Transgender is it just me that is totally perplexed?

[bimble]

To be [brutally] honest, I don't care. As long as any newer term doesn't position my experience of under "gender" as somehow "normal" against that of transgender people (which "cis" does. Who benefits from that? Not women like me who have suffered under and have opposed the idea that what's thrown at me and/or expected of me (as a woman) is somehow unavoidable or inescapable. That's the idea behind "gender is innate" and "gender identity is "choosable"". As far as I'm concerned "cis" is doubly harmful. It posits I'm on the "normal" side of something artificially devised that is used to oppress me while claiming, by virtue of of my possessing boobs and a vagina, that my identity is somehow inextricably linked to both the boobs and the vagina. I say, "'da fuck!?!?

Yep this. A while ago on here we had a 'toxic masculinity' thread, where I said that i'm trying to get rid of some of what I think of as my 'toxic feminity', which one of the ways it manifests is being unable to express my opinion clearly and unappologetically (in work emails especially) and always hedging my 'no' with language like i'm really sorry to bother you with this but I feel...
To which Sea Star responded saying they do this too and hadn't before realised that this is maybe because of being female. I've pondered that a bit since and actually no. I do this stuff because of how i've been taught to behave in this culture as a woman, not because my innate womanly soul is just born feeble overly polite and frightened of conflict.

 

[8ball]

It's the transactivist position.

You might have more luck if your opening statement wasn't "trans women are men".

Also, the transactivist position would seem to cover a very small proportion of women generally.

 

[Pickman's model]

Yep this. A while ago on here we had a 'toxic masculinity' thread, where I said that i'm trying to get rid of some of what I think of as my 'toxic feminity', which one of the ways it manifests is being unable to express my opinion clearly and unappologetically (in work emails especially) and always hedging my 'no' with language like i'm really sorry to bother you with this but I feel...
To which Sea Star responded saying they do this too and hadn't before realised that this is maybe because of being female. I've pondered that a bit since and actually no. I do this stuff because of how i've been taught to behave in this culture as a woman, not because my innate womanly soul is just born feeble overly polite and frightened of conflict.

i thought it was because you'd been wrong so often

 

[FabricLiveBaby!]

You might have more luck if your opening statement wasn't "trans women are men".

Also, the transactivist position would seem to cover a very small proportion of women generally.

What's that political/business negotiation technique called where both people make as leftfield a negotiating position in order to get the best outcome for themselves and open up the middle ground? I think it has a name.

If one side are gonna come out with "Transwomen are women" why shouldn't the other go "Transwomen are men"?

Also, is there room in this debate for discussing the "golden middle" (or argument to moderation) as a logical fallacy? Does it apply here?

Argument to moderation - Wikipedia

 

[MochaSoul]

what does loving kittens, what does wearing pink, have to do with gender?

The point I wanted to make is that one could be gender conforming in tastes (aesthetic or otherwise) whilst being gender non conforming in attitude. The gender role rules are not set by me. You prefer to nitpick. Keep doing it if it makes you happy.

 

[8ball]

What's that political/business negotiation technique called where both people make as leftfield a negotiating position in order to get the best outcome for themselves and open up the middle ground? I think it has a name.

If one side are gonna come out with "Transwomen are women" why shouldn't the other go "Transwomen are men"?

Also, is there room in this debate for discussing the "golden middle" (or argument to moderation) as a logical fallacy? Does it apply here?

Argument to moderation - Wikipedia

That's a business technique for when both sides want a favourable resolution.
Doesn't work when your motive is to continue hating the other side and raise your standing in your own camp.

Argument to moderation, on the other hand, is sometimes practical for diplomatic reasons but can lead to absurdities.

 

[Miranda Yardley]

You might have more luck if your opening statement wasn't "trans women are men".

Also, the transactivist position would seem to cover a very small proportion of women generally.

How about 'trans women are trans women'? What is wrong with this?

 

[8ball]

How about 'trans women are trans women'? What is wrong with this?

Few people argue with tautologies unless they are loaded in a particular way.

 

[Pickman's model]

The point I wanted to make is that one could be gender conforming in tastes (aesthetic or otherwise) whilst being gender non conforming in attitude. The gender role rules are not set by me. You prefer to nitpick. Keep doing it if it makes you happy.

yeh. and the point i'm making is that picking certain attributes that you associate with a particular gender and reading them as signs of that gender will lead you astray. your point benefits from being expressed without the semiotick nonsense you introduced it with.

 

[Pickman's model]

How about 'trans women are trans women'? What is wrong with this?

it's a mayism and therefore suspect.

 

[MochaSoul]

yeh. and the point i'm making is that picking certain attributes that you associate with a particular gender and reading them as signs of that gender will lead you astray. your point benefits from being expressed without the semiotick nonsense you introduced it with.

Thank you

 

[8ball]

The point I wanted to make is that one could be gender conforming in tastes (aesthetic or otherwise) whilst being gender non conforming in attitude. The gender role rules are not set by me. You prefer to nitpick. Keep doing it if it makes you happy.

I'm unsure of the exact boundary or difference between 'tastes' and 'attitude' here.

Do you just mean the difference between, say, a girl liking 'boy' things and a girl feeling that she is really a boy?

 

[Wilf]

How about 'trans women are trans women'? What is wrong with this?

But it carries on, round and round... sometimes biological definitions, sometimes social, sometimes psychological. Either 'terfs' get to own the boundaries of female or trans activists get to redefine those boundaries. There's perhaps a psychological pay off in 'winning' this battle, there's the odd victory about this that or the other bit of legislation to be had. But again, where is the bigger victory, what does this do to oppose oppression?

 

[MochaSoul]

I'm unsure of the exact boundary or difference between 'tastes' and 'attitude' here.

Do you just mean the difference between, say, a girl liking 'boy' things and a girl feeling that she is really a boy?

No. I asked where was the border between being "cis" and not and where do people who use the "cis" label put a woman who is aggressive (an attitude ttributed to masculinity) and likes pink (attributed to femininity).

 

[Santino]

I don't know if I'm getting the picture across right. Even "essence" isn't the right word because "nemű" is somewhere in between gas/essence/soul. So in between the physical and supernatural.

I seem to remember reading somewhere that scientists used to try to measure the weights of souls, as if it had a real physical presence.

Ah ha! Found it! The 21 grams experiment over 100 years ago.

21 grams experiment - Wikipedia

Anyway, us fuckin bilinguals, innit!

The English word 'spirit', which can mean ghost, soul or essence (as in the spirit of a rule) is derived from the Latin spiritus, which also meant 'breath', as in respiration.

The Greek word for spirit, pneuma, is also related to gas/air - pneumatic etc.

 

[8ball]

No. I asked where was the border between being "cis" and not and where do people who use the "cis" label put a woman who is aggressive (an attitude ttributed to masculinity) and likes pink (attributed to femininity).

I’d put that in cis. Unless you were talking about a trans woman.

 

[MochaSoul]

But again, where is the bigger victory, what does this do to oppose oppression?

This is not the war. This is only a battle. To me, the war is to abolish gender altogether. This particular battle is whether it is useful to win that war, to cast gender as an innate identity.

E2a: This is my particular perspective. Other feminists share some of it. Others I'm no longer sure.

 

[8ball]

This is not the war. This is only a battle. To me, the war is to abolish gender altogether. This particular battle is whether it is useful to win that war, to cast gender as an innate identity.

I thought gender was socially constructed by definition. So not innate.

 

[Santino]

There’s a woman in my team from China. She told me that they have no different pronouns for men and women in Chinese. That’s interesting in and of itself, I think. But more interesting to me is that when she first arrived in the UK, she says she had massive difficulty in identifying when to use each pronoun, and used to regularly refer to men as “she” and women as “he”. Now, that either says something trivial about learning language or it says something really quite profound about the way we learn to categorise. I’m not sure which.

I used to sing a song to my daughter about five monkeys, and whether they were or were not at any one time on the bed. Because of my overbearing liberalism instead of referring to all the monkeys as 'he', as many would, I would arbitrarily refer to each of them as 'he' or 'she' as the fancy took me, and I think perhaps as a result of this my daughter often used the incorrect pronoun with humans as she learned to talk.

 

[MochaSoul]

I thought gender was socially constructed by definition. So not innate.

Carry that idea to the comment you made to me in your #5202 comment.

 

[Pickman's model]

The English word 'spirit', which can mean ghost, soul or essence (as in the spirit of a rule) is derived from the Latin spiritus, which also meant 'breath', as in respiration.

The Greek word for spirit, pneuma, is also related to gas/air - pneumatic etc.

lots of pneumatic women in brave new world

 

[FabricLiveBaby!]

The English word 'spirit', which can mean ghost, soul or essence (as in the spirit of a rule) is derived from the Latin spiritus, which also meant 'breath', as in respiration.

The Greek word for spirit, pneuma, is also related to gas/air - pneumatic etc.

Yeah, the work "lélek" in Hungarian covers both spirit and soul. Lélek is also derived from the word for breath. Levegő also means air so it's connected too! Interesting cuz Hungarian isn't Indo-European at all!

 

[8ball]

Carry that idea to the comment you made to me in your #5202 comment.

If there's a contradiction there I'm totally missing it.

 

[Wilf]

This is not the war. This is only a battle. To me, the war is to abolish gender altogether. This particular battle is whether it is useful to win that war, to cast gender as an innate identity.

E2a: This is my particular perspective. Other feminists share some of it. Others I'm no longer sure.

I think this goes to something I was on about before about prefigurative politics. I, I suspect like the majority on this thread, would like to see a world where people are immensely relaxed about gender identities and sexualities (with the usual and obvious caveat about consenting adults). I'd like to see this discussion take place with at least one eye on that. That doesn't make it some kind of utopian struggle/politics, there are very obvious, concrete and structural issues to address in the here and now. But at the very least those struggles should be fought in a way that puts solidarity at the heart of day to day politics. FWIW I think class politics has the potential to do that, so I suppose I'm also saying that these problems arise from identity politics.

 

[Santino]

lots of pneumatic women in brave new world

Grishkin is nice: her Russian eye
Is underlined for emphasis;
Uncorseted, her friendly bust
Gives promise of pneumatic bliss.

 

[MochaSoul]

If there's a contradiction there I'm totally missing it.

I didn't say there was a contradiction. I said "cis" positions some people against "trans" as if those people were "normal" when the whole system is mad to start with. I disagree with the label on those grounds.
I had a tomboy phase in my adolescence. I hated everything to do with "woman" including, of course, everything that was happening to my body (boobs hurting in their growth, menstrual pain, learning to wear pads, my mum constantly telling "now you're a young lady...", etc, etc). Might anyone have called me cis then? And if lots of people go through changes, conflicts, etc with their identities throughout life how does that stack up against this idea of an internal gender inclination?
Where is the boundary?

 

[Miranda Yardley]

But it carries on, round and round... sometimes biological definitions, sometimes social, sometimes psychological. Either 'terfs' get to own the boundaries of female or trans activists get to redefine those boundaries. There's perhaps a psychological pay off in 'winning' this battle, there's the odd victory about this that or the other bit of legislation to be had. But again, where is the bigger victory, what does this do to oppose oppression?

Oh, yes, it's circular. But we need to be able to recognise our differences, if we can't how can we address conflicts of rights and needs?

My position has consistently been that there's common ground and compromise to be reached.

 

[8ball]

I didn't say there was a contradiction. I said "cis" positions some people against "trans" as if those people were "normal" when the whole system is mad to start with. I disagree with the label on those grounds.
I had a tomboy phase in my adolescence. I hated everything to do with "woman" including, of course, everything that was happening to my body (boobs hurting in their growth, menstrual pain, learning to wear pads, my mum constantly telling "now you're a young lady...", etc, etc). Might anyone have called me cis then? And if lots of people go through changes, conflicts, etc with their identities throughout life how does that stack up against this idea of an internal gender inclination?
Where is the boundary?

I don't see anything there as not sitting with my definition of 'cis' because I only use it to mean 'not trans' (rather than happy with the gender pressures imposed on you, or conforming comfortably to gendered norms) and I think it is way overused generally since the number of trans people is very small.

It's useful if you need an antonym to 'trans' (there's a bit of organic chemistry in my academic background so it feels natural), but I think aside from on Urban the only times I've used it was to explain what it meant to someone when they had heard or read it somewhere.

 

[MochaSoul]

I think this goes to something I was on about before about prefigurative politics. I, I suspect like the majority on this thread, would like to see a world where people are immensely relaxed about gender identities and sexualities (with the usual and obvious caveat about consenting adults). I'd like to see this discussion take place with at least one eye on that. That doesn't make it some kind of utopian struggle/politics, there are very obvious, concrete and structural issues to address in the here and now. But at the very least those struggles should be fought in a way that puts solidarity at the heart of day to day politics. FWIW I think class politics has the potential to do that, so I suppose I'm also saying that these problems arise from identity politics.

Argh... different thread

 

[Wilf]

Argh... different thread

It's taken me ages to get even a toe hold on this one. Ploughing through the ID politics thread is too daunting task for a lazy man even whiling away the hours till home time from work!