tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20435429.post2944547572977131965..comments2023-10-20T08:03:50.579-05:00Comments on Blogging While Feminist: Why race is not sex.Plain(s)feministhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15056404699624958898noreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20435429.post-49257363783197174902007-11-26T17:17:00.000-06:002007-11-26T17:17:00.000-06:00Doesn't allowing men to identify as women reinforc...Doesn't allowing men to identify as women reinforce the gender role dichotomy? Take, for example a man claiming to be a woman "inside" because he felt he had "feminine traits" (what are those traits other than upheld gender role stereotypes?) and having terribly invasive sex change surgery?<BR/><BR/>When are we going to simply identify as human beings and not be so driven by these gender constructs as to need modify our bodies to fit them?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20435429.post-66498932833390667702007-01-24T21:34:00.000-06:002007-01-24T21:34:00.000-06:00Maybe it's hard to find a good term because the id...Maybe it's hard to find a good term because the idea is so darn constructed ;)Kelseyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09833213923742764650noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20435429.post-58850616847586946282007-01-24T17:36:00.000-06:002007-01-24T17:36:00.000-06:00Yeah..."biological woman" sounds like a machine of...Yeah..."biological woman" sounds like a machine of some sort. But "born woman" makes everyone else sound artificial.Plain(s)feministhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15056404699624958898noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20435429.post-4893366340483400252007-01-24T09:58:00.000-06:002007-01-24T09:58:00.000-06:00Generally if someone tells me she is a woman I bel...Generally if someone tells me she is a woman I believe her. Self-definition is enough for me. <br /><br />On a totally unrelated note, the term "biological woman" has always squicked me out a little bit.Annahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07701924315897238428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20435429.post-91804605720917249732007-01-24T08:45:00.000-06:002007-01-24T08:45:00.000-06:00That's kind of what I'm saying -- there are cleari...That's kind of what I'm saying -- there are clearing more than 2% that don't fit any perfect definition, making biological sex more of a gradiant (with, admittedly, some heaving concentrations in certain areas) than a binary.Kelseyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09833213923742764650noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20435429.post-13758237435095899662007-01-23T23:03:00.000-06:002007-01-23T23:03:00.000-06:00So how would you define "woman"?
Oh, Lord! I do...<i>So how would you define "woman"? </i><br /><br />Oh, Lord! I don't know - because of that 2% of intersexed people, and then transgendered people, and then biological women who maybe don't fit common definitions (don't have a vagina and/or uterus, or maybe have xxy chromosomes)... I can't think of a good way to define the term. But I still think the majority of the population is clearly biologically male or female, even if a minority makes a clear definition difficult.Plain(s)feministhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15056404699624958898noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20435429.post-626575334849059872007-01-22T20:00:00.000-06:002007-01-22T20:00:00.000-06:00So how would you define "woman"?So how would you define "woman"?Kelseyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09833213923742764650noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20435429.post-34478416394601786252007-01-21T11:58:00.000-06:002007-01-21T11:58:00.000-06:00plainsfeminist --
Yes. Yes. There's something rea...plainsfeminist --<br /><br />Yes. Yes. There's something really... invigorating? about being with people like you and being away from people who wouldn't understand. Who assume. Who encroach on your space without even meaning to. And this is a lot of women's experience with men, even men they love. I know that as a bi woman, sometimes I'm boggled at the things that come from men I love, men who understand a lot about feminism -- or are even just people who love me and who I know care and listen to me when I talk about women's issues that matter to me.<br /><br />It can be nice, very nice, to get away from all of that.<br /><br />I just think -- and this is me, and where I am, so I'm not trying to tell other women to feel the same -- that those spaces really should be looked at not as political solutions or as keystones for solutions but as vacations. Places to let down your hair and feel safe and secure and proud, but places you will have to eventually leave.<br /><br />Because I think when we get too attached to isolating ourselves, even for REALLY REALLY VALID REASONS, it encourages us to develop a mindset that makes it eventually very hard for us to let in others who have needs for similar space (witness the MichFest craziness about "women born women.")<br /><br />I mean, I know that one thing I really love, as someone who is very deeply into SM and very involved in the community, is just to go to a club every now and then and just be immersed in people like me, with no fear of some other feminist being offended by my arousal or my smile or the people I associate with there or whatever.<br /><br />And that's all great. But what's not great is not caring about those other people and not respecting their experiences and the things that makes them uneasy about what I do (or the bad experiences they have had with power in sexual relationships, which are very, very real.) I have to come back out into a world where my identity isn't the be all and end all. Even a world where some people are scared of it. I have to be mature enough to handle it.<br /><br />And I find that starts to get more and more difficult if I start trying to invest that, or any one of my identities, with too much importance. There's a lot about women, women's culture, feminist consciousness and sisterhood that is beautiful and strong and a very real tool to fix the world. There's a lot in leather culture -- the celebration of many kinds of body and many forms of desire, the emphasis not just on thin sexual consent but on enthusiastic desire -- that also informs my views of how to change the world. Same with disability rights and disability culture.<br /><br />But all of those things are a piece of me, a part of a big tapestry. Wedging myself into one and only one -- and damn have I done this, more than once -- just does no justice to who I am or to who anyone else is.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20435429.post-7965990787135349742007-01-21T00:30:00.000-06:002007-01-21T00:30:00.000-06:00Trin - Absolutely. And you wrote about that so ge...Trin - Absolutely. And you wrote about that so generously - I've been wanting to say something similar but couldn't think of a way to say it without it coming across like, "kids! I know this is all very exciting to you because it's still new to you, but grow up already!" But I think you're right - people who are newly politicized (me as an undergrad in Women's Studies, for example) see their politics as not only a way to solve the problems of the world, but as THE ONLY way to solve the problems. And also, for a lot of us, the movement is healing on a personal level, a way to fight back against oppression, etc.<br /><br />What confounds me though is the women who've been in the movement for a long time and who still have this same sort of inward focus. I think that in great part it's due to the loss of so many women's and lesbian spaces, which was happening simultaneously to the expansion of "lesbian and gay" titles to include bi/trans/etc. That fear of being erased and losing that space is real and justified, and I'm sympathetic to that.<br /><br />I'm NOT sympathetic to the notion that we have a right to associate with those whom we want to associate with, and this is a contradiction I can't resolve. I'm for women-only space - I just think it shouldn't exclude transwomen. I'm against male fraternities based on their histories of misogyny disguised as male bonding. I'm for MichFest, but I've never been because of their exclusion of transwomen. And I'm also not thrilled with the pushes to diversify groups that don't want bis/trans/etc. to be part (not that I've never done this, however).<br /><br />Anyway, this "I love being with women and I should be allowed to be with only women" stuff is something I both relate to and appreciate and also see as very very uncomfortably similar to "I love being with white people and I should be allowed to be with only white people." I can't help but come away from that with a bad taste in my mouth.Plain(s)feministhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15056404699624958898noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20435429.post-28048625677211386202007-01-20T19:10:00.000-06:002007-01-20T19:10:00.000-06:00Amen sister!
I've never understood why certain fem...Amen sister!<br />I've never understood why certain feminists are so uptight. I've read some of the blog posts out there lately too that have ripped transgendered persons to shreds. What's the point? The same type of complaining comes from those feminists who want to argue about make up and whether a man should open the door for a woman or not. What a waste of time! This really makes the movement look infantile. There are greater issues such as domestic violence, equal pay for women, and rape to focus on. These petty arguments about whether a transgendered MTF should or should not be allowed to use the women's bathroom are really tiring- let's move on.SallySunshinehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17417077309361828475noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20435429.post-66739095765803835852007-01-20T16:30:00.000-06:002007-01-20T16:30:00.000-06:00"Meanwhile, of the lesbian separatists and the rad..."Meanwhile, of the lesbian separatists and the radical feminists I've known? Lots and lots have shouted down other women, silenced men and women and lesbians and bisexuals. And you know what that tells me?"<br /><br />Personally, and I'm a weird one and very much on the outskirts, but I think this kind of thing just sort of happens any time identity becomes the foremost thing in your mind.<br /><br />I mean, I'm thinking here of some of the models of sexual orientation... eh. I don't know the name for these theories. I wish I could think of it now, and link to them. If anyone knows what I'm talking about and can give the term, it'd be truly helpful.<br /><br />But that say you start out questioning, "I might be queer", and then you decide you are, and then there's a stage where you're really loud and proud and sticking up for yourself and hiding nothing and fiercely defending yourself, an then after that comes acceptance, and actually you calm down and aren't so immersed in those issues any more.<br /><br />I think the same happens with feminism, particularly with bougie white feminism. You read all this stuff and you want to belong, to fight for women, to claim your space -- and you lose sight of all the fault lines.<br /><br />I know it's only recently for me that I'm realizing that I have some very different views than what I see as feminist canon on sexuality, on strategies for repro rights, etc. because I am also a woman with a disability. And the issues around sexuality for us are not so much objectification/being overriden by male desire as invisibility/erasure of our desire even existing, and on repro rights are not so much access to abortion as concerns about prenatal testing in an ableist world, and about support for wwd who choose to get pregnant and (gasp!) bring people like us into the world or (gasp!) assume we can CARE FOR CHILDREN, even with our supposedly stunted bodies or minds.<br /><br />And so I think a lot of women come to feminism with the thought or the hope that all women will face the same struggles and need the same things, and "women's space" will provide them all. But the problem is that as it begins to become truly clear that this isn't the case, women get shouted down or driven out on the assumption that everyone ELSE has the same needs, and it's just that pesky transwoman/WOC/WWD/bisexual/straight woman that doesn't get it and shouldn't be so goddamn destructive and keep derailing the whole movement! <br /><br />When of course what we should be asking is "oh, how can we be YOUR sister, too?"Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20435429.post-3822835869317749162007-01-20T12:43:00.000-06:002007-01-20T12:43:00.000-06:00Kelsey,
That's why I hedged by saying "the vast ma...Kelsey,<br />That's why I hedged by saying "the vast majority" - I think it's something like 2% of the population that are born with "ambiguous" genitals and chromosomal "abnormalities", but for the most part, sex, unlike gender, is biological. Gender is completely invented, however.<br /><br />Jane,<br />Good questions - I don't know. Academically, it's understood that race is a social construct, but as it obviously has real and lasting meaning, knowing this and acting on it are two totally different things. I do think, though, that w/re to sex and gender, this is exactly the fear: if transwomen are accepted as "real" women, it blurs the boundaries between the sexes and it brings into focus how socially constructed much of our thinking about sex and gender is. This, then, threatens feminisms and other politics that are based on the notions of essential differences between men and women.Plain(s)feministhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15056404699624958898noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20435429.post-3937428988487432422007-01-20T01:38:00.000-06:002007-01-20T01:38:00.000-06:00Do you think that if transgender women came to be ...Do you think that if transgender women came to be more widely accepted as "true" women, we would see sex/gender as more of a social construct than we do now? And maybe if that happened we would increasingly perceive race as a social construct too, considering that so many parallels are - mistakenly or not - drawn between sex and race? (in the case you are referring to, the argument being that if you can't change one, you can't change the other). <br /><br />I don't know. I am realizing how much I don't know, even though I consider myself a feminist.<br /><br />BTW, I do agree that race is a social construct - I just wonder if we (as a society) have gotten far away from a general awareness of that fact.evilcityjanehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15307272818985442338noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20435429.post-91272641399498996232007-01-20T01:06:00.000-06:002007-01-20T01:06:00.000-06:00First of all, the vast majority of humans are born...<i>First of all, the vast majority of humans are born members of a sex...But we are born into bodies that are sexed.</i><br /><br />I basically agree with your conclusion, but I'm generally of the opinion the degree to which biological sex is a firm category is really overstated. It is highly constructed, to the point where people think I'm a little nutty to even question it. But that's because the man/woman binary is so ingrained that it's really difficult for people to even begin to look at it critically. There's nothing biologically that absolutely indicates man or woman, just a continuum (admittedly heavily weighted on either side) of traits that we associate with men and women. Even chromosomally, there are variations (not to mention that it's likely that everyone who has done chromosome research has gone in with the assumption that there are two biological sexes and, thus, will be looking for evidence that supports binary and difference, not variation or commonality between the sexes). In the animal world, many species have more than two sexes, but scientist still insist on referring to them as male and female ("That's not a third sex…that's just a small male who has a completely different role in the reproductive process than either the large male or the female). <br /><br />So, yeah, I basically agree with you. But race and sex are alike in that they're both kind of made up.Kelseyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09833213923742764650noreply@blogger.com