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

Thanks for clarifying C# that's what I thought

I didn't mean to go into the Cher Lloyd "nnnggghhhh!" of frustration quite so hard ha ha

Yeah this is also a thing, Lex!

Like, human beings manage to control and modify all sorts of other "biological" instinctual things - we change our diets in all sorts of weird ways, control our food intake, some ppl even practice breathing control, we manage not to slaughter each other at the grocery shop - but somehow when it comes to gender "oh no, we're biologically programmed, we can't ~help~ ourselves!" #NotBuyingIt

we manage not to slaughter each other at the grocery shop

only fkn just, most of the time :(

Those examples are so confused, I should not try to address srs topics before I've had my tea.

i want to read that shulamith firestone book again c# maybe your mom can be in my book club

so this thread has gone - some interesting points about male privilege - lots of nature vs nurture discussion(mainly about men) - focus on the role of testosterone in (male) aggression - fat man eating salad.

I thought this was going to be about women!

― thomasintrouble, Tuesday, February 14, 2012 4:46 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lmao. its the contenderizer and aimless show!

it is about women, that's all there is to say about us

Can I just say, I didn't bring up testosterone & aggression bc I was interested in men qua men, I'm interested in knowing if there is in fact *any* underlying justification for painting men and women differently wrt violence, or even confidence and approach to power relationships, or is any biological component in fact weak enough to discount in favour of biological factors as WCC indicates. I think it is weak but I wld like to acknowledge differences if they exist, and I have a personal pref for evidence-based argument. Also it's been 15 years since I looked seriously at the research on neurological sex difference and I wanna know what's changed.

It seems there is more or less a consensus here that we shld look at the social construction of gender first and foremost, and that's cool, I'm well up for that & will happily take my brain chemistry 101 stuff off-thread.

MASSIVE POST ALERT. Sorry, and also several x-posts bcuz it took me forever to write it.

I'm gonna try and get off this "violence" thing and try to explain / share personal examples of how this determinist approach to gender gets me down in my daily life. So these things may seen trivial, but they're purposefully trivial rather than the life-changey stuff.

So much of this X = "masculine" and masculinity = BIOLOGICAL is about Identity construction. Carving out space as "masculine" (and excluding women from it) is a kind of ersatz identity politics for men. (I could be snide about that, and say "bcuz of male privilege, men don't have ~real~ identity politics so they resort to this shit" but I don't think that's true. The enforcement of "masculinity" is deeply poisonous. It's just that some men play these "get girls out of the treehouse" games instead of questioning "masculinity.")

1) I got this book out of the library, about walking the London tube lines. Like, this is such WCC-bait I can't even tell you. Maps! Trains! London! Psychogeography! Lost rivers! Guest appearances by Bill Drummond! You could not make a book seem more appealing to me unless you threw in a story about Aphex Twin living in the actual Elephant & Castle roundabout - wait, that was in there, too. Yay!

But right from the start, because the author's wife thought the project was, well, a bit silly (Might that have something to do with the fact that they had a child under 2, and her partner kept disappearing to do massive 2-day walks instead of child-minding?) he decided that MAPS were "masculine" and in fact walking itself was masculine, and producing statistics about how men just travel more (again, this is ~biological~ and nothing to do with circumstance?) which is sounding more and more spurious to a woman who lived on 3 continents by the time she was 10, but, whatever.

It got to the point where I could no longer read the book bcuz I was sick of his identity politicking. Bill Drummond turned up, with this amazing art project about "cake lines" (based on ley lines, but involving Bill Drummond turning up at yr house and making you a cake) and all this author could do was prattle on about how Cartography was so ~male~ - despite the fact that Bill Drummond pointed out that HIS SISTER was actually an IRL cartographer, not him (he's a cake-baking conceptual artist, talk about "feminine" coded activities) and never mind that the A to Z, the apex of London cartography which he is using to plot his "masculine" map-walks, was designed by ~a woman~ - author dude is so invested in his identity politics of "maps = male" that he cannot abandon it.

This did not hurt *me* beyond the irritation of having to abandon a book I thought I would like. But it certainly hurt him, in terms of, it cost him a sale. It cost me going on twitter and ILX and recommending "hey this is an awesome book" and instead me giving him negative publicity of THIS IS A BADLY WRITTEN AND INACCURATE BOOK.

Example 2 is a bit more worrying to me personally, but still fairly trivial in the grand scheme of things.

2) Because I am a massive Aphex Twin phan, I joined a forum dedicated to that artist and similar electronic music. I encountered there a whole group of angry young men engaged in their own Identity construction. Aphex Twin fandom and Electronic Music was a huge part of their self identity. But they had also constructed this in such a way that AFX and EDM was coded as "Masculine" and that fandom as reinforcing their masculinity.

It took me a while to figure out why I was getting *such* bad treatment on that board - above and beyond the usual newbie hazing and aggro-banter. It wasn't even the kind of angry men going into feminist spaces and intimidating them to get women to shut up. (Though it often took the same forms - harassment, intimidation, rape threats)

What it was was this: the idea of AFX TWIN FANDOM IS MASCULINE was so important to their constructed identity both as music fans and as "masculine" that the idea of a *female* Aphex Twin fan threatened their entire identity. They would keep repeating "no women like this music" not as a statement of fact, but as a statement of identity. And would police its borders rigorously, driving off any women who dared to like their masculine-coded music, in order to preserve, even by force, their construction of masculinity. *Creating* it as a statement of biological fact (no women lasted very long on that forum, because rape threats are kind of an icky thing to have to deal with every time you post) to service their ideas of "masculinity." And then presenting it as fact.

So you take those two stories, and you scale them up (to big things, like my career) and repeat them over and again, twice weekly for an entire life, and you start to understand maybe, why I'm so suspicious of the essentialist constructions of gender.

(I think it's particularly weird to me, as a not very gender conforming woman, that gender is so high up on many people's lists of identity signifiers. Not even addressing "femininity" (which is totally unimportant to me) but "being a woman" is not even top 3 of my identity signifiers (in fact, it's so subliminal it's like "being human" it's not even an issue to me until someone else points it out - which, unfortunately, they do, at least once a day.) I'd put things like "artist" and "music fan" and "feminist" way higher than "being a woman" (Yes, I know that last one sounds weird, but I don't believe that "feminist" means "being a woman" so much as it means "pro gender equality") on the big list of Things That Construct WCC's Identity.)

Sorry these examples are so personal and anecdotey - I know the plural of anecdote is not data, but the personal *is* political, as evidenced by how rigorously these men defend their identity politics.

that post demands a longer and more thoughtful response, but i want to hop in while i have a second and say YES I AGREE with so much of it, and that gender-specific responses (per your second anecdote) are often cloaked as 'convention' and 'tradition' b/c it is otherwise uncomfortable w/ a privilaged group to confront its own prejudice.

the whole "IDM (yeuch) is boy's only music" plays as a running trope amongst its detractors, too. but with the same reinforcement of stereotypes i guess?

Not to derail into WCC obsession land but... I get that about IDM coding "male" but - ~Aphex Twin~?!? Really?!?! Dude who appeared on the cover of the NME wearing a bikini and in fact a female body? Dude who addressed the tendering if electronic music with "girl songs" and "boy songs" and "girl/boy songs" - this guy? You're using him to construct an image of "masculinity" that excludes women at the end of a rape threat? Really?

HOW?

the rape threat is disgusting and inexcusable but Aphex Twin is also "difficult music", "collectable", "techie", "beardy" , all do have male associations ( without any tangible reason inherent to any of those attributes except the last ! but the stereotype *is* there)

He's also long haired and slightly effeminate in his beauty and he's a big sappy Celt who writes Satie inspired ballads for his Mum's birthday?

But this isn't "wah watmm sucks" it's about the construction of "male" identity through female-excluding spaces.

And not even in an honest way, like the "no boys thread" is an acknowledgement that yes, boys are sometimes interested in the things girls discuss on their own, but we'd rather be on our own kind. It's this highly gendered exclusion based on ~pretending women are not interested or biologically incapable~ of gender neutral spaces men wish to claim.

And it's often not even about male bonding or identity but about claiming things which bring power, money or acclaim so as to exclude women from all three

On our own / with our own kind. Sorry clumsy construction.

i guess some of Richard's more boneheadedly boyish fans can take the whole "Windowlicker" bikini thing as a playground joke and nothing more disturbing to their libidos.

yeah, i feel like the bikini thing played out as a gross-out joke rather than a feminising, in the discourse i read about it at the time at least. (and by discourse, let's be clear, i mean select magazine)

now to read WCC's post properly!

harbl, we should make that book club happen! (possibly w/o my mum, i am not bringing her to ilx)

Given the context of his other work, I don't read it as gross-out but whatevs, this is not AFX: C or D

It's about how men construct these rules of "X = feminine; Y = masculine" Very actively chase you out of Y, then claim "no women are in Y" as ~proof~ of Y's inherent "masculinity."

It's the same thing as Baron-Cohen (the neuroscientist one not the comedian) claiming that there is "male brain" and "female brain" and then writing a test for "female brain" on which actual women score an average of 40%.

My limited exposure to AFX part seven:

The video to Windowlicker. First part is the lonnng bit where two dudes in a car agressively (well, one of them is, the other is "whoa, be nicer!") hassling two girls to get into their car for specific reason.

Then, just as it's getting boring, Ricky smashes into the car removing it and the 2 MEN!, and seduces the two girls by sort of morphing them into himself and vice versa.

Now, is that a fairly feminine outcome, or am I over-reading?

WCC, I think your first example emphasises one of the funny things about closing things off by gender, which is the use of negative language about [hobby/trait/tendency] as a way of keeping other people out.

there's a lot of "this is a MALE thing that MEN do because we're boring and spoddy and get obsessive about stuff and our wives just don't understand" language used around quite geeky things - and because it sounds like a self-criticism it's considered 'okay', as a way of talking. but e.g. there's a lot of anger among geeky women about the way it's used as a barrier, "women just aren't interested in this" so you specifically as a woman can't be interested in this.

i think the second 'geeky' could have been instead 'women who are into sci-fi', i was kind of specifically thinking of some arguments around the founding of that website The Mary Sue

Most men seem to read it as competitive dickwaving - AFX as bigger pimp than the 2 wannabes / scrubs trying to pick up girls with no cash. But to me, the whole morphing thing and becoming one another was a genderfuck that outweighed the "man performing masculinity in front of bevy of naked girls and the rivals he has bested" because what he was performing was so NOT heteronormativity.

But this is not an AFX thread, are y'all just ignoring everything else I said in that massive post?

Ha x-post w C v much not ignoring.

Sci-Fi is a HUGE one & prob would have been a better example but I haven't been part of any scifi communities in years bcuz electronic music is my scifi. Also the biggest scifi geeks I know are ALL women.

OK, maybe a nother angle:

Stereotypical behaviour: The Man goes off to do his 'hobbieh' while the wife shrugs and goes off shopping with the girls. But on entering the hobbispace, oh noe another girl! Must not make move on her! must not flirt! I know I'll insult her and she will never look like making a move!

I find male-only groups/spaces somewhat alien and would be depressed to think of any of my activities as masculine-coded.

I find sci-fi spaces somewhat alien, but hey.

So women must be excluded from masculine space because their pesky temptress ways mean that men cannot control their sexuality? Oh come off it, that one is Older Than Dirt and it's one of the founding principles of Rape Culture. #NotBuyingIt

i really don't think it's about feeling constrained by yr desire to flirt w/o insulting. but there is certainly a way in which people who conceive of these spaces as 'masculine' do feel constrained if not threatened by a female presence.

and maybe that's a feeling that needs to be patiently worked out if there's ever to be a solution.

i'm sure men only spaces exist in part because some men feel threatened by female sexuality, and that needn't be expressed purely as "away vile temptress"? that inability to relate to women other than in terms of their desirability/undesirability underpins rape culture but it's problematic in plenty of other ways too - libido destroying reason is another classic "the boys can't help it" identity ish and at the same time as it serves to exclude women from swathes of discourse it perma-cripples swathes of men in a permanent adolescence. (which is still a privileged state within the kyriarchy yes)

question tho, isn't there a more general division happening here between, for want of a better phrase, the libido-led and the intellect-led? a division that also cuts across normative gender lines?

Must be (excluded)? No of course not. it all comes down to basic ignorance, of course.

Men are allowed to speak their desire without losing authority but godhelpyou if you as a woman bring sexuality into the ring (your own or anyone else's) because you can be one or the other, never both but that's another kettle of fish.

I understand the desire to take a vacation from sexual temptation but male only spaces have usually been more annoying than relaxing in my experience.

xp

it's a kettle this thread can explore tho?

and yeah huge awful double standards still in play but female sexuality is a little way out of the angels vs whores box by now surely?

I'm not ignoring, I just can't speak w/ much experience about the second scenario – I have such unremittingly terrible taste in music, and such a preference for mid-century melodic drivel that my tastes transgress boundaries far beyond the gender-inflected ones, and kind of fail in a way that preculdes any serious consideration. IOW, you are potentially right, but I wouldn't know, and I don't have an analogue in my own life for comparison.

As to the first example... I think the reactive gendering of activities you cite – the attachment of a gender/sexuality sum to an innately neutral activity – is a very real thing and has as much to do with fear of sissiness or faggotry on behalf of the men themselves, as with an outward directed pressure toward women. This doesn't make the labels less offensive – it reduces the participation of women to an epsilon - but is in significant fashion a construct for power-holding men to elevate their own preferences. Anecdotally, I enjoy growing small potted herb plants and flowers. I was well into my 20s before I acknowledged that (a) I liked this activity and (b) I had avoided participating because I felt it wasn't proper/appropriate/sissyish (c) it had been a favorite childhood hobby to garden with my grandmother that I had stopped as a teenager. What I mean to illustrate is that in the experience of my life, this type of indoor gardening was a feminized activity* in a strictly non-valuative way, but nevertheless one that I felt I could not access for fear of transgressing a strictly described gender stereotype.

* Feminized in the sense that I could not participate, and I was masculine, and the container gardeners in my circle were female. The singular experience trumped the larger cultural one that says 'gardening is an obv. gender-neutral activity,' and was directed only inward – I didn't, to the best of my recollection, make any assumption or attach meaning to any male gardeners I encountered.

that post is like an hour old, sorry

remy, what does "reduces... to an epsilon" mean? i've never come across it before and google's not being super helpful.

epsilon is a maths analogy! it's something very very small

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Epsilon.html

just a mathy way of saying 'makes women a trivial sum'

maths analogies! awesome, i am using that one forever.

Wow, this thread. Holy hell. By the way, if you start your argument on the premise that a very very common turn of phrase is actually something to be taken painstakingly literally, you've already lost.

I can't deal with the multitude of points and ideas that have been on this thread since last I checked in, so I'm just gonna...

i don't know much about the trans experience or trans norms at all. i was raised by two cisgender lesbians & a hetero pair of parents, and i feel like i have some sense of what friends mean when they describe themselves as queer, but i haven't known or read of much of the trans experience. does anyone have suggestions on that?

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, February 14, 2012 6:50 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

My friend has written a good personal column about it, if you're interested? http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/series/transgender-journey

Also, I saw someone ask for a clarification of 'cisgender' upthread, but not sure if anyone answered? I know wiki's not the best resource, but this sort of covers it. Basically, it's in contrast to 'trans' but without the highly offensive use of terms like 'normal' that people often use without thinking (I'm sure I have done in the past).

cis gay men seem to get especially het up about the word 'cis' ime - like i've seen a few bloggers claim they don't like the word because it sounds like "sissy" and is thus feminizing/demeaning (and yet they're content to fling the word 'tranny' around as if that word isn't extremely problematic either)

i like cis because it's both a good shorthand that dispels the idea of all trans ppl as being 'other' and bcz it's etymologically consistent

huh I've never seen this cisgender term before, interesting.

Any dude, gay or otherwise, who gets het up about "feminising" being inherently "demeaning" can GTFO AFAIC.

I mean I get the negative reductive stereotypes of gay men as effete can be pretty offensive and RONG but that derives its power from an intensely misogynist worldview that sees femininity as naturally tainted as much as reductive ideas about homosexuality.

sure - otoh it isn't really that surprising that some gay men overcompensate in the masculine gender roles dept. defense mechanism etc

"het up" <-- also problematic :)

i like cis as useful & necessary shorthand but i'm also aware of how jargony it can come across to people who haven't heard it before - the influence of academia and academic language on queer/feminist theory is not something i would dismiss but i think it's also helpful (and necessary!) to move away from it if we actually want to effect this change we talk about.

SO MANY gay men i've known have casually flung around "tranny" (and terms like "slut", "slag" too for that matter) and i fucking hate it.

lol mark