I don’t like the word “fail” here. If the standard definitions don’t include a category into which someone feels they comfortably fit, it’s the categories that have failed, not the person.
Not that I’m suggesting you don’t know this or are arguing otherwise, I’m just picking up on some ambiguous language.
Yeah, i didn’t word that very well.
I think you ned to be careful about conflating “biological sex” and gender identity here.
It is objectively scientifically true that “biological sex” is very strongly bimodal. Physiological intersex conditions are extremely rare. The estimates of the order of 1% that have got some press are nonsense, using a ridiculously broad definition. The true figure for which the physiological phenotype is not clearly male or female is probably two orders of magnitude lower than this. And it’s scientifically appropriate to classify physiological intersex conditions as abnormal.
Gender identity (and presentation) on the other hand, while still bimodal with the modes corresponding to male and female, is more weakly bimodal with a hugely variable spectrum. And there is no “normal” or “abnormal” here.
I think it’s a mistake to try to “justify” anything about the broad diversity of gender identity by reference to diversity of physiology (“biological sex”). The former does not depend remotely on the latter, and the latter really does not objectively exist to any significant extent (at least not in the sense of people who do not physiologically correspond to the distinct male/female modes).
I do not present as female. I have some garments that have nothing about their design that makes them specifically structured to be worn by a person with a female body, but which are culturally associated with girls and women. They make good statements, they serve as symbolic representations, but even when I wear them, anyone seeing me at close range is unlikely to mentally categorize me as a female person.
And no, it’s not just me.
Can you give me an example, if you’re comfortable doing so? I’m always intrigued by the way fashion is connected to gender (the colors offered to boys and girls, for example)
Skirts are a good example. In other cultures / at other times, they were considered normative garments for males (whether they called them “skirts” or not), but in our culture and era they’re so totally associated with female people that we use the silhouette of someone wearing a skirt to signify the women’s bathroom.
Ah, yes that makes sense. As an aside, a kilt would be an interesting case. A person assigned female but who identifies as male could wear one and still be “seen” as female since it looks like a skirt, but it would still “count” as a male garment? Or likely I’m overthinking it-I know it’s not a game and I’m not intending to approach it in a frivolous manner. Apologies if my musing is offensive and thanks for answering my question.
I’m guessing most Republicans wouldn’t notice the distinction.
That is part of the bigger root issue, isn’t it – that there are these categories that have been established at some point, either by countless generations of social evolution or by scholarly consensus, and while that is useful as otherwise you’d have to keep track of 7.2 billion distinct identities, it takes root in many parts of the population that it must be because categories and how you fit into them is a Truth about existence, and it’s just a matter of finding what are the right categories and fits and then all will be fine.
So we wind up with large segments of the public expecting that everyone has got to fit into a box in the system they embrace and if that does not happen, or it is questioned if their expectation itself is what fails, then that somehow subversive, an attack on their Truth.
(As mentioned, so, not everyone nonconforming has to then, ironically, conform to one of a set of specific and fixed ways of being nonconforming, in order to get on with their lives. They just need to be allowed to get on with their lives.)
Calling back to the general thread topic, all that is especially aggravating to those whose ideological worldview is that there is a fixed and finite hierarchy ordained by Heaven or “natural law” of every person (and group) in their place and in their role, and that everyone must Know Their Place and stay in it, and those who don’t are a threat to be supressed.
Context probably matters a great deal.
There actually is a difference between and man’s and a lady’s kilt (the lady kilt is longer and has fewer pleats/bulk, for example) but outside of that particular sub-culture people likely won’t know the difference. Back when I was playing bagpipes there was some conflict, particularly with old timers, regarding women pipers and drummers wearing “men’s clothing” and whether or not the women players should be wearing female Highland attire or if they should be uniform with the men in wearing men’s kilts.
Men in the Scottish kilt-wearing crowd can be quite protective of their garment styling.
But like I said, outside that sub-culture that distinction may not be perceived.
Thank you for that information. I had no idea that lady kilts were even a thing! I guess there’s conflict and new discussions everywhere you turn. Are bagpipe players generally a pretty conservative lot (socially speaking) in your experience?
Back when I was first learning to play them (1980’s, or 40 years ago) in general yes, there was a strong conservative bent. It was by no means universal, but there was a definite group that wanted to keep it strictly to those who were Scottish by descent, handing the music down father to son. Very much to son - I ran into more than one old guy who was FURIOUS that not only were women being taught to play but having the audacity to play in public. (Heh. YOU try to find a place to practice those “discreetly” or even “in secret” without half the neighborhood knowing someone is playing bagpipes.) The problem, of course, is that this results in the practice slowly dying out. It didn’t help the same crowd wanted to keep things absolutely the same without any changes or modernization, which didn’t help either. Honestly, I’ve met Amish people more open to new technology than those old geezers. Bands run by those sorts didn’t have to consider the questions about costuming women because they simply didn’t allow women into their groups. In their mind playing bagpipes was something MEN did, not women, and certainly not anyone with pretensions of being a lady.
Out of necessity, I was with people more open-minded (being a woman not of Scottish descent). They did exist, and they were growing in number. Because they saw the clothes they performed in as costumes they didn’t have a problem with women wearing men’s kilts. They also did things like having an African-American bass drummer (Fort Dearborn band). Outside of “bagpipe bands” performing in parades, you also had other people incorporating bagpipes into more modern music - “fusion”, jazz, a sort of pop/folk genre, and so on.
These days, you have some people doing some very innovative music with the Highland bagpipes that is anything but traditional. Some of them are women. Some went the other way to even older influences and are now performing in wrapped rather than sewn-pleats kilts and shirts optional. Body paint and/or tattoos optional. They may be looking back to older traditions but the current playing/performing they’re doing is a lot looser with fewer rules. The old geezers who’d get apoplectic at the notion I was wearing a men’s kilt and performing in public have all, literally, died off from old age and we don’t have to listen to their whining any more.
So yes, there is a conservative element but they don’t hold the sway they used to. There is still a very old-fashioned/conservative type of playing for those who fancy it, just as there are still people performing “classical music” in symphonies, but while they’re mostly performing within those constraints a lot of people performing look different than a couple generations ago, and outside of those formal performances they can often be seen playing in a looser and more modern manner. Likewise, a lot of the modern pipers doing cross-genre stuff still respect the older traditions and can perform the older, more constrained music when they want to. They just don’t feel as bound by it as their grandparents.
For the record - I still have the men’s kilt I used to perform in, and I still have the lady’s kilt I was married in. As someone who has worn both while there is a certain superficial similarity they hang differently on the body and feel different when you wear them. Sort of the difference between rugged male work pants and the clinging, soft stretchy yoga pants that are seen as feminine attire in our culture. The men’s kilt is intended for men’s bodies, they don’t fit women the same way. Women’s kilts fit women’s waists and hips better, and they aren’t as heavy (literally - there is a noticeable weight difference). Add in differences in accessories such as belts and sporrans and it’s even more pronounced (“sporran” is Gaelic for purse - women wearing women’s kilts will carry purses, but men will be VERY insistent when speaking English that they are wearing sporrans because “purse” is so gendered in our culture).
Thank you! That was a fun read!
Today I learned about bagpipe politics. Who knew.
Which is literally the point. They’re not remotely the same thing. No one who looked up the word furry, let alone talked to them, would think they were the same thing.
I forgive getting furries mixed up with the furry fetish. The latter got a lot of press early on, and people had to clarify that most furries just are fans of anthropomorphic animals. But thinking these long known people who get full body tattoos are somehow part of the furry community is ludicrous.
That’s why I think the idea came from trolls. Furries have long been trolled for being different. I suspect some idiot pretended these were furries as part of trashing them, or even just to see how gullible these guys were—how little research they’d do and just how out of touch they are.
Your article literally had to actually throw in a woman with a botched plastic surgery job as cat woman, as they needed one more example. They had that much trouble. And yet this is somehow something that all are children are facing?
The guy is freaking out about kids playing pretend.
He just can’t bring himself to admit that he had a crush on Maid Marian.
Most likely they’d get very confused when transmen are brought up, like my mother did when the public bathroom nonsense started. Also unless something has changed since I was a teenager the boys already have their genitals inspected during their sports physicals, it’s called a hernia check. It’d be a simple (if expensive) matter to add blood tests for DNA and hormone screening to boys physicals as a matter of routine. The only way this could inconvenience cisgendered boys is if prostate exams suddenly get required.
Wasn’t sure where else to put this: Theresa May is against conversion therapy. Republicans should take a note.
Republicans take note: “The Deep State got to her too.”
What’s the British version of the Deep State? The Deep Stas(u)te (superfluous u added)?