I do think that it's important to be able to acknowledge the difference between sex and gender, or rather the difference between how society sexes people, our own genders, and how society genders us . . . to ensure that the documentation matches the person.
Do you mean it's important to acknowledge that people do make a distinction between sex and gender, and that society does in a very incoherent way? Or are you saying that we need to maintain seeing a distinction--that there's a usefulness in maintaining this vision? Or something else I'm not getting.
Of course no one is born a man or a woman, and I think that language (like woman-born-woman) is ridiculous
It doesn't accord with my pretty constructivist worldview which is based in how I experience sex/gender, but I don't see this kind of essentialized thinking as ridiculous, nor applied in one way only. I've heard some trans women talk about their experiences of their body as the wrong one as having brain chemistry out of accord with the rest of her sexed body--which is also an essentialist view, like a cisgender woman viewing herself as a woman-born-woman. I struggle with respecting that view, and not thinking, "if you only read Judi Butler you'd see things my way!" because why the hell does anyone else need to see it this way anyway--it works for me and I think you pretty much hold the same view, but it's OK if it doesn't work for everyone. Making the unwilling read Judi Butler and some other of the gender theorists perhaps *should* be considered a war crime. ;-P j/k
I also think that the gender binary is used to support the social construction of sex and the social construction of sex is used to support the gender binary. I don't believe that there is an underlying true biological reality that defines what everyone's sex is or should be, and I think that saying there is interferes with and damages everyone's ability to relate properly to their bodies.
That's really well-put, and I think so too. But people's experiences of their sexed/gendered selves is not really something you can argue away--experience does matter and at bottom, all we have to offer are theories because there are no control cases here, and all their assertions are, likewise, theories.
I would prefer that "male" and "female" be removed entirely and that we find some other way to discuss how people are born with the equipment to sire or bear children, and not define our own or anyone else's entire lives around this against anyone's will, ever.
Agreed. And you're probably just using shorthand here, and think the same, but the nexus of bodily traits, and traits having nothing to do with the physical, grouped under sex are only partially connected with reproductive apparatuses. The biological works improvisationally, and if pleasure centers can be used to cause social cohesion between individuals as well as getting some of them to reproduce, both uses further survival and continuance of the species, and nature isn't picky. Too many people like to reduce the bio function of sexuality to reproduction alone.
. . . I think it's important to be able to talk about them, to talk about how they reinforce each other, and how one is exalted over the other as a policing tool.
Do you mean sex as the exalted and policing tool? Because I think regarding "sex" as always already "gender" helps take away some of that policing power. (Despite that, I'm still uneasy about how much I want to stand on mountaintops yelling to get people with essentialized experiences of sex to listen.)
no subject
Do you mean it's important to acknowledge that people do make a distinction between sex and gender, and that society does in a very incoherent way? Or are you saying that we need to maintain seeing a distinction--that there's a usefulness in maintaining this vision? Or something else I'm not getting.
Of course no one is born a man or a woman, and I think that language (like woman-born-woman) is ridiculous
It doesn't accord with my pretty constructivist worldview which is based in how I experience sex/gender, but I don't see this kind of essentialized thinking as ridiculous, nor applied in one way only. I've heard some trans women talk about their experiences of their body as the wrong one as having brain chemistry out of accord with the rest of her sexed body--which is also an essentialist view, like a cisgender woman viewing herself as a woman-born-woman. I struggle with respecting that view, and not thinking, "if you only read Judi Butler you'd see things my way!" because why the hell does anyone else need to see it this way anyway--it works for me and I think you pretty much hold the same view, but it's OK if it doesn't work for everyone. Making the unwilling read Judi Butler and some other of the gender theorists perhaps *should* be considered a war crime. ;-P j/k
I also think that the gender binary is used to support the social construction of sex and the social construction of sex is used to support the gender binary. I don't believe that there is an underlying true biological reality that defines what everyone's sex is or should be, and I think that saying there is interferes with and damages everyone's ability to relate properly to their bodies.
That's really well-put, and I think so too. But people's experiences of their sexed/gendered selves is not really something you can argue away--experience does matter and at bottom, all we have to offer are theories because there are no control cases here, and all their assertions are, likewise, theories.
I would prefer that "male" and "female" be removed entirely and that we find some other way to discuss how people are born with the equipment to sire or bear children, and not define our own or anyone else's entire lives around this against anyone's will, ever.
Agreed. And you're probably just using shorthand here, and think the same, but the nexus of bodily traits, and traits having nothing to do with the physical, grouped under sex are only partially connected with reproductive apparatuses. The biological works improvisationally, and if pleasure centers can be used to cause social cohesion between individuals as well as getting some of them to reproduce, both uses further survival and continuance of the species, and nature isn't picky. Too many people like to reduce the bio function of sexuality to reproduction alone.
. . . I think it's important to be able to talk about them, to talk about how they reinforce each other, and how one is exalted over the other as a policing tool.
Do you mean sex as the exalted and policing tool? Because I think regarding "sex" as always already "gender" helps take away some of that policing power. (Despite that, I'm still uneasy about how much I want to stand on mountaintops yelling to get people with essentialized experiences of sex to listen.)