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

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

so yes there is an "outside" or limit to culture/meaning but we only have access to it as a kind of negative capability.

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.

i am glad this thread is here.

agreed

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.)

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.

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.)

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.

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

<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>

Though obviously my inability to click the "Convert Simple HTML to BBcode" button is due to Evolutionary Psychology.

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

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.

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.

and yeah there are double standards, sometimes we are at the mercy of our internal chemistry and sometimes it makes us who we are

...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.

Hey Emily - Thank you. :)

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.)

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.

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.

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?"

the funniest iphone autocorrect i've seen is changing "sexting" to "destiny" :/

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?)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Has anyone else read this? Should I go home and re-read it for this thread?

...and A Passing Spacecadet was right. We opened up a discussion of "women's issues" to well-meaning dudes and in less than 1 day it's become all about dudes and testosterone and male violence and we're not even talking about women at all.

Not even Myra Hindley.

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.

there's also evidence that testosterone inclines humans to competitiveness, and is produced as a "reward" for competing successfully. and violence can be an effective competitive strategy, at least in the sense that beating someone up causes your body to produce more testosterone. violent criminals tend to have elevated testosterone levels relative to the general population, and we can't say for certain that causation is a one-way street in that case.

That looks great, LaureL (ha! My iPhone just tried to change yr name, it's not me!) but I'm still reading Bitch which doesn't deny the possibility of female violence either.

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.

i've read all of your posts closely. i'm familiar with the concepts you're discussing. i repeat myself only because you repeatedly respond not to my arguments, but to a straw man that only tangentially connects with what i've said.

I'm coming in at a tangent right now, because one of the things that's been upsetting me recently is male rape. I've heard reps from NGOs in Africa denying that there is a problem, denying that there is any need to include men in their considerations when setting up services to support victims or even when investigating war crimes. Yes, more women are probably victims. But the numbers of men who've been attacked isn't something anyone even cares to find out about.

This stuff: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jul/17/the-rape-of-men

I feel like this is a onsequence of stereotypes of both men and women but I accept that's not where this conversation is at right now. I just wanted to get it off my chest.

Contenderizer viz the quote you took out of my statement; your response is exactly the approach I think should be taken - to any subject - I was expressing my frustration that I couldn't find anyone doing that. Everyone writing about this stuff, including policy wonks at the UN, is trotting out the same lazy set of assumptions.

onsequence = consequence, obv

As for discussing testosterone and male violence &c &c, I don't see how these can be things people-identifying-as-women-with-or-without-biological-determinants should ignore.

We opened up a discussion of "women's issues" to well-meaning dudes and in less than 1 day it's become all about dudes and testosterone and male violence and we're not even talking about women at all.

in my OP, i talked about a number of things, not just male violence. when you argued with me (IN ALL CAPS), i narrowed things down to male violence in the hopes that it might provide a generally agreeable example of a gendered behavior with some relation to biology. maybe this is too "controversial" for this thread, i dunno.

anyway, the thread that this primarily expands out from, the feminist blogs & communities thread, was always open to guys, right?

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.

This rhetoric may be emotionally accurate, but it is ott when compared to mundane reality. How so? Because it leaves no wiggle room for so much as one neutral male-female interaction at any time.

Let's say I invent a board game where men players take alternating turns with women players who compete for a share of power. To make this fair (though not realistic) at the start of the game both sides will have a million units of power. The rules will be your rules. At every turn men will be rewarded and women will be punished. We will do this by taking away one unit of women's power and giving it to the men.

After exactly a million turns the men will have two million units of power and the women will have zero.

But it wouldn't matter how many units were involved to start, or what tiny fraction of a unit changed hands at every turn, the end result would always be that the men become omnipotently all-powerful and the women will be utterly, completely, nakedly, and absolutely powerless. This may feel true to you, but this is not the world I live in.

Zora it's not that I think ppl should ignore it, it just can veer perilously into "but what about teh mens!!!!" territory.

You're right, that this enforcement of "men as perps, women as victims" is a narrative that is deeply dependent on patriarchal and harmful views of both women and men.

It is worth looking at, in that sexual violence (especially as war crimes) is an everyone problem, not just a woman problem.

But one of my problems is, so often when women gather to talk about their problems and the narratives of their own lives, so often that narrative gets hijacked by men who want to substitute their own narratives about women, and I'm deeply tired of that.

thank the lord

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/02/16/why-this-pastor-believes-american-girls-boy-doll-is-a-trick-of-the-enemy/

The Rev. Keith Ogden, who is a pastor at Hill Street Baptist Church in Asheville, N.C., said he heard about the boy doll earlier this week on a segment of “Good Morning America.” He then sent a message to his parishioners titled “KILLING THE MINDS OF MALE BABIES.” “This is nothing more than a trick of the enemy to (emasculate little boys) and confuse their role to become men,” he wrote in a statement, which he later sent to The Washington Post. “There are those in this world who want to alter God’s creation of the male and female. The devil wants to kill, steal and destroy the minds of our children and grandchildren by perverting, distorting and twisting to TRUTH of WHO GOD created them to be.”

bit melodramatic imho

"the enemy" is pastorspeak for Satan

So he... wants male dolls to have penises?

no, he wants them to have guns (though I guess a doll with a camouflaged penis that fired nerf darts would meet his standards for acceptable masculine playtime)

A new addition to the feminist canon launches on 10 March:

Join Gillian Anderson and Jennifer Nadel launch their new book, WE: A Manifesto for Women Everywhere.

Imagine a sisterhood spanning all creeds and cultures – an unspoken agreement that women will support and encourage one another. So begins WE, an inspiring, empowering and provocative manifesto for change.

Change which provides a crucial and timely antidote to the have-it-all Superwoman culture, and instead focuses on what will make each woman happier and more free. Change which we can all effect, one woman at a time.

https://d2csxpduxe849s.cloudfront.net/media/9116038B-1451-4FB6-90B39305790096A6/02ED6F11-F2A3-42A0-9ED6939AB4335450/Hero1600x630-83a46e98-0a1e-4fa5-b4b6-1e3e5f899936.jpg

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2017/03/05/im-never-reenlisting-marine-corps-rocked-by-nude-photo-scandal/?utm_term=.fb674e79ebee

The War Horse’s report focuses on one Facebook group with more than 30,000 members called Marines United. In January, a link to a shared hard drive containing photos of numerous female Marines in various states of undress was posted to the group, according to the War Horse’s report. The hard drive contained images, as well as the names and units of the women pictured. Many of the photos were accompanied by derogatory and harassing comments.

This is a truly excellent reason to start a rock band. https://t.co/bYoFldhcAZ pic.twitter.com/x0YmPPURrp

— Sassa (@astridoverthere) October 19, 2017

So I've been more involved with left activism/organizing of late which means I've been more exposed to more flavors of The Left than I was previously. This has been mostly rewarding and rad but I have encountered a strain of what I'd consider to be on the extreme end of radical idpol, where a couple of trans comrades have outright stated that 1. sexual preference for certain/specific types of genitals are inherently transphobic and 2. because cisgender folks uphold cisnormativity, their cisness / "being" cis is itself a form of oppression against trans folks. I struggle with these ideas and I don't think it's *just* cause I'm a cishet dude (albeit one who's not uh "active" in any meaningful sense and not planning to be again anytime soon), but I also really don't think it's appropriate to ask them about it directly for a whole lot of reasons. So I'm throwing it out to Feminist Theory ILX: are these super common notions of late? How do we feel about them? Am I hopelessly square for bristling at them?

*michael bolton voice* how can we be lovers if we can’t be cis

2 sounds like a very serious evolution of something that probably started off as a joke

1 i don’t really have any comment on

1. sexual preference for certain/specific types of genitals are inherently transphobic and 2. because cisgender folks uphold cisnormativity, their cisness / "being" cis is itself a form of oppression against trans folks. I struggle with these ideas

what is there to struggle with? they're irrational and wrong

I feel like #1 leaves a lot more questions than it provides answers

"being" cis is itself a form of oppression against trans folks

My basic reaction to this is that, even if there is some grain of truth hiding in there, the obvious solution is to expand what is normal to include being trans, rather than, let's say, trans folks setting up intensive deprogramming sessions to 'fix' cis people, much like those evangelicals use for 'fixing' gays. because the oppression does not really reside in "being cis".

expand what is normal to include being trans

i feel like this is what both ideas are getting at, albeit extremely

everyone join me in flagging that sleepingbag post

yeahhhh that was the type of language I was explicitly trying to avoid

i feel like this is what both ideas are getting at, albeit extremely

yeah this makes a bit of sense to me, like an extreme way of leveling the playing field

It's sad that sleepingbag can't keep a girlfriend for more than a few months.

can we keep to a generally respectful tone in this thread even if some
malcontents feel like disrupting it?

yeahhhh that was the type of language I was explicitly trying to avoid

― Simon H., Thursday, November 23, 2017 2:08 PM (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so you were thinking something similar but you wouldn't just come out and say it? what is wrong with saying that ideas like those are absurd?

Diplomacy.

i'm not at all well informed but i do see people expressing both 1 and 2 with apparent sincerity, which i suppose means that they're not too uncommon (if i could take notice of them).

both seem prima facie coherent as moral/political stances but liable to harbor all manner of confusions/distortions of the relevant moral and political concepts (which if interpreted charitably could mean challenging, radical revisions of them in the direction of justice, the good, etc.).

for instance on 1, a similar view about homophobia would probably be met with skepticism. yet it seems to be a consistent implication of a trans-positive ethic that if one accepts the gender self-identifications of others, for instance not at all denying trans women any status, role, etc. one assigns cis women, then one must accept them in sexual activity as well. even as a cis het man, for instance. if in response to the imputation of transphobia a cis het man who had some inclination to prefer cis women to trans women as sexual partners appealed to his desires as on some level a brute fact, or as something that falls under the exercise of his own autonomy (on a par with the self-identifications of others), the idea that our desires are educable, correctable, and often deeply in need of education and correction, would seem to undermine that appeal. but it seems like it would be a bit of a feat to appeal to autonomy and authenticity or legitimacy of desires on the one side and, out of a moral/political critique (what the use of the term 'transphobia' earmarks), to question or deny them on the other in the name of a more enlightened desire, without putting enormous pressure on all those concepts to change significantly. in effect, it's a critique that sees most contemporary behavior around gender and sex as thoroughly unradicalized, and validates itself by resting on a vision of a thoroughly transformed society.

I'm heading off to a party in a moment, so I can't get deep into discourse, but I would say (speaking as a queer trans woman in a relationship with another trans woman):

Regarding 1), genital preferences are not necessarily transphobic, but the people who feel the need to publicly articulate their sexuality in terms of attraction to specific kinds of genitals are usually also making a whole lot of cissexist assumptions about trans people and their bodies. Patterns of attraction are conditioned by systems of power, but that doesn't mean they can be reshaped at will; at the same time, though, statements about who one can find desirable can often serve as a way of policing the boundaries to a given community (think of what "No fats, no fems, no Asians" implies as part of an online dating profile).

Regarding 2), this seems mostly like a hyperbolic way to express frustration with transphobia, and shouldn't be taken too literally.

Xp

yes, op made it sound like these ideas were axiomatic in this leftist group when it sounds much more likely that these things were said in exasperation or to blow off steam... either way i don't understand the point of struggling with the ideas and/or self-flagellating for not being a proper ally unless you've completely lost the ability to evaluate things for yourself tbh?

there are certain ideas that are more useful in an academic rather than practical sense and these (partic #1) are good examples

j, well put

also appreciate and find agreeable OWS’s perspective

yeah same, great posts j. and one way street

genital preferences are not necessarily transphobic, but the people who feel the need to publicly articulate their sexuality in terms of attraction to specific kinds of genitals are usually also making a whole lot of cissexist assumptions about trans people and their bodies

Shortly after I posted here, another trans comrade reponded to the original post and made this distinction

op made it sound like these ideas were axiomatic in this leftist group when it sounds much more likely that these things were said in exasperation or to blow off steam

Somewhere in between.

great posts j. and one way street

Co-sign, thanks y'all's

apologies in advance if this is addressed upthread

i don't recall growing up having any conflicts about my gender identity, but for the last several months, i have had recurring bouts of dysphoria where ive fixated on wanting to have a feminine body/be a woman. ive mostly put these notions to the side, but theyve grown in intensity the last couple of days and im starting to think there's *something* and im really struggling with it. like i dont know what to do with these feelings. i dont feel like "a woman trapped in a man's body" per se although ive never really cared for how my body looks at any size (my weight has fluctuated over the last 15 years). i think the fact that im married and have a child is whats making me the most terrified. what if i go down this path and wreck what i have? will my child understand? will my wife? will she still want to be with me? are there any trans/NB folks or anyone else here who can speak to this? i am in my early 30s and i havent so much as given 2nd thought to this until the last few months, is this weird?

Good luck to you, m bison. What you're dealing with isn't weird or wrong. I don't think it's uncommon for trans and NB people to come to an understanding of theirselves gradually or at irregular intervals, or to be aware of dysphoria before they know exactly what it means in terms of their identity.

In my own case: I'm a trans woman in my mid-thirties, and while I was intensely aware of my dysphoria as a teenager, I spent most of my twenties trying not to think about my gender or how alienated I felt by my body, until I kind of realized at thirty that trying to ignore it was becoming unbearable. My partner, who transitioned in her later thirties, had a similar trajectory, and neither of us have ever thought of ourselves as "women trapped in men's bodies": that's a nineteenth-century soundbite formulated to explain male homosexuality that has stuck around mostly because it flatters straight, cisnormative assumptions.

I would just try to be lucid about these feelings and find a space (whether it's the practice of a therapist who works with queer and trans clients, a trans support group, a queer community space that isn't primarily focused on hooking up, or wherever) where you feel safe to work out these feelings and how you want to deal with them. Your concerns are definitely reasonable: a lot of relationships don't survive one partner transitioning, although some do. All you can really do is try to be honest with yourself and your partner and explore your options patiently, whatever you choose to do.

m bison, this is going to appear like it goes against everything I've espoused recently, because I am a big believer in "people's experiences are real; people are who they say they are".

Over the past few years, I've been doing a lot of talking to non-binary and trans people, trying to compare experiences, and a lot of reading on the subject.

One thing that strikes me in common, with most of the non-binary and trans people I've encountered is how deep-seated these feelings are, and how early they first appear, and how long *something* has been going on. It's a sensation that usually occurs first in childhood, or adolescence at the latest, a sensation of being "different" or not-fitting or something being *off*, which may not initially even be recognised as *gender* being the thing that is off. Now, for people like myself, who did 'pop out' in middle-age, it was a question of 'not having a word for it', or 'being told it was impossible' and suppressing and repressing and squishing those feelings down and overcompensating for them. But it's a lifelong thing. Mine was a thing that came up in childhood. It came up in adolescence. My friends used to *joke* about it when I was in my 20s. It was something I did not have a proper *name* for until I was in my 40s, but the thoughts were always there.

Now, forgive me if this sounds disrespectful, or if it sounds like I am invalidating your experiences and feelings - your feelings are real, and powerful. It's worth addressing them and working out what they are, and how to cope with them.

But I want to ask. Do you have, either in yourself, or in your family, any history of OCD or anxiety disorders? Because something that *does* come on suddenly and abruptly (within the 'couple of months' timeframe you describe) is a variant of OCD called Pure-OCD or P-OCD. It comes on *fast*. It tends to take the form of really overpowering and overwhelming intrusive thoughts, which often snowball and accelerate in intensity. These thoughts often take the form of intense doubts about one's identity, one's sexuality, one's orientation (for example a straight woman, who had always been straight and knew she was straight experienced P-OCD episodes where she could not stop having intrusive thoughts of pornographic imagery which developed into an OCD pattern that took the form of obsessive, incessant, unstoppable thoughts of questioning whether she might be a lesbian - even though she had never previously experienced any desire that way). Like many other forms of OCD, it involves an irresistible hook of how *harm* might come, to the self, or more usually, one's loved ones.

It often comes on a little like 'medical students' disease' where, if you are studying something or investigating something, the OCD will latch onto the thing you've been researching. It can also result in response to intense periods of stress which aren't connected to the OCD pattern itself.

It's so hard to tell, because it's an OCD loop that hijacks a real thing, over which it is totally normal to have doubt and uncertainty and self-interrogation over. However, it doesn't ever *resolve* to an answer, a "phew, I'm actually x", it just goes round and round in an unfinished loop of fear and anxiety.

It's entirely possible you may have had thoughts and desires and feelings in childhood that you have forgotten, or more likely repressed? In which case, if you have trusted people who have known you since childhood, it's worth asking "did my behaviour ever make you wonder?" Or if you have old diaries, or even childhood schoolwork type stuff? Something which puts you back in that mindset and reminds you who you were then. Maybe it was there, and you've squished it down. I wouldn't say it's weird, but it i's atypical for this stuff to appear so suddenly, out of nowhere, having never wondered about it pre- or around adolescence.

But if it really wasn't there, and this is a sudden thing that has "come out of nowhere"? Especially if it takes the form of incessant rumination and intrusive thoughts and *worry* about how it will damage people you love? And especially if you have any history of OCD or anxiety disorders. Do some reading on P-OCD, even if just to discount the possibility.

Honestly, I'm not discounting your *feelings*. Your feelings are real, and *need* to be addressed and looked at and dealt with and maybe acted upon. Talk it over with a professional, find out what the options are. Investigate your own history. Conduct it like an experiment of "what would I do, if this were the case" and see if that makes things better, worse, no change.

To add to the above post, it might be worth searching articles about gender confusion OCD or sexual orientation OCD, because even if the fears you're reading about aren't the specific fears you have, you might recognise some of the same patterns and habits. Search a few different terms that might describe what you're afraid of and add "pure OCD".

branwell that is extraordinarily helpful and I am grateful for you taking the time and care to share that. I have had a history of anxiety. and I am a sponsor for an lgbt club at my school and I interact with trans and nb kids every day.

the intrusive and obsessive worrying feels very much in line with what I've been experiencing the last couple of days which is evident in the panic from my initial post. thank you again.

I feel really touchy and difficult discussing this kind of stuff, because one of the biggest Trans Issues is how difficult it often is for trans and non-binary and questioning people to get others to *believe* them. This kind of "Are you sure it's not... (other psychological issue)?!" is a huge derailing and time-wasting and de-legitimising technique.

I am, however, someone who is both non-binary (and has gone through all the questioning that entailed) but ALSO has had episodes of near-crippling OCD.

Both things involve the experience of 'recurring thoughts and feelings' and it's quite difficult, unless you've had both, to describe the ways in which they are both similar and different.

Trans-ness, or gender dysphoria, or (preferred term?) is a long-term, persistent sense of *mismatch* between one's body, and/or others' sets of expectations about what one's body should *mean*; and one's own sense of self, sense of internal compass reports that one's self and one's body *ought* to be. I don't want to use the phrase "wrongness" because wrong implies a moral judgement. It's just this repeated feeling of "this doesn't fit"; "this doesn't feel right"; "something's not working here". Now this, obviously, involves recurring thoughts, because every time that mismatch becomes apparent or becomes highlighted it's going to generate a twinge. Like every step you take in ill-fitting shoes rubs or pinches somewhere.

It can become *acutely* intense, at times where the mismatch is continually and painfully highlighted. I generally thought I had reached a level of peace with my identity and my dysphoria - until a couple of weeks ago, I had to go and do a 24/7 on-site training course, involving 5 brogrammers and me, and it was just unrelenting. There was the expected fury and strangled exasperation of dealing with 7 days of relentless casual sexism and exclusion. Like, this stuff is unjust for anyone to deal with. I'm used to dealing with sexism and even hostile work environments. But what I was not prepared for, was the *wave* of dysphoria that followed closely on its heels. The sense of "no one deserves sexism because misogyny is unjust" followed by "you assholes have completely misread and misunderstood who *I* am. I'm not uninterested in your toxic masculinity stew of 'cars, sport, the military' because I am 'feminine'; it's because this is not the *kind* of 'masculine' I am." (If the environment had been 'music, real ale, trains' I could have performed *that* kind of masculinity just fine.)

But in this environment, the level of dysphoria reached such a crescendo that it become unavoidable, intrusive, dominating my thoughts, leaving me unable to function. But it was the stress of that environment that pushed it to that level of intrusiveness. Something that was normally traffic noise, suddenly became a jet engine. But it *can* become that intrusive, do you understand what I'm saying? It can become *like* the intensity of OCD, but it's an exaggeration of a thing which has recurred persistently for a long time.

OCD, on the other hand, is like... I've always called them Thoughtworms. "It comes on like a thought, and stays just like a disease." Something intrudes upon your mind, and you believe it's an urgent, important thought, so you just start thinking it. Except it is not an actual thought, it's a recurring, looping computer-virus-like thing, which starts taking over all the other circuits of your brain and just shuts other processes down, so that the only thought you are able to think is the Thoughtworm. It's not an environmental response, like dysphoria feels like a pinch or an ache from an ill-fitting shoe. (Except the shoe is your body, and you can't take it off.) It's a virus that quite quickly takes control of your entire brain. THIS IS THE ONLY THOUGHT THAT WE CAN THINK NOW.

And these thoughtworms are... you know, they are brainweasels. They are worries, fears, the things you care *most* about, your worst impulses, things that feel really really *urgent*. They would not be able to cannibalise your mind with intrusive and obsessive worrying if they weren't things that meant something to you in the first place. Pure OCD is *agony*. It starts with urgency and escalates into panic, and if unchecked, leads to feeling like you are losing your mind.

Does that make more sense, the way that they are both recurring, they can both be *intrusive*, but that the way these feelings recur, and the way that the thoughts intrude are different? I just really hope that that helps you to tease apart what you are experiencing right now, and how to proceed with it. Because it doesn't sound much fun, where you are right now.

If you're working with trans and nonbinary kids, it's entirely possible that you are recognising something of yourself in them, and them in yourself. That's empathy, and that's good. And it's also possible that you do have curiosity and questioning raised by this empathy, which is perfectly natural and normal. OR it could be, because you are so engaged with these kids, and you start to care for and worry about them, that's exactly the kind of anxiety that OCD will latch onto. It could be either. It could also be both! I wish you peace, and clarity and greater self understanding.

Thank you again. And yes, that makes total sense to me.

https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/11/13/18079458/menstrual-tracking-surveillance-glow-clue-apple-health

I don't really have anything useful to say about this as I'm too full of rage

Woman reported her ex to the police five times in the six months before he murdered her. They fined her for wasting police time.