I’m saying the jury is out on the existence of sex-based brain differences and we should be careful to not assume that any evidence that does exist has anything to do with gender. It’s just one of those areas that is prone to misinterpretation and bias.
I’m not saying everything can be pinned on society. I believe hormones play an important role in behaviors, just on their own. You can have these influences without there being a neurological component. I think we tend to over fixate on the brain when trying to explain stuff.
I’m sorry that my position has made you feel pounced on. There is sexism being casually expressed in this thread and although I know that it’s not meant to maliciously, it has me worried on a number of levels. Between that and the naked misogyny I’m seeing on other places on the internet, it’s just a weird time.
My husband cares for our daughters. He probably spends more one-on-one time with him than I do.
Is this a female gender role that he is performing? Or is he just a father who has taken active interest in raising his kids? I say the latter.
Transwomen can be SAHPs. I think that is wonderful. Men can do the same thing, and that is also wonderful. It would be sad it someone felt they couldn’t do this unless they transitioned.
I know you said you wouldn’t engage me further, so you probably won’t correct my interpretation if I’m wrong. But it does seem like you’re saying staying home to care for kids goes against being a man.
Even if you told me you could detect a statistically significant difference in brain morphology between men and women, like that the mesencephalon has a slightly higher ratio between two types of neurons, or whatever, why should anyone besides anatomists make anything of it? I guarantee you could not tell me what it meant*, nor (at least we like to pretend) are people robots to that extent anyway. I do not sense that any poster here disagrees.
*Beyond repeating the fact that you made such-and-such a measurement on such-and-such a population and those were the results
@Trinopus, I don’t know if you’re not replying to me for the same reason, but that was also my interpretation of what you are saying. And it surprised me. Apart from anything else, where does that leave the people who claim a non-binary identity?
Its not an or thing, though. Both those statements are true.
Your husband is objectively a father taking active interest in raising his kids. That is just a rephrasing of the statement that he takes care of your kids. But it’s also true that he is performing a female gender role, because in our society it is still the case that being the primary caregiver to children is stereotypically associated with women.
Gender is stereotypes. Everything about it is just things that we associate with one sex or the other. We associate the color pink, elaborate skin care, Barbie dolls, staying home with kids, liking wine more than beer, enjoying books clubs more than pro football, wearing dresses, wearing eye shadow, and a zillion other things with women more than men, and we associate fart jokes, the NFL, liking books about World War II, working on cars, and sneaking away from the family to play golf with men more than women. When things shift to make something different, there’s angry pushback; in the 60s, young men who started wear their hair longer than “really short” were laughed at and called girls and discriminated against; hair length was a BIG DEAL. Today there isn’t nearly the same concern about it because to some extent that stereotype isn’t what it used to be. It was a big deal when women started wearing pants.
Most gender stereotypes are, of course, purely artificial and silly. There have been many societies and time when men were just as prettied up as women, or hand long hair, or wore jewelry, or when stereotypically male jobs were mostly done by women and vice versa. But that is largely all gender is. So yeah, your husband is performing a female gender role, but that doesn’t make him female because it’s just a stereotype he is refusing to bend the knee to. Granted, that’s not a strong stereotype anymore the way it once was.
I’ve been reflecting on this for the last day. Still can’t get over the theory that society actually needs constructs for “men” and “women” that are centered around the performance of traditional gender roles. As if we haven’t been trying to fight this very thing for the past 50 years.
I really hope that trans allies seriously consider what it means to the concept of “woman” if a biologically-defined group (adult human females who aren’t trans) is grouped together with people who are performing and reinforcing stereotypical gender roles that historically have been used to disempower females. Even if all transwomen aren’t doing this role playing, the mere fact that “performing a feminine role” (as @Powers put it) is considered a valid reason for transitioning means “woman” will eventually become shorthand for female stereotypes.
Andrea Long Chu is a transwoman who wrote in her book Females:
I transitioned for gossip and compliments, lipstick and mascara, for crying at the movies, for being someone’s girlfriend . . . for feeling hot, for getting hit on by butches, for that secret knowledge of which dykes to watch out for, for Daisy Dukes, bikini tops, and all the dresses, and, my god, for the breasts.
This isn’t gender dysphoria. This is someone wanting to experience a fantasy of sexualized femininity. Which is no skin off my back or whatever; it’s a free country.
But why are we saying a male who transitions “for gossip and compliments and lipstick” is entitled to be called a woman by society? What entitles someone like Chu to enter women’s locker rooms and demand that women change how they refer to themselves? It’s disturbing that so many people are going along with this idea, as if it totally makes sense that wanting to be sexually objectified under the male gaze goes with being female.
I honestly wonder sometimes if the recent tendency of some people to think non-traditional gender expression makes you the opposite sex is because they’re not aware of the fact people spent decades fighting against gender stereotypes.
I’d agree, but there are too many people old enough to know better pushing these ideas or shrugging them off as no big deal.
It was only last year we had a thread on toxic masculinity. I saw no push back on the idea that “real men don’t do X” (with X being traits typically associated with femininity) was closing men off from their own humanity and causing them harm. Not to say there wasn’t any disagreement, but it wasn’t a controversy to say that forcing sexist expectations upon men is bad stupid and bad.
But fast forward to today and I’m hearing “men” are the category of people who fill the masculine role in society and “women” do the girly feminine things.
I don’t see how we can successfully liberate men from the confines of male gender norms while at the same time treating femininity as more compatible with womanhood than manhood. These are two opposing ideas.
Probably not that much different than she does now, which is likely not that great. I find it hard to believe her dreams at being hit on by “dykes” has come to fruition. Most women I know would be turned off by the ideas she espoused in that book. Can’t imagine she has many girl friends.
Sure there are gender stereotypes, but when it comes down to it we would not say that wearing dresses and eye shadow makes a man a woman any more than it makes him a homosexual.
An interesting case is e.g. that of some traditional Albanian laws and customs. Gender roles are prescribed, society is patrilineal, and women cannot vote, own property, etc. What if you are a woman and you don’t like that? You join the communist revolution… but the traditional way is, you swear an oath of celibacy; you dress as a man, work like a man, smoke and drink and hang out with men, etc., and you’re OK. The same rigid code ensures your “real” sex will never be mentioned or come up, and as far as society is concerned you are a person with a male gender role.
If someone told me those things were the essence of womanhood, I’d tell them to go fuck themselves. I’d like to think that my fellow progressives would understand why, but I don’t know. I have a feeling many would cosign this response if a guy were to say that’s what womanhood is all about. But let a transwoman say that’s why she transitioned and it suddenly becomes impolite to say anything other than “You go, girl.”
As you say, if those are things motivating her to request feminine pronouns and whatnot, OK. But I don’t know why others should be obligated to see her as a woman. I don’t know why we can’t just view her as a transwoman and keep it moving.
I mean, if her narrative weren’t so eye-rolly and I was her friend, maybe I would be willing to give her a “woman” card. But that’s a different thing than believing that everyone with this kind of story is a woman.
She’s been given a platform to speak as a woman too. So we can’t treat her as an obscure nobody that isn’t worth holding up as an example. She, like Caitlyn Jenner, has been given a microphone and allowed to influence public opinion about womanhood. How many feminist scholars have been given this kind of visibility in the last 5 years? None by my counting.
But what takes the cake is Chu casually referring to lesbians as dykes. This person is using a lesbian slur as if it is hers to reclaim and brandish with impunity. Why should it be considered hers? Because she says so? I just can’t get with transwomen calling women dykes and bitches and cunts, even when (or maybe especially when) they are doing it under the pretense of “that’s what we all are, teehee!”
Women would never be socially permitted to throw “tranny” around like it’s ours to reclaim. It would never even occur to me to do that. Yet we’re currently living in times when women are expected to graciously accept it when others outside of our sex class refer to us with dehumanizing slurs.
I didn’t wade through the whole thing, but the beginning at least reads like a slightly less unhinged version of one of Glenn Beck’s conspiracy theories.
The author fails to seriously examine any alternative explanations for the largely anecdotal or cherry-picked information recounted. Notice how she implies that when the Alaska proposition failed by a slim margin, it means the vote was distorted by the outside money being spent. Alaska is one of the most expensive media markets in the country on a per-voter basis, so it makes sense that it would require a lot of spending to move the needle a small amount.
The author also seems to assume that the only reason anyone from the lower 48 would care about transgender folks in tiny little Anchorage is if there was an ulterior motive.
By and large, it’s hard to believe any conspiracy theory that relies on the silence of thousands of people to remain hidden, as this one does.
I don’t know anything about Glenn Beck. But what thousands of people would need to stay silent? There’s nothing wrong or illegal about donating money to charity, and why would ordinary people working for those charities know or care where the money comes from? Who is staying silent in your view?