Gender again. Sorry!

[multitool]

there are dozens of athletic women who people would say with derision 'Looks like a bloke'. Not helped by advertisers presenting bikini models as 'athletes'.

How about we get, shall we say, more 'masculine' women to model bikinis then...

Oh

 

[theclaud]

Yes, and it's long been an issue that muscular women were insulted as being like men. Bodybuilders especially, black female athletes especially. Whitbread might have been a prominent one but there are dozens of athletic women who people would say with derision 'Looks like a bloke'. Not helped by advertisers presenting bikini models as 'athletes

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]

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

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]

. 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

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.

 

[theclaud]

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.

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]

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.

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.

 

[AuroraSaab]

Sex is not a spectrum, but it is and always has been an unstable category, with contingent meanings, grey areas, and real-world situations that unsettle its certainties.

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.

If everything arising from it were so natural and inevitable, why would it need have needed the violent enforcement of the patriarchy over so many centuries, and why does it require so much cultural work (like the crusade you're on now) to uphold it? Gender is an edifice built on unstable foundations.

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.

Anyway, one of those grey areas / unsettling realities is people with DSDs. The fact that sporting classifications can't cope with their existence is hardly surprising, as society as a whole can't cope with it either - hence railroading them into a binary category at birth (which, contrary to your suggestion, has not just happened in developing countries).

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]

How about we get, shall we say, more 'masculine' women to model bikinis then...

Oh

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]

There's no such thing as a masculine woman or a feminine man.

Of course there is.

 

[AuroraSaab]

Can you give me a list of famous 'masculine' women, and famous 'feminine' men?

 

[AuroraSaab]

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

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]

Can you give me a list of famous 'masculine' women, and famous 'feminine' men?

Yes

 

[AuroraSaab]

The athletes you denigrate were, by and large, AFAB, with all the real-world consequences that arise from that, and that makes them girls and women in exactly the same way that it makes me a woman.

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]

Yes

As you seem reluctant to list them, perhaps you could simply list the characteristics that make a female 'masculine' or a male 'feminine'.

 

[multitool]

As you seem reluctant to list them, perhaps you could simply list the characteristics that make a female 'masculine' or a male 'feminine'.

Certainly.

Would you like to stipulate which culture/ethnic group and which chronological era, given that these things are fluid?