time. and pretty much anyone who has ever been a teenager probably knows that hormones tend to do things to you. and yeah there are varying degrees of testosterone and oestrogen. and the binary of gender is culturally substantiated.
i mean i don't want to be misunderstood, this is not to say that we can understand some set of biological imperatives, primordial urges. i think its closer to what monique wittig meant when somebody asked her if she had a vagina and she said "no." i mean maybe i should explain that monique wittig was a lesbian and concluded that as she was a lesbian, she was not a woman because woman is something that is constructed within heterosexist gender relations. she's not insane, she wasn't denying that physiologically her body corresponds to a female body, but that the the body itself is something that is constructed by language and culture. still though, the matrix of signification is not one that is closed at the level of "culture" but that bodies are *part* of culture. folds of sensations, particular materialities, pleasures, warmth, movements, hormones. its not that these things are anterior to culture but it isn't the other way around either.
― judith, Monday, 13 February 2012 13:35 (1 year ago) Permalink
yeah sorry i certainly wasn't trying to privilege culture-and-nothing-else, just reflecting that the links are inextricable and not reducible to "this but not that" arguments
― dayove cool (Noodle Vague), Monday, 13 February 2012 13:41 (1 year ago) Permalink
<I>"The problem with the word 'vagina' is that vaginas seem to be just straight-out bad luck. Only a masochist would want one, because only awful things happen to them. Vaginas get torn. Vaginas get ‘examined’. Evidence is found in them. Serial killers leave things in them, to taunt Morse . . . No one wants one of those."</I>
― Andrew Farrell, Monday, 13 February 2012 13:59 (1 year ago) Permalink
Though obviously my inability to click the "Convert Simple HTML to BBcode" button is due to Evolutionary Psychology.
― Andrew Farrell, Monday, 13 February 2012 14:01 (1 year ago) Permalink
Yeah but that whole "men are just biologically different because: hormones!" ignores the fact that women also have a set of those exact chemicals sloshing around our bodies (except doctors call them androgens we have them) and not to mention the fact that it's even sometimes sold as a pseudo health concern by the kind of behavior police-y magazines all "OMG do you have an interest in maps and systems thinking? You might suffer from too much testosterone giving you ~male brain~ oh noes panic!" (This was an actual article I read in the launderette.)
And how things get interpreted like - I dunno, maybe I have an endocrine malfunction I should get checked out bcuz I totally get very male-coded aggro if I'm driving a car I get v aggressive about defending my territory (one of many reasons I don't drive) but when men do that, they have "testosterone" as their excuse but If I'm being all competitive in that pissing contest sense and male-coded, do I just do it bcuz I missed that particular bit of training in how to be ladylike? Or can I blame my ~androgens~?
I don't buy the "it's hormones" excuse entirely
― White Chocolate Cheesecake, Monday, 13 February 2012 14:09 (1 year ago) Permalink
I type so much less coherently when I'm on an iPhone. Don't know if the little screen makes me male brain or iv it's just the lack of ability to see the whole post to sense check it. That was almost incoherent. Sorry.
― White Chocolate Cheesecake, Monday, 13 February 2012 14:11 (1 year ago) Permalink
that can apply to "personality" across the board tho. western society is increasingly big on medicalising personality in general - "are you like this? maybe the chemicals in your body need readjustment". there are maybe models for personality that rely less on societal norms - we can think about people's personal goals or happiness, ask whether their behaviours are self-limiting or destructive in some way - but a lot of hormonal/brain chemistry/genetic arguments have become standardised ways of looking at humanity and life experience. it's an excuse, as you say, and takes on virulent forms when used against women - lol PMT etc - but personality in general is increasingly policed, i guess, in ways that previously the power structures only sought to police behaviours.
― dayove cool (Noodle Vague), Monday, 13 February 2012 14:15 (1 year ago) Permalink
and yeah there are double standards, sometimes we are at the mercy of our internal chemistry and sometimes it makes us who we are
― dayove cool (Noodle Vague), Monday, 13 February 2012 14:19 (1 year ago) Permalink
...runs the argument
Yes, all that, too.
What I'm trying to say is, it varies within gender as well as between them. Some women are aggressive and competitive. Some men are warm and nurturing. (Most humans have some mixture of the two.) You can say "it's testosterone" or you can say "it's cultural conditioning" but the important thing is that it varies and that variance is OK.
― White Chocolate Cheesecake, Monday, 13 February 2012 14:23 (1 year ago) Permalink
Hey Emily - Thank you. :)
― wolf kabob (ENBB), Monday, 13 February 2012 14:26 (1 year ago) Permalink
gonna check in later because this will likely be a thread to learn from, just please do me a favour and explain/link any jargon ( "culturally essentialist" up there threw me, though to be fair it also took me three attempts at processing "climate change denier" before I realised it wasn't talking about sheerer stockings.)
― thomasintrouble, Monday, 13 February 2012 14:31 (1 year ago) Permalink
Anyone who takes potshots at the surreal typing lysdexia caused by my iPhone is gonna get a crack on the head for asking. Just saying, like. My spelling is gonna be all over the shop.
― White Chocolate Cheesecake, Monday, 13 February 2012 14:34 (1 year ago) Permalink
Yes I am aware of the hilarity involved in an amateur Li ghost (that was linguist, iPhone - but I'm gonna leave that to show what this thing does to me) who cannot spell but chomski my Sapir-wharf hypothesARSE if u wanna rib me about it. ;-)
^^^^^ha ha this is all a clumsy joke but if you ever can't google something or want a clarification pls say "srs question" and I'll try to de-jargon-ify
It's not so much learning new jargon as learning a new language requires a new way of thinking coz replacing words w/o replacing the thought processes is not progress. It's trying to unlearn so many of the kierarchy's ideas which is often the hard part.
― White Chocolate Cheesecake, Monday, 13 February 2012 14:42 (1 year ago) Permalink
Right, why is why "can't google" isn't necessarily the problem - a lot of this is going to be "but what do you mean by that word / in this context?"
― Andrew Farrell, Monday, 13 February 2012 14:45 (1 year ago) Permalink
the funniest iphone autocorrect i've seen is changing "sexting" to "destiny" :/
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Monday, 13 February 2012 14:50 (1 year ago) Permalink
Yeah but there's a difference between "who is Dale Spender" and "what do you mean by kierarchy in this context" - happy to discuss the latter. Not so much the former.
I dunno, "cultural essentialist" seemed to be the opposite/corollary of "biological essentialist" and didn't really need clarification? But I guess maybe we should touch on how there are two (opposing?) schools of thought saying gender difference is the result of nature or nurture. Obv almost all arguments of this kind are at their heart an and/both proposition not an either/or.
But the biggest difference is that the Cultural crew believe that this stuff is nurture - and therefore can be changed and the Biological crew think this is impossible (and maybe even "against nature") to try to strive for gender equality
(see if you can guess which side I'm on, huh?)
― White Chocolate Cheesecake, Monday, 13 February 2012 14:56 (1 year ago) Permalink
if anyone is going to continue to insist that gender is a ~biological~ thing, I'm going to treat them like a climate change denier, and just not engage with nonsense.
biological gender IS a thing, and anyone who continues to insist that it isn't is simply wrong, full stop. in an overall sense, we can measure the differences between men and women any number of ways, not just in terms of the gross architecture of the body, but also in terms of more subtle things like its chemistry and DNA. we don't fully understand what all of this means, of course, and individuals vary greatly, but this doesn't mean that we can't scientifically "perceive" biological gender. we can.
of course and like i very clearly said before, we can only perceive and understand the significance of biological gender at a remove, as filtered through the understandings of gender that we've inherited. that's what makes this subject interesting. we know that we are driven both by biology and by the cultural constructs that compose our understanding, and there's no way to clearly distinguish between the two.
to repeat another thing i said earlier, we can see the workings of gender in male violence as a phenomenon. male violence exists and is a problem in every culture in the world, and this has always been true throughout human history so far as we know. you suggested that if i were dropped into ancient sparta, i would be perceived as a wimp. of course i would. in case you missed it, that was the entire point of the paragraph you were responding to: that gender is, to a substantial extent, a cultural construct. but it's worth noting that ancient sparta was no less dominated by male violence than our world is today. this does not conclusively "prove" that male violence is a product of male biology, of course, but it does incline me to suspect that biology plays a role.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Monday, 13 February 2012 17:37 (1 year ago) Permalink
You're not *even* wrong.
You seem to inhabit this weird fantasy world where male power is not prized and rewarded at every turn, and female power is not demonised and punished at every turn. Where male violence is not *fetishised* and portrayed as noble and good and female violence is not denied in order to keep some wonderful "pure" vision of "femininity" as opposed to "masculinity."
This fantasy world where violent women from Boudiccea to Margaret Thatcher can just be handwaved away.
A fantasy world where structural inequality does not codify "male" supremacy over "female" at every step because the rules were written to keep it that way. These ideas are not reinforced with cultural narrative over and again until ppl believe they are true bcuz other views just don't get presented, or are actively derided by those w the most to lose?
And then you want to turn around and talk about this highly contrived and exaggerated version of "masculinity" as being somehow inevitable, even biological?
And I just call: bullshit.
― White Chocolate Cheesecake, Monday, 13 February 2012 18:30 (1 year ago) Permalink
I've been looking for the past half hour to see if I can find any studies that strongly demonstrate even the simple premise that testosterone leads to increased aggression. Can't find anything. And conversely, if you google 'violent women' you get lots of hits about violence against women, a review of a book about Hollywood fetishisation of female violence, and a Daily Mail article about teenage girl gangs.
If the starting assumption for discourse is that men are perpetrators and women are victims, which it seems to be, it excludes from serious consideration the violence women do against men, the violence women do against each other, and the (sexual) violence men inflict on other men. I'll keep looking for biological underpinnings to the assumption, there may well be something, but I'm inclined to think it'll turn out to be by far the lesser factor.
― Also unknown as Zora (Surfing At Work), Monday, 13 February 2012 18:42 (1 year ago) Permalink
I mean let's get this straight. I'm not denying that there's such a * thing* as male violence, or that male violence especially as used as a method of control against women (hello Chris Brown and domestic violence awareness) is not hugely problematic.
What I'm denying is this idea that violence is something automatically and essentially coded into masculinity from biological sex up - rather than something which is learned, reinforced and rewarded at every step of a man's life.
― White Chocolate Cheesecake, Monday, 13 February 2012 18:43 (1 year ago) Permalink
i think you're responding to an imaginary person in your head, cuz it sure as hell isn't me.
of course male power is prized and rewarded at every turn. or course female power is demonized and punished i don't wave any counter examples away. but the history of human violence, not just in western culture but in every culture ever known, is predominantly the history of male violence. to my mind, in conjunction with what little we do know about male and female biology, this makes it reasonable (not certain, just reasonable) to suppose that male biology plays a role in male violence.
would say the same of many other ostensibly gendered characteristics and behaviors, that biology probably does play some role. again though, it's impossible to clearly distinguish between the urgings of biology and cultural conditioning. but the fact that we can't know exactly what role biology plays does not mean that biology plays no role. in order to understand such things clearly, we have to accept huge amount of uncertainty. i.e., if you align yourself with either "crew", Cultural or Biological, you're missing the larger picture.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Monday, 13 February 2012 18:45 (1 year ago) Permalink
i suspect that both factors play a role, nature & nurture.
Zora there's evidence that testosterone is released by men who are victors *after* the aggression is over but little evidence that testosterone causes violence or aggression. It's complicated, as all hormonal things involving humans tend to be.
― White Chocolate Cheesecake, Monday, 13 February 2012 18:45 (1 year ago) Permalink
If the starting assumption for discourse is that men are perpetrators and women are victims, which it seems to be, it excludes from serious consideration...
i don't think you need a starting assumption. i think it's better to look at the available information and work up from there.
― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Monday, 13 February 2012 18:47 (1 year ago) Permalink
Contenderizer you keep repeating the same things over and over as if you haven't read what I've posted (and certainly none of the books I've referenced) so you are also having a conversation with someone who is not me.
― White Chocolate Cheesecake, Monday, 13 February 2012 18:48 (1 year ago) Permalink
sometimes?
― and that sounds like a gong-concert (La Lechera), Tuesday, 23 April 2013 20:08 (4 weeks ago) Permalink
I think what I meant was not that that line was going to turn anyone on, just that he needed to start a dialogue and he has no words because penis durr durr
― Dr. Adorbius (mh), Tuesday, 23 April 2013 20:09 (4 weeks ago) Permalink
some people are hurt by directness! I am not that guy, although I am taken aback by statements at times, but people can retreat from a conversation
― Dr. Adorbius (mh), Tuesday, 23 April 2013 20:10 (4 weeks ago) Permalink
dude was being passive-aggressive with that line about feeling unloved, if unintentionally
― Dr. Adorbius (mh), Tuesday, April 23, 2013 4:07 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
totally disagree with this. dude needed to say what he felt. that's what should be encouraged.
― huun huurt 2 (Hurting 2), Tuesday, 23 April 2013 20:10 (4 weeks ago) Permalink
I'm kind of getting tied up in what I see implied in the article, I think I should be a bit more generous here, and you're rigth
― Dr. Adorbius (mh), Tuesday, 23 April 2013 20:13 (4 weeks ago) Permalink
*right
*girth
― Call me at **BITCOIN (DJP), Tuesday, 23 April 2013 20:14 (4 weeks ago) Permalink
lol
― horseshoe, Tuesday, 23 April 2013 20:16 (4 weeks ago) Permalink
damn, decoded again
― Dr. Adorbius (mh), Tuesday, 23 April 2013 20:18 (4 weeks ago) Permalink
via roxy, thought this was p interesting http://goodmenproject.com/ethics-values/gay-mens-sexism-and-womens-bodies/
― 乒乓, Sunday, 19 May 2013 16:48 (2 days ago) Permalink
Article was v interesting to me as well -- especially the example at the Atlanta gay bar, b/c IME gay bars are kind of not a safe space for people who don't like to be touched, just in general. Obviously grabbing someone's boobs unsolicited is never OK under any circumstances, but non-sexualized parts of the body seem more like a gray area. I've gone to friends' DJ nights at gay clubs and dudes I didn't know showed no hesitation in putting their hands on my shoulders, back, etc. On one hand I wasn't really "cool" with it but otoh I was able to shrug it off because it's a freakin gay bar & it's an opportunity for gay men to have moments of intimacy in a non-hostile environment & it's not really my place to complain about that I guess? But I still wonder. I avoid those places now because I just don't like strangers touching me.
― ḉrut (crüt), Monday, 20 May 2013 10:02 (Yesterday) Permalink
(also women probably have to deal with straight dudes they don't know touching them in the same way at bars & clubs, so I feel silly complaining about it)
― ḉrut (crüt), Monday, 20 May 2013 10:05 (Yesterday) Permalink
gay bar or not, the unsolicited fondling of women you don't know seems like a shitty move. can't really speak to misogyny in the gay community, but a sadly predictable holy shit at the comments in response to that article.
― controversial vegan pregnancy (contenderizer), Monday, 20 May 2013 12:22 (Yesterday) Permalink
Is that a good source, the good men project?
― Van Horn Street, Monday, 20 May 2013 12:26 (Yesterday) Permalink
sorry to have to point this out to you, but there are quite a few women of any sexuality who make very unpleasant comments about the smell of male genitals – and then they advocate mutilation called Circumcision on the grounds of smell. I admit it seems to be a US centric issue, but it is disgusting and sexists globally.
― Mordy , Monday, 20 May 2013 13:37 (Yesterday) Permalink
i have felt in the past like the thing described in that article is a thing but i have never known how women feel about it. but then, nor do the gay guys.
― the white queen and her caustic judgments (difficult listening hour), Monday, 20 May 2013 13:56 (Yesterday) Permalink
it's kind of a thing but it's also, like, i don't know
― the bitcoin comic (thomp), Monday, 20 May 2013 14:43 (Yesterday) Permalink
finally we have identified the real enemy of womankind: gay men
― the bitcoin comic (thomp), Monday, 20 May 2013 14:44 (Yesterday) Permalink
wellllll it's more circling very slowly around the v v basic truth that the "patriarchy" is not heterosexual dudes, it is everyone. (also, hurts everyone.)
― ✌_✌ (c sharp major), Monday, 20 May 2013 14:49 (Yesterday) Permalink
this is very much a thing that I have witnessed on many occasions
― siouxsan sarandon (Stevie D(eux)), Monday, 20 May 2013 15:34 (Yesterday) Permalink
misogyny in the gay community is p rampant (maybe because a lot of them feel like they have "no use" for women and therefore don't have to make any effort to understand them?)
― siouxsan sarandon (Stevie D(eux)), Monday, 20 May 2013 15:36 (Yesterday) Permalink
^ I've heard something this before! I was friends with a gay guy one summer who out of nowhere just delivered some spiel - in a very "hey we're both men here" kinda way - about how women weren't good for anything but laundry and dishes, etc. It was really bizarre.
― how's life, Monday, 20 May 2013 15:42 (Yesterday) Permalink
i remember when scarjo got mad at isaac mizrahi for touchin on her hoots. i was stoked that she spoke up because i was so tired of homos having flaagrant lady-touching parties and everyone actin like its a cool thing to happen
― turds (Hungry4Ass), Monday, 20 May 2013 15:43 (Yesterday) Permalink
i had a gf who insisted on going to gay clubs p frequently, and not like big downtown superclub ones but smaller more neighborhood-y ones. i was always kind of uncomfortable with it, mostly because i felt like we were sort of sailing into someone else's space? i felt like, we can our thing anywhere, and this club's core clientele really can't, so why are were here? we were never made to feel explicitly unwelcome but i couldn't shake it off obliviously.
parallel to (and hard do differentiate from) gay male misogyny, i wonder if there isn't some justifiable resentment of straight people (women, primarily, stereotypically -- unless crews of straight dudes hitting gay clubs for the dancing is common) kind of taking advantage of spaces where sexuality functions differently. idk, maybe i was making too much of it.
― goole, Monday, 20 May 2013 15:49 (Yesterday) Permalink
obv having someone act the fool in your club isn't justification for contempt for a whole gender, i'm just saying
― goole, Monday, 20 May 2013 15:53 (Yesterday) Permalink
I blame fiddy
― my name is louis and i'm an acoleuthic (darraghmac), Monday, 20 May 2013 15:55 (Yesterday) Permalink
I have long had a theory that most men, gay or straight, really really really love boobs, based primarily on how excited most of my gay male friends get about them
― AMERICA IS ABOUT RESSLING (DJP), Monday, 20 May 2013 15:57 (Yesterday) Permalink
women also often fans
― the white queen and her caustic judgments (difficult listening hour), Monday, 20 May 2013 15:59 (Yesterday) Permalink
gay men feel entitled to women's bodies, as do men everywhere
― turds (Hungry4Ass), Monday, 20 May 2013 16:15 (Yesterday) Permalink
boobs boobs boobs tbh
― controversial vegan pregnancy (contenderizer), Monday, 20 May 2013 16:23 (Yesterday) Permalink
My friends and I have a delicate way of referring to misogynist gay men: "Is he one of those 'eww, I smell FISH" kinda guys?" Definitely a *thing* in the '80s/'90s, much less so now.
― on the sidelines dishing out sass (suzy), Monday, 20 May 2013 16:55 (Yesterday) Permalink
yeah, "EWW VAGINAS!" is definitely a thing amongst gay men, ~*tHx pAtRiArChY*~
― Salt Mama Celeste (donna rouge), Monday, 20 May 2013 17:05 (Yesterday) Permalink
gay coworker always made out with his female friends when he was drunk, like that's the thing you do when you're friends with him. they all do it is the crazy thing. he's been in a committed relationship for 15 years, I am friends with his partner too...amd friends with some of the girls he makes out with & it pisses me the fuck off when he just assumes he can do it, so I try to stay away from him. He tried once & got pissed at me when I told him to take a hike. "it's just fun, jeez why are you being so bitchy about it" because i'm not part of the lady-banquet, is why.
― set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl), Monday, 20 May 2013 18:23 (Yesterday) Permalink
"it's just fun, jeez why are you being so bitchy about it" is the great patriarchy leitmotiv.
― Van Horn Street, Monday, 20 May 2013 18:27 (Yesterday) Permalink
i have other gay friends who don't behave like that at all though, are totally chill with women & boobs etc. not that I ever pressed them about it. so I was always more inclined to say that one guy was just a conflicted self-involved weasel. idk
― set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl), Monday, 20 May 2013 18:28 (Yesterday) Permalink
misogyny in the gay community is p rampant
yeah, it's pretty thoroughly ingrained, like i don't really think it's cool for gay men to refer to their own assholes using female anatomy terms
maybe that's specific to gay porn but afaict 100% of gay men watch porn
― a ridiculous clusterfuck of totally uncool jokers (elmo argonaut), Monday, 20 May 2013 18:51 (Yesterday) Permalink
whats wrong with callin your turdslicer a manpussy or w/e... doesnt seem like a big deal
― turds (Hungry4Ass), Monday, 20 May 2013 18:58 (Yesterday) Permalink
xp Oh boy, that's a whole new low that I'd never heard of.
In general though, not to gainsay the article because I believe it, but also to keep in mind that when the free expression of humanity/sexuality has been suppressed and everyone has their own possibly fucked up journey to get there, some modes of expression will still show the...scars? I want a less judgmental word than "scars" but I'm kind of in a hurry so. I agree, access to women's bodies is assumed across society, incl gay men, for sure let's work to reduce that. I just don't feel good about coming down on gay men with both boots on when lots of facets of the public performance of "gayness" (I'm skipping right over a ton of nuance here, sorry) are responses to the repressive environments people developed in.
― lets just remember to blame the patriarchy for (in orbit), Monday, 20 May 2013 18:58 (Yesterday) Permalink
um is this a trend now?
http://www.vice.com/read/gay-men-and-their-not-so-cute-misogyny-problem
― goole, Monday, 20 May 2013 19:02 (Yesterday) Permalink
Yeah, like H*****4A**, I don't have any sort of problem with the m**-p**** contstruction
― how's life, Monday, 20 May 2013 19:05 (Yesterday) Permalink
well, it reinforces a gender binary wrt penetrative sex, first of all
― a ridiculous clusterfuck of totally uncool jokers (elmo argonaut), Monday, 20 May 2013 19:18 (Yesterday) Permalink
http://www.autostraddle.com/butch-please-butch-with-a-side-of-misogyny-174442/
― turds (Hungry4Ass), Monday, 20 May 2013 19:18 (Yesterday) Permalink
Can't find the original article but it reminds me of the Grindr CEO, Joel Simkhai, who said that as a gay men, he understood women better and that would the reason why Blendr will be such a huge trustworthy success.
― Van Horn Street, Monday, 20 May 2013 19:24 (Yesterday) Permalink
is that a good source, autostraddle?
― you are not a better writer than f. scott fitzgerald. you are not a b (k3vin k.), Monday, 20 May 2013 19:34 (Yesterday) Permalink
are you makin a joke mate
― turds (Hungry4Ass), Monday, 20 May 2013 19:35 (Yesterday) Permalink
excited to click on autostraddle.com when i get home
― the display names will fall like rain (Matt P), Monday, 20 May 2013 20:15 (Yesterday) Permalink
They should call it a manfrontbottom.
― tokyo rosemary, Monday, 20 May 2013 22:32 (Yesterday) Permalink
manladybits
― set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl), Monday, 20 May 2013 22:35 (Yesterday) Permalink
still so excited you guys
― the display names will fall like rain (Matt P), Monday, 20 May 2013 22:46 (Yesterday) Permalink
some good discussion in the comments posted to that autostraddle piece
― controversial vegan pregnancy (contenderizer), Monday, 20 May 2013 23:21 (Yesterday) Permalink