Gender again. Sorry!
- Thread starter theclaud
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OP
OP
theclaud
Reading around the chip
She was one of the most prominent and successful British athletes of her era, and (quite apart from the barrage of racism - in my neck of the woods she was often called a P***) her name became an everyday playground insult used to shame or denigrate girls who were big or strong or considered insufficiently feminine. If she were competing today you'd be demanding she prove she's a 'real' woman. Your absolute blindness to heteronormative gender ideology, which has had much more impact on all of us than any transgender orthodoxy, is one of the reasons you are so exasperating on this topic
classic33
Me
A bit too successful for some of her competitors. She was made go through having to prove she was a woman, more than once. With questions asked when she out threw men on a regular basis.
multitool
Pharaoh
Is that not the same with any issue where people are captured by some sort of fixed view of the world, which they want to imprint on everything, and everyone? The, for want of a better word, aspergic inability to see beyond their own fixed point, empathise with others, or, as you say, weigh up the realities of the world against their own vision filtered through dogmatism.
OP
OP
theclaud
Reading around the chip
Maybe - in terms of dogmatism and intolerance of dissent or nuance, it feels like a flashback to being involved with the SWP at university - the relentless recruitment to a cause in place of normal social interaction. The reason no one wants the SWP around is not usually any specific political disagreement as such but more a resentment at being treated like fodder and as a person who can't possibly have thought already about something and ended up in a different place.
multitool
Pharaoh
Always avoided the SWP. Didn't seem like they'd be much fun at parties. I did, however, encounter Claire Foster of the RCP on a few occasions, and she briefly attempted to groom me. You might know her better as Baroness Claire Fox. Quite incredible to think where her journey has taken her. Almost the antithesis of what she was in the late 80s. Of course, Spiked, as RCP is now known, are on the anti-trans bandwagon.
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AuroraSaab
Squire
How is it an unstable category when 98.8% of births fall pretty equally into only 2 sides of the category? 'Human beings have sight' isn't an unstable category because a small number of babies are born blind.
Yes, gender requires the enforcement of gender roles based on patriarchal ideas of what women should be like. Ignoring women's material reality - and that their oppression is sex based not gender ID based - doesn't help get rid of gender. It reifies it. Instead of saying 'Women are oppressed on the basis of their sexed bodies but they can do anything', it says 'Anybody can be a woman who identifies with the role of 'woman'' - a role which is based on sexist and regressive stereotypes.
It's not a grey area. These are diagnosable, identifiable conditions. People with dsd's aren't railroaded into a binary category - there's no 'inbetween' sexes for them to occupy. They are male or female with variations in development, not different sexes. Their condition might go unnoticed until puberty in some countries, and in the past even in the West babies with ambiguous genitalia have been crudely operated on and designated male or female based only on external genitalia. Children are born with dsd's in the West, but they are less likely to go undiagnosed and those children are more likely to have been correctly sexed early on, unlike in countries with poor paediatric care.
Dsd athletes like Caster Semenya are in the position they are in through no fault of their own. The fact remains though that those with the 5-ard dsd have an unfair advantage over female athletes.
AuroraSaab
Squire
There's no such thing as a masculine woman or a feminine man. There are only stereotypes of how the 2 sexes should look and behave. An athletic woman isn't masculine, though it's interesting that when I say 'athletic woman' you immediately think 'masculine', almost as if you equate the two.
multitool
Pharaoh
Of course there is.
AuroraSaab
Squire
Can you give me a list of famous 'masculine' women, and famous 'feminine' men?
AuroraSaab
Squire
Just to go back to this. No, I would be insisting she was a woman (there are no real and unreal ones) simply because she is a woman. It's more likely that 'your' side would be suggesting she might be trans because she doesn't meet stereotypes of femininity. The bullying of girls and boys who don't conform to stereotypes has moved from 'Are you a boy???' and 'Are you gay???' to 'Are you trans????'. Gender identity rests on stereotypes because otherwise what are you identifying with when you say 'I identify as...'
multitool
Pharaoh
AuroraSaab
Squire
I don't denigrate them. I'm saying they have an unfair advantage. Your definition of 'woman' rests on shared experiences, not biology then, even though those non biological experiences could vary widely. Your belief on the inclusion of dsd athletes and transwomen in the female category for sports is held for moral reasons then, not scientific ones? Would that be fair to say?
AuroraSaab
Squire
As you seem reluctant to list them, perhaps you could simply list the characteristics that make a female 'masculine' or a male 'feminine'.
multitool
Pharaoh
Certainly.
Would you like to stipulate which culture/ethnic group and which chronological era, given that these things are fluid?
