Transgender is it just me that is totally perplexed?

[MochaSoul]

That's semantics. In Brazil, yes, ancestry is not the main component but people's skin hues are graded hierarchically. It's more insidious because it's harder to define.
I can't read the paper. I'm going by the witch-hunt article MY posted. I'd like to know what Tuvel has to say about objections to Dolezal's reinforcing the colour line. As I think I said on the other thread, I object to her presuming to know and define what it means to be black, by her deception and subsequent justifications. Blackness is not culture. You can throw away culture. You cannot get rid of the fact that once you're out the house you cease to be person and become black person in other people's eyes.

I need to qualify this because in mixed race families like mine there is a racism insidiousness that does penetrate households. It manifests in things like hair. My hair, that of my siblings and my cousins is graded according to nappiness by my mum, my aunts and other generally older generations. Straighter hair good, nappier hair bad. It seems like small thing but it does signal uneasiness with natural African aesthetics. I see that kind of thing as related to racism. Bad manners, clumsiness and intellectual slowness were associated with tribes people who refused adopt standards of whiteness the Portuguese had brought to Angola. All of those seemingly insignificant things were part of my mum and dad's socialisation which was steeped in apartheid (in case people thought it was only a South African thing).

 

[elbows]

I note that the Paris Lees Vogue Suffragette thing lead to a predictable response on twitter, including numerous people having a go at Stella Creasy and accusing her of all the usual betrayals against women.

How I hope this shit is condemned to lurk on the fringes forever more, and people with more care and decency actually bring about both the sensible discussion of the issues, and the protection and gain of rights, freedoms etc.

 

[FabricLiveBaby!]

What better way to celebrate women's suffrage and the unshakling of gender chains than that bastion of revolutionary Feminist thought: a VOGUE front cover?

JFC

I just can't get upset about it. It's actually pretty fucking funny. Like, it's FUCKING VOGUE. WHY IS EVERYONE UPSET?

 

[elbows]

What better way to celebrate women's suffrage and the unshakling of gender chains than that bastion of revolutionary Feminist thought: a VOGUE front cover?

I just can't get upset about it. It's actually pretty fucking funny.

Oh there are many absurdities to be found there, and I am not being uptight about the whole thing. Just the people using it as an excuse to be shitty towards trans people and allies.

 

[Miranda Yardley]

I note that the Paris Lees Vogue Suffragette thing lead to a predictable response on twitter, including numerous people having a go at Stella Creasy and accusing her of all the usual betrayals against women.

How I hope this shit is condemned to lurk on the fringes forever more, and people with more care and decency actually bring about both the sensible discussion of the issues, and the protection and gain of rights, freedoms etc.

Reading like something from a bad 1970s men's magazine, Paris Lees's own words are here The 22 Sexiest Things About Sex :

"She doesn't even preface her list with any real acknowledgment that sex can be great fun, or that women's pleasure is important. It comes across like "women don't really enjoy sex, it's all just so dirty and embarrassing". Way to go, Hannah."

"the sort of women who spend their weekends listening to Kylie and drinking white wine spritzers. The kind of people who bought Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus in the 90s and rabbit dildos in the noughties – but only "for a laugh", because Samantha from Sex and the City had one"

"2 – Socks. When your trusted fuck-buddy stuffs socks inside your mouth and ties your hands behind your back while ramming you like a champ. You people all do that, right?"

"7 – Semen. Is great. I probably like it best when it comes as a surprise (no pun intended) like when you're shagging some guy at a house party and some next dude walks in and you're like "Hey, come join the fun!" but he's so horny as he pulls his dick out he just ends up jizzing over the both of you (seriously, what had we all taken that night?) – or maybe like when you're wanking some stranger off in a dark room and you suddenly feel this warm, wet dripping in-between your legs and down your thighs onto your leather miniskirt. Dude, you didn't tell me you were close! Hot!"

"8 – Your underwear. Call me old-fashioned if you like, but I really don't think you can go wrong slutting it up with lingerie, champagne and copious amounts of you-know-what. It's traditional, innit?"

"11 – Watching yourself be a bad girl in the mirror. I really feel like a spit roast is wasted if the person in the middle doesn't get to see how it looks, 'cause it looks fucking horny."

"12 – Talking dirty. Agreed, it takes some chutzpah and genuine passion to pull it off, but what are you? A mouse? Or a fucker? You're a fucker – so call me a slut and tell me to suck it."

"18 – Doggy style. This is hot when you just want to get fucked like an animal – a dog, say – and it has the added bonus of leaving your hands and mouth free should his friends require simultaneous servicing."

 

[Miranda Yardley]

What better way to celebrate women's suffrage and the unshakling of gender chains than that bastion of revolutionary Feminist thought: putting a man in the centre of a VOGUE front cover shoot?

Fixed it for you.

 

[pengaleng]

you jealous they aint asked you to do a cover shoot?

sit the fuck down.

 

[Miranda Yardley]

You envious they ain't asked you to do a cover shoot?

Sit the fuck down.

LOL! No, to both.

 

[pengaleng]

why have you edited 'corrected' my post? thats really weird and patronising.

dont change my words.

 

[bimble]

This just got published:
Why it’s so unhelpful to talk about the male or female brain | Aeon Essays

The bits about autism I have no clue what to make of but the rest is good - particularly the idea that storytellers over the centuries, even the victorian novelists, grasped non-binaryness better than we do now.

'Perhaps in Victorian society in particular, weighted by illusory trappings from interminable widows’ weeds to age-defying hair dyes for men, these novelists and the people who read their stories were better able to look past the window dressing that defines feminine and masculine, and simply describe – and appreciate – individuals as they were.'

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Reading like something from a bad 1970s men's magazine, Paris Lees's own words are here The 22 Sexiest Things About Sex :

"She doesn't even preface her list with any real acknowledgment that sex can be great fun, or that women's pleasure is important. It comes across like "women don't really enjoy sex, it's all just so dirty and embarrassing". Way to go, Hannah."

"the sort of women who spend their weekends listening to Kylie and drinking white wine spritzers. The kind of people who bought Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus in the 90s and rabbit dildos in the noughties – but only "for a laugh", because Samantha from Sex and the City had one"

"2 – Socks. When your trusted fuck-buddy stuffs socks inside your mouth and ties your hands behind your back while ramming you like a champ. You people all do that, right?"

"7 – Semen. Is great. I probably like it best when it comes as a surprise (no pun intended) like when you're shagging some guy at a house party and some next dude walks in and you're like "Hey, come join the fun!" but he's so horny as he pulls his dick out he just ends up jizzing over the both of you (seriously, what had we all taken that night?) – or maybe like when you're wanking some stranger off in a dark room and you suddenly feel this warm, wet dripping in-between your legs and down your thighs onto your leather miniskirt. Dude, you didn't tell me you were close! Hot!"

"8 – Your underwear. Call me old-fashioned if you like, but I really don't think you can go wrong slutting it up with lingerie, champagne and copious amounts of you-know-what. It's traditional, innit?"

"11 – Watching yourself be a bad girl in the mirror. I really feel like a spit roast is wasted if the person in the middle doesn't get to see how it looks, 'cause it looks fucking horny."

"12 – Talking dirty. Agreed, it takes some chutzpah and genuine passion to pull it off, but what are you? A mouse? Or a fucker? You're a fucker – so call me a slut and tell me to suck it."

"18 – Doggy style. This is hot when you just want to get fucked like an animal – a dog, say – and it has the added bonus of leaving your hands and mouth free should his friends require simultaneous servicing."

I don't get your point. Are you saying that this is a list no cis woman could have made? Is that your point? I bet I could find you something similar written by a cis woman.

 

[Miranda Yardley]

I don't get your point. Are you saying that this is a list no cis woman could have made? Is that your point? I bet I could find you something similar written by a cis woman.

Point I am making is this is a man using language that reinforces negative and objectifying language and stereotypes about women. This are not the words of someone who is a social progressive.

Here's another I Love Wolf-Whistles and Catcalls – Am I a Bad Feminist? :

"I get the stuff about "power imbalance" but it just makes me feel sexy."

"Last summer I went to Ibiza, where I was catcalled, sexually objectified and treated like a piece of meat by men the entire week. And it was absolutely awesome."

"I love catcalls. I love car toots. I love random men smiling “Hello beautiful!” like my mere presence just made their day. I like being called "princess" and ignoring them as I giggle inside. I like being eye-fucked on the escalator and wondering if I’ve just made him spring a boner."

 

[8ball]

Ok, giving it a try in the time I have... I think ALL parties will find plenty to disagree with here:

"Its REALLY hard to explain/tricky" doesn't and cannot cut it for me. It snacks of the bullshit religious indoctrination they (the school) attempted to put me through in Catholic school.

Any difficult questions were met with "eee, well it's complicated" and when that didn't cut it "Don't be a doubting Thomas" (a very bad thing).

This all smells the of same shit. And I can't help smelling it. I really tried to get on the "progressive" band wagon, but the similarities became too overwhelming.. The refusal to answer tricky questions, the dismissal of non belief as something bad, and then the ostricisaion and accusations afterwards if you refuse to lie "YOU HATE GOD. YOU AREN'T TRYING HARD ENOUGH TO FEEL HIM!"

Homosexuality also has a lot of unexplained elements. LOADS of things have unexplained elements. My ideas about where transexuality/transgender fits into things and how it works might not gel with your ideas or those of lots of other people on here, but that's just being in a state of having partial knowledge. Even if there was only ever the case of there ever being one transexual person who wore clothes of the other gender and wanted to be addressed as such, it would still be the civilised thing to do to accept that in interactions.

HOWEVER: I fully understand why those in some parts of the feminist movement have misgivings about such people including themselves in feminist circles, and there are several reasons for this, of (in my opinion) varying degrees of validity.

In terms of relating things to your Catholic upbringing, I'm not too sure what in particular you feel I am expecting you to accept with some kind of handwaving. This struck me as bizarre. I just meant I don't understand how gender identity works and manifests and I can same about various elements of sexuality and personality that I'm sure you'd accept.

And this is something else that niggles... why is one example (Dolezal) exploitation of lack of understanding, but the other (Gender Identity) not when the mechanism is *exactly* the same?

It's not the same mechanism at all. One is a mendacious person trying to get themselves out of the shit, the others is people trying to find a way of explaining their feelings that is quite culturally filtered.

Take the "Aspies/autistic spectrum" thread, if I was to say I felt like "I have a brain that boots up into the wrong operating system", I wouldn't be called a liar or a fantasist or be told "wtf - you're not a computer, you're talking nonsense, shut up" but I'd expect it to be accepted that defining parts of my experience is crunching the linguistic gears a bit.

I think something similar is going on when a transexual person says they feel like eg. "a woman born into a man's body". It's the explanation that feels best.

From what I can see one is a result of a kind of knee-jerk progressivism, and the other a result of hierarchical exploitation (racial exploitation) not being around long enough (10,000 years is the estimate of gendered exploitation IfiRC) in human history for the idea of racial identity as innate to be taken as something as given.

Becuase OF COURSE women have womany identities (OBVIOUSLY) but it's racist to say certain races do (RACIST).

I don't buy this "racial identity" thing in the slightest in terms of relation to gender.
It's just down to a few genes affecting how you look. There's no "binary" expectation either. Is a mixed race kid adopted by a monoracial family going to suffer alienation and confusing to a degree similar to that suffered by an intersex child with male hormones who is brought up as a female (this generally didn't end well to my knowledge and is possibly close in many ways to how some transexual people feel)?

For that matter, shouldn't a "mixed race" person feel totally alienated due to being formed from two races (the answer obviously being no because there is for almost all purposes NO DIFFERENCE between people of different races beyond appearance <genetic> and culture <not genetic>)?

You may deeply feel your race is a part of your identity, but some people are 'meh' about the race thing and identify strongly with, I dunno, fucking cosplay! That doesn't make it the same as gender, or even sexuality. If you said homosexuality was "just thoughts and feelings" you'd be labelled homophobic. Plenty of cases not too long ago of gay men desperately wanting to be able to wish their sexuality away.

Think I've said enough, see y'all later...

 

[pengaleng]

could be from any cis womans personal blog tbh, keep reaching like that, you'll fall over

 

[MochaSoul]

Oh there are many absurdities to be found there, and I am not being uptight about the whole thing. Just the people using it as an excuse to be shitty towards trans people and allies.

DP

 

[MochaSoul]

Oh there are many absurdities to be found there, and I am not being uptight about the whole thing. Just the people using it as an excuse to be shitty towards trans people and allies.

Like the fact Paris Lee would have had the vote 100 years ago type of absurdities?

 

[pengaleng]

now you think a poxy vote would have been enough to be a game changer, interesting

 

[Pickman's model]

This just got published:
Why it’s so unhelpful to talk about the male or female brain | Aeon Essays

The bits about autism I have no clue what to make of but the rest is good - particularly the idea that storytellers over the centuries, even the victorian novelists, grasped non-binaryness better than we do now.

'Perhaps in Victorian society in particular, weighted by illusory trappings from interminable widows’ weeds to age-defying hair dyes for men, these novelists and the people who read their stories were better able to look past the window dressing that defines feminine and masculine, and simply describe – and appreciate – individuals as they were.'

Yeh even those famously monolithic victorian novelists who were of course all m/c cis men

 

[MochaSoul]

now you think a poxy vote would have been enough to be a game changer, interesting

So you can do disingenuous. Congratulations!

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Like the fact Paris Lee would have had the vote 100 years ago type of absurdities?

Here in the UK, she'd have been locked up for being who she is 100 years ago.

 

[pengaleng]

So you can do disingenuous. Congratulations!

well done for using the big words?

 

[Athos]

That's semantics. In Brazil, yes, ancestry is not the main component but people's skin hues are graded hierarchically. It's more insidious because it's harder to define.
I can't read the paper. I'm going by the witch-hunt article MY posted. I'd like to know what Tuvel has to say about objections to Dolezal's reinforcing the colour line. As I think I said on the other thread, I object to her presuming to know and define what it means to be black, by her deception and subsequent justifications. Blackness is not culture. You can throw away culture. You cannot get rid of the fact that once you're out the house you cease to be person and become black person in other people's eyes.

Indeed. But they're the same arguments some level at trans people.

 

[bimble]

I don't get your point. Are you saying that this is a list no cis woman could have made? Is that your point? I bet I could find you something similar written by a cis woman.

Ye but do you think that person would be on the cover of vogue as an aspirational figure? Like Jenner being Glamour's woman of the year after explaining all about having a female brain that likes nail polish & girly nights in.

 

[pengaleng]

swear down that shit about jenners nail polish she can finally wear was pure crap, i seen em on the kardashians years ago with chipped nail polish on

sorry but that well aggs me and i dunno why, beauty lies, it was on telly ffs

 

[bimble]

She said in an interview that the best thing about being a woman is that you can wear nail polish ALL THE TIME, until it chips off.

 

[pengaleng]

oh yeah?? well how do you chip polish that bad if it's only on for a brief period, that was a weeks worth of chips cus you know she wasnt doing washing up or manual labour on that show they got staff for that, i dont buy it. as if it was £ shop varnish as well. ridiculous.

 

[bimble]

Maybe she likes the chipped distressed look, like the finger version of designer ripped jeans?

 

[MochaSoul]

Ye but do you think that person would be on the cover of vogue as an aspirational figure? Like Jenner being Glamour's woman of the year after explaining all about having a female brain that likes nail polish & girly nights in.

It's Vogue. All Vogue wants of women is their dosh.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Ye but do you think that person be on the cover of vogue as an aspirational figure? Like Jenner being woman of the year after explaining all about having a female brain that likes nail polish & girly nights in.

Let's not forget that it's Vogue we're talking about here. And I've no idea what Glamour is, but I can guess from its title. Isn't this a little like complaining about a trans woman appearing in a beauty pageant while ignoring the fact that beauty pageants still happen?

 

[bimble]

It's Vogue. All Vogue wants of women is their dosh.

Yep, and to sell more & more advertising space full of products to make you more feminine.