Perhaps the most frustrating thing about genderists (people who seriously use gender identity as a concept) is their tendency to project their ideology onto other people. It becomes impossible to have a conversation with them at all, let alone navigate differences of opinion, because they take for granted that "gender identity" is a meaningful concept to other people, that other people feel themselves to have "gender identities," and that people are referring to "gender identity" when we use the terms "man" or "woman."
Almost no one is referring to gender identity when we call ourselves men or women; we are referring to our reproductive sex, because that is fundamentally what "man" and "woman" literally mean: adult human male and adult human female. That isn't an opinion and it isn't an aspect of any ideology; it's a fact of the English language. It's been a fact of the English language for a very long time, so English-speaking genderists should know this. I don't know whether they are just stupid or are pulling yet another one of their intellectually dishonest tactics when they do this shit.
There is absolutely NO concept of "gender identity" aka "personal gender" of any kind in radical feminist theory. The only gender that is part of the theory is gender roles, which are
socially constituted and therefore not properly considered to be any kind of
personal identity. Individual people, of course, have individual experiences, perceptions, preferences, etc. with respect to gender roles, but we don't conceptualize these as any particular type of personal identity; they are merely individual experience and personality. Radical feminism isn't fundamentally about personal identity at all; it's about the
sociopolitical condition of female oppression, something that applies to the masses, so there is no use for any theory of personal gender in radical feminism.
So radical feminists will never say or believe that womanhood is any sort of personal gender and that males, "transwomen", simply can or can't have it or participate in it. There is no such thing as a woman gender identity in radical feminism, insofar as "gender identity" is some type of psychological phenomenon (genderists never define it exactly). NO ONE can have a woman gender identity; such a thing does not really exist. The reason males cannot ever be women is because they are and always will be male, and are therefore excluded from the meaning of "woman". Nothing else they do, want, or think is relevant. Nothing else about their biology, neurology, or psychology is relevant. The same goes for female men; they'll never be men because they are female.
I came upon the idea for this post after an Internet search led me to a paper in which the author purports to negotiate between radical feminist theory and genderist theory: philarchive.org/archive/cohgia-2
The author fails at the outset because she doesn't understand the radical feminist theory of gender. According to her, we actually believe in gender identities but don't want to separate the woman gender identity from femalehood because that separation will have negative implications for political language:
Radical feminists retain A(s,c)
associations connecting biology and gender-category, e.g. women produce ova,
males have testicles, etc. They do so because they believe that women are
identified and thus oppressed on the assumption of their reproductive role.
Babies are assigned membership in the subjugated “woman” gender-category on
account of their genitals. If womanhood is detached from biology (or assumed
biology), then issues relating to female reproductive roles (concerns such as
contraception, abortion, tampon-taxes, childcare, etc.), can no longer be
conceptualised as “women’s issues”. Therefore, they hold that correct analysis of
patriarchal society recognises the existence of norms defining womanhood via
reproductive biology.
The "A(s,c) associations" refers to a categorization system for things related to "gender" (such as clothing and behavior), referenced earlier in the paper. The problem with this system, or the problem with the way it's presented in this paper at least, is the same problem with all genderist discourse: "gender" is never defined. So, in the first sentence of this quote, in which the author references "women" and "males" as "gender categories," the statements have no clear meaning. I'm assuming "women" here means woman gender identity. Which does not exist in radical feminist theory.
Also, radical feminists do not believe that babies are "assigned" membership in womanhood. That "gender assigned at birth" bullshit is also genderist theory, not ours. Medical staff could write whatever they want on the birth documents and use whatever terms they please to describe the child to the parents; the treatment of the child (that is relevant to radical feminism) depends on her sex, which isn't determined by language or medical authority. People have been recognizing and raising children as girls or boys (that is, female or male juveniles) since long before medical professionals existed, so this "assignment" that allegedly determines a child's future holds no weight except maybe when it actually is an assignment—in the case of sexually ambiguous infants.
The author has briefly addressed the main point I'm making in this post:
Many radical feminists see A(s,c) associations as being non-normative
matters of definition – females are defined as those with certain biological
features, and women are, by definition, adult females (Jeffreys, 2014; Reilly-
Cooper, 2015).
Anyhow, the radical feminists stipulating a definition of “woman” that
tautologically determines the outcome of a political debate is suspicious, even
when it is ostensibly “non-theoretical”. Radical feminists are better off staking a
claim in the political debate, rather than pretending that it does not exist.
This fool has the nerve to try to dictate to radical feminists how we should argue our own ideology, and suggests that we are merely "pretending" that our ideology is our ideology. There can be no legitimate debate about womanhood having a particular definition. Dictionaries and encyclopedias and everyday English usage reflect it. It's literally the reason why society at large refuses to believe that transwomen are women. Once again here is this insistant, arrogant belief that we, too are genderists; that we share genderist ideology.
*******************************************************************************************************************
Throughout this post, "male" and "female" refer to reproductive sex, just as in real life. Another ridiculous thing genderists do is construct and argue against a straw conception of sex, some sort of amalgam of reproductive, chromosomal, and hormonal sex, with genital appearance as a separate dimension. These three don't always align typically (for example, people with typical female reproductive function but atypical sex chromosomes, or reproductive females with higher than typical testosterone levels), and genderists act as if the outliers prove that sex is not a physically real thing. This false concept of sex is presumably the reason they think that sex is a social construct.
This amalgam of a concept isn't actually used in real life. Most of the time, "male" and "female" refer to reproductive sex
only. Reproductive sex is the oldest (and default) concept of an individual's sex because reproductive function has been observed since humans existed (whereas chromosomal sex wasn't identified until medicine advanced sufficiently far). Therefore, reproductive sex as a concept existed without chromosomal and/or hormonal sex for the majority of human history, and presenting them as a single concept is ahistorical and therefore of limited analytical value. And this three- or four-fold concept also does not reflect how the term "sex" is used in modern times.
To reproduce, animals need certain body parts, and genitals generally do reliably match the inner reproductive organ/reproductive function; that is the connection between reproductive sex and genital/physical appearance. Educated people do not take this connection for granted, however; we know that people can be infertile regardless of having the standard physical appearance and that people can have genitals that look atypical despite having typical reproductive function, for example. We do not, in scientifically advanced societies, have conceptions of female or male biology so inflexible or specific that they are social constructs moreso than physical reality, and wherever such inflexibility exists, it's a product of scientific ignorance and not social constructionism.
Chromosomal sex is rarely referenced at all outside of medical contexts. Nobody is talking about chromosomes in day-to-day life; there's no reason to think people are making statements or assumptions about anybody's chromosomes when we say "male" or "female." The same is true of hormonal sex. We may speak of the norms of XY/XX or testosterone/estrogen levels, but educated people aren't going to be shocked at or disbelieving of or rejecting of the reality of, for example, males with low testosterone. The existence of the norms in everyday discourse does not negate the existence of the people who are outliers. And the outliers do not negate the physical existence of the norm. Sex as a human trait is not a social construct.
***************************************************************************************************************
I have not read this whole paper (nor will I, since the author is gravely mistaken in her premises), but an excerpt from the introduction serves, I think, to illustrate what I'll call feminine politics:
Generally, trans
people suffer greatly in western society, often facing harassment, discrimination
and violence, in addition to social exclusion, high levels of stress and mental
health problems (Diamond, Pardo, & Butterworth, 2011). It is therefore
imperative that we listen to, think with, and be empathetic towards trans people’s
diverse lived experiences.
The author is basically saying that we should listen to and empathize with trans people because they suffer. Empathy, a particular emotional condition, is presented as a political imperative: that's what's feminine about this, and this sort of feminine political sense is something I've complained about on this blog, one of the major things that womyn do which annoys me, that is anti-intellectual (focused on feelings rather than on the analysis of actions, whether, for example, they are just or unjust) and potentially harmful to our own political causes. (I'm using "feminine" in the sense of things taught to and expected of females as part of the feminine gender role, in other words, something that is not for our benefit and will likely have negative consequences for us.)
There's an implicit assumption that people can choose to feel empathy, but how much choice do we, people, have over our emotions? There's also the implicit assumption that emotions are proper political action. Emotions don't affect change; actions do. Womyn passively taking about their feelings rather than actually changing things: here it is again. I don't know the author's sex, and the point I'm making doesn't hinge on the author being of any particular sex: I'm describing a
type of political sense which I find problematic regardless of who deploys it; however, it's something that I've noticed among womyn far more often than among men.
Political action should be focused primarily on injustices, not suffering. People suffer for all sorts of reasons that are not related to injustice, so suffering itself is not a proper prerequisite for political action. The harassment, discrimination, and violence are injustices, but high stress and mental health problems are not necessarily the result of injustice. If we extend political action to something like charity or general social awareness, perhaps we can make the argument that listening to "lived experiences" is a political imperative, but, otherwise, we're back to emotions as political action.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
