So, I promised a friend a while ago that I would do a take-down of Gia Milinovich’s latest post. However, I was beaten to it by someone who did a much better job than I probably would have done. Its well-thought-out, very detailed, includes solid sources, and it is a good read. There is also a great response here.
I have to admit that I was planning something a little more terse that included this video about The Heart and an allusion to the movie Kindergarten Cop where a young boy raises his hand in class, and creates a comical and awkward moment for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character when he blurts out, “Boys have a penis and girls have a vagina.”
From there, of course, I would comment on the irony of pedantically pining on about how the concept of LOVE being in the HEART is a social construct and then taking for gratis that the essence of SEX is in the JUNK. Maybe I’d do a little twirl and point out that there’s a REALLY long logical chasm between stating that “gender orientation has a neurological component” and parroting a hyper-traditionalist talking point about the “LAAADDDDYYY BRRRRRAAAAIN” (thoroughly debunked here) – y’know, just for completeness.
But since someone else did it better, instead of harping on that dead horse, my Plan B is to answer one of the comments on the thread.
Now, when I first read the comment rather quickly, I formed an incomplete concept of its meaning. So, in my mind (before I sat in front of my computer to type this) I was formulating a nice little happy post about how acknowledging the likelihood of the existence of gender orientation and respecting gender self-identification did not magically preclude feminist social commentary on gender roles and gender constructs; or fighting against the power dynamics of gendered social classes. Respecting individuality does not equate to respecting the confines and norms that dictate “what is feminine”, “what is masculine” or a person’s proper social caste within a society obsessed with gender; quite the opposite.
*group hug*
But then I reread it. I’ve copied it here in its entirety:
Rebecca R-C says:
February 13, 2014 at 1:48 pm
Excellent post. It’s unbelievable to think we’ve got to the stage where women are afraid to talk about female biology, but that’s where we are.
With respect to your final point – unfortunately, that is exactly where the conflict comes from, I think. There are some feminists who think that gender takes the form of pernicious and damaging social norms and rules of behaviour that constrain people’s potential, and need to be eradicated. And there are others, influenced by postmodern ways of thinking (albeit not always consciously), who think that gender is a matter of personal identity, of how you feel and define and understand yourself, of how you express your unique and transgressive characteristics.
Those latter people are never going to agree that we should try to eradicate gender, because their entire identity and political activism is bound up in maintaining it – albeit while shaving it down into ever more finegrained but apparently sacrosanct distinctions. I think it’s fundamentally narcissistic. Political action is reduced to playing with or “queering” gender, and adopting novel and apparently transgressive identities. Calls for justice are reduced to claims that people recognise and accept my vision of myself. There’s no room for any social or political change that goes beyond endorsing people’s self definitions. For all its radical pretensions, it’s fundamentally conservative.
One of the problems with this comment is that the person concludes that transgender people existing reinforces “gender”. Since radical feminists tend to define gender as oppression based on gender (and not, you know, gender), you hear this all the time from the TERF crew. They equate being a transgender person with being a cartoon of a “man” or a “woman” who performs stereotypical gender roles. They often use dehumanizing language such as “Frankenstein” or refer to “lopping” body parts off. If you don’t know, they are run of the mill bigots.
I’m not accusing Rebecca R-C of this, she takes a different route.
Now, in reality, not all transgender people express their gender the same way and their gender expression runs the gambit just like cis folks (go figure). Not to mention, not too long ago, the medical protocols were written up in such a way that transgender people were often required to act “like a man” or “like a woman” in order to attain transition-related medical care. This sometimes necessarily involved performing for their therapists, presenting in a gender normative way and lying about how they felt, to save their own lives.
I mean, it’s really pretty sick to accuse transgender people of reinforcing norms (as a group) that were once used to bar some of them from potentially life-saving medical care.
However, she goes a step further really. She’s not actually making that argument. She’s making the opposite argument. She takes issue with trans activists parsing the concepts of “sex” and “gender” to be more meaningful instead of using “sex” and “gender” as mutually exclusive dualist umbrella terms for stuff and things. She alludes to the fact that many trans folks use (as she puts it) “novel and apparently transgressive identities” to describe themselves. So, her argument is that since transgender people (in actually) are very individual and are NOT actually hyper-normative in their gender expression and some people use words to describe this: they are reinforcing gender.
Let’s recap:
Trans people are hypernormitive in their gender expression therefor they reinforce gender.
Trans people are not hypernormative in their gender expression therefor they reinforce gender.
Yeah – so – really any old argument will do for your average terfesque radfem as long as the last line of thinking is: transgender people reinforce gender, gender is bad, therefor trans people (particularly trans women) suck.
But of course, you can’t just say, “trans people suck” because that wouldn’t be socially acceptable and is devoid of a proper rationalization. I mean – bigotry can’t be naked! You have to dress it up in pseudointellectual bullshit or 7th grade science or casual condescension clothed in concern or penis-related political points about pissing in public. You know – whatever. You can’t just SAY that.
So, the last line might be restated as “therefor trans people are hurting themselves” or “therefor trans people are appropriating womyn” or “therefor trans women are socialized as men and are a threat” or “therefor, in a gender-less utopia, trans people would not exist”.
What route did she take? How does she frame her conclusion? How does she state her “therefor transgender people suck” in a reasonable sounding and civil way?
“I think it’s fundamentally narcissistic…There’s no room for any social or political change that goes beyond endorsing people’s self definitions.”
So, I really wish I could write a fuzzy post about how you can actually manage to respect people and still discuss “social and political change”. However, I’m not sure how far I’m going to get attempting to find common ground with an ideological argument that appears to contain the following stance:
Respecting individuality is incompatible with the social change I wish to see in the world.
This is similar to the arguments made by Julie Burchill in her recent transmisogynistic screed against the concept of intersectionality where she makes these statements:
“…the diversity movement has given us a rainbow coalition of cranks and charlatans. Which has, in turn, has given us intersectionality.”
And
“Because intersectionality is actually the opposite of socialism! Intersectionality believes that there is ‘no such thing as society’ — just various special interests.”
Because, I guess, there just wasn’t enough fascism in my feminism. Thanks! I know there might be some nation-specific context in there, that takes the edge off that, but she sounds like your average American neo-conservative, who sees themselves as the default, complaining about those homosexuals and Muslims and black people and other “special interests”.
Now, I want to be careful to be some-what fair and not conflate Gia Millinovich’s, Rebecca R-C’s, and Julie Burchill’s ideas. I suspect that Gia Millinovich might distance herself from some of the more vitriolic white-supremacist-light rantings of Julie Burchill.
Gia has gone yet another route.
Because nothing says ABOLISH GENDER like insisting that someone should be able to “live as a woman” (and that “living as a woman” means being feminine) – you know, doing what women do, wearing what women wear, and jumping into that nice little “woman box”.
I mean, does Gia really think that when someone who is AMAB (assigned male at birth) explains that she is a woman that what she likely really means is that she wants to wear pink socks, watch figure skating and gossip over ice-cream and that’s what makes her a woman?!
Holy fucking christ.
dkrehab Thumbs Up said:
I’m an old, white, angry male [as described by the politically conservative politicians], but I’m not a Conservative. Actually, i’m a loudmouth progressive who has problems [among many things] with labels people use on other people.
When I was in my mid-20s, I was in an elevator, riding up 40 floors and tried to think about how humans view other humans – by what characteristics we see that impact our brains and cause reactions. I realized it was more than “seeing,” it includes smell, and our reactions are based on height, girth, color of clothing, if a matching pattern or grouping that fits the viewers brain concepts, tidyness, eye contact or lack thereof, and many other key indicators. For example, I’d never worn red shirts to that time, but I saw a woman wearing a red shirt that I thought the color would look good on me, not the style or accutrements, just the color. About two years later, when buying new shirts for myself, I looked at a red shirt, liked it with the tie I’d previously selected, and bought both shirt and tie.
These are visceral reactions to brain sensors, not all require external labelling, but do require personal understanding as to what fits oneself’s personality and senses.
My young grsnddaughter often selects different color and pattern combinations of pajama tops and bottoms, because she “likes them.” This is not a gender”thing,” but is a self-brain construct of what patterns/colors she likes.Further, when walking in stores, she comments about color combinations she sees and likes. These patterns “fit” her brain. Her younger brother reacts in a similar manner to different colors and patterns, but uses different words, or gestures, to describe his reactions to these patterns.
I bring all of this up because I don’t ascribe it to gender identification, or gender roles, nor gender labelling. It is the patterns that our brains”see” and react to. A further example to describe the ways our brains work. My two children, a girl and a boy, and me, all think in math contexts; my daughter knows formulas, my son seems to intuitively”know” the answers, I seem to recognize the patterns or groupings. These are not gender-based, but how individual brains are wired. They do not require labelling to function, nor do they fit “stereotypical ” gender-based groupings. It is not always necessary to label something to understand, or accept, it. This is the same for understanding, and accepting, other people.
M. A. Melby said:
I suspect, at some point, the labels of gay, straight, bi, etc will no longer really be that important. People will simply fall in love with whomever they fall in love with, and the use and policing of these labels will be less of a thing.
However, right now, those identities are important because of the struggle faced by the LGB community. If there is no identity – there is no community. When a group is marginalized, forming some semblance of community can provide a very means of survival.
The more that group is integrated into larger society – in a REAL and equal way – the less that identity requires defense and definition.
I mean, the moment those who are able to do math in their head are isolated, harassed, and socially ostracized – is the day that a term is needed to describe that group.
However, just as there are people who simply will never be attracted to someone of a particular gender or attracted to someone having a particular body; there will, most likely, be people who identify strongly as a particular sex and that identity will likely always be socially relevant.
I don’t KNOW this – but from what I do know – it appears to be how our biology works: that gender orientation is as much a part of sexual dimorphism as chromosomes and genitals. Gender orientation is the aspect of neurology that makes us aware of our sexed bodies.
So, gender dysphoria and gender angst aren’t going to just disappear if gender roles are less strict – because they aren’t ABOUT gender roles – they are about (in an extremely fundamental way) neurology.
I suspect though, in the future, an assumption of a gendered pronoun will become less accepted (get used to singular “they”) and a binary gender less imposed.
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