Feminist Theory & "Women's Issues" Discussion Thread: All Gender Identities Are Encouraged To Participate

displaying your uncertainty like a badge on every topic and "exploring the sides" while "remaining above the fray" is a very white, very male appeal to white male ideological power

I agree with this. I don't think it's wrong to attempt to approach these subjects objectively, but one should be aware of how subjective un-attachment is, given one's relationship to the subject. Neutrality is often the luxury of the priveledged.

privileged

1. Boys could only ask or answer questions.

tbh, Socrates managed to ask 'innocent' questions that were so irritating to people that he was condemned to drink hemlock and most Athenians thought it was a pretty good deal to just be rid of him.

Q: if it is accepted that men calling women "girls" is sexist, is it simply a matter of turnabout is fair play for women to call men "boys"?

^^^original post was referring to 17yo, iirc?

letting grown men into a 6th form women's group would've been pretty creepy

It was a "6th form women's group", iirc.

yes, comprised of students usually sixteen to eighteen years of age.

a group of 17 yo females admits 17yo males = boys among women?

Neutrality is often the luxury of the priveledged.

yeah, i question this line of reasoning because certainty is also the language of the privileged. and questioning is used by the marginalized in order to create alternate realities.

i also question it because it's the language of division, "with us or against us", and i reject that categorically, not just in this instance but in (almost) every instance. i do not deny anyone's right to commit to believe as they do, but i defend the validity of my commitment to "objective" distance, to a mode of exploration and testing. i believe that there's real value in this.

d'oh ah I see what you did there Aimless

nm

Yes they were 16-18, on the cusp of manhood, just as we were 16-18 on the cusp of womanhood. Some people were studying sociology and copping onto "women's issues" and we were all for trying to take ourselves seriously. I don't recall what language the actual rules used but I'm sure it wasn't actually 'boys'.

FWIW I have no problem being referred to as a 'girl' by people I like, where the intention is playful rather than condescending, ref. "No boys allowed", "No girls allowed": we do this.

not really got anything to say but this thread looks interesting and i have 1 pot of tea and 2 eyes to read with. :D

misread this as "2 eyes to roll with"

― max buzzword (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, 13 February 2012 20:27 (39 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

did come into some eyerolling practise itt not gonna lie. people strawmanning and strawwomanning like crazy. lol people not reading other people and then arguing with them about points they didn't make.

Dudes who are feeling defensive about yr Privilege, what can you do to help?

1) you can recognise and acknowledge that privilege instead of pretending it doesn't exist or that everyone has it. This is a massively helpful first step.

2) you can check your privilege BEFORE you step in to tell women How The World Works.

3) you can actively work to change the future world by trying to dismantle privilege of all kinds. This is the scariest and hardest bit

(this is also the checklist I try to follow when thinking about mine own race privilege and class privilege so I'm not recommending anything I dont try to do myself. Try being operative word)

― White Chocolate Cheesecake, Monday, February 13, 2012 8:01 PM (50 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

one for the FAQ

xxxxp There are also holes in our language for stuff, though, such that "women's group" means one thing but "girls' group" doesn't suggest the same thing at all, in which case "women" was a more useful word there than "girls."

Thank you, Zora. We are once more as little lambs gambolling in the fields of green.

btw guys this tumblr, curated by a couple of my friends, is v relevant here

http://yumadwhiteboy.tumblr.com/

http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lxnb9b6rzF1r9zsizo1_500.jpg

http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lxe7wpBE3i1r9zsizo1_500.jpg

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lx8ld5fHYf1r9zsizo1_500.jpg

http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lx8jzhO4zP1r9zsizo1_400.jpg

ok sorry done with that

I think those are pretty good!

They're great.

like the blog, too, hoos. image by image, i don't always agree w what i take to be the point, and some make me uncomfortable, but that's clearly the point, so well done, blog persons.

Yeah I'll cop to some strawmanning but to be honest that first big post with all the CAPITALS like Molesworth was not so much a reply to Con as me just venting every single argument I've ever had in this subject (which is a fuck of a lot) and just trying to say jeez I do not want to have any of this argument again about biodestiny and neurosexism - but of course even a world weary "I dont wanna talk about this any more" is basically an invitation to discussion to ppl who have not had that argument 5000 times and Con maybe felt unfairly picked on because I was shouting at the previous 500 ppl I'd had the conversation with as much as him.

Hmm, hit and miss imho, that last one is like "why do I want to hear Skrillex' opinion about all this". Former ones are great, yes.

xp

oh my god i only just realised those were dreadlocks in the last one i thought they were like...wall decorations

i am DEAD

I only wish they were wall decorations. Also the rest of that site has some of the most punchable mugs on it I have ever seen.

but of course even a world weary "I dont wanna talk about this any more" is basically an invitation to discussion to ppl who have not had that argument 5000 times and Con maybe felt unfairly picked on because I was shouting at the previous 500 ppl I'd had the conversation with as much as him.

fwiw, i don't blame you at all, WCC. i recognize that my "objective" ambivalence about loaded subjects sometimes verges on socratic trolling.

ambivalence about loaded subjects sometimes verges on socratic trolling.

― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Monday, February 13, 2012 9:36 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ha

so i am late to the party and no one's even talking anymore but it's worth pointing out that biodeterministic assertions that are necessarily rooted in some dichotomous Testosterone/Estrogen ish betray a fundamental and devastating, argument-wise, misapprehension of some basic endocrine stuff

o sure, but it's still reasonable to draw connections (not necessarily or directly causal, but connections nevertheless) between testosterone production and male competition/aggression

Ernest Hemingway as a child:

http://students.cis.uab.edu/mikehow/dress.jpg

btw, i'm not on board with biodeterminism at all in regard to humans, unless it is framed in terms so general as to become nearly meaningless. As WCC mentioned upthread, variation within sexes is much greater than variation between sexes (nb: I am using 'sexes' to denote the physically-expressed primary sexual characteristics) and I see no reason in my personal experience to disbelieve that assertion.

(cant get caught up here for a minute so XP)

even just basic chemistry tbh, w/r/t what the ~implications~ are of normal reaction-type stuff like concentration gradients, affinities, biochemical pathways, and le chatelier's whatever

in that: genotypically men and women are pumping out estrogens and androgens all the time, but at differing rates and compositions. this is largely (but not entirely) due to having different soft things making different hormonal stews; stews that, in XX/XY or XXY or XYY or w/e, are comprised of hormones shared and produced by literally (almost) everyone and that (surprise) can be chemically induced to act more like what we simplistically believe are their binaries.

which is to say: it might be very likely that if someone's hormonal ecosystem, with its v special concentration ratios, is experiencing a surfeit of testosterone, that that may predispose someone to aggression. or "aggression." and so sure XY "men" are more likely to roiling in that brew.

but that says nothing about the actual, root-causes of violence and violent behavior, what's doing the roiling. many ppl have a genetic predisposition to cancer (and these genes are often ~less~ subtle than the in-yr-face obviousness of X/Y phenotypic difference). and some of these people will, "inevitably," go on to develop cancer. but many of them dramatically increase their risk by engaging in behaviors and exposing themselves to risks (maybe unknowingly!) that also predispose to cancer. would we be right to demur on the topic of "bad behavior" or "social determinants" and make the genetic component the essential one, because it's more "science-y"? because that would be dumb.

so yeah ok i guess retrospectively males are pretty violent and sure if you take steroids (as a man or a woman) you're gonna be more hot-tempered than if you didn't. and criminals have excessive levels of testosterone or something (note the word "excessive"). big fucking deal! PCP, booze, and lust make all ppl violent and criminals also have "excessive levels" of drug addiction, mental illness, minority status, and connections to poverty.

tl;dr even pretending to get serious about the ~hormonal~ roots of gendered relations is roughly equivalent to phrenology, both scientifically and ethically

re hemingway, talk about yer later-life overcompensations.

don't know if i'm saying anything that hasn't already been said here, but i completely appreciate the desire to displace the question of biology from these discussions - no one is so crass as to pretend that there's no connection between the cultural and the biological, but yet the body is so overwritten by culture as to make any worthwhile study of it in these terms virtually impossible. but the problem there is that in displacing the problem of biology you can end up displacing the problem of what a genuine sexual difference could entail, perhaps risk engaging in a monolithic form of cultural critique that can't really do justice to the differences that hold between actual material bodies. how you work through the manner in which these things fold together, how you avoid falling into the particular pitfalls of this approach and avoid its own normative tendencies, well, that is difficult.

o sure, but it's still reasonable to draw connections (not necessarily or directly causal, but connections nevertheless) between testosterone production and male competition/aggression

― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Monday, February 13, 2012 7:22 PM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i was mostly posting to myself there obv but as to this: no, it really really isn't. unless its also reasonable to point out connections between butterflies flapping around in china and a bombing in a public place and then suggesting, humbly, by your leave, that bombings are actually a problem with butterflies and not with people blowing up bombs

i was being kind of a jerk there, soz

yeah, the connections are a bit clearer in the case i suggested than butterflies and bombs. as you said earlier, "males are pretty violent and sure if you take steroids (as a man or a woman) you're gonna be more hot-tempered than if you didn't. and criminals have excessive levels of testosterone or something (note the word "excessive")."

this matters, this is real. acknowledging it doesn't mean we've "answered the question", but ignoring or minimizing it because we are uniformly hostile to any biological interpretation of gender strikes me as foolish. we don't have to throw out biology entirely to recognize that culture is the primary architect of most of what we perceive as "gender", even the ostensibly biological stuff.

i can't throw out biology entirely or else i'm out of a job

at a certain point, i'm not even being "fence-sitty" or "open minded" or w/e. i'm just trying to be as honest as possible about what i perceive as the realities of the situation.

i completely appreciate the desire to displace the question of biology from these discussions - no one is so crass as to pretend that there's no connection between the cultural and the biological, but yet the body is so overwritten by culture as to make any worthwhile study of it in these terms virtually impossible. but the problem there is that in displacing the problem of biology you can end up displacing the problem of what a genuine sexual difference could entail, perhaps risk engaging in a monolithic form of cultural critique that can't really do justice to the differences that hold between actual material bodies. how you work through the manner in which these things fold together, how you avoid falling into the particular pitfalls of this approach and avoid its own normative tendencies, well, that is difficult.

merdeyeux otm. this is very much where i'm coming from.

anyway, my point stands: it isn't that there isn't "biological stuff" that can be correlated to gender, it's that what exists isn't really germane to the conversation (if what you're trying to figure out is why women drive like this or why men are vicious rapers). it is insignificant, and very likely ("provable" even with facts and stuff) approaching totally non-contributory. yes, on an individual, case-by-case basis (which is yr style, con, <3 u tho i do), messed-up* levels of testosterone can make a person more likely to hit a guy. but to even introduce that as a maybe-maybe-not-but-look-see stakeholder in the hunt for why persons hit guys and what we ought to do about it is...irresponsible? or at least naive

dang another xp

ok see
this is very much where i'm coming from.

while i'm pretty sure i 'get' merdeyeux's post, imo talking about 'men' and 'women' necessarily elides and, sure, doesn't "do justice to the differences that hold between actual material bodies." but again that is a p myopic and case-by-case approach to an issue (to be vague) that isn't, can't, be read on a case-by-case basis.

a little confused by that, tbh, gbx. when it comes to this sort of stuff, i'm much less interested in the individual than the general/demographic. the individual is a field of endless variation in which everyone has the opportunity to be or do anything. it's only on the large scale, over time and across cultures, that we begin to see the deep patterns. and i don't think it's by any means absurd to attribute masculine aggression and violence as large-scale, human-species-level problems/phenomena at least in part to human biology.

i don't think that this is naive at all, and it should take nothing away from our understanding that culture is at least as big a driver of human behavior as gender. i mean, just because a human behavior has some basis in human biology doesn't make it in any way "right" or inevitable.

i.e., it wasn't the focus on the individual i was responding to in merdeyeux' post, it was this: displacing the problem of biology you can end up displacing the problem of what a genuine sexual difference could entail. it's elective selective blindness, and i don't see any reason for it.

god, and on reflection, i certainly wouldn't have chosen the word "genuine" there. sub "what a biological sexual difference could entail".

uh, also sub "culture is at least as big a driver of human behavior as biological gender" a couple posts up. moving too fast here, though that's a p telling slip (*ahem*)

yeah certainly, it's an approach that (whatever it ends up looking like) runs the risk of reasserting a male-female binary to the exclusion of trans, asexual, etc issues. and i don't know where the ideal place between that and a systematically ineffectual turn to specific individuals is.

(and fair enough on the genuine. although i'm inclined to think that sexual difference is probably better articulated ontologically rather than biologically. don't really know what i mean by that tho.)

well, the appeal to biology is necessarily an appeal to the ontologically "real", that much is unavoidable.

maybe part of the problem is that we want gender to be one thing when it isn't. there's biological gender (female, male, intersex, other, sliding scales, etc) and there's cultural gender and individual gender (both of which come in endless variations). there's perceived gender and identified gender. it's not singular, not as a concept and not in terms of how it applies to any person or group.

i don't think it's by any means absurd to attribute masculine aggression and violence as large-scale, human-species-level problems/phenomena at least in part to human biology.

my point about biology is and has been this (or at least i meant it to be): it's not a very big part (ho ho), at least vis a vis the process by which actual human violence is expressed. and that giving it a seat at the table "well let's not forget about biology, testosterone and such" can and does become a way to crowd out other, more germane explanations

XXXXPOOSSSSSSSSSTSSS

it's not a very big part (ho ho), at least vis a vis the process by which actual human violence is expressed.

see, this is what i quibble with. you present your argument with great certainty, as though you were reporting a value-neutral, easily verifiable fact. but there's no way at this point to quantitatively analyze such a thing. "proportion and/or degree of violent male behavior caused by biological factors vs proportion of the same caused by other factors, in all cultures, through all time: a study"

anyone who claims with any certainty to know the real answer to questions like this is prioritizing assumptions and perhaps politics over scientifically verifiable information, imo. in trying to determine what makes sense and what doesn't, i try not to worry much about how any given conclusion might be employed, whose interests it might seem to serve. i simply look at the best information available and draw only those conclusions that truly seem warranted. only after doing that do i consider what my conclusions might mean in a sociopolitical context.

on that level, i agree that it's vitally important to keep the focus on gender as a cultural construct - but i'm not going to let that prejudice me when evaluating gender as biology. nor will i minimize, distort or ignore what seems to be true about biological gender out of political fealty to gender as a construct. i feel that there's room for both in any sensible consideration of the issue.

well, the appeal to biology is necessarily an appeal to the ontologically "real", that much is unavoidable.

i dont think this has to be the case, but i get that this has underwritten almost everything on this thread