Womyn, wombon, not a woman
Aug. 24th, 2006 03:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyOh for fuck's sake. I hope these people and most of these people aren't trying to call themselves feminists, at least. Because they're sadly deluded if they're determining who's a woman and who isn't by what bits someone was born with.
I could go on about these privileged, self-congratulatory hippies and how disgusted they make me. Or why this is ridiculous and arbitrary.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
springheel_jack covered that more eloquently than I could.
I ask, instead, for anyone who thinks that this is perfectly groovy to ask themselves the following:
• Who else talks about gender and sexuality in terms of "natural" and "unnatural"?
• Who else likes to define people on the basis of genitalia?
• Who else is freakishly obsessed with other people's uteri?
Yeah, that's right, you bigoted nutjobs. Your ideological allies are the Christian Taliban. Put that in your clay pipe and smoke it.
I could go on about these privileged, self-congratulatory hippies and how disgusted they make me. Or why this is ridiculous and arbitrary.
springheel_jack covered that more eloquently than I could.I ask, instead, for anyone who thinks that this is perfectly groovy to ask themselves the following:
• Who else talks about gender and sexuality in terms of "natural" and "unnatural"?
• Who else likes to define people on the basis of genitalia?
• Who else is freakishly obsessed with other people's uteri?
Yeah, that's right, you bigoted nutjobs. Your ideological allies are the Christian Taliban. Put that in your clay pipe and smoke it.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-08-24 08:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-24 08:12 pm (UTC)SMASHIN UR BINARY
small edit
Date: 2006-08-24 08:19 pm (UTC)HIDIN FRUM UR WEINERZ
Re: small edit
Date: 2006-08-24 08:40 pm (UTC)SCARIN UR HIPPIECHIX
WooWooWomonhyd!
Date: 2006-08-24 08:46 pm (UTC)And while you're at it, a logician and maybe a sociologist.
" As Festival organizers, we refuse to question anyone’s gender."
So you're discerning their biological arrangements by what means?
Feh.
Re: WooWooWomonhyd!
Date: 2006-08-24 08:49 pm (UTC)I suspect it's some sort of "don't ask, don't tell" thing. Which is also problematic, obviously.
Re: WooWooWomonhyd!
Date: 2006-08-24 09:20 pm (UTC)*sigh*. i'm not one to talk about ugly neologisms, being as i love gender-neutral pronouns such as 'zie', and tend to like new words; the more the merrier. i grant "man" as in "mankind" is replacement-worthy. but i dislike womon/womyn/wimmin; probably because i see no reason to view every appearance of the syllable "man" or "his" or "son" as a sign of the oppression of the patriarchy.
Re: WooWooWomonhyd!
Date: 2006-08-24 09:56 pm (UTC)Singular "they" all the way!
Re: WooWooWomonhyd!
Date: 2006-08-25 01:18 am (UTC)Whoops then that means I semi-snarked at you in the same post I name-checked you!
Re: WooWooWomonhyd!
Date: 2006-08-25 01:23 am (UTC)Well, I object to "wombyn," specifically because it implies that women without uteri aren't real women. And that's just insulting.
Re: WooWooWomonhyd!
Date: 2006-08-25 03:19 am (UTC)And because many such misspellings resemble white racist dialect humor - especially when spelled "wimmin." It reads like something out of Amos & Andy or some other menstrual show.
Pardon that. LJ's spell check is insidiously suggestive.
Re: WooWooWomonhyd!
Date: 2006-08-25 03:11 pm (UTC)Re: WooWooWomonhyd!
Date: 2006-08-25 01:22 am (UTC)Re: WooWooWomonhyd!
Date: 2006-08-25 03:05 am (UTC)The dinosaurs agree!
Re: WooWooWomonhyd!
Date: 2006-08-24 09:57 pm (UTC)I'll go along with "zie," if someone prefers it, but when I'm editing, I tend to use the singular "they," as less blink-worthy. People may have grammatical issues with the singular "they," but the majority of standard-English speakers are more likely to have heard and used it than are likely to have heard and used "zie," etc. If I want to communicate, I'm best using language that more people are going to understand.
Re: WooWooWomonhyd!
Date: 2006-08-25 06:46 am (UTC)No, babies have genes that determine their sex. Their genitals only indicate that sex.
If one has an operation to alter that genitalia then one is deliberately misrepresenting one's genetic gender in an attempt to pose as the other. Having hormone therapy and a "gender reassignment" operation no more makes one the opposite sex than putting on a fur suit and barking makes one a dog.
Re: WooWooWomonhyd!
Date: 2006-08-25 01:10 pm (UTC)I will not, however, grant that that genetic organization or plumbing have anything at all to do with the collection of culturally determined traits that get described as "gender."
There is nothing mystical or genetic that determines "gender." One's genitalia tell people how to treat one, and the way one is conditioned to think about one's sex, sexuality, and social roles often determine one's gender.
And the Womyn's festival isn't examining people's genes. They're not subjecting all their participants to genetic testing (how creepy would that be?) They're basing their distinction on an arbitrary question of plumbing, which I think is pretty bogus, and they clearly don't.
Their call. Their festival. I won't be attending any time soon.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-24 09:28 pm (UTC)i can't stand arguments that make it all about what i am (born as), instead of what i do. those arguments have in my experience always been used to piss on me.
the MWMF annoys the shit out of me, and i boycott them. (which isn't saying much now that i live far away, but it was once meaningful, *heh*.) i tend to like hippies (i almost was one, i was so about being one with nature and peace, but i missed hippiedom heyday by a few years). tho these folks don't strike me as hippies. no free love for them, i bet. and certainly not with men, or non-womyn-born-womyn!
no subject
Date: 2006-08-24 10:01 pm (UTC)Either that, or I'm just too rage-filled to deal with peace and love. ;)
no subject
Date: 2006-08-24 10:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-26 07:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-24 11:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-24 11:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-24 11:59 pm (UTC)But not everyone who falls under the definition of feminist wants to abolish gender, nor thinks it can be a matter of personal choice. I don't entirely understand that kind of argument, but since ones biological sex does pretty much determine which gender you're raised as, the point that "womyn born womyn" have different experiences than mtf women seems valid...until you think how offensive it must be to not be considered a real woman. I guess the "safe space" argument would only hold up if you say that transwomen, as a group, have societal power over born women...huh?
(I guess I should also consider that there are even more trivial things that generate an even more inordinant amount of coversation and blog posts, as well!)
no subject
Date: 2006-08-25 12:11 am (UTC)I also don't believe in abolishing gender. I'm all for gender diversity. I don't want to speak for the transgendered people I know, but as I understand it, their identity isn't a matter of personal choice. Even if they were born male, they don't experience the world as a man, and likely they wouldn't even be coded as such in terms of societal power, even if they weren't dressing as a woman.
And hey, it's the complete opposite of the Pluto posts now spamming the blogosphere. I'm guilty of that too.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-25 12:24 am (UTC)& I didn't mean "personal choice" as in "oh, I think I'll be a woman today"! I meant more that their gender was not decided for them by others.
I totally have no sympathy for Pluto.:) heh heh
no subject
Date: 2006-08-25 12:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-25 03:14 pm (UTC)And then, on an even later day, it won't.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-25 02:58 pm (UTC)I've no desire to abolish gender. I think gender is fun, neat, and cool. I want to expand the range of choice, render the gender binary obsolete, and erase the lines drawn around gender and gender roles. I want to see femme-y construction workers, and very very butch-male primary cargivers, and phys-ed teachers of both biological sexes who feel comfortable wearing lipstick. I want straight men to feel comfortable wearing skirts when they dance, because it's much more comfortable and the a skirt swirls so nicely when you twirl, and women wearing swimming trunks at the beach. I want to see boys wearing pink and girls wearing ties and nobody making assumptions about their sexuality (present or future) as a result.
I want words like philanderer to apply to females and words like whore to apply to males.
And none of this is biologically determined. All of it is a matter of personal choice and access to choice-space.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-25 03:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-25 04:10 pm (UTC)Fine by me.
The "identity" signified by "gender" has been different throughout history and culture. Sure "woman" (or the local term for it) has historically been used to mean "female person with female-type plumbing who can theoretically get pregnant under the right circumstances." Beyond that, it's meant different ways of dressing, different economic choices, different family roles, different standards for attractiveness, different ideals throughout history and throughout different cultures.
Being a woman meant something entirely different to an Innu woman and an English woman in the seventeenth century. It means something quite different to me from what it meant to either of those women. My hyphothetical seventeenth-century English woman would very likely consider me entirely unwomanly, some sort of ungendered cross-dressing transgressive freak—so much of what I consider normal activities for a woman would very likely be quite outside her choice-space, experience, and ability to even conceive (I can read, I can travel alone, I wear trousers and generally don't wear a corset or stays, I'm not married, I haven't had children, I govern my own finances and affairs, I've been to university ... in general, I'd make a terrible woman by seventeenth-century standards, plumbing notwisthstanding) . I can't even begin to think what the Innu woman might think of me.
The only way we "have a good idea what you mean" when you say you ascribe to a particular gender is if we've all agreed on what those roles mean. It's socially constructed. As women gain more control over their reproductive systems, and, in consquence, as women's choice space has broadened because we're less held hostage by the plumbing that people use to assign us our gender roles, what it means to be a "woman" has changed and shifted. Other factors, such as the women's movement, of course, have also broadened the choice space.
Being a woman once meant that you could be celibate or a mother (married or not). Now there are other choices.
Being a woman once meant that you had to have a monthly period. Now there are other choices.
Being a woman once meant that you covered your ankles and wrists in public, and that you wore a skirt to go horseback riding. Now it doesn't, in mainstream western culture, at least.
Being a woman once meant that you could have "the vapours." How many people do you know who have vapours now (other than womyn at music festivals who see male gentalia, apparently)?
no subject
Date: 2006-08-25 04:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-24 11:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-25 12:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-25 08:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-25 03:29 am (UTC)Fucking essentialism, it's ridiculous.
Next up, these people will be joining forces with the christian right in order to stop pornography... oh, wait.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-25 01:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-25 06:25 am (UTC)--
On an only partially related note, this whole discussion reminds me of the lingering discomfort I have with anarcho-primitivism: while I don't disagree that we might have something to learn from societies which operated differently, I fundamentally disagree with the idea that there is a way "that people ought to live". Sounds like reactionary conservatism to me.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-25 01:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-25 08:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-25 08:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-26 04:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-26 12:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-26 08:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-26 07:09 pm (UTC)i really love when groups who aren't at the absolute margins of society expect those who are to go along with their bullshit.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-26 08:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-27 05:21 pm (UTC)that happens so much in mainstream "GLBT" organizations here. they'll put the "T" in their name or mission statement, but then expect trans issues to be on the absolute back burner until all the "gay and lesbian" issues get worked out. ugh.