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

i am flattered but idk where you got that idea xps
i started reading dialectic of sex again! so beautiful imo

I am not a man, and I found the science stuff more understandable than the stuff about stuff about words about words.

it makes much more sense to describe the "the falsely objective idea of 'clear' language" (hey, that was very clear and direct!) than to publish arcane gibberish for yr academic peers.

actually try to do this while being as true as possible to the phenomenon you are discussing and avoiding re-telling the history of philosophy on every page, and you'll be surprised how fast your language starts to look like, say, Derrida's. it seems to happen on its own! i personally strive for clarity with precision, and sometimes that results in some scary looking stuff.

xp - you are behaving like a stereotypical dude though!

i have never read that book. maybe i will get it tomorrow.

xxp

ha guys you ~fell into my trap~

of course you were able to make sense of that, you're people that have trafficked in that language professionally or just out of interest. and, as i said, it's actually a pretty straightforward account (which duh it's the abstract). but, if you weren't in the business of knowing what those words (or the roots of those words) meant, it might be a little obtuse. moreover, there's the question of why exactly it's even interesting, as a study or observation?

corticosteroids can induce osteonecrosis in chickens. when is this an issue? i can think of a bunch of cases, but i doubt it would be immediately, readily apparent to a person that found these words written on a scrap of paper on the floor.

the first chapter is here: http://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/firestone-shulamith/dialectic-sex.htm
xp

Posting once only here to mention that, as a reasonably smart guy who nonetheless doesn't try very hard and Peter Principled his way into a BA in only six years, the first book I ever read that taught me anything at all about feminism was not an academic or theoretical text at all, but Susan Faludi's "Backlash"; and frankly that book should be required reading in US high schools, because if anything things have gotten worse.

(also apologies for display name/thread topic collision)

academic language is often purposely obfuscated

yeah the biggest question of the chickens text is why would you do that to chickens??

lol i talk about women as "the sex class" all the time and have never read shulamith firestone :/

thanks, rrrobyn!

and i think that's why i didn't find it any easier to parse (maybe a bit more difficult) than the gender/language theory examples. Like, scientists gave drugs to some of the chickens and some of the chickens died. Other than that ... eyes kinda glazed because it didn't seem relevant.

but when you understand the text because you are immersed in its science world, you just probably inherently know why they would do that to chickens, is what i'm saying

exactly, rrobyn!

Whereas gender and language are things that we all deal with

you are behaving like a stereotypical dude though!

Fuck gender roles. I'm not behaving like a stereotypical dude, I'm behaving like a systems thinker with a strong background in both sciences and classical languages. This is the point, these things aren't attached to gender, but to personalities/bents/occupations.

And, as someone who has a huge interest in linguistics and languages, and in fact, studies dead or revived languages ~for fun~ seriously, it's not the "OMG words!" aspect of Butler that troubles me.

they are often attached to gender, as certain personality traits and bents and occupations are encouraged more if you're male vs. female!

but when you understand the text because you are immersed in its science world, you just probably inherently know why they would do that to chickens, is what i'm saying

― obliquity of the ecliptic (rrrobyn), Wednesday, February 15, 2012 8:36 PM (12 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: THIS THREAD

i mean basically

they are often attached to gender, as certain personality traits and bents and occupations are encouraged more if you're male vs. female!

*beats head against fucking wall*

Susan Faludi, yes!
xps

yeah i love Backlash a lot

so what is this thread supposed to be about, anyway? Science and math and related topics up until very recently (like the past 20 yrs or so) have been ridiculously male-dominant. And it goes back to stereotypes of female brain vs. male brain that that Harvard dolt bought into! Aren't we supposed to be discussing stuff like this?

Whereas gender and language are things that we all deal with
true, but we all don't engage with gender and language in the same ways
just like we all don't engage with chickens and corticosteroid therapy in the same ways

lol

some of us don't deal with chickens and corticosteroid therapy at all though!

Sarahel, it's 3 in the morning and I don't even know.

I've just spent the entire thread arguing, as a gender non conforming woman, that gender roles are contrived and how harmful it is that non-gendered interests are so actively gendered, and then you come in and tell me I'm ~being a dude~ for having an interest and a job in science.

like how many people don't even bat an eyelid at gender stereotypes? a lot of people.
and chickens are for eating and corticosteroids are something on a medication label or something "doctors know about"

i'm just saying that everyone engages with information on some level or another

all i'm saying is that your reactions to Butler and the theory and then the science stuff codes as "dudely" -- I don't mean it pejoratively, just that it is funny, because it shows the intersecting types of privilege interacting, and how it is complex.

for example, because you do have that aptitude/experience w/science, you have a certain privilege in terms of the science vs. non-science power dynamic.

I think it would improve my understand of the thread if everybody, ~ including me ~ would stop using these stupid ~ tildes ~ all the time because it is weird and ~ distracting ~

they're not tildes they're snakes!

~ swinton

The tilde is p much my way of saying I am being ~facetious~ or snotty or air-quotey or some other sarcasm family of emoticon WRT the text so highlighted. It's kind of a useful shorthand and I was hoping it would lead to people having a more natural and less negative interpretation of my posts where I'm not being 100% ~serious~ but I guess that didn't work, huh.

I think it is funny! I have totally adopted it.

it would also be funny if you did it like this:

<swinton>omg Thom Yorke's hair</swinton>

Just for that, I'm gonna post one of those ~Thom Yorke Looking Like Lost Son Of Tilda Swinton~ photos from like 1994 or so.

Anyway, ~FEMINISM~, huh? What's that about?

he totally looks like her lost son!

I'm just gonna mention some books I have liked that deal w/some gender stuff:

Susan Faludi's Backlash yeah this is like gender wars 101, also a great study in how fake media stories get perpetuated

Dorothy Allison's Skin is a collection of really great essays, I like it a lot more than her fiction

Pat Califia's Public Sex was kind of a big deal for me as well when I started reading abt this stuff

Doris Lessing's Prisons We Choose To Live Inside is maybe off topic but idk

Carol J. Adams' The Sexual Politics Of Meat is super interesting, just what it says

would be interested in hearing about what people in this thread think about Faludi's Stiffed, I thought it was really sad and fascinating but maybe skirting a little too close to excusing male privilege?

maybe skirting a little too close to excusing male privilege

^ how i felt reading it

It's odd, I've never read Faludi, either. I probably should. There are huge gaps in my feminist reading due to being autodidact about it - and for the past 3 or 4 years I've been mostly reading obscure feminist linguistics (due to personal interest) or Beauty Myth type stuff (due to the industry I was working in) rather than more general stuff ... which I should probably amend instead of wasting so much time on ILX.

In an actual hijack for a personal moan, I think I need to get off and stay off this thread.

It's cost me about £10 in mobile Internet at this point. I don't think I'm learning much, I'm certainly not teaching anyone anything they don't know, it's not making me any friends and it's just cementing a really negative impression of me in the minds of ppl who didn't like me to start with.

So in a non-angry and fairly sobered-up mood, I'm pretty sure I do need to bow out. This is doing me more harm than good.

I appreciate what you bring to this thread and to the boards in gen, fwiw

I mean I'm not sure that's worth app. 20 American dollars

Hey WCC, I've been out all evening and have only skimmed to catch up, but I want to say that you were instrumental in ilx even taking about any of this stuff, so thanks. I'm sorry it's been kinda costly to you personally, I have also been v frustrated at various points as you know. But we were all here on ilx and we were all presumably having these thoughts privately but we weren't talking about any of it until you made it happen.

I don't know where it's going to take us, but it will be somewhere cooperative and interesting, in large part thanks to your insistence that we talk at all, and your keeping it going even if it meant giving people a target to aim at. I'm sorry that was the role you ended up in. But this is a general good overall, I think.

dood, hoos, that excerpt about "Step up, step back" was so great. I feel like I/we have been having a contentious relationship to a bunch of men that I normally like pretty well, these last couple of days, on these threads, partly because of my inability to say what that thing said, as clearly, and with as much grace extended toward all parties.

"Common Behavioral Patterns That Perpetuate Power Relations of Domination"

http://toolsforchange.org/resources/org-handouts/patterns%20.pdf

^ don't let that title scare you off, it's a handy one pager with a big comparative table

No, it was cool! I gave it a quick read and it rang a lot of bells. Will consider it further.

cool link hoos thx