Urban v's the Commentariat

[ViolentPanda]

It predates that by many thousands of years. Look at early neolithic art. Not a huge amount of third genders, a whole lot of big dicks and massive tits.

You're confusing sex and gender again!
Fact is that in many mass religions pre-dating Christianity, what we might term "gender confusion" (if we're being stupidly reductive) was an accepted part of life, as were homosexual relations, and as was physical hermaphrodism. The spread of "the word of G-d" placed a restrictive template on how people were able to conceive of themselves, that pretty much mapped sex to gender (as well as implanting other ideas that haven't done us any favours).

 

[JimW]

Really don't think you can extrapolate from e.g. penis imagery to gender roles resembling what prevails now - VP's post just reminded me that hermes (IIRC) was often represented by a big old phallic statue in a society with very different attitudes to masculinity.

 

[TruXta]

we can only guess by using our own society as the frame of reference.

Don't agree at all - isn't a major point of doing history to avoid doing just that?

 

[TruXta]

You're confusing sex and gender again!
Fact is that in many mass religions pre-dating Christianity, what we might term "gender confusion" (if we're being stupidly reductive) was an accepted part of life, as were homosexual relations, and as was physical hermaphrodism. The spread of "the word of G-d" placed a restrictive template on how people were able to conceive of themselves, that pretty much mapped sex to gender (as well as implanting other ideas that haven't done us any favours).

No I'm not, I'm being quite clear that the representation of genitalia and biological markers of sex such as breasts can be both gender- and sex-representations. BTW you can also find many counter-examples to putative "gender-permissive" societies - look at ancient Greek and Egyptian religions, which are fairly heavily (albeit not exclusively) weighted towards fairly recognisable male/female binaries. Again there was a place for gender-bending, hermaphrodites and other sexual and gender variants, but the preponderance of the male/female binary was there long before Christianity.

 

[SpineyNorman]

Truxta, class divisions are as ubiquitous as the two genders model, are they rooted in biology?

I don't really understand the arguments about the relationship between biology (sex?) and gender - I'd need to do a lot of reading on it before I could form an opinion. And I'm equally unfamiliar with the terminology so I apologise if I get any of it wrong. But surely the near universality of class divisions is different in one important way from that of gender, in that all societies have 'male' and 'female' genders (albeit with some also exceptional cases having other identities too) whereas there is a huge variance in terms of the class structure of societies (capitalist = bourgeois, proletarian, petty bourgeois; feudalism = lord, squire, serf, artisan etc; slave societies = masters, slaves etc).

But as I said, I haven't really understood this discussion so this might be utterly irrelevant.

 

[rekil]

Ah shit, I thought that was from today, never mind.

 

[cesare]

Don't agree at all - isn't a major point of doing history to avoid doing just that?

How can our interpretation of different societies not be grounded in our own frame of reference?

 

[J Ed]

Ah shit, I thought that was from today, never mind.

I'm not sure what I would say if I could say one thing to the left collectively but it wouldn't be about etiquette.

 

[frogwoman]

Ah shit, I thought that was from today, never mind.

"guys"

 

[TruXta]

How can our interpretation of different societies not be grounded in our own frame of reference?

Of course you have to start somewhere, but isn't the ideal end-point of social history at least to try to understand a place and time as much as possible from within their own terms? I think of it like learning a new language, you have to use your own language skills to gain a foothold, but as you improve your understanding you start to become immersed in the new language (and in the wider language milieu for want of a better word), you start to think in that new language, you understand the tacit links between words and idioms etc etc.

 

[SpackleFrog]

I'm not sure what I would say if I could say one thing to the left collectively but it wouldn't be about etiquette.

I think if I had to pick one thing to say to the left it would probably be "please, please, please, try not to come across as a total loon when you talk to people". And then I'd probably cry, because it would be a waste of breath.

 

[SpackleFrog]

From previous experience, I think "most" is too kind. A majority, maybe.
Problem is, identity politics is pretty much honey to bees looking to feed their egos - it can be a non-critical environment, once you're part of the in-group, unless you're into self-criticism.

Yes, and I do see that thats a danger, but I also think these groups are fundamentally incapable of dealing with internal disagreement, and thats when shit really hits the fan - the local ISN/RevSoc/whatever student group round our way has just exploded for basically this reason.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Yes, and I do see that thats a danger, but I also think these groups are fundamentally incapable of dealing with internal disagreement, and thats when shit really hits the fan - the local ISN/RevSoc/whatever student group round our way has just exploded for basically this reason.

It (the fracture of political/ideological groups) seems to be part and parcel of life whenever dogma is involved. As you say, there's an inability to deal with internal disagreement, and that sort of constraint on how people are able to express their political thinking means that two things usually happen:
1) A group self-destructs, with the majority swearing off activism, and
2) A new group forms, even more dogmatic and more convinced of the rectitude of the dogma than before.

Of course, if we're really lucky (and it doen't happen very often), some of those participants will look inward and actually learn something positive from the experience, but I don't usually hold my breath for that.

 

[J Ed]

Yes, and I do see that thats a danger, but I also think these groups are fundamentally incapable of dealing with internal disagreement, and thats when shit really hits the fan - the local ISN/RevSoc/whatever student group round our way has just exploded for basically this reason.

Fall out from raceplaygate?

 

[TruXta]

Your analogy sucks whale dick. Cost/benefit analysis has little to do with social constructionism.

Just saw this. I didn't bring up cost-benefit analysis. In fact it's entirely irrelevant. I was talking about mitigating damage, for which you have to at least try to understand both the physical realities on the ground as well as the social/political/cultural/economic histories that lead to particular risk profiles. One is pointless without the other.

 

[SpackleFrog]

Fall out from raceplaygate?

Old news mate. They're calling each other out of houses now I hear

 

[ViolentPanda]

Just saw this. I didn't bring up cost-benefit analysis. In fact it's entirely irrelevant. I was talking about mitigating damage, for which you have to at least try to understand both the physical realities on the ground as well as the social/political/cultural/economic histories that lead to particular risk profiles. One is pointless without the other.

Your "taking into account both the material side of things...as well as the local built environment" is reducible, in one easy move, to a cost/benefit analysis. Hence, "your analogy sucks whale dick".
Next time, rather than going for a pat analogy, why not say what you've just said above?

 

[ViolentPanda]

No I'm not, I'm being quite clear that the representation of genitalia and biological markers of sex such as breasts can be both gender- and sex-representations. BTW you can also find many counter-examples to putative "gender-permissive" societies - look at ancient Greek...

That would be the ancient Greece, most of whose constituent cultures during various parts of the history of ancient Greece had religious beliefs that featured deities, one of whom was hermaphrodite, several who were homosexual, and one who went for bestiality?

...and Egyptian religions, which are fairly heavily (albeit not exclusively) weighted towards fairly recognisable male/female binaries. Again there was a place for gender-bending, hermaphrodites and other sexual and gender variants, but the preponderance of the male/female binary was there long before Christianity.

And there you show that you've missed my point, which was that Christianity has "locked in" thinking to a binary sex/binary gender way of thinking, and that many religions pre-dating Christianity did not, as well as that Christianity has tainted elements of those religions that were previously accepting of non-binary sex and gender conceptualisations.

 

[TruXta]

Your "taking into account both the material side of things...as well as the local built environment" is reducible, in one easy move, to a cost/benefit analysis. Hence, "your analogy sucks whale dick".
Next time, rather than going for a pat analogy, why not say what you've just said above?

Way to miss the point. Yes you can reduce that to a cb analysis, but that's irrelevant. You can reduce it to a watercolour too.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Way to miss the point. Yes you can reduce that to a cb analysis, but that's irrelevant.

It's hardly irrelevant that your analogy is reducible to that. If I read it as saying that, who else will? Who else will think "TruXta's analogy suck shit of off of a paving slab"? What does that say for the credibility of other stuff that you write, especially when we bnoth know that you can do better?

You can reduce it to a watercolour too.

Now you're just being silly. Go to your room! No herring for you tonight!

 

[TruXta]

It's hardly irrelevant that your analogy is reducible to that. If I read it as saying that, who else will? Who else will think "TruXta's analogy suck shit of off of a paving slab"? What does that say for the credibility of other stuff that you write, especially when we bnoth know that you can do better?

You can reduce pretty much anything to a cb analysis. I'm mystified that you fail to see the point I was making.

 

[smokedout]

I'll give her a respectful response when she gives me the respect of actually reading my argument and not ignoring it for some offensive strawman.

the straw man you have created is an assumption that transsexual people have surgery to meet gender norms, or because of societal pressure to conform to a standard model of femininity - as you said, for similar reasons someone might have plastic surgery. Now this may be the case for some of the wide spectrum of trangendered people, some of who like most people in society are gender essentialists, or increasingly commonly have a queer perspective on gender as a chosen performance that can be played with, adopted at will etc

But that is not transsexuality, which is not a perceived mismatch between born sex and gender expectations, but a strongly felt discord about one's own physical sex which usually manifests, often in infancy, as a type of bodily dysmorphia, hatred for genitalia, revulsion to secondary sexual characteristics at puberty such as chest hair etc, a feeling that the neural map of the body is wrong - that the brain and body don't match up, some female to male transsexuals even report feeling of phantom erections etc

I have a freind who's currently transitioning and have met with several of her mates who have previously transitioned and talked about this at length for what its worth. All said the clothes, the gender expression etc were secondary to the mismatch and discomfort they felt in their own bodies, often from early childhood and which went away after transition ie they felt cured, even if their gender expression in one case was very androgynous - it wasnt about gender to her it was about physical sex. Despite feeling cured, they may still have a desire to meet gender expectations, like most women, so a slim figure, bigger breasts etc - but this was not a dysmorphia in the sense that it left them feeling suicidal, unable to cope, self-hating, in denial etc - the hormone treatment and surgery had ridded them of transsexuality, but the feeling to conform and be feminine that many/most women feel remained.

Ive never heard anyone transsexual say they have had SRS surgery to meet gender expectations, but you still insist on this being the driving force, which then develops into your argument that a transsexual's need to alter their body is something socially constructed due to a gendered society and can't possibly be for any other reason. Your entire position is based on misrepresenting transsexuality, deciding for yourself why trans people act as they do and then drawing conclusions from that whilst ignoring not just the medical testimony of thousands of people but also the current neurological research which suggests at least the possibility, and increasingly even the probability of a biological driver for transsexualism.

and it's 'he' by the way, sloppy in the context of this discussion.

 

[Steel Icarus]

Oh dear.

http://owenjonesramblings.tumblr.com/post/76255250252/my-mini-encyclopaedia-of-bile

 

[TruXta]

Christianity has "locked in" thinking to a binary sex/binary gender way of thinking, and that many religions pre-dating Christianity did not, as well as that Christianity has tainted elements of those religions that were previously accepting of non-binary sex and gender conceptualisations.

Just picking up on this before bed - surely this is a hangover from Judaism and other local religions. Christianity made it stronger and more widespread, but the basic ideas were already there.

 

[rekil]

Quality from Shiv Malik today.

If young adults aren't willing to protest abt rising housing costs, why shouldn't the other 2/3rds of the country take advantage of them?

In fact I was in the very first kettle in Oxford street in 2001...

I wrote a book. I think I know.

Take charge of your victimhood.

etc etc

tbf, the twitter intersectionality kru don't have any palpable interest in issues like housing.

 

[Greebo]

Just picking up on this before bed - surely this is a hangover from Judaism and other local religions. Christianity made it stronger and more widespread, but the basic ideas were already there.

Possibly.

 

[TruXta]

Possibly.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I can't recall a lot of third genders, hermaphrodites or even homosexuality in the OT or other Jewish texts BC.

 

[Greebo]

Homosexuality is mentioned - one of the things which people in Sodom (or was it Gomorrah?) wanted to get up to with the visitors to Lot's house.

 

[butchersapron]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I can't recall a lot of third genders, hermaphrodites or even homosexuality in the OT or other Jewish texts BC.

Samaritans.

 

[butchersapron]

Homosexuality is mentioned - one of the things which people in Sodom (or was it Gomorrah?) wanted to get up to with the visitors to Lot's house.

The visitors were angels. Perhaps that's the third gender? The interesting thing in that story is lots reaction to the rapists - offering them his daughters.